Why People Do Go to Church, or Not?
The Maker of the star and sea
Became a Child on earth for me.John Betjeman
Once more putting my urgent to do list on hold in favour of something that pleases me more, I want to write up some thoughts about why people don’t go to church any more. I am sure one aspect is language, in its widest frame of reference.
The language of Christianity and most of the teaching heard in the churches is the language of a much earlier cosmology (to state the obvious). It simply does not work for people who are constantly exposed to scientific evidence of a universe more vast than most of us can imagine. We are also exposed to imaginary universes which in some ways becomes more real. Think of Star Wars or Star Trek as examples. I confess to a very nearly total ignorance of these fictional universes but I am fascinated by what I hear of the way they represent value systems that we all relate to and a sensitivity to the transcendent, albeit by less specific titles than Christians have used. A small example; “May the Force be with you” everyone, (even I) know to what that refers though it is not spelled out in formal language: a superior and benign, if sometimes demanding, Power. Linguistically one could say “Good-bye” means exactly the same thing since good-bye is a colloquialism from long ago of “God be with you”. Of course, I am not proposing that the language of Hollywood films should replace the language of liturgy, that would be absurd. I am simply illustrating that the gap between the ancient world view and ours feels almost as vast as the universe itself!
In the cosmology of the New Testament world, and for a millennium and a half beyond, it was comparatively easy to believe in a God who was not just the Governor and Creator of all but who also kept an eye on everything going on in the world. In other words, a personal God whom people were encouraged to believe knew the secrets of their hearts, “to whom all hearts are open” and knew and judged their sins, negligencies and ignorances.
In the universe we inhabit it is much, much harder to believe in that kind of personal God, the gap between the archaic images and language and our world view is too wide. We can see how ‘The Force”, “The Universe”, “The Source” or other popular ways of expressing the Transcendent signify belief in a Greater Power that is both omnipresent and available. Finding a language to bridge the gulf that is both true to the faith and intelligible to the present generation is a demanding and humbling task for any church.
Making the language of the liturgy simpler and more ‘every day’ isn’t the answer when the sermon, say at Christmas, is about choirs of angels appearing to shepherds and wise men following a star, as though this is historic truth. These stories are constructs for teaching purposes but still the preaching persists along the traditional lines. How interesting and refreshing it would be to have some intellectual input and use the stories as teaching models, as they were originally, but for our own time in our own intellectual language. The Nativity stories as presented have the character of myth or even fairy story and are viewed as such, and like fairy stories, are ‘put away’, along with ‘other childish things’. People who do not have the background or the commitment to make the leap of faith required to bridge the gap probably can’t see any good reason why they might try.
What is it that holds people in who do stay? One thing is obviously because they have personal experiences that convince them of the Presence of God in their lives. We never know how true that is for how many. That’s not to cast doubt upon it but it’s like turning things around: you don’t find out how to get rich by studying poor people, you don’t discover how to live a vibrant healthy life by studying the sick. Maybe you find out how to bring people to faith by showing them what a life of faith really looks like. How it makes a difference and why. Outside of the Evangelical congregations one does not see or hear much about the way in which faith enriches life. One does not get the feeling that the pleasure, joy, delight which one might think would accompany a life of faith is something anyone wants to talk about. Maybe it is too important, maybe lives would be incomparably more drear without the faith. None of this is by way of crit. but observation; it raises interesting questions, and I confess talking about my faith is not high on my conversational agenda. And the questions keep coming!
Pushing the question with a church-going friend recently, after much prodding as to why he believes in a personal God he finally described his personal experience of the divine, which is the valid base of his conviction. He was very convincing but it was like drawing teeth to get him to talk at that level. The reason for that is not hard to find and it is both honourable and worthy. For all of us, sharing the intimacy of our most treasured relationships is not something we do lightly, such talk ‘debases the currency’. “Let that which is beyond words be revered by the agency of silence”.
One hears occasionally of vibrant, youthful Evangelical congregations and it is interesting to explore what is the motivation. One answer I got was, “Well it makes sense, it creates structure and stability and a safe world within the unsafe world in which we live.” I thought about this further and thought even including the hell option for after death is a way of safety. The present world is so frightening for many people and I would emphasise especially for young, new parents bringing up children into all this danger, if you have and end point onto which you can project all those fears you have a greater sense of control. Obedience to an all- seeing, trustworthy God is the answer and if that means keeping my faith experience in a box separate from the rest of my intellectual life well, since it feels good, it is a small price to pay for the security and peace which I would never know without it. I trust in God to keep safe all I love and I repay that trust by obedience to His laws. That’s how I think it works. I have seen, as I am sure you have, what happens when someone in this mould is provoked by an inner restlessness to ask more probing questions. It is truly disturbing.
But why else do people stay in? For some lifelong companionship with likeminded others would be reason enough. And I guess there are always people who gain a little recognition, power or ascendency in lives otherwise devoid of valued influence. Pattern, structure, habit these are not inconsiderable and not to be sneezed at but don’t lead one to want to go out there and ‘compel them to come in’ by the power of one’s faith.
After all this I can hear you ask but what about you, why do you stay in?
That could take pages to answer starting from, “I am not always sure that I do.” but there is a one word answer the resonance of which I will try to fill in. The Holy. I believe, as Rudolf Otto pointed out years ago that the sense of the Holy is a “fact of our nature – primary, unique, underivable from anything else….. and the basic impulse underlying the entire process of religious evolution ‘
Beyond any rationality, right through to my middle, I know that the Eucharist is the holiest thing we’ve got. It is the point of ‘intersection of time with the timeless”, the sacred present moment, the point where vertical and horizontal realities meet. The One irreducible Point, for me. But in order to make that a point of connection for someone outside the faith I’d have to have a lot more words to say and I guess it would have to begin with my knowing that the conscious mind is not what ‘drives the bus’.
For all of us, what we think is incomparably less effective in our lives than what goes on below the surface. Our intuitive function, for example can be a more reliable guide than out conscious thinking. This is very significant in coming to the Eucharist. I can think lots of clever things about it, do a theological run-down or three but that’s not where it is at. I attend with my intuitive knowing, for that brief time I am part of something outside of ‘normal life’, and Reality has a different range of meaning. As you see, once one begins to attempt an explanation the mind falters and does a poor job, that exactly makes my point! Poetry is always more use than prose at these times. John Betjeman is hardly an example of sublime mystical heights but for simplicity, to conclude where I began, I am giving him the last word.
That God was Man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.
