Source: Huffington Post

By Derek Penwell

Author; Editor; Speaker; Activist

So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent–and often even vocal–sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

~Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail

I remember listening to a series on NPR one time about young adults leaving their religion behind. The thrust of the weeklong series centered on the increasing number among the emerging generations who no longer claim any religious affiliation.

Some gave traumatic grief as a reason for giving up, and others named a ponderous ecclesiastical hierarchy they no longer found useful, while still others struggled with what felt like the silliness of trying to find consolation in mythology. I got the impression from listening to them that they’ve thought more about religion than many of the people I know who’ve remained in the church. They’ve carved their disbelief out of the cold existential marble of a future scape devoid of religious infrastructure.

Interestingly, though, some of what I heard sounded like wistfulness, a desire somehow to have the “something” they felt like religion offers. “Not consolation, necessarily” they say. “Not so much forgiveness,” they’re quick to add. For some it sounded like a desire for community. For another I heard it as a longing for the kind of taken-for-grantedness associated with a meaningful afterlife, which some religion offers.

“Do you still pray?” the interviewer wanted to know.

Haltingly, “Yes … well, sort of. I’m not sure you could call it prayer.”

Another, “I try to feel gratitude, which seems to me like prayer.”

Young man: “I’m embarrassed to admit it, because it makes me sound like a hypocrite after all the things I’ve said this week, but yes, when things get really bad, I still do.”

Many of them were quick to point out that they weren’t looking to get back into religion, but there seemed to be something …

I think the church ought to pay attention–not so we can figure out a way to give them what they want in the hopes that all these “nones” will want what we’ve got and come back to teach the 2nd grade Sunday School class. I think the church ought to pay attention because, whether they can articulate it with precision or not, much of what the nones are saying is that the kind of stuff often peddled in the name of religion just isn’t interesting enough to hold anybody’s attention–let alone young people who have precious little extra time and a mountain of student loan debt with which to be preoccupied.

The other thing I’ve heard the nones saying is that evidence of Jesus and his commitment to a new world is often difficult to find in the lives of the people who appear to claim his blessings with the most enthusiasm.

In other words, what nones tend to see when they see the church has less to do with the humble path of faithful service in the pursuit of justice, than with what appears to be the venal and self-aggrandizing building of personal kingdoms by those certain that the Jesus of the Gospels must not have meant what he said “literally.”

I mean, come on. Have you read the Gospels? I am not even lying.

• Surely, Jesus was just doing a little fancy rhetorical two-stepping when he uttered the first words of his public ministry in Luke: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind” (Lk. 4:18-19).

• It’s not like Jesus literally meant that we shouldn’t oppose people who think differently from us about God, not like Jesus was actually saying that “whoever is not against us is for us” (Mk. 9:40).

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