Letters from a "Broken" Church
Figuring out what (and who) this Substack and Podcast is for.
About fifteen years ago, I was coming to terms that I was on the autism spectrum. After a lot of failures and one specific success, I was wondering what was going on with me. I asked a former boyfriend if he had seen any “odd behavior.” He smiled and said something to the fact that I tend to not really plan for anything, but just “do” things.
He had me pegged.
If you read anything about starting a podcast or even a newsletter, the advice is usually to make sure you know who your audience is before you create your first episode. Did I do that three years ago? Nope. I just started a podcast with no real idea of who would want to listen to this. It usually takes time for me to figure out what is the point of…well, anything. I feel like I have to live into what I want something to be and it feels like I’ve finally decided what this newsletter and podcast is for- it just took three years and 177 episodes.
Looking back at past episodes and blog posts I’ve come to realize that the church, which is my focus is broken.
Broken. Damaged. Collapsed. Injured. Defective. Busted.
I’m not saying the church is imperfect; it has always been imperfect because it is made up of humans. When I say it’s broken, I’m saying that the church is no longer working in the way it should.
Mainline Protestantism is broken in many ways. They have bled members and closed tons of churches. It seems like in many quarters the decline is greeted with a shrug of the shoulders or even worse outright denial.
The idea that Mainline Protestantism is broken stems from a 2021 essay by Alana Newhouse, the founder and editor of Tablet Magazine. She summarizes that various changes in culture have produced a society where the major institutions no longer work. In the before times, meaning before the 1970s, America was a society made up of strong institutions that produced a wide range of culture:
For seven decades, the country’s intellectual and cultural life was produced and protected by a set of institutions—universities, newspapers, magazines, record companies, professional associations, cultural venues, publishing houses, Hollywood studios, think tanks, etc. Collectively, these institutions reflected a diversity of experiences and then stamped them all as “American”—conjuring coherence out of the chaos of a big and unwieldy country. This wasn’t a set of factories pumping out identical widgets, but rather a broad and messy jazz band of disparate elements that together produced something legible, clear, and at times even beautiful when each did their part.
Changes in the economy brought about liberalization, but it came at a cost; destroying major institutions and leaving individuals with few places such as churches for support. At the same time, the tech revolution also brought down barriers and gatekeepers that made the world flat. This flatness also had a cultural component as organizations became more ideologically driven and more and more homogenous in thought. This flatness might make it easy for people, but it hasn’t always been good:
Flatness is the reason the three jobs with the most projected growth in your country all earn less than $27,000 a year, and it is also the reason that all the secondary institutions that once gave structure and meaning to hundreds of millions of American lives—jobs and unions but also local newspapers, churches, Rotary Clubs, main streets—have been decimated. And flatness is the mechanism by which, over the past decade and with increasing velocity over the last three years, a single ideologically driven cohort captured the entire interlocking infrastructure of American cultural and intellectual life. It is how the Long March went from a punchline to reality, as one institution after another fell and then entire sectors, like journalism, succumbed to control by narrow bands of sneering elitists who arrogated to themselves the license to judge and control the lives of their perceived inferiors.
Flatness broke everything.
I think that a certain flatness or, to put it another way, frictionlessness has invaded Mainline Protestantism. I’ve seen it more and more, especially in the years that most of these denominations voted to affirm LGBTQ persons into the full life of the church. When these denominations were “big tents” there was friction on various issues, especially on sexuality and gender issues. No one was happy about it. The breakthrough on LGBTQ issues was good for people like me personally. When I was ordained in 2002, I had to keep my sexual orientation a secret. Now I can be open and share with the church the man that I love. But there was a trade-off. As denominations became more accepting, they also became more homogenous as the losers in the debate left to set up other denominations more to their liking. When I went to my denomination’s General Assembly last summer, I saw a gathering that was flat and frictionless. Everyone agreed on what would have been contentious issues. There was a lot of pride in being part of a progressive denomination, but I didn’t feel a whole lot of grace or gratitude. In the words of a fellow Disciples pastor, there was little theological humility. These denominations have become more like affinity groups with things like evangelism and church planting having gone by the wayside. The mission seems to be more following some kind of political agenda than it is to figure out what God is calling the church to be and do at this time.
Hear me out. I don’t wish to return to the days when I had to be in the closet. The past is not where I want to go, but the present is not a good place to me either. I also should note that this flatness is also a problem in evangelical circles where conservatives push for pure forms of their churches.
The problem is, that a flat church, one where there is no friction, is a church that is in trouble. In the mainline that shows itself in the crashing rates of membership and other tallies. Will denominations like the ELCA or the Episcopal Church be around by 2050? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. What I do know is that they are broken and I’m not sure they can be repaired.
We still need mainline Protestant churches. Maybe not these denominations, maybe we will need something different, but they are needed. As I’ve said before I stay because it’s the only place where I can be who I am as a gay man. Political scientist and American Baptist pastor Ryan Burge says something similar about how mainline churches are places for those who might not be a good fit in evangelical circles:
Some people desperately want to be part of a Christian community. They love the Gospel story of a simple man from Galilee who lived a sinless life and died an innocent death on the cross, that somehow saves all of us from our sins. They believe in the redemption of that simple act. But, they also believe that women can and should preach and that if two men or women want to marry each other, that’s none of their concern. Shouldn’t those types of people have a few options for a church home as well?
The data is exceedingly clear on this point. Most of those people who would like to still be a Christian, but can’t be an evangelical, aren’t gritting their teeth and going to the local Southern Baptist or non-denominational congregation. They are leaving religion behind entirely and not looking back. As a pastor, I cannot fathom how anyone thinks that is the best outcome. Unfortunately, for many evangelicals they have a view of church that is simply “if you don’t agree with our theology completely, then you might as well have no religion at all.”
So maybe these traditions are beyond saving. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
The hidden purpose of this blog and podcast has always been to find the dreamers who are trying to live out what it means to be a more moderate Christian in today’s world. It’s about people like Paul Moore, Ben Crosby, Loren Richmond Jr., Laura Cottington and countless others who are not still have a passion for the gospel and also a heart that really welcomes all to God’s table.
Think this blog and podcast as a letter to a broken church: finding ways that it might work again.
Towards the end of her essay, Alana Newhouse urges people to start building and trying new things, leaving the old institutions behind:
This disconnect between culturally mandated politics and the actual demonstrated preferences of most Americans has created an enormous reserve of unmet needs—and a generational opportunity. Build new things! Create great art! Understand and accept that sensory information is the brain’s food, and that Silicon Valley is systematically starving us of it. Avoid going entirely tree-blind. Make a friend and don’t talk politics with them. Do things that generate love and attention from three people you actually know instead of hundreds you don’t. Abandon the blighted Ivy League, please, I beg of you. Start a publishing house that puts out books that anger, surprise and delight people and which make them want to read. Be brave enough to make film and TV that appeals to actual audiences and not 14 people on Twitter. Establish a newspaper, one people can see themselves in and hold in their hands. Go back to a house of worship—every week. Give up on our current institutions; they already gave up on us.
I don’t know if we should give up on the mainline denominations just yet. I’d much rather see what new things are coming up among the old. But I am open to seeing what can be made new and make something that isn’t so flat, but that makes room for friction and grace.
That dear friends is what Church and Main is all about. Join me on the journey.
Glad to be on the journey with you!