Who’s Giving Up On (the Institutional) Church? It’s No Longer Just the “Casual Christians” who are D
Here’s a fascinating quotation from Laura Anderson’s important and insightful book, When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High-Control Religion:
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the largest group of people who are leaving evangelicalism are not those who were mildly involved or nominal believers. Instead, the people leaving are among the most committed-those who studied the holy texts; served others tirelessly; gave at the expense of themselves, their families, and their well-being; and shaped their lives around the mission of the church. People leaving these religions altogether are often left feeling disillusioned not only with the religious system but also with the people at the top of these hierarchical structures and those they “did life with” day to day.
I know “anecdotal evidence” can means lots of different things and can be interpreted in a variety of ways, but for what it’s worth, this tracks with my own experience: it seems that a lot of people who have previously been very committed to active church membership are now either walking away from engagement with the institutional church, or at the very least are exploring new ways of doing faith community.
What, pray tell, does this mean?
The shrinking of American Christian Churches is nothing new (and similar dynamics have been at in many other parts of the world as well, sometimes ahead of the American curve). To look at just one denomination, the Episcopal Church:
- In 1966, there were approximately 3.4 million Episcopalians (that’s a total number, which includes both active and inactive members).
- By 2016 that number had dropped to 1.9 million.
- In 2022 the membership was down to 1,584,785 - a reduction of well over 50% in less than sixty years.
Those numbers are even more sobering when compared to overall population growth: during this same period of time, the population of the United States grew from 192 million to 333 million. In other words, in 1966, about 1 out of every 57 Americans was an Episcopalian; by 2022, only 1 out of very 210 Americans were part of that church. And this is hardly unique to the Episcopal Church: similar trends can be seen in most denominations. Even Catholicism has sobering numbers, if you factor out immigration: in other words, without the large influx of Catholic immigrants over the last half century, Catholicism’s numbers would not be that different from other denominations.
Meanwhile, it seems like this process has been gaining traction, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic. I spoke at a church recently where the people were warm, friendly - and few in number. A beautiful suburban church, probably built in the 1950s or 1960s, it never bounced back from a contentious split over music in worship, followed by the pandemic. Several people in attendance told me that a decade ago their average Sunday attendance was over 300; now it’s about 50. And yes, some people join the worship via streaming, but even with that, the numbers don’t add up. I wish I could say this was an isolated incident, but I’ve seen this again and again. Churches - at least institutional churches - are in what Elaine Heath has called a “dark night of the soul.” In her excellent book The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Church Outreach, Heath (former dean of the Duke Divinity School) compares the changes happening at the institutional level to John of the Cross’s great metaphor for the radical letting-go that is part of a maturing spiritual life.
There used to be this idea that Christianity in the mid-20th century included a lot of people who could be described as “cultural Christians” - the kinds of folks who identify as Christian, who make sure to have church weddings and funerals and to have the kids baptized and confirmed, but otherwise have only a social or cultural relationship to church; they attend church because it’s the cultural norm, and often perhaps only attend on major Feast days (the so-called “Christmas and Easter Christians”).
For years, my contention (and I think that of many others) was that Christianity’s institutional decline was mostly driven by the disappearance of cultural Christians. People with only a social connection to Christianity became less inclined to honor those old family or cultural expectations. You don’t need church anymore for weddings or funerals or any other rites of passage. So the thinking was, “Yes, there are fewer of us, but the ones who show up really want to be here, so the church may be smaller but is healthier than ever.”
But if we are to take Laura Anderson’s assertion seriously, it sounds like more than just the casual church-goers are opting out of the institution. If the church is now losing “the most committed-those who studied the holy texts; served others tirelessly; gave at the expense of themselves, their families, and their well-being; and shaped their lives around the mission of the church” then perhaps the church’s dark night of the soul has truly reached a crisis point.
What does all this mean for contemplatives? My answer is very much shaped by my personal perspective and experience, so this is only one thought, but I offer it for your consideration. For years, I have been inspired by Karl Rahner’s famous quote, “the Christian of the future will be a mystic or will not exist.” I find church to be a meaningful part of life, and have felt that if locals congregations became more contemplative, it would make them spiritually healthier and perhaps even start to attract new members.
Friends, I am in the process of rethinking this. I’ve previously quoted Howard Thurman’s striking words from 1939 on this blog, but they bear repeating:
The mystic seems always to be the foe of institutional religion. He [sic] is very sensitive to the crystallizing of acts of worship into dead forms. It is profoundly true that he does not stand in need of the institution or the institutional forms as such. Even in Catholicism any careful reading of the testimony of the mystics convinces one that the church has no real friend in the mystic.
If you want to see this quote in its original context, it’s found on pages 114-5 of A Strange Freedom: The Best of Howard Thurman on Religious Experience and Public Life.
I don’t know if the “most committed” Christians that Laura Anderson sees leaving the institution are mystics or not; but of course, I believe everyone is at least a mystic-in-potential; it seems to me that the people who are engaged in prayer, study, service, and other forms of worship are people who are at least open to the possibility of a life-transforming relationship with the Spirit. If we have reached the point where the mystics are leaving the institution, then it seems to me that the institutional form of Christianity is not just having a dark night of the soul - it is experiencing its own crucifixion. The institution as we know it is very likely going to die.
The wisdom tradition of Jesus, of course, is all about resurrection. So I don’t believe the death of the institutional church is the end of Christianity or of Christian mysticism. But at this point in my journey, I am increasingly persuaded that the future of Christian will not only be mystical and contemplative, but it will be either post-institutional, or at the very least the institutional shape of faith communities will look very, very different from what it looks like today (or a century ag0).
There’s a lot of patriarchal and authoritarian inertia at play in the institutional churches. I imagine the Catholic Church, in particular, will lumber along for years if not decades and centuries to come. But I believe that the changes that first will be coming to the smaller Protestant and Evangelical Churches will eventually impact even Catholicism, because these changes are not just theological in nature: they are the result of sweeping societal changes reflected in our technology, our communications networks, our level of education and accessibility to information (including religious teachings from around the world), and an increasing rejection of old models of authority, hierarchy and control, especially among younger people.
But those who choose just to stick with the old way of doing things are ignoring the plain reality that millions of people simply don’t find spiritual care or nurture in the old institutional forms. Some of those people are just secularist, or conscientiously object to church teachings on certain issues; but many have genuine hearts for meaningful spirituality, and the churches have let them down. Many such people are contemplative. They only show up at church on Wednesday nights, to attend a Centering Prayer meeting (and nowadays that’s more likely to be on Zoom).
So here are the kinds of questions I’m wrestling with:
- What does mystical and contemplative Christianity look like in a post-institutional church?
- Does the word “church” even matter any more? If church no longer matters, then how do we “love our neighbors as ourselves”?
- If we no longer accept the old model of church as a pastor tending for his flock (complete with a capital campaign and regular work days to maintain the building), then how do we foster meaningful and sustainable community for today and tomorrow?
And a few more, specifically for those of us who still have some sort of ties to the institution:
- Are we listening to our friends and neighbors and children and grandchildren, to let them tell us, openly and honestly, why the institution just doesn’t work for them?
- And how can we respond, compassionately and non-defensively and with a contemplative heart, to those conversations?
- If you are in ministry or church governance, what are the best things we could be doing not to preserve the interests of an old institutional model, but to continue to share the liberating wisdom of Jesus and the mystics to a brilliant and imaginative young generation of authentic spiritual seekers?
I know, this is one of those posts with lots of questions and no answers. I believe these are questions that only the Spirit can answer, but the Spirit will answer - in our hearts, one by one. Meanwhile, if you are a contemplative Christian or a student of the mystics, I encourage you to remain faithful to silence, meditation and prayer, and to join me and others who are seeking to discern the gradual unfolding of the divine will for what the spirituality of the future will look like: both in individual and communal ways.
Featured Image: Wells Cathedral, England. Photo by Haydon on Unsplash. Used by permission.
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