I find this article to be fascinating. I am an XC, having been deeply steeped in the SBC and having a full understanding of how the Church “works” and the mindset of many of its members and leadership. This article nails it on its head that the American Evangelical Christian church is very much responsible for the plight of the working class, having diligently labored for so many decades in lock-step with capitalist interests in the undermining of social works and protections, the alienation of the citizenry from themselves, and the division of societal bonds through ideas such a racism, elitism, and exclusion of the Other.

Sunday after Sunday the pastors and leaders of the different congregations that I had attended would lament how the Church just needed to be more SOLD OUT for Jesus and give Him their all… That a new Revival or Awakening was coming just around the corner and that an “Early Church” lifestyle would be possible, one in which the Church would be all encompassing to the daily lives and needs of the people… though it was always out of reach because there was just too much sinning going on in the Church. All the while they lacked even a modicum of the introspection necessary to grasp that there was never going to be a way to actually fulfill this mission given that the Church was continually undermining its own self-interests by supporting politics and economics that are in diametric opposition to what the Church SHOULD stand for and exemplify.

Millions have fled the church as fast as their internet connection have allowed them to. They, like myself, have grown tired and bitter at the hypocrisy, the lies, the cover-ups, and the steady Onward march of Christian Soldiers towards the villainy of Christo-Fascism. Attending “church” was becoming an ever more grueling ritual which no longer made any sense in the modern world. This passage describes the beginning of my EX-odus quite succinctly:

[A] 30-something woman who grew up in a suburban megachurch, was heavily invested in a campus ministry while in college, then after graduating moved into a full-time job and began attending a young-adults group in a local church. In her 20s, she meets a guy who is less religiously engaged, they get married, and, at some point early in their marriage, after their first or second child is born, they stop going to church. [. . .] Soon it actually sounds like it’d be harder to attend than to skip, even if some part of you still wants to go. The underlying challenge for many is that their lives are stretched like a rubber band about to snap—and church attendance ends up feeling like an item on a checklist that’s already too long.

Once we discovered another world out there full of people who, just like us, had the same questions about life, the universe, and futility of religion and had been able to conclude that it was all just a farce we were finally able to loosen those “Ties that Bind” and progress forward.

Thank… Glob?

However, while I’m so glad that my eyes have been opened to the truth of the universe, something that I cannot shake to this day is this incredibly salient desire to regain that sense of oneness and fellowship, flawed and fruitless as it was, that I used to feel when I was a church-goer. I have been searching for a contemporary and humanist replacement for that “communal” sense of togetherness and belonging.

I suppose that was pains me the most about all of this is that life COULD be like that “Utopian” vision of the Reign Christ on Earth were everyone’s needs are met, where people are entitled to the full fruits of their labor, where the world is a:

community marked by sincere love, sharing what they have from each according to their ability and to each according to their need, eating together regularly, generously serving neighbors, and living lives of quiet virtue

…under communism, which the corporate church cannot allow to happen.

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