Releasing Old Understandings of Christianity

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been pondering how we might need to let go of outdated understandings of ourselves, our nation, and our culture. A full exploration of each of those topics could fill a book—or a library! Today, I tackle another major institution with an even longer history: Christianity.

The institution of Christianity has been around for nearly two millennia. Jesus didn’t start it, his followers did, and that’s perhaps one of the deepest misunderstandings that we need to release. In fact, the harshest words Jesus spoke were against leaders who put their religious institution ahead of the needs of its people (for a reminder, read here).

I’ve believed for years that the institution of Christianity needs its own death and resurrection, at least here in the USA—and that was before the rise of Christian Nationalism! For one thing, too many small churches are clinging to outdated and outsized church buildings that suck up too much of their dwindling financial and human resources. I write this well aware that these buildings are precious to many of those who remain—people who helped fund and grow those churches but whose progeny are unlikely to be churchgoers themselves.

Then there are those leaders (lay and ordained) who have damaged the church’s moral reputation through their mismanagement or their protection of misbehaving leaders. Anytime the institution is valued more than those harmed by it, the church loses more members. Too often, people also equate the church with following Jesus, and his good messages are abandoned when people walk away from a church and institution that have hurt them. I don’t blame them for leaving—and I grieve.

I am unabashedly a follower of Jesus, what he taught, and how he lived. But I am not a fan of the institutional church at this point in my life. I can still be moved by the liturgy and find beauty in religious art. I have ordained friends, colleagues, and clients whose ministries I admire and support. I can embrace some of the ideals that created Christianity—but I find that too many churches are more focused on keeping the doors open and the budgets afloat. They aren’t dedicated to those ideals.

And so I grieve.

I don’t know what a transformed or resurrected Christianity would look like, but I do believe we need to release many harmful old understandings and re-root the church in what Jesus taught. I see this blog as one way I encourage that—sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly—and I thank you for reading.

What would you pray or hope for regarding Christianity—whether you’re a current churchgoer or not?