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A Church Beyond Belief

Tendency No. 2: Making Faith a Binary Choice

8/28/2014

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Many congregations and the denominations with which they are affiliated affirm that faith has somehow gone awry. Conservatives see liberal betrayal, and liberals see conservative distortions of genuine religious belief and life. Both sides presume the power of the other to harm the lives of vulnerable people.

To the religiously uninitiated, this doesn’t make sense. Robert Putnam and David Campbell conducted a survey asking “whether religious diversity has been good for America or bad for America.” Given the religious divide we have, the results were surprising. It was no surprise that those who are not very religious saw diversity as a positive thing. But they found that even among the most devoutly religious, three-quarters say that diversity is good for America.  Add to this that they found that 80% of all Americans believe there are truths in many religions, and one can see why making faith a binary choice is turning people away.

While congregations and denominations debate who has a truer, purer faith, people are passing them by because they yearn for a place where people are open to learn from a variety of perspectives, not to reject one in favor of the other. As MLK, Jr. said, “We must learn to live together as brothers [and sisters], or we are going to perish together as fools.” 


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What Quest Are We On?

8/26/2014

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My coauthor and I have a passion: it is helping congregations create the spiritual space for a new generation to connect with God and one another. Our book explores this theme with a particular focus on how the yearning for belonging is reshaping religious life—or at least it should!

As we approach the release date (Oct. 1) of A Church Beyond Belief, we’ll be offering quotes, thoughts and excerpts from the book.

In the book, we discuss five ways that many congregations tend to distance themselves from the very people they say they wish to reach. For the next five blog posts, we’ll explore these tendencies.

Tendency number one: “They make beliefs more pronounced rather than the spiritual quest more profound.”

Whenever institutions suffer, especially the church, they tend to double the effort on what they already do rather than rethink their approach. As church attendance has declined, how has the church responded? By making beliefs more sharply defined so to demarcate themselves from perceived threats and opponents.

But what if the spiritual yearning within us doesn’t begin with a quest for truth, where beliefs are the answer? What if it is a quest for belonging, which seeks a deeper connection with others and something larger than us? If this is the case, becoming clearer, louder, hipper or trendier in the way we communicate beliefs will not meet the longing of many people. Congregational life and mission will need to be reshaped to respond to this spiritual longing.

I leave you with the words of Addie Zierman, who in “5 Churchy Phrases That Are Scaring Off Millennials” describes her return to church: “I went back not because of what the church was doing, but rather in spite of it. I went back because I needed community.”

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    William L. Sachs
    Michael S. Bos

    Rethinking the place of belonging and belief 

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