Snippet: "The next bad thing"
snip·pet | ˈsnipit | noun a small piece or brief extract.
Reverend William Glass on how the church saved his life after growing up desperately poor, with an abusive father, and trying to manage the stresses of his life with drugs and alcohol (including short stints of homelessness):
“The bonds I formed in church meant that when things got bad, there was something else to do besides the next bad thing.”
Glass notes that after first attending a church to impress a girl, but then sticking with it, his church life offered him “social and relational capital” that was in short supply in his highly fragmented community.
Today Glass is an Anglican priest and theologian, fluent in five languages.
This snippet is from an article on what the authors feel is a looming health crisis because people are rapidly giving up on church while our communities are becoming increasing fragmented.
Is this an exaggeration? Just more doom and gloom? Maybe. But they made me think.
The article sites a study conducted by one of the authors over a period of 15 years with 70,000 health professionals.
“Medical workers who said they attended religious services frequently…were 29 percent less likely to become depressed, about 50 percent less likely to divorce, and five times less likely to commit suicide than those who never attended. And…health care professionals who attended services weekly were 33 percent less likely to die during a 16-year follow-up period than people who never attended.”
And they site a growing number of studies that draw very similar conclusions.
There’s so much coming out now about toxic aspects of modern church life that we need to learn from, but these narratives sometimes miss the bigger picture.
Of course we’ll find toxicity in churches. Just read the epistles. Or look at Jesus’ small congregation of 12 depicted in the gospels.
We’ve never gotten it right. We never will. But God’s grace is bigger than our mess, and he still seeks to accomplish his mission and purposes for the world through us.
All that being said, churches can become so toxic that they cease serving Christ’s purposes. Just read the seven letters to the churches of Asia Minor in the opening chapters of Revelation.
In our evangelical tradition, we note that churches cease serving Christ when the authority of Scripture and the primacy of the gospel are abandoned.
We’re also very clear about the spiritually (and physically) destructive results when churches toss out the historical biblical sexual ethic.
But what about churches who still preach verse-by-verse, adhere to an orthodox statement of faith, and still teach a historical biblical sexual ethic but also actively promote conspiracy theories on the election or on vaccines with the same confidence they apply to the truth of the gospel?
What about churches that actively opposed the desired outcomes of the civil rights movement not that long ago, while holding orthodox beliefs about the Bible and the cross and sexuality?
Personally, when it gets out of hand and infects the entire church, I regretfully tell people to run from some of these kinds churches.
I truly hope that’s not out of arrogance, thinking our church has it all together or is made up of better people.
I certainly have had bouts with boulder size blind spots and toxicity, and I just needed a little more time, friends, and some brick walls to bring me back around. And I’ve noticed you don’t have to get Covid to live sometimes in a Covid fog. Hopefully with time some will get back to the main thing.
I’ve strayed from the main intent of this snippet. Or maybe not. The church won’t be an oasis of sorts from the fragmenting society, and engaging in a church won’t lead to greater health and spiritual outcomes, if we mimic our world.
The article is written by Tyler J. Vanderweele and Brendan Case, “Empty Pews Are an American Public Health Crisis: Americans are rapidly giving up on church. Our minds and bodies will pay the price,” October 19, CT.