[Sundaycommunity] WHY PEOPLE WALK AWAY FROM CHURCH

Wed Mar 3 11:42:10 PST 2021

Thank you Brian for this article. It is spot on with its critique of
mainstream Christianity and most churches today and the reasons so many
young people walk away.  This highlights the community we have and the
prophetic witness of our own priests who have in some cases been arrested
for nonviolent resistance to the economic greed machine, fed by endless
war, and domination and exploitation of the most vulnerable on the planet
including animals and plants.  One can walk into a  Catholic Church today
in most cases and never hear a sermon on Laudato Si and the climate
emergency or on the global arms industry.  Further, to see Catholic bishops
not speak against the endless wars waged in American long before number 45
came to power is nothing short of scandalous from a Gospel perspective!
Until I found the Sunday Community I found myself angry most of the times I
left mass and were it not for this community I would have had to seek out
another community or way of expressing faith.

In regards to young people they are actually much more counter-cultural
than our church which speaks volumes.  They are warm and welcoming to LGTBQ
people, look at the numbers of youth in the streets for Black Lives Matters
protests last summer including some of my own students I am proud to say,
look at the numbers who fill the streets in climate emergency
demonstrations, including the leadership of Greta Thunberg and indigenous
peoples on the frontlines with their bodies.  Many of these are willing to
face militarized police violence.  Seems to me the Holy Spirit and Christ
consciousness are to be found here, as the Gospel of John says, "The Spirit
will blow where it will".  Thank you for everyone's insights and
contributions.

In Peace and Solidarity

Greg
Greg

On Wed, Mar 3, 2021 at 1:59 PM Patricia Smiley via Sundaycommunity <
sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:

> I did read this article and it was well worth it.  I think it applies to
> the Catholic church as much as to the American evangelical church.  My
> daughter Rachel has said to me exactly the same thing about any church's
> response to those who identify as LGBTQ.  While I did baptize her, as was
> important to me and her father to make a vow to raise her as a Christian,
> her godfather had been a woman when I first met him.  (He is a
> transgendered man who has been very happily married to a woman for over 30
> years.  Raised in a very traditional Catholic environment, he has had his
> own difficulties with finding a community to share his faith with.)  The
> Sunday Community was an important part of my children's lives when they
> were children as was a real and genuine faith - for both of them.  I raised
> them both to be good critical thinkers and that meant accepting that they
> did not have the faith that I have.  I respect their values, their
> principles and their ethics.  I also enjoy having discussions with them -
> not that I am or ever will be an apologist for the Christian faith but more
> of an apologist on my own behalf and what my faith and its practise have
> meant to me in my own life - and at times how I have reconciled the
> authoritarianism, patriarchy and
>
> When the pandemic has finished and the Sunday Community is back to meeting
> in person, I will try to find an alternative faith community here in
> Hamilton.  I know I won't even try to find a Catholic parish, as I can't
> imagine trying to find my understanding of what the Gospels tell me as to
> the appropriate life of a Christian in one of them.  I became a Catholic as
> a very young woman because I loved the mass - and if we are not currently
> taking communion together, I still have a need to hear the prayers.  I hold
> dear the Christianity that was built during my childhood in the United
> Church.  I will never lose that.
>
> As for grandchildren who haven't been baptized:  My youngest sister and
> her husband had a pretty traditional wedding in our dad's church (Bloor St.
> United).  That wedding there was more for nostalgic reasons than anything
> else - Dad had been dead for several years.  When their daughter was born,
> they did not have her baptized as neither of them were churchgoers and they
> felt this would be hypocritical.  (I agreed.)  When that girl was a teen
> she decided her family should go to church, and they are all now active
> members of the Bloor St.  congregation.  My niece still hasn't been
> baptized, she doesn't feel she is really ready for it, but has told me she
> likely will at some point when the pandemic is over.  We have talked about
> our faith and our respective churches, and how we live our the call to
> justice and love for all humans.
>
> I think our younger generation have been a great challenge to us.  For the
> parents, please discuss with your sons and daughters what is lacking in the
> church, or if they still take an active part, what it is that draws them to
> whatever faith community they belong.
>
> David Walsh, thank you for your sharing, your example and your work with
> the students
>
> Peace to all, Pat
>
>
> *Patricia Smiley*
>
> *email:  smileypatricia76 at gmail.com <smileypatricia76 at gmail.com>*
>
> *mobile:  647-517-1599*
>
>
>
>
> 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
>>
>>
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