Religious people aren’t the only sloppy thinkers. Skeptics think just as poorly.
This past Sunday, the Washington Post ran a piece by contributing columnist Brian Broome under the headline, “Why the decline in church attendance won’t end here.”
I expected this to be an examination of the statistical decline in church involvement— I’m always a sucker for statistical analyses. But it turned out to be a first-person essay about Broome’s loss of faith.
Broome’s disillusionment arose from religion’s classic conundrums, the ones you might encounter in an undergraduate intro-to-world-religions course: the question of suffering, contradictions among the world’s faiths and the tendency of believers to worship gods made in their own image.
All these are thorny issues and worthy of discussion. That’s why theologians have been discussing them for millennia. In my observation, though, regular disciples often confront these problems early on, realize there’s no clear answer, and move on to more practical considerations such as feeding the hungry and visiting the sick.
What surprised me more than Broome’s column were the 9,400 (and counting) responses it drew from readers. I’ve subscribed to the Washington Post’s website for years, and I could count on the fingers of one hand the articles I’ve seen that drew so many comments.
I always read the comments sections beginning with the “most liked.” Here, I was struck by the superficiality of the more popular responses.
It was disheartening, not because people were critical of religion—hey, I’m an ordained minister and I’m critical of religion—but because they’d apparently devoted so little thought to the matter. The comments largely consisted of stereotypes, tropes and knee-jerk reactions. Just sloppy thinking all-around.
So. Allow me to offer a few readers’ posts about Broome’s column (in certain cases edited for clarity and space), followed by my own thoughts:
▪ From Buckeye John: “Modern Christianity’s inexplicable obsessions with people’s sex lives and reproductive rights have done more than anything else to undermine its appeal and long-term viability. However, its embrace of the two-faced clown and hypocrite Donald Trump might well have been the historic and proverbial nail in the coffin.”
My answer: Clarify, please, Buckeye John. When you say “modern Christianity,” what exactly are you referring to? There are 2 billion Christians in the world. They run the gamut from cultural Christians who are Christian in name only, to Christmas-and-Easter Christians who darken the church doors a couple of times a year, to regular attendees.
Their churches range from Roman Catholic to Eastern Orthodox to mainline Protestant (Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, etc.) to evangelical Southern Baptist to fundamentalist. This is the short list. There are innumerable varieties of Christian beliefs and practices.
Some Christians in this country — conservative Catholics, evangelicals and similar groups — oppose gay rights and also favor Donald Trump. But other Christians—including progressive Catholics, many mainline Protestants and so on — are LGBTQ affirming and oppose Trump. Also, remember that the vast majority of Christians don’t live in the United States.
You cannot logically extrapolate from one loud activist, or a loud denomination or two, to the whole of Christendom.
▪ Spiny Norman wrote: “Personally I’m holding out hope for the Rapture to happen soon. If the hypocritical, self-righteous, bigoted ‘Christians’ exit the planet, humanity may be able to cast off the shackles of religion and achieve its real potential.”
My answer: It’s true that hypocritical, self-righteous, bigoted Christians exist. I can introduce you to some. But I’ve known at least as many straightforward, humble, big-hearted Christians. Of course something similar might be said about Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and agnostics.
If you think getting rid of Christians would enable society to shed its shackles and achieve its highest potential, recheck the stories of societies that have tried to abolish, persecute or minimize religion: the Soviet Union under Stalin, or Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Tell me how that turned out.
▪ Chelonian wrote: “If the Crusades didn’t show what Christ’s message of peace and forgiveness really meant to Europeans, I don’t know what else we need.”
My answer: The Crusades were bad. No argument there. But we haven’t had an old-fashioned crusade for a day or two. The last one occurred more than 700 years ago, during the Middle Ages, when crazy things were going on everywhere and the prevailing church tragically had become inseparable from the state.
▪ American Citizen wrote: “They supported slavery. They supported segregation then Jim Crow. They supported the natsees. Now they support Trump. Like the Roman Catholic pedos, Christianity is like Teflon. Just like Trump.”
My answer: Again, some Christians, mainly in the South, supported slavery. Other Christians created the abolition movement—both here and in England. Same with Jim Crow. The Civil Rights movement that ended Jim Crow was led by churches and clergy. Per usual, some Christians behaved sinfully. Some behaved virtuously. Churches are made up of humans. Like all humans, churchgoing humans are a mixed lot.
▪ Hap35 wrote: “I’m reminded of the Hank Williams Jr. song about preachers, which includes the line ‘They tell you to send your money to the Lord but they give you their address.’”
My answer: Love it! You win the Prather Award for best comment of the day! But in fairness to preachers, we don’t know the Lord’s P.O. box number.
Paul Prather is pastor of Bethesda Church near Mount Sterling, Ky. You can email him at pratpd@yahoo.com.