I don’t think that most Christians stop going to church suddenly. They don’t wake up one day and think, “Screw this. I’m out.” At least, I didn’t.

You see, I’ve always struggled to talk about my faith with other people. Even telling others that I’m a Christian made me cringe and brace myself for impact.

I felt like when I said “Christian,” they heard “Republican, conservative, bigot, homophobe, pro-life, isolationist, and anti-Muslim.”

What I realized over time is that these stereotypes don’t exist in a vacuum. People really are that way, despite my efforts to provide an opposing example. I realized that Christians are no different than anybody else. They are bigots. They are anti-refugee. They look down on the poor. They are sexist and they are racist.

I’ve seen it with my eyes and heard it with my ears because I’m an upper class white male. In their eyes, I’m “safe” to say these things in front of.

Maybe you have seen it, too.

Church dinners devolving into rants about how pathetic the poor, minority communities near us were and how they were all just scamming the system. Racist remarks during church announcements brushed off by church elders as “oh, she didn’t mean it that way.” Refusal of the elder board to address the issues.

And yet none of those things caused me to stop going to church.

In fact, it had the opposite effect. It made me go to church more. You see, I’m fascinated by where the Christian church came from.

Humble Beginnings

Jesus taught many things during his brief time on earth, but above all else, he taught about grace. Not only in his stories, but his actions. With his life as a model, a tiny sect of Jews that followed him started sharing their faith in a very unusual way:

The early church hung out with the most undesirable people in society.

They associated with slaves. They treated women as their equals. They cared for unwanted elderly and children. They were the first to rush to aid when plague and sickness struck.

Tertullian, an early Christian writer remarked that pagans looked down upon Christians thinking “look at how they love one another and how ready they are to die for one another.”

Put that at odds more popular commentary at the time (mid-300s BC) from Demosthenes who wrote:

“We keep prostitutes for pleasure; we keep mistresses for the day to day needs of the body; we keep wives for the begetting of children and for the faithful guardianship of our homes.”

It seemed insane that these Jews, calling themselves “Christians,” would choose to live their lives this way.

And so I persisted.

After my pastor (also a very close friend) left our church, I asked for more responsibility. I asked to be a part of the group leading the rebuild. I asked to be on the pastoral search committee.

I wanted to help us heal, and I thought I had a plan to do exactly that.

We Have Lost Cabin Pressure

It wasn’t until the most recent presidential campaign and election (2016 – if you’re reading this in the future) that I started to feel like the church was beyond fixing.

70% of Americans identify themselves as Christian. And yet, only 18% of millennials find the Christian faith to be relevant to their daily lives.

Why the disconnect?

I’d wager it’s because, like an entire generation of Holden Caulfields, they despise hypocrisy.

When black people, who feel like their lives don’t matter, say that they do matter, Christians respond with “police lives matter.”

When Syrians seek refuge in our nation, despite the Bible saying we should help them, our Vice President (who claims “Christian” as his number one identifier) refuses to allow them into his home state.

When our government says that equal rights for “all people” really means “all” people, Christians disagree.

When our government has the chance to provide affordable healthcare for all people, Christians disagree.

Maybe it’s because the core tenets of what Jesus taught are blatantly ignored by the loudest Christians in favor of American conservative ideals.

Maybe it’s because those of us who value our faith are afraid to be lumped together in support of child-molesting, sexual-assaulting candidates.

72% of white evangelical Christians believe that their elected officials can be ethically immoral and still effectively service in office. This is up from 30% in 2011.

In America, “Christian” has effectively been replaced by “Republican.” It matters to me more than ever to remember that Jesus fought against the political and religious power-brokers of his time, reminding his disciples that their love and grace would be what changed the world.

Why I REALLY Stopped Going to Church

With an internal conflict between my faith and my church erupting within me, I asked to speak about it at my church.

It would have been my third time speaking during a church service, an opportunity that I sought out to build up our congregation and use my gifts for God.

I wrote a piece similar to what you’ve read above, focused on how our small church should re-focus on what Jesus actually calls his followers to do versus what the American conservative movement calls people to do.

It was a call to arms, a battle cry, to return to the ideals of the early church: service, grace, and love.

I was denied.

The subject matter and tone were too “inappropriate.”

I was told I needed to avoid criticizing, scolding or guilting people. “Rebuking and conviction is the job of the Holy Spirit through Word of God delivered by the pastor,” an elder responded.

Had somebody else written what I had and spoken it to our church, I would have been ecstatic. In my mind, it should have been the interim pastor to be the one to share something like that and my attempt to share it was a last resort.

But understand, I’ve never been one to hold back my thoughts.

In Hamiltonian fashion, my words are more cutting than most knives. Thus, I responded in ways I’m not proud of, either. I’ve just always felt the following to be true:

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” – Desmond Tutu

With my long-standing (admittedly prideful) sense of justice, I let our elders know that the racist remarks during church services that they’d previously dismissed implicated them as racists. Now a refusal to confront these issues in any platform meant that these trends would continue.

I believe an email to one church elder ended something like, “The fact that you are completely ignoring this as an actual issue further proves to me that our church has no problem with racist, bigoted remarks as long as white people aren’t made to feel bad for them.”

I refuse to raise my children in an environment like that. In a “church” were racist, homophobic, and bigoted remarks are allowed to be made, where women are judged differently than men, but I am not allowed to name those remarks and being unChristian and unbiblical.

We Left Our Church… Now What?

And so we walked away, but right around the time I stopped going to church, my wife asked me a very simple question:

“How is it that you can have such a lack of empathy over their lack of empathy?”

If you can’t tell by this question alone, my wife is brilliant and I’m extremely lucky to have her.

I decided to respond to trials of my faith in the same way that I’d always responded to other problems in my life: get local, get personal, and put together a group of people working toward a goal.

And so we did.

My wife and I started a Bible study in our home with a group of friends we felt could help us navigate our questions and would be willing to grow with us.

To share guilt, shame, regret, struggles, and the real shit of life that nobody is prepared to hear about when they ask “How are you?” at Sunday morning church service.

A group where we focus more on loving our neighbor regardless of race, class, faith (or not), gender (as defined by them, not me), sexual orientation, etc. Love is not a word, it is an action, a choice. Love is a commitment to doing the work of relating to another person when they are, simply, unlovable.

To be honest, I’m not sure how the story of our small group ends (or even what the next page is about). But I am sure that I’m willing to keep putting skin in the game, working, and trying to find out.

Because, for the first time in a very long time, I see potential to do the work that I’m here to do.

I have hope.

This isn’t an essay about why you should stop going to church. It’s a warning, a call to action to monitor how much of your beliefs about your faith are determined by the Bible or the current conservative political climate.

You, reader, have the chance to determine the future of how and where people see the grace of Jesus.

Will it be because of you, or in spite of you?

You can find more about Brendan on his website, here.

Follow him on Instagram, here.