“Your daughter would like you to come to church, because she will sing on stage. But she doesn’t want to ask you, because you don’t believe in God anymore”.
So there you go, I was back in church at Easter Sunday. After 34 years on this planet in which I attended church on every single Sunday (sometimes even twice), I abandoned it cold turkey style some 9 months ago.
But today I was back. For my daughter, but also curious how I would (dis)like it.
And you know what? I found the service to be quite powerful. I get it now. This is why church services have survived for centuries. What am I rambling about?
The Power of Church
For starters, just the numbers alone are powerful. To get together with a couple of hundred people (it was Easter) that all seem to believe the same thing is a powerful way to say “this faith thing must be real”. It doesn’t even matter what you do, if you get together for a common purpose, for a common truth, the sheer numbers alone made me feel like I have it all wrong because the majority around me sees the world so differently.
Then the organ starts to play (it was a reformed church with a professional musician), which was really beautiful (and emotional!), at least for me. Then the singing starts; which is so powerful that I wonder if church would have survived without it at all. Also with the singing the number of souls surrounding you kick in, because now you can hear everybody express their faith. And it’s made so very easy to just sing along, because of the poetic prewritten language, perceived group pressure and beautiful music. I honestly had to fight the urge to sing along, reminding myself that I should only sing that which I could agree with.
Then the praying comes along as well. With the bombs in Brussels still ringing in our ears, it is such a relief to put all these worries in the hands of an almighty Father who will fix everything for us in the end. Really, wouldn’t that be a great and powerful thing?
Then I noticed in the singing and preaching how often there are references to the emptiness without God, and the purpose we find in God. The common goal of Christians, usually found in “God” and the “Kingdom” is a very powerful way to make sure you want to stay in that church, in faith, because how else are you going to survive? “We find our purpose in You”. “We can trust in Your promises”, “You are the rock of our salvation”, “Without God there is no hope”. How on earth would you leave such a system?
And if you thought about leaving the faith anyway: I noticed that fighting to keep faith is another powerful mechanism. Just recently a research was released in the Netherlands that showed that only 12% or so regularly attend church, and well over half is now agnostic/atheist. The preacher quoted that research, and encouraged the congregation not to despair, but to keep on going, because ‘Jesus himself is leading the church’. It struck me how it actually can strengthen a community of faith to be under ‘attack’, even if the attack may be completely legitimate. It completely sidesteps the more important question: are we actually believing in the truth? The underdog is such a powerful beast.
Now I’m going to get a bit sharp here, but I was also struck at the power of ignorance. The preacher, who probably did his job for decades and was university trained, told about an example of a Russian prisoner reading the gospel of Mark out loud. One of his fellow inmates liked the last chapter of Mark so much, that he wanted to hear it again and again, and he started to believe. This was the chapter about the resurrection, he noted. But here is the thing: this preacher and I both knew that the resurrection story of Mark 16 is a later addition, it wasn’t part of the original and was only invented centuries later. However, the rest of the congregation has probably no clue. So why be picky and tell people the truth? Rather, leaving them ignorant about the truth of the complexity of historical reliability of the Bible is a much more powerful way to encourage people in their faith. Ever heard a sermon about the historic reliability of the Bible? Guess not. Simple truth only seems to get in the way of faith. Ignorance is bliss.
After the service ended, lots of people were buzzing around and chatting away in the hallway. The social life of a church was yet another powerful way to connect to one of our basic human needs: to belong. For someone to say: hi, how are you? To see faces smile upon your arrival. To build community, without having to be into a specific sport, or book, or some other hobby.
What I Took Home
Next to handicrafts made by my kids, some “forget-me-not” flowers (what’s in a name?) and a head filled with memories and emotions, I was once reminded of Atheism 2.0:
https://www.ted.com/talks/alain_de_botton_atheism_2_0
While I don’t believe in the Christian church as the bearer of Truth, I do believe that secularisation has thrown away the poor baby with the bathwater. After all, don’t we people want to have a social community without judgment or all sorts of entry requirements? Don’t we want to work across generations? Don’t we want to belong? Don’t we want to sing sometimes? Don’t we want to share what is on our minds?
I myself am happy to have found some alternatives: philosophy clubs and the “church of the atheists and agnostics”. I also know of Sunday Assembly and other non-religious “churches”. Do you know any alternatives? I’m happy to hear about them in the comment box.
Let’s take the incredible power of church, which has been tested throughout the centuries, and turn it into something good for all of humanity.
Losing Your BFF 
March 27, 2016 at 20:29
Powerful post!
Glad you weren’t so overtaken that you threw up your hands and praised Jeebus. 🙂
I’ve never felt the need to attend church “substitutes,” but I do think many new deconverts would benefit from them. Socializing is a major part of being human … whether you’re a “believer” or not.
LikeLiked by 1 person
March 28, 2016 at 13:13
About a month ago I was a bridesmaid at a christian’s friend wedding and it was my first time reliving a “church” experience. It required some courage to walk down the aisle in front of all these people, but I was happy I did it. They had two songs where the community joined in the signing – it was also really striking to me how much of a powerful emotional experience that was. Thankfully the church does not have exclusivity on music – it is found in every culture and is an important vector of so many varied spiritual and human experiences. It’s a good idea not to dismiss it from our lives and it’s great if you have a chance foster your daughter’s general appreciation of it. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
April 12, 2016 at 18:26
Creepy brainwashing. To attend a church again on sunday (last time I was about 18) and see al those people ignorant worshipping God and Jezus would probably make me puke. If they were realy honest to themselves they should admit it’s all just one big lie.
LikeLike
April 19, 2016 at 17:53
Hi Grobbo,
When I was a believer, I truly believed it. I would not have been able to ‘admit’ it was one big lie, because I honestly didn’t see it that way. Perhaps it was all a lie for you somewhere down in your heart, but definitely not for all people in church.
LikeLike
June 10, 2016 at 09:12
De laatste keer dat ik naar de kerk ging moet ergens in juli of augustus vorig jaar geweest zijn. Ik herinner me niet precies wanneer, omdat ik niet het idee had dat het m’n laatste keer zou zijn. Van m’n christelijk geloof was op dat moment weinig over, maar ik had het nog niet helemaal toegegeven voor mezelf. Ik ging ook ter communie. Ik bleef er een half uurtje langer voor aanwezig, want de communie werd deze keer niet in de dienst gedaan, vanwege een familieproject.
Over drie weken is de lokale Gay Pride. Ik herinner me nog van vorig jaar dat ik een discussie had met een katholieke collega waar ik vrij giftig uit de hoek kwam tegen religie en geloof, maar waar ik mezelf nog gelovig noemde. Niet lang daarna gaf ik het op.
Het is gek. Ik wil best weer eens naar de kerk. Ik wil het nog een keer ervaren. Het is bijna als een drug. De zang, de cantorij, de liturgische antwoorden samen met de anderen zeggen of zingen. Knielen voor de hosti, de wijn.
En ik wil mezelf observeren. Zal het anders zijn nu ik niet geloof dat God daar is? Zal ik de gezangen kunnen meezingen? Wil ik wel meeknielen tijdens het eucharistisch gebed?
Voor mijn gevoel heb ik geen goed afscheid genomen. Mijn laatste keer was niet bewust mijn laatste keer. Ergens wil ik de idee van God vaarwel zeggen, daar waar ik er altijd van overtuigd was dat hij er was.
Het waren altijd de rituelen die mijn kerkgang zin gaven. Een ritueel afscheid lijkt me gepast: de hosti niet te ontvangen en de zegen niet te vragen.
LikeLike
June 22, 2016 at 23:13
Speaking about the ‘power of ignorance’: how did you become so ignorant about basic issues in New Testament within a year of leaving the faith? Did you lose your memory or did you draw your conclusions on shaky grounds to start with?
On the ending of Mark: 1. It doesn’t make any difference. Do you think without the longer ending Mark was not teaching the resurrection? Mark 8:31: “And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.” The message is the same, just the literary structure is different without the longer ending.
2. ‘Hundreds of years’ is nonsense. Maybe 40 or so. Because you don’t like evangelical scholars let me quote Wikipedia: “Because of patristic evidence from the late 100s for the existence of copies of Mark with 16:9-20, it is contended by a majority of scholars that this passage must have been written and attached no later than the early 2nd century.”
LikeLike
June 23, 2016 at 18:31
1. The point is that this prisoner got all excited about a chapter that was not a part of the original. I wasn’t saying that the gospel of Mark denied the resurrection, but it was just a very, very thin story with almost zero details.
2. OK, good point. I didn’t remember the exact years, so ‘centuries’ may indeed be too much. Still, it means that such a chapter was written a full century after the events supposedly happened, in an era filled with superstition, hearsay, etc. If I look at the chronology of the Bible, it is clear that the resurrection story gets wilder and more fantastic as the years go by (mark original ending, then matthew, luke, and the super miraculous stories of John, followed by rather bizarre promises in the added chapter 16 of Mark). Later stories even had the cross come out of the grave and talk, but they never made it to the Bible. It looks like the further we go back in time, the less of a miraculous story we find.
LikeLike
June 22, 2016 at 23:16
Of course, Jesus is the baby, the church service is the bath water. Your suggestion for atheists to keep the community is doomed to fail, as nobody is interested in bath water without a baby. It grows cold quickly.
LikeLike