Danger West

Steve Gilliard writes:

The reason people leave fundie churches is because they’ve been raised in ghetto where they are sold a Christian world and most other people don’t live like that. Megachurches are the biggest sign of a decreasing committment to church.

Once, church was a committment like the Rotary Club or the Boy Scouts. Now, it’s a movie. You go, you do some other things and you go to watch football. Without a community committment to a church, how can you feel you belong to anything. And then the fear based teaching breaks down when you live on your own and your beliefs change.
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The fundies turned church from a local community service to ideology and people move away from ideologies as they grow older. Also, many of the conversion techniques, like fundie ministers in the military, are coersive. So when they live on their own, they find their beliefs have changed.

Once you leave the Christian ghetto, the world becomes a vastly more interesting place.

I don’t know anything about chaplains in the military, but otherwise this is a good assesment of why young people often have intense periods of commitment to a religion and then drop out, like I did. You grow up and realize that the ideology you have bought into is just not useful for your life. I’d perhaps (strong perhaps) still be going to church if I had that same community I had when I became interested in the Eastern Orthodox Church, but I show up to a church around here and it’s just a bunch of people in suits. I don’t know them and I don’t want to get to know them.

The fact is most teenagers are not well read enough to counter whatever ideology is being sold. Teenagers are also in that period of life when they have a lot of anxiety to deal with. Once that anxiety goes away, the fear based teachings lose their effectiveness. Presently one has the courage to think, “So, what kind of God will damn me for thinking the wrong philosophical thoughts?”

A lot of my time in Chico was a trip down memory lane. My mom made me clean out most of my old crap from the basement - I got rid of thise huge speakers, amplifiers and the guitar I wasn’t using. I also got rid of a bunch of books, but kept others. One was a book called Nihilsim by Eugene (Fr. Seraphim) Rose. I’ve been reading it again. When I first read the book as a teenager, I wouldn’t say I was impressed so much as I assumed that anyone who had read so much philosophy must know what he’s talking about. He sure sounded smart and everyone in the group assured me he was a genius. Now that I’m older I’m having a hard time seeing the genius. Obviously one has to be reasonably bright and well read to write this stuff, but It’s just not all that impressive at second glance.

Christianity has always at least had a strong tendency towards insularity. Neverthless, Christians need to concentrate less on programming teenagers to reject secular ideas (evolution for instance, or even loose sex… afterall, divorce is just as much a problem among Christians as anyone else) and more on buidling meaningful communities that help people deal with real life outside of the group. Basically the in group shouldn’t be a place where you go to learn that everyone else is wrong and you have the one true gospel that will save the world. Kids will usually grow out of that. What they won’t grow out of are friendships. That doesn’t mean a church should be reduced to a social club - just the opposite. It should be a place where one can experience the love and community that you don’t get at your job, your school or in your metal fish laden car listening to the lastest Christian hits.