Why I left the church after 45 years

If we believe that ‘political correctness’ is a satanic plot, we oppose it and anything that looks like it. This means we end up siding with the powerful against the marginalised. Jesus didn’t do this, and neither should his followers. Once I figured that out, I knew that I couldn’t stay.

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment when I knew I should leave my church. It might have been the day the senior pastor told us that we should vote ‘no’ in the postal survey.  It might have been the sermon about transgender rights in Canada, or another sermon mocking “social justice warriors”  Maybe it was the night they asked me to do an “answers to tough questions” session with the youth group and I couldn’t stop thinking about how much the church leadership would probably hate many of my answers.

I’ve been a regular churchgoer since I was born, and that’s 45 years ago. I was baptised when I was 14 years old. I was that kid who got up in the school chapel service and preached a sermon to try to convert all my classmates. I’ve taught Sunday school, led youth groups, played in worship bands, volunteered to help run summer programs and even preached a handful of sermons. Being a Christian was, and remains, central to my identity, and I believed that being part of a church community was an essential part of being a Christian.

Being a Christian was, and remains, central to my identity, and I believed that being part of a church community was an essential part of being a Christian.

I am a little bit surprised to find myself writing about leaving a church with no immediate plans to find a new one.

So why did I leave? It was because I realised that things that were upsetting me were not a series of isolated events. The church was operating within a particular framework, and this framework would ensure that the church would keep placing itself in the wrong side of nearly every issue that matters.

My theory is that we keep getting it wrong because many churches believe they are engaged in a battle between “the gospel” and “family values” on one side and a movement we call “political correctness” on the other. Instead of seeing “political correctness” as the idea that we should be inclusive of the people who are usually marginalised by society, some churches see it as a plot to undermine things we think are important.  This is how the church ended up thinking that marriage equality campaigners were trying to undermine the concept of family, when all they really wanted to do was marry the person they love.

If we believe that ‘political correctness’ is a satanic plot, we oppose it and anything that looks like it. This means we end up siding with the powerful against the marginalised. Jesus didn’t do this, and neither should his followers. Once I figured that out, I knew that I couldn’t stay. Now I am asking myself what to do next.

I wrote something about this on Twitter recently and my timeline was flooded with people wishing me well and making helpful suggestions, from joining a more progressive church, to spending more time in nature, to embracing atheism. 

I politely declined that last suggestion, because I still believe in God and I have no intention of abandoning my faith.  My question is where the church should go from here. Can we transform the current structure into something that looks more like what I believe Jesus intended, or will change only happen through letting the current structure burn to the ground and seeing what rises from the ashes?

I still feel a deep sense of grief whenever I think about the decision to leave. I will miss the friends I made, and the teenagers in the youth group. I will also miss the feeling of being part of a community that came together to support each other and to try to make the world a better place.  There is a sense of joy and connectedness that comes from worshipping together that I have never found anywhere else. I need a break, but I hope that the break does not last forever.

For now, I am going to put my extra spare time on Friday nights and Sundays into meditation, working on my fitness, and finally reading some of the books that I should have read years ago. The first one I picked up was Searching for Sunday by Rachel Held Evans.  It’s a beautifully written and very honest story of how the author stopped going to church but kept her faith, and what she learned along the way.

Most of all, I will try to remain optimistic about the future of the church in Australia. As Rachel Held Evans wrote, “As the shape of Christianity changes and our churches adapt to a new world, we have a choice: we can drive our hearses around bemoaning every auger of death, or we can trust that the same God who raised Jesus from the dead is busy making something new.”

Christians Like Us airs over two nights at 8.35pm, Wednesday April 3 and 10 on SBS.