My maximally controversial and maximally verbose thoughts on the church

03/16/26

Edit/warning: this ended up taking two days to write lol. I'm making a lot of bold statements here and i just want y'all to know this is a topic i'm passionate about and will write way way more paragraphs about. As i explain in the concluding paragraphs, i believe spiritual exploration across many faith practices is vital to faith in general, but this is my experience with the Christian faith specifically and i believe it's valuable to openly discuss it and all its baggage, especially in a modern Western society that has been tug-of-warring with this specific faith practice for centuries, and ever moreso now.

This monday afternoon i'm listening to a friend's community radio show and thinking about church. This is a topic i've been wanting to write about for a while and will probably bring up habitually because my complicated relationship with my faith tradition (and Our complicated relationship with faith in wider society) is a central theme in my life and is something i believe is important to talk about. Traditional hymns and talk of God (though never by name; i use the capitalized three-letter term here as a culturally recognizable placeholder for that who has no true name in English) are a recurring motif in my music, and i want to emphasize the emotional complexity of this motif to my very personal and very anguished work. As much as some of my family members would hate to hear it, i did not write a worship album; i wrote an album that wrestles with God and begs to be forsaken, which i believe is a far more important portrayal of faith because it's painfully absent from those (artistic) conversations between both the common faithful and the common faithless (though, perhaps, felt deeply and wordlessly by both of these groups). Very soon you'll hear what i write about: medieval saints who rend their own bodies into oblivion in search of atonement; mothers who believe so powerfully and misguidedly in a false god that they would sacrifice their children, and children who believe so powerfully in their mothers that they would willfully embrace this fate; the bewildering hypnosis of guilt and shame and loss that damns us to the wilderness in so many different ways, bringing us seemingly ever further and yet ever closer to the very thing we can't even remember we lost. I write about love and forgiveness and death and choosing to live. This, to me, is where God is found. This is where i found God.

If you've scrolled thru my memory journal, you might've found out that i grew up in a protestant church - United Methodist, to be precise - and its memory is a source of both comfort and dissonance. Before i had a concept of socially-prescribed shame and theological controversy, my church really was like a "home" and a "family" (terms the contemporary protestants love to hamfist into their self-descriptions in the same way corporations do about their un-unionized employees). I literally thought of all those old ladies as my friends who did arts & crafts with me and sang old songs with me and taught me beautiful folktales about battles with giants and many-colored coats and miraculous healings. And they were. It wasn't until my teenage years at church camp, where informal confessionals and sobbing hysterically in crowds of hundreds of children were commonplace, that faith began to hurt in a way that was as intense as it was confusing. That along with my gradual exposure to the outside churches of my peers - frequently pentecostal, baptist, and presbyterian, where there was a bewildering whimsical intensity that was foreign to my comparatively meek and bookish foundations, to say nothing of the unfamiliar and vaguely threatening contemporary music they played which had the same somatic effect as inhaling huge clouds of thick, sticky incense (i will probably say this more than once but that meticulously-formulated hypnotic ecstasy-inducing effect will always make contemporary worship music threatening and ungodly to me, although i uphold the virtue in other more natural forms of ecstasy) - complicated something that i thought was simple, and it wasn't long before i was telling my grandparents i didn't want to go to church camp anymore. And then, of course, came the discord of the impending Methodist church split (for reasons then confusing and yet confusingly immediate to me), and the pastor became so unpopular and attendance so low that my childhood church was no longer recognizable, and i couldn't keep going there, either.

I want to make clear that i don't think of my experience as religious trauma (this is a separate issue that is far more specific in nature than most of society will claim right now), nor do i think there is anything Inherently harmful about church as a concept, or God. It's very important not to put the term "trauma" onto what should be recognized as a very rational and spiritually vital moral dilemma that arises in the souls of people who grow up in the (especially protestant) church. And i'm not talking about the dilemma of "church makes me feel guilty, and feeling guilty feels bad, therefore God is not real". I think this is a tragically sad view of life that completely lacks self-inventory as well as awareness of the presence of the grand natural world within and around oneself (yes, God can be this simple, and yet there is so much more that will have to be expanded upon later).
As we get older and (hopefully) start to decide what it is we believe, i think we Have to come to terms with 1) that the church we grew up in has professed as indisputable fact a series of worldviews that is, in fact, infinitely disputed between and within every church (even those within a five mile radius of us), and 2) that most if not all churches (at least in the United States) are hopelessly damaged and misguided institutions which are situated much further from the true Spirit of God than they have ever claimed. I will always think it very ironic that one of the earliest stories of the earliest book of the Hebrew Bible, the tower of Babel, symbolically foretells the very pride-induced splinteredness that makes our Church (which i'll from this point on capitalize to refer to "the primarily protestant church as a modern Western institution", only because i am unequipped to expand on the particular flaws of the Catholic and Orthodox institutions) essentially the structural antithesis of everything it stands for - and yet churches go on exhibiting the exact same habits of old, and in a shockingly oblivious manner.

I've been to a lot of different churches, especially in the last few years. And i swear to you i've heard three separate sermons that said the exact same thing in the exact same tone: "I read recently about this problem where people are saying now that they've been 'Hurt... by the Church'. Have you guys heard of this? It was so shocking and inconcievable to me, that this is something that's actually been driving people away from the church. Feeling... judged, or... rejected by their church community, or, yknow, even worse... Well, all i can say is this: if you've been hurt by somebody in the church, they don't represent our church as a whole. And it doesn't mean you should reject the church altogether. After all, we're a family. And sometimes family hurts us, but we still love each other."
Now, i can understand how a 95-year-old middle-class white lady sitting in the pews of the church she's attended for 20-50 years would feel rather divorced from such a phenomenon - i imagine, actually, that she feels rather divorced from everything that's going on in the world lately. But for a church leader to both acknowledge and dismiss such a vital issue in one breath - especially in such cases as the Methodist, Anglican, and Presbyterian churches, where every sermon right now is latent with the subtext of their denomination splitting due to intense social discord about sexuality, gender, and politics - this is just one of the myriad ways the Church expresses its incapability of addressing the massive moral and psychological weight inherent in faith, in choosing to be faithful or part of a faithful body, especially right now in this societal moment. This is because the modern Church is secular. It is not concerned with the deeper conflicts of modern human life; how difficult it is to even want to seek a relationship with a higher power when you're queer, when you're living through a covert world war, when you're experiencing real instances of profound human suffering like poverty, homelessness, addiction, psychosis, neurosis, abuse, violence, alienation, complex grief. (I speak of all of the above from personal experience.) The Church does not have this kind of relationship with God and it's not concerned with discussing that. It is concerned with maximizing middle-class attendance through a really great light-and-sound show and a really passionate motivational speaker who says absolutely nothing controversial, much less theological, beyond, "Hey guys, when you're really stressed out about your job and your marriage, remember to 'let go and let God'!"

Now, mind you, I am saying all of this as a Christian. But not as a protestant or as a member of any Church institution. (I think many in my generation don't realize they have the freedom to make this distinction, that having a desire to explore spirituality - yes, even and especially the spiritual practices that have the most emotional and cultural baggage to you - does not consign you to a corporate owner. I decided to start going back to church in 2022 specifically because i would start sobbing hysterically every time i stepped into a church, and this may sound crazy but dammit, i wanted to figure out why!) The way the Church has incessantly dropped the ball on pretty much every real human issue that both complicates and necessitates a reparative personal relationship with God is one of the biggest betrayals i have ever personally experienced in my life. It's no wonder so many of my peers have rejected the pursuit of faith - which i don't think is right and i even feel compelled to speak out against, but that's specifically because i understand and relate to that generational hopelessness and nihilism. And the protestant Church is aware of this, and their hideously irresponsible and ungodly response is twofold: 1) widen the church demographic by making church less faith-oriented and more social- and entertainment-oriented, and 2) continually simplify the moral imperatives and the philosophical-theological undercurrents of faith until they're so dumbed down and so derivative that the message to the church body becomes nothing more than a vague guilt-trip and, for example, the retelling of the life and death of Jesus Christ (because of course, every protestant church will focus almost exclusively on the Gospels while completely brushing off the historical and symbolic significance of the Hebrew Bible) becomes a folktale scripted to rote memory out of mere unconscious obligation, never remembering or understanding the theological complexity, philosophical implications, or psychological richness of the remembrance ritual of the resurrection.

In all my criticizing, you should know there is an implication of severe hope. Despite it all - all i have been through personally, and all i have seen in the failure of the Church - i have a personal need to understand God, to feel close to God, and to learn about what it means to believe in God. This is something intimate, emotional, and very closely intertwined with my personal suffering and grief. This is what i believe is absent from the modern Church - a personal imperative that is based on having experienced something real and complex about human life. Many in the Church congregation feel this, this Something they've experienced that causes them to Need to believe, whether it's grief or self-loathing or terror or loneliness or emptiness or rage or love or the pure humiliating gratitude of receiving every beautiful thing that has ever come to you after every horrible thing you've been through or done; but it is sequestered to unconscious knowledge and never brought up with any substance or lived reality by the church leaders or anyone. I dare to argue that this severe vitalness to faith that comes from all the most unspeakable agonies of being human, all those most vast of emotional sensations and hysterical perceptions we still hardly have words to describe in modern clinical language, much less language (but have been described with profound poetic precision in several religious texts), and most of all the innate unconscious sense that there is or was a something, a presence, a wish, watching us go through all of this and waiting for us to come back - this sense or wish that there is Something to Come Back To - that's what faith is supposed to be. That's where God is. And it's only when you've known this, felt this in order to know it, that you can also see that God is present in all the most mundane and peaceful and beautiful and natural moments of being human, too. That God is not the Great Punisher of humanity, nor the cold unfeeling bystander to all our pain; that God is the presence that feels all pain alongside us and is the very voice inside us that insists that this isn't right, this isn't what we deserve, this isn't the end, this isn't all there is.
First, we feel this and realize this. And then, we look back - to history, to the faiths of the ancient eras, to the suffering of the ancient peoples (i'm talking both about the Bible and about apocryphal, secondary, and tangential religious texts throughout history, with a special fondness for medieval hagiography), and recognize that this vastness of feeling is recursive, cyclical, prescribed, shared; that we were never alone in this, that we can never again be alone in this, that we can never again let others be alone in this.

I reject the moral absolutism, the social obligations, and the political and economic panderings of the Church. In fact, i believe that separating my identity from the Church is an exercising of correct faith. I don't want to understand God the way they do. I don't relate to God the way they do. I certainly still listen to their sermons, and see their value as a sociological gauge of the current moral sentiments and worldviews of our society, and i sit in the pews to keep my aging grandmother company, and i sing the same hymns that are a fond reminder of when things felt simpler to me; but my faith is ultimately expressed in my private commitment to personal lifelong learning. I believe the only way for me to have a meaningful, respectful, and reparative relationship with God is to commit time to understanding theology intimately, to never take for granted or presume as true what is said by any church, and to never think of church attendance as equivalent to having faith. That, and spending more time in nature, listening to birdsong and observing the lives of plants and animals, and trying relentlessly each day to be kind and loving and patient, even when it is naive, and especially when it is difficult.

Matthew 18:20 says, "For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them" (NRSVUE). This has been understood to mean that, if church is a necessary aspect of faith, it doesn't have to be within an institution, but can be anywhere where God is discussed. I think the Spirit of God is still very much alive in these smaller, little-known and little-seen gatherings, and this is precisely where we still have a chance to find and develop an understanding of faith as a modern people, as a generation that has been hurt and failed by the Church, as a species for which being alive is painful and confounding. And when i say all of this, i'm speaking from the perspective of someone who has deep familial and formative ties with the Christian faith practice, but i don't believe it's right to enforce Christianity as thee singular truth. I have read Buddhist, Daoist, Muslim, and Satanist texts. I happen to have a pretty wide knowledge of pagan New Age practices like astrology, tarot, runes (this was my area of interest before i decided to go peeking around in Christian circles, which i found to be far more psychologically fulfilling because of its familiarity and because it was a place of personal hurt), as well as ancient pagan practices that were snuffed out by the religious wars of the Hebrew Bible. I've spent the last several years exploring specifically Catholic and Orthodox texts, despite subscribing to neither group. And, to top it off, this entire 1000-paragraph ramble has been instigated by a book i'm reading by a psychoanalysis professor (Professor Don Carveth, a huge favorite and very inspiring person to me) arguing that religion is not necessary to guide society's morals or wellbeing anymore. I have a lot to say on that which is still brewing.
All this is to say that i believe it's very important to promote and support the open exploration of spirituality. I know what it is that calls to me, and this is because i have explored enough to be able to feel the difference. I believe that God (once again, just a placeholder term) exists independent of all our wide-ranging attempts to describe or name God. Human language cannot describe the omnipotent, and human minds cannot comprehend the omnipotent. The best approximation of omnipotence we can possibly conceptualize is that of our mothers and fathers when we were infants; that feeling of complete smallness and complete helplessness that all but our atoms have forgotten, and yet, this is not omnipotence. Our Father and Our Mother are the only words by which we can understand someone that is neither a Father nor a Mother. But Christianity agrees with many other faith practices on the point that unconditional love is a divine essence that is the lifeforce that guides and justifies humanity. To me, this is a prerequisite of a religious practice's plausibility. But i do believe, from the depths of my heart, that this is the theme we as a people still need to meditate on, to contextualize, to debate, to understand, in order to repair what was hurt in our souls and be better and more whole people. Both culturally and personally. No matter what our faith tradition is.

Okay, i'll wrap it up. If you've scrolled all the way to the bottom of this mess, i'm going to reward you with a demo of a song i've written. It's topical, don't worry.