I’m a leaver.
I left the church. I was on my way out in my late twenties, but didn’t completely cut the cord until I was in my yearly thirties. I stayed completely away for seven years. That may not seem like a long time, but for someone who was raised in the pews, someone who dedicated their your adult years to being formed by the church and teaching, preaching, leading worship for the church, for someone who’s identity has been wrapped up in the word, “Christian” and, ”church,” seven years in the wilderness is a long time.
A lot of us have left. A lot of us are still gone. A lot of us will never go back. Church has wounded and maimed and hypocrisied itself into a place of toxicity that some of us can’t stomach any more. Some of us have been wounded spiritually to the point that we question the goodness of a loving God based on how his followers treated us. Some of us have been abused physically, and when we see the abusers “restored” to leadership—some never even get called to repent and are treated to a coverup that blames the victim—we know that there is no place left for us. Some of us followed theology and the bible right out the door when we saw how easily conservative and fundamentalist doctrine jumped into bed with right-wing, extremist ideologies.
There are myriads of reasons we have left, but they boil down to one salient point: the church has sinned against its people.
From bigoted stances against LGBTQ+ people, abusive scandals against the least of these, and political maneuvering that has taken side with the powerful oppressors and corporate greed, the church has harmed her people. Church has not been a safe haven, a refuge, a place of health. Trauma has been inflicted the church’s theology and action. Is it any wonder there seems to be a mass exodus from its doors?
But we didn’t just leave. No, we tried to reconcile. There were meetings over coffee where we would talk to the pastor about our concerns, our hurts, our trauma. We spent time with other promenade members of the congregation spilling our spiritual guts, trying to find some support for reform and change. We went to the church by ourselves, in private, to try to heal the growing rift that was happening.
The answers we got in return, the actions taken, all told us that the church was blaming us for the hurt. It was our fault. We simply wanted to lead lives of sin. Or we didn’t believe correctly. Or we didn’t have enough faith. We needed to pray more. We needed to forgive our abusers. We needed to accept that the Bible was plain and clear and we were called to conform, to fall in line, to change. We were the ones hurting, and we were met with called to obey doctrine and pastoral teaching.
Our trauma was met with a doubling down, with no room to question the church’s behavior or beliefs. We were greeted with a smug satisfaction that the church was right, and we were the ones who were wrong.
But we were bleeding out. We were spiritually (and sometimes physically) dying in the pews. We continued to get hurt. We were even blamed for our abuse, forced to see corrupt, evil men continue to lead from the pulpit without a word of remorse. The times when secrets did come to light, the leader was subjected to a mock form of discipline, and even if they were taken away from their position, they would be restored in a month or two. All the while, we were expected to forgive by acting as if nothing had ever happened.
Then there was the theology that continued to pierce our hearts. We were told that who we are, our gender and sexuality, the things that make up a large part of a human’s identity, were wrong, at odds with doctrine, sinful. You told us to change. Some of us tried to. We tried to closet the queer and conform, contorting ourselves into heterosexual marriages, into submission to husbands, into domineering men that led the home. We bent ourselves out of shape to be the perfect people you wanted us to be, denying part of ourselves, and closing off the possibility that the way we naturally were made was beloved by God.
This doesn’t even bring into the conversation the trauma of eternal damnation. That’s a doctrine that was drilled into your hearts from an age so young some of us can’t ever remember a time not fearing hell. We were told we were nothing in ourselves, that we deserved punishment and hell just because we were born. Then you threw us to society and expected us to thrive. We still carry the trauma in our bodies. Years of being told you’re nothing, not worth living, and you better be grateful for anything you receive will take its toll on a psyche, and it has taken its toll on ours.
We sought resolution with the church around these things. We wanted to talk about it, to reason it out. Instead, we were shut down, told to conform or run the risk of that hell we grew up so terrified of. The church demanded utter conformity of us: theology, sexuality, politics, and every other area.
We began to leave. We found others like us, others that were struggling with how to live in this toxic church environment. We began comparing notes, seeing that our stories are similar. We hurt the same way because we were wounded in the same ways.
In our small enclaves, we began speaking out; we began demanding accountability. We made each other brave. We began to form our own communities, missional and emerging gatherings that were meant to stand as a witness against the church, pointing to a better way, calling the church to reform, to change, to evolve and grow. We came to the church together as witnesses to the conversation, the pleas, and the atrocities that ensued. The church called us anathema, heretics, false teachers. We experienced even more resistance to our requests, our questions, our challenges.
The church dug in its heels harder and harder. Even as people began to jump the sinking ship, the church held onto its remnant and persecution complex. The church was convinced of its rightness, and in that self-righteousness, it refused to move.
So, we took the next steps of discipline: we went to the assembly. We called out the abuse, the trauma, the damaging theology in public. Movements like #ChurchToo sought visible accountability from the church. We began to write, to speak, to sing about our fears, our hurts, our traumas as well as the healing we were finding away from the church. We became vocal and loud, echoing across the valleys of public life our call for reform, for change, for healing. We sought restoration of the relationship we had with the church, knowing that it could only happen if there was a mass evolutionary event within the walls of the church we still love.
Again, for a countless third time, we were met with not just resistance, but outright hostility. You said that we were only angry and trying to hurt the reputation of the church. You told us we had abandoned our witness, our legacy, our inheritance. You began calling those of us who deconstructed from the toxicity of the church enemies of God—even though it was Godself that led us to where we are. You taught and encouraged us to disregard what humans thought and to seek and follow God. We did, right out the doors of the church that hurt us so much.
The church is now entrenched in its sin against us. So, we have no choice but to treat it like a tax collector, someone in league with the oppressive empire, someone who has betrayed us, who sides with that which harms us. We have loosed ourselves from our ties to the church, some of us finally finding healing in various faith streams, some of us losing faith all together for the sake of freedom and health. Many of us are somewhere in between, but all of us refuse to play games with the church anymore. The church has bound itself to its sins, and we can’t pretend that there is life and health found there anymore.
The church has sinned against its people and has refused restoration. I don’t know if the church will be ultimately lost or not, but I do know that as we gather in our twos and threes, we see Jesus outside the church. We see Jesus amongst the people the church told us were off limits, the people the church told us were unclean. We see Jesus among the marginalized, the weak, the poor. We find Jesus where people still gather in his name, as opposed to the name of political ideologies, toxic doctrine, and oppressive social constraints.
Our offer still stands, though. Seven times seventy times we will stand with an outstretched hand, looking for the restoration of a relationship with the church and begging for reformation within the church.
The sins of the church that it has bound itself to—sins of pride, of self-justification, of arrogance—will bury the church unless there is an intervention. I hate to see something I love destroyed just because it refuses to listen to Jesus’ call to walk in love. Restoration is possible, but first there has to be an admittance of guilt, of sin, of wrongdoing. With confession comes absolution, and with absolution comes peace.
May the church find peace before it rests in pieces.
Friends, The Book of Common Words is 100% reader supported. Here we explore the Christian spirituality of being human through podcast, poetry, and prose about my life, art, and the Christian faith. If you would like to support this exploration, and gain early access to all the podcasts, poems, and prose, consider joining my Patreon community.
One of the best way to support my work is to share what you’ve read here with your friends and acquaintances. Every share is an invitation to our little community. Thanks!
Thank you for stopping by my little corner of the internet. If you would like to be notified and receive my posts, poems, and podcast episodes in your email, just fill out the form below.
Leave a Reply