Uncomfortable

August 24, 2007 by
Filed under: Religion 

Now I’ve gone from itchy to uncomfortable.

Enthusiasm for God:  high
Enthusiasm for His followers:  low

The Presbyterian bloggers have been at each others’ throats this past week or two.  As always, there are still two camps:  progressives and conservatives.  The progressives are willing to (for the most part) allow conservatives to co-exist with them, but they are not willing to allow exclusion based on conservative criteria.  The conservatives see themselves as the last bastion of the True Faith and are unwilling to bend in their defense of only people who follow their rules being ordained.

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It’s only going to get uglier.  It’s clearer than ever that the evangelicals are going to accept nothing less than a denomination where their beliefs are dominant and where heresy trials are the rule rather than the extreme exception.  The progressives are looking for a big tent.  These are fundamentally incompatible positions.

This affects me personally.  My enthusiasm for my own local church work is waning.  I’m at the point where I’m seriously leaning towards taking Sunday off this week just to see what having a lazy Sunday was like.  Last year I was trying to figure out whether or not I could stand a life that included organized religion.  Now I’m wondering if I should go back.

Oh, I’ll probably go to church on Sunday.  And I’ll lead my little committee.  And I’ll work with the youth group.  Just please understand why my enthusiasm is absent for a while.

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Comments

4 Comments on Uncomfortable

  1. Rev Kim on Fri, 24th Aug 2007 2:15 pm

    2. I recently attended the national com/cpm conference, where Eugene Peterson was the keynote speaker. During one of his lectures, which he based on Ephesians as the invisible church, he said something to the effect of, “We look at the church now and think it’s a mess. Well, it’s always been a mess, so take heart!” That’s one of the reasons why I love reading the epistles! He also said that “we don’t get to choose congregations, but we should persist in looking at them longingly and lovingly. It takes a while to see the body of Christ here and now.”

    Your discomfort is one of the reasons that I don’t spend alot of time (though some) reading said blogs (and I know we read some of the same ’cause I’ve seen some of your comments). I’m afraid I just don’t have a dog in either hunt, as they say. Just striving to serve God and God’s people as best as I can in my weakness and sinfulness. Maybe it’s a cop-out or I’m sticking my head in the sand, but it’s another thing about being in Wyoming. At the congregation and presbytery level, we just don’t get into those arguments here. But I’ve been in a much larger presbyery where that’s all they talked about, and it is exhausting.

    Take heart!

  2. Jon on Sun, 26th Aug 2007 5:14 pm

    3. Hi Mark, I sometimes feel the same way. It can help to take a break every so often (from the web, not the church).

    I think some of this is cultural also. UPC traditions in PA, southern presbyterianism, and West Coast evangelicalism are all pretty different from what you get in NJ/New England. This helps me sometimes. I also think the web often makes things worse–there’s no way to gauge inflection, body language, etc.

    The ironic thing for me as I read blogs is that almost everyone feels disenfranchised. I read confessional Presbyterians, then RevGals, then GLBT friends, then locals, etc. Each one has its own reason for believing it is right and everyone else is leading us to hell in a handbasket.

    I really appreciate that you’ve reached out to a lot of different communities. Hang in there.

  3. Alan on Mon, 27th Aug 2007 10:07 am

    4. I know what you mean. After many years in the PCUSA, I sort of doubt we’ll continue once we move in a couple years. It isn’t that I don’t want to be in a denomination with conservatives. It’s that I no longer want to be in a denomination where ministers — people who are supposed to take the role of Pastor seriously — seem to seek the snottiest ways to berate people publicly on the web, all in the name of winning some argument that anyone can plainly see is unwinnable.

    Who knows, maybe when we move we’ll find a happy little PCUSA church and attend there, ignoring the denominational silliness, which is essentially the position we’re getting to now.

  4. jodie on Wed, 5th Sep 2007 1:04 am

    5. Hey Mark,

    I feel your… pain?… The “conservatives” you’ve been blogging with are best described as “Fundamentalists.” That is way past being conservative, but its how they prefer to call themselves. The thing is, they make being conservative really hard for the rest of us for fear of being confused with a Fundamentalist.

    To tell you the truth, I never knew the PCUSA even had Fundamentalists until I started reading some of the blogs and articles with letters in the Layman. There are other denominations that are Fundamentalist by definition, but I am surprised at the Fundamentalist infiltration in the PCUSA. Surprised also at their hijacking of certain congregations and brazen theft of church properties they never payed for – all self righteous poor victims of course. The Southern Presbyterian Church was always more conservative, but not Fundamentalist.

    I used to argue with them allot in college (when I first discovered them in Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship – but most of them were either Baptist or Plymouth Bretheren or Nazarines – none Presbyterian except Reformed Presbyterian) and what amazes me is that there is no real difference between a College Freshman Fundamentalist and one that has gone to seminary and has had 10 years experience. The things they say, and the things they worry about are exactly the same!

    Jimmy Carter made an interesting comment recently. He said “a Fundamentalist will never admit he is wrong, because to admit he is wrong is to admit God is wrong.” I think he hit the nail on the head.

    And if you can never admit you are wrong, you can never learn. Which explains why they know everything they need to know by the time they are Freshmen in college.

    My antidote back then is the same as now. Disengage. Only now I am convinced I really don’t want them in my local church. They just make a mess out of the Gospel and out of the bible, they drive people away from God and away from the Scriptures and take all the fun out of church life. So yes, I feel your pain.

    Jodie

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