[Sundaycommunity] Article in today's Atlantic

Mon Jul 31 10:34:45 PDT 2023

wow the article seems to be calling for intentional communities - much like
the Catholic worker. My own life has been enriched through associations
with groups of friends via Columbus boys Camp. One World Global education,
Youth Corps, Camp Micah and 2 teaching staffs. The community aspect is what
each person really wants and our North American context is so focused on
the importance of the individual. I feel blessed for the past, but now
wonder about the future for myself and my children and grandchildren.
Peac, Dwyer

On Mon, Jul 31, 2023 at 10:45 AM Greg Gillis via Sundaycommunity <
sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:

> Thank you Catherine for your thoughtful and heartfelt response! So true,
> my wife just returned from a retreat at a Buddhist Dharma centre that was
> not based on any religious precepts but grounded in the beauty of nature
> and she returned as a new person. Nature as Richard Rohr says is the first
> sacrament and when we return to it the healing is almost immediate.
>
> In peace
>
> Greg
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 31, 2023 at 10:01 AM Catherine Walther via Sundaycommunity <
> sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:
>
>> I agree with Greg, a very good article, and small Christian communities
>> like the Sunday Community, Taproot and CNWE are places that people tend to
>> thrive. In Taproot and CNWE we also read and take workshops or retreats
>> with current theologians and are able to expand our understanding of Jesus'
>> message in current linguo and in conjunction with recent scientific
>> findings about our place in the Earth Community. That is so often missing
>> in 'regular church experience'.  We live in and are an important part of
>> this Earth community and need to foster those relationships that sustain
>> us, like land, soil, water, air and simple beauty.
>> In Quebec City this summer I went into a cathedral because my friend
>> wanted to visit it.  I was disgusted with the opulence, so much so that I
>> couldn't even pray. But out in the parks and by the sea I was praying
>> constantly. I believe people are finding God in places other than the
>> bricks and mortar of traditional churches and the God they find is so much
>> bigger than they've ever experienced.
>> Another reason why people are leaving traditional churches is because
>> with a flick of a finger one can find when and how all the tenants of
>> church required belief were made.  And some of it doesn't make sense to a
>> 21st century person. So praying the Creed becomes very difficult until one
>> day you just can't say it and you leave.  I think that's what happened to
>> my children and a lot of others. The traditional churches need to change
>> and the traditional SLOW way of change isn't working.
>> Blessings and enjoy the rest of the summer experiencing God
>> wherever/however you do, ❤Catherine
>>
>> On Mon, 31 Jul 2023 at 00:59, John MacMillan via Sundaycommunity <
>> sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:
>>
>>> The Misunderstood Reason Millions of Americans Stopped Going to Church
>>>
>>> The defining problem driving people out is ... just how American life
>>> works in the 21st century.
>>> By Jake Meador <https://www.theatlantic.com/author/jake-meador/>
>>> [image: A bible on a pew.]
>>> Spencer Platt / Getty
>>> JULY 29, 2023
>>> SHARE
>>> SAVED STORIES <https://accounts.theatlantic.com/accounts/saved-stories/>
>>> SAVE
>>> Nearly everyone I grew up with in my childhood church in Lincoln,
>>> Nebraska, is no longer Christian. That’s not unusual. Forty million
>>> Americans have stopped attending church in the past 25 years. That’s
>>> something like 12 percent of the population, and it represents the largest
>>> concentrated change in church attendance in American history. As a
>>> Christian, I feel this shift acutely. My wife and I wonder whether the
>>> institutions and communities that have helped preserve us in our own faith
>>> will still exist for our four children, let alone whatever grandkids we
>>> might one day have.
>>>
>>> This change is also bad news for America as a whole: Participation in a
>>> religious community generally correlates with better health outcomes
>>> and longer life
>>> <https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/10/28/religion-church-attendance-mortality-column/92676964/>
>>> , higher financial generosity
>>> <https://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/magazine/less-god-less-giving/>,
>>> and more stable families
>>> <https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/03/20935/>—all of which are
>>> desperately needed in a nation with rising rates of loneliness, mental
>>> illness, and alcohol and drug dependency.
>>>
>>> A new book, written by Jim Davis, a pastor at an evangelical church in
>>> Orlando, and Michael Graham, a writer with the Gospel Coalition, draws on
>>> surveys of more than 7,000 Americans by the political scientists Ryan Burge
>>> and Paul Djupe, attempting to explain why people have left churches—or
>>> “dechurched,” in the book’s lingo—and what, if anything, can be done to get
>>> some people to come back. The book raises an intriguing possibility: What
>>> if the problem isn’t that churches are asking too much of their members,
>>> but that they aren’t asking nearly enough?
>>>
>>> *The Great Dechurching *finds that religious abuse and more general
>>> moral corruption in churches have driven people away. This is, of course,
>>> an indictment of the failures of many leaders who did not address abuse in
>>> their church. But Davis and Graham also find that a much larger share of
>>> those who have left church have done so for more banal reasons. The book
>>> suggests that the defining problem driving out most people who leave is …
>>> just how American life works in the 21st century. Contemporary America
>>> simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it
>>> is designed to maximize individual accomplishment as defined by
>>> professional and financial success. Such a system leaves precious little
>>> time or energy for forms of community that don’t contribute to one’s own
>>> professional life or, as one ages, the professional prospects of one’s
>>> children. Workism
>>> <https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/religion-workism-making-americans-miserable/583441/> reigns
>>> in America, and because of it, community in America
>>> <https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2023/05/03/new-surgeon-general-advisory-raises-alarm-about-devastating-impact-epidemic-loneliness-isolation-united-states.html>,
>>> religious community included, is a math problem that doesn’t add up.
>>>
>>> Numerous victims of abuse in church environments can identify a moment
>>> when they lost the ability to believe, when they almost felt their faith
>>> draining out of them. The book shows, though, that for most Americans who
>>> were once a part of churches but have since left, the process of leaving
>>> was gradual, and in many cases they didn’t realize it was even happening
>>> until it already had. It’s less like jumping off a cliff and more like
>>> driving down a slope, eventually realizing that you can no longer see the
>>> place you started from.
>>> Consider one of the composite characters that Graham and Davis use in
>>> the book to describe a typical evangelical dechurcher: a 30-something woman
>>> who grew up in a suburban megachurch, was heavily invested in a campus
>>> ministry while in college, then after graduating moved into a full-time job
>>> and began attending a young-adults group in a local church. In her 20s, she
>>> meets a guy who is less religiously engaged, they get married, and, at some
>>> point early in their marriage, after their first or second child is born,
>>> they stop going to church. Maybe the baby isn’t sleeping well and when
>>> Sunday morning comes around, it is simply easier to stay home and catch
>>> whatever sleep is available as the baby (finally) falls asleep.
>>>
>>>
>>>    -
>>>    -
>>>
>>>    <https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/06/revenge-bedtime-procrastination/619156/>
>>>
>>>    -
>>>
>>>    <https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/09/john-dickerson-goodbye-my-familys-beloved-dog/620010/>
>>>
>>>
>>> In other cases, a person might be entering mid-career, working a
>>> high-stress job requiring a 60- or 70-hour workweek. Add to that 15 hours
>>> of commute time, and suddenly something like two-thirds of their waking
>>> hours in the week are already accounted for. And so when a friend invites
>>> them to a Sunday-morning brunch, they probably want to go to church, but
>>> they also want to see that friend, because they haven’t been able to see
>>> them for months. The friend wins out.
>>>
>>> After a few weeks of either scenario, the thought of going to church on
>>> Sunday carries a certain mental burden with it—you might *want* to go,
>>> but you also dread the inevitable questions about where you have been. “I
>>> skipped church to go to brunch with a friend” or “I was just too tired to
>>> come” don’t sound like convincing excuses as you rehearse the conversation
>>> in your mind. Soon it actually sounds like it’d be harder to attend than to
>>> skip, even if some part of you still wants to go. The underlying challenge
>>> for many is that their lives are stretched like a rubber band about to
>>> snap—and church attendance ends up feeling like an item on a checklist
>>> that’s already too long.
>>>
>>> What can churches do in such a context? In theory, the Christian Church
>>> could be an antidote to all that. What is more needed in our time than a
>>> community marked by sincere love, sharing what they have from each
>>> according to their ability and to each according to their need, eating
>>> together regularly, generously serving neighbors, and living lives of quiet
>>> virtue and prayer? A healthy church can be a safety net in the harsh
>>> American economy by offering its members material assistance in times of
>>> need: meals after a baby is born, money for rent after a layoff. Perhaps
>>> more important, it reminds people that their identity is not in their job
>>> or how much money they make; they are children of God, loved and protected
>>> and infinitely valuable.
>>> But a vibrant, life-giving church requires more, not less, time and
>>> energy from its members. It asks people to prioritize one another over our
>>> career, to prioritize prayer and time reading scripture over
>>> accomplishment. This may seem like a tough sell in an era of dechurching.
>>> If people are already leaving—especially if they are leaving because they
>>> feel too busy and burned out to attend church regularly—why would they want
>>> to be part of a church that asks so much of them?
>>>
>>> Although understandable, that isn’t quite the right question. The
>>> problem in front of us is not that we have a healthy, sustainable society
>>> that doesn’t have room for church. The problem is that many Americans have
>>> adopted a way of life that has left us lonely, anxious, and uncertain of
>>> how to live in community with other people.
>>>
>>> The tragedy of American churches is that they have been so caught up in
>>> this same world that we now find they have nothing to offer these suffering
>>> people that can’t be more easily found somewhere else. American churches
>>> have too often been content to function as a kind of vaguely spiritual NGO,
>>> an organization of detached individuals who meet together for religious
>>> services that inspire them, provide practical life advice, or offer
>>> positive emotional experiences. Too often it has not been a community that
>>> through its preaching and living bears witness to another way to live.
>>>
>>> The theologian Stanley Hauerwas captured the problem well
>>> <https://www.christiancentury.org/article/interview/dangers-providing-pastoral-care> when
>>> he said that “pastoral care has become obsessed with the personal wounds of
>>> people in advanced industrial societies who have discovered that their
>>> lives lack meaning.” The difficulty is that many of the wounds and aches
>>> provoked by our current order aren’t of a sort that can be managed or
>>> life-hacked away. They are resolved only by changing one’s life, by
>>> becoming a radically different sort of person belonging to a radically
>>> different sort of community.
>>> Last fall, I spent several days in New York City, during which time I
>>> visited a home owned by a group of pacifist Christians
>>> <https://www.bruderhof.com/> that lives from a common purse—meaning the
>>> members do not have privately held property but share their property and
>>> money. Their simple life and shared finances allow their schedules to be
>>> more flexible, making for a thicker immediate community and greater
>>> generosity to neighbors, as well as a richer life of prayer and private
>>> devotion to God, all supported by a deep commitment to their church.
>>>
>>> This is, admittedly, an extreme example. But this community was thriving
>>> not because it found ways to scale down what it asked of its members but
>>> because it found a way to scale up what they provided to one another. Their
>>> way of living frees them from the treadmill of workism. Work, in this
>>> community, is judged not by the money it generates but by the people it
>>> serves. In a workist culture that believes dignity is grounded in
>>> accomplishment <https://mereorthodoxy.com/dignity-beyond-accomplishment>,
>>> simply reclaiming this alternative form of dignity becomes a radical act.
>>>
>>> In the Gospels, Jesus tells his first disciples to leave their old way
>>> of life behind, going so far as abandoning their plow or fishing nets where
>>> they are and, if necessary, even leaving behind their parents. A church
>>> that doesn’t expect at least this much from one another isn’t really a
>>> church in the way Jesus spoke about it. If Graham and Davis are right, it
>>> also is likely a church that won’t survive the challenges facing us today.
>>>
>>> The great dechurching could be the beginning of a new moment for
>>> churches, a moment marked less by aspiration to respectability and success,
>>> with less focus on individuals aligning themselves with American values and
>>> assumptions. We could be a witness to another way of life outside
>>> conventionally American measures of success. Churches could model better,
>>> truer sorts of communities, ones in which the hungry are fed, the weak are
>>> lifted up, and the proud are cast down. Such communities might not have the
>>> money, success, and influence that many American churches have so often
>>> pursued in recent years. But if such communities look less like those
>>> churches, they might also look more like the sorts of communities Jesus
>>> expected his followers to create.
>>>
>>> Jake Meador <https://www.theatlantic.com/author/jake-meador/> is the
>>> editor in chief of Mere Orthodoxy. He is the author of *What Are
>>> Christians For?: Life Together at the End of the World*
>>> <https://tertulia.com/book/what-are-christians-for-life-together-at-the-end-of-the-world-jake-meador/9780830847365?affiliate_id=atl-347>
>>> .
>>> ________________________________________
>>>
>>> Sundaycommunity mailing list
>>> To send message: sundaycommunity at integralshift.ca
>>> To manage Subscription: https://sundaycommunity.integralshift.ca
>>> To Unsubscribe send email to:
>>> sundaycommunity-unsubscribe at integralshift.ca
>>> To Subscribe send email to: sundaycommunity-subscribe at integralshift.ca
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> *May you walk in joy as love calls us on.*
>> ________________________________________
>>
>> Sundaycommunity mailing list
>> To send message: sundaycommunity at integralshift.ca
>> To manage Subscription: https://sundaycommunity.integralshift.ca
>> To Unsubscribe send email to:
>> sundaycommunity-unsubscribe at integralshift.ca
>> To Subscribe send email to: sundaycommunity-subscribe at integralshift.ca
>>
>>
>>
>> ________________________________________
>
> Sundaycommunity mailing list
> To send message: sundaycommunity at integralshift.ca
> To manage Subscription: https://sundaycommunity.integralshift.ca
> To Unsubscribe send email to: sundaycommunity-unsubscribe at integralshift.ca
> To Subscribe send email to: sundaycommunity-subscribe at integralshift.ca
>
>
>
>

-- 
Act Justly, Love Tenderly, Walk Humbly With Your God
    - Micah 6:8
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.integralshift.ca/pipermail/sundaycommunity-integralshift.ca/attachments/20230731/3ddd6fd8/attachment.htm>