[Sundaycommunity] WHY PEOPLE WALK AWAY FROM CHURCH

Wed Mar 3 11:08:45 PST 2021

Thanks for all these reflections. Jean

On Wed, Mar 3, 2021 at 1:09 PM Lee Piepgrass via Sundaycommunity <
sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:

> Thanks, David and Brian S.!
>
> Lee
>
> On Mar 3, 2021, at 12:04 PM, David Walsh via Sundaycommunity <
> sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:
>
> Thanks for sharing your personal thoughts Brian and others. Below are two
> short reflections I shared recently with friends.
>
> I am involved with a project to introduce prophetic voices to university
> and high school students, and I find they are enthusiastic to engage with
> others on an inter-faith basis around justice issues. With the way the
> bible and the message of Jesus have been distorted by Christians, we need
> to reclaim the social justice and contemplative elements of our faith in
> ways that are not threatening to others who see only the hypocrisy of many
> Christians. We are fortunate at the Sunday community to have prophetic
> priests and members who help to raise our consciousness about how our faith
> relates to the many injustices of our society.
>
> David
> David Walsh
>
> “I plead guilty to a life-long passion, even an obsession with making
> sense of faith, especially for those for whom it makes little or no sense.
> This concern had a definite moment of birth when I was 21 and spent a full
> year outside the then very Catholic Ireland at the University of Caen in
> the north of France. For the first time in my life I encountered widespread
> agnosticism among my French companions, most of them baptized Catholics.
> And a first simple insight got born then, one that was strengthened in
> later years as a Jesuit, working always in different university contexts. *I
> became convinced that most blockages to faith were not on the level of
> truth but on the level of spiritual freedom.* This was later confirmed
> when I did some more specialist work on Newman and discovered his special
> stress on people’s disposition. A second insight, born from a year in Latin
> America, was that our western lifestyle and culture have immense and often
> hidden power over our spiritual freedom or lack of it. A third dimension
> entered when I began to understand that human imagination is a key cultural
> battleground where faith is either starved or nourished. So these three
> topics – freedom, culture, imagination – came to be natural concerns for
> me, and in this spirit I tried to explore some of the so-called frontier
> areas of fundamental theology.”
> *Jesuit theologian,* *Fr Michael Paul Gallagher*
>
>
>
> The Bible is one massive protest against the ancient domination system,
> which makes it a very political document. And we need to remember that
> Jesus didn't simply die, he was executed by the domination system that
> ruled his world. He was executed because he had become a radical critic of
> the way that world was put together and he was beginning to attract a
> following. To be very blunt, it's difficult for me to imagine how anybody
> who has seen what the Bible and Jesus are about could vote for policies
> that actually maintain or increase the wealth of those at the top in our
> day.
>
> For Christians, a major task is consciousness raising within our own
> congregations about the Bible. Not only about what it is, but also about
> the idea that God is passionate about our liberation from oppressive
> systems.
>
> Part of the scandal of American Christianity is that statistically the
> U.S. is the most Christian country in the world and yet, as a country we
> have the greatest income inequality in the world. And as a country we are
> uncritically committed, not simply to being the most powerful nation in the
> world militarily but to being as militarily powerful as the rest of the
> world combined.”
>
> *Marcus Borg*
>
> *From:* Sundaycommunity <sundaycommunity-bounces at lists.integralshift.ca> *On
> Behalf Of *Brian Halferty via Sundaycommunity
> *Sent:* March 3, 2021 11:37 AM
> *To:* sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca
> *Cc:* Brian Halferty <bhalferty at yahoo.ca>
> *Subject:* Re: [Sundaycommunity] WHY PEOPLE WALK AWAY FROM CHURCH
>
> Brian, and Lee,
>
> I also found the article to be pretty good. It didn't go into great depth
> of discussion on the various points, but it did outline pretty accurately
> many of the reasons why people either reject the formal church(es) or just
> put religion aside.
>
> I grew up in a household that was very Roman Catholic, and very
> traditional about all of that.  My grandparents, (my Mother's parents) and
> especially my grandfather had a fairly rigid view of the RC church and its
> laws and regulations.  I realized in my adult years, looking back, that my
> grandfather was really a Jansenist, that school of thought which emphasized
> evil and sin more strongly than almost any other element of belief.  I went
> to Catholic grade school, and learned a lot of narrow thinking there as
> well.  Regarding Church membership, we were taught to believe that if
> anyone we knew -- a friend, or even a relative -- turned away from the
> Catholic church and left it, we should avoid that person.  Do not visit
> their house, do not socialize with them, stay away from them.  They are
> dangerous.
>
> I have now long-since come to see that kind of approach as totally
> judgmental: a fearful attitude at best and a hateful attitude at worst.
> Fear and hatred are closely linked.  Henri Nouwen used to say that the
> opposite of love is not hate, but fear.  And we were being taught to fear,
> (or hate), people whom we defined as different or not sufficiently like us.
>
> My Mother, God love her, while being a "good Catholic," was also a more
> loving person than that.  She had a more open personal attitude towards
> people, was generous, helpful to others. And she had a good sense of
> humour, with regard to herself and to others.  I'm grateful for her
> influence in my life, and for having learned my first lessons about love
> from her.
>
> In our own lives, Mary Lou and I have made choices about church and
> spirituality, how we will worship, and how we will (try to) live our lives.
> Our 5 children all have their own approaches to things.  ranging from
> active church participation for a couple of them all the way to complete
> dissociation from church affiliation.  If we were living the old religious
> code we learned as children, we would reject those children who left the
> church, keep them away, disown them, disavow any association with them.
> What a hell on earth would we be creating for them and for us!  But that is
> not how we live.  We love our children, and their children, with our very
> lives.  Regardless of where they stand on church affiliation, they are all
> good people: highly principled, living and promoting justice, loving their
> families and others, and trying to be instruments of peace.  They are
> spiritual people in a most fundamental way. We could hope for nothing
> better. We are blessed, and so are they.
>
>  Best wishes,
>
> Brian
>
>
>
> *Brian J. Halferty*
> 146 Sumach Street, Apt. 214
> Toronto, ON  M5A 0P7
> 416-431-0038
>
>
> On Wednesday, March 3, 2021, 04:48:36 a.m. EST, Lee Piepgrass via
> Sundaycommunity <sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:
>
>
> I read it, Brian, and I thought it was pretty good, right on the money in
> many cases. And even though it deals more with “Christian,” even
> evangelical Christian, rather than explicitly “Catholic” churches, there
> were many points, I felt, that were well taken and could equally apply to
> us. My kids like yours don’t go to church and have not baptized their kids.
> I support them in their choices, which make sense to me on many levels. Don
> and I always counselled then not to mistake religion for spirituality. They
> all have healthy spiritual outlooks, they like young people mentioned in
> the article, don’t find nurturance for that part of their lives in any
> church.
>
> If it weren’t for our community and others like it over the years, I might
> not have made it this far.
>
> Thanks for this, even if you didn’t read it.
>
> Lee
>
>
> On Mar 3, 2021, at 3:43 AM, Brian Shaughnessy via Sundaycommunity <
> sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:
>
> 
> Why People Walk Away from Church. A Post-Church Christian Reflects on the…
> | by Dan Foster | Backyard Church | Medium
> <https://medium.com/backyard-theology/why-people-walk-away-from-church-9724179d9234>
>
> I haven't read the article.  Don't feel I have to.  I have a pretty good
> idea from personal experience.
>
> It's ironic.  The main reason we moved over in 1991 from St. Peter's
> Church to here was because our kids were in the public system, having
> started there for French immersion and with the approval of some of the
> younger Paulists.
>
> The "CIC" having at that time two very lively and active youth groups, a
> senior and a junior, that our kids much enjoyed until the time came for
> them to go off to university, Val to McGill and Tony to Waterloo.
>
> Now not one of our three go to Mass anymore.
>
> We have 5 grandchildren, not one of them baptized.
>
> "You can lead a horse to water.  But you can't make it drink."
>
> "Into Your hands, Lord, I commend all of our spirits."
>
>         Brian S.
>
> --
> aptYLJC,Twbd,ttM
>
>
> <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail>
> Virus-free. www.avast.com
> <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail>
> _______________________________________________
> Sundaycommunity mailing list
> Sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca
> http://lists.integralshift.ca/listinfo.cgi/sundaycommunity-integralshift.ca
>
> _______________________________________________
> Sundaycommunity mailing list
> Sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca
> http://lists.integralshift.ca/listinfo.cgi/sundaycommunity-integralshift.ca
> _______________________________________________
> Sundaycommunity mailing list
> Sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca
> http://lists.integralshift.ca/listinfo.cgi/sundaycommunity-integralshift.ca
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Sundaycommunity mailing list
> Sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca
> http://lists.integralshift.ca/listinfo.cgi/sundaycommunity-integralshift.ca
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.integralshift.ca/private.cgi/sundaycommunity-integralshift.ca/attachments/20210303/879891df/attachment-0001.html>