Advertisement A recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life showed 16.1 percent of Americans are not affiliated with any faith, which is double those who were unaffiliated as children.
So what pushes people away?
Jesse Schultz, 26, was raised Catholic but no longer identifies himself that way and says he has a problem when any religion acts as if it has it all figured out.
“When you’re talking about something as deep as God and existence and the afterlife, to believe that you are definitely right and therefore somebody else is definitely wrong is going to do nothing but stir up problems,” Schultz said. “It’s more important that we attempt to get along in this world than to worry about if our specific beliefs or not are going to buy us a place in heaven.”
Schultz said for a couple years he was a strict atheist, even preaching it to an extent. But he moved beyond that, too.
“I kind of reflected upon that one day and realized that I had become as bad as those that drove me to become that way, in the sense that I believed I had it figured out and those that abided specifically by a certain religion were misled,” he said. “I’m at least smart enough to realize that I’m not smart enough to unravel the mysteries of the universe.”
After chatting with Schultz about what keeps him away from religion, I chatted with the Rev. Stephan Sandness, 44, senior pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church, about what keeps him inside of religion.
I asked Sandness about a common question, and maybe doubt, coming from people in my generation: Can Christianity embrace a global, multicultural world where people practice many faith traditions?
Sandness, who had been at a meeting earlier in the day in which Lutherans discussed how to respond to the current flooding, talked about needing to open ourselves up to the reality that God is bigger than us.
“Sometimes we get accused of having a kind of theological superiority we hold over others who aren’t of our faith,” Sandness said. “But when we go out in humility, strong in our faith but in the knowledge that God is a lot bigger than us, bigger even than our theological understanding of God, and instead open ourselves up to meeting God in the face of a stranger, our Christian faith can be deepened and enriched in ways that can’t be imagined.”
In explaining why he stands inside Christianity, Sandness said the Christian message is much different than a culture that tells people they are what they consume, own and make of themselves.
“We need that message that my self-worth does not come from the life I’ve created,” he said. “It comes from the one who gives me life.“
But the tension remains.
Schultz talked about how anything that tells people to judge people on a whole, whether religion or government, should not be listened to.
The ultimate message of religion, he said, is to be a good person, and that has gotten lost and replaced with too much dogma.
He said he doesn’t pray, except maybe when he’s in an airplane.
“If I do look up, I just look up,” Schultz said. “I don’t look up to Ganesh or Jesus or anyone else. If I look up, I just say, ‘Hey, if you’re out there, I’m trying.’”
In an e-mail after our conversation, Sandness wrote this response to those who say they don’t need religion to be a good person:
“You might not need the church to be a ‘good person,’ but rather the church needs you if it’s ever to be the Kingdom of God the way Jesus seems to have imagined it. It’s as simple as that. As a pastor, it’s not my job to sell people a faith they ‘need.’ Neither is it any congregation’s job to sell itself as a place worth spending an hour once a week. My calling, the church’s calling, is to love them, all of them, the way God loves them. That should keep us pretty busy, don’t you think?”
Joe Orso can be reached at jorso@lacrossetribune.com.
Michael Welch wrote on Jun 25, 2008 12:37 PM: