The Great Church Search I

I didn’t have a Halloween theme in mind today, but for anyone who has ever been in our shoes, there is something genuinely frightening about my present topic. Everyone who has asked it has asked whether we’ve found a church yet. After all (as I assume the reasoning goes), it’s been nearly three months since we moved to Extortiana, or, as it is commonly known, Illinois. For my part, I have been attending a Catholic university, and often found myself meditating upon theological subjects; Katie has not found this particularly satisfying for her own spiritual life, especially as she is not also attending a Catholic university.

So yesterday we hied on down to an Evangelical Free church in Deerfield that Katie found in the phone book. She remarked that its ad (yes, it had an ad) employed certain catchwords of the so-called Emergent church, such as “relationship” and “authenticity.” I with my usual celerity took up an ironic stance with respect to the whole church-search project, dubbing our first object of investigation the “Emergent Church of Deerfield,” and off we went.

We knew we were in trouble during the first worship song. The lyrics were projected onto two large screens on either side the stage. Fair enough. But behind the lyrics ran video footage that may or may not have been lifted from a mystical yoga video, variously treating us to the soothing sights of rushing water, blowing trees, and time-lapse-rolling clouds. Oooh-kay...

Of course everyone who spoke spoke too much, but that is true of just about everyone I know, so I couldn’t in good conscience hold that against them. The worship leader stood alone at a podium, holding a mic, before a band admirably representing high school through late middle age persons, and smiled kindly and sympathetically—that is to say, with grating condescension. The pastor then got up and, not unlike a parody of a Baptist minister, sought to make us feel the profundity of his brief message by forcing it out through his gleaming teeth while pulling his lips unnaturally back toward his ears so to stretch them to a paleness even as his cheeks turned red under the compression. Happy Halloween.

Okay, so I didn’t enjoy the Emerging Church of Deerfield, which I didn’t think had emerged very far, or, if it did, was coming out backward with its head still below ground. Katie was not a big fan, either. In fact, if it could have an enlivening effect, I’d just as soon the place were submerged, demerged, unmerged or dismerged as the case required.

Oh ye powers of positivity, aid me now in my insufferable cynicism!

No doubt many, no doubt most, of the congregants deeply believe on Christ and have felt his hand on them. Indeed, three teens testified to that effect during a brief baptism service, and the crowd was so enthusiastic it clapped after anything anyone said: “We’re over half-way to our third-quarter goal of $400,000!” (clap clap clap) “Please be seated.” (clap clap clap).

Our overwhelming sense was that these weren’t our people. Brothers and sisters in faith, okay, but different still as the hand from the...femur. We may just have to get used to that until we get to know a congregation well enough to understand in what ways we are united. But I doubt it could be this congregation, and unfortunately it is because I can’t take the pastor or worship leader seriously. Just sing. Just preach. Please, please, don’t smile at me as though you think you have to convince me that I, too, feel abnormal accesses of bliss and wellbeing. Please, please, don’t grin at me as though you don’t think we’ll take your words seriously unless you demonstrate how good they ought to make us feel. The most authentic acting can never be authenticity when it comes to faith, and even children can perceive the difference.

Not to get dramatic, but let me just get dramatic and say there’s a heresy infecting many Protestant congregations that takes the form of the faith of feeling, the belief that God makes us feel good. Sola fides, yes, sola scriptura, sure, but if you don’t feel good, you’re doing something wrong. Christ suffered so we don’t have to.

One of my professors argues that after Vatican II Catholicism lost its sense of limitation and therefore its sense of tragedy. I tried to hide my consternation as I tried to think of the last time I’d seen the true pathos of tragedy in a Protestant church. What would it look like for us to imagine God not as an on-call handyman, but as the life behind and in the finite world before us, as the Father awaiting us on the other side of the too-real pain and weakness that we otherwise sell off to our careers and TVs?

And yet, I wonder if I could even handle it myself.

If you've read this far, now go to publicintellectual for October 26, 2005, where my friend takes on some similar ideas. We totally came to this topic independently--really.