I’m Officially Breaking Up With Organized Christianity
By: Julie Mcclung Peck
Tags: Current Events, Christianity, Politics, Religion

I’m Officially Breaking Up With Organized Christianity

The three things that may have soured me on religion — but not faith — for good

Photo by Diana Simumpande on Unsplash

Although I was raised in a Protestant household, I told my parents when I was about 10 that when I grew up, I was either going to be Jewish or Catholic. I’ve talked about this elsewhere, but the church that we attended when I was little, the main Presbyterian behemoth in town, never did much for me. The minister who helmed the place when I was a kid was of the fire-and-brimstone variety, which just never felt right to me; then, when I was a bit older and in a confirmation class, I had a run-in that left me in tears when I asked how we knew our version of belief was “right” and, if I remember correctly, “not a cult.” Both Judaism and Catholicism seemed warmer to me and less tied up with the person behind the pulpit.

I’ve lived my entire adult life in the Deep South, and I’ve grown progressively angry at and embittered with organized Christianity the longer I’ve lived here. This week, things have just finally come to the breaking point: I’m officially disgusted with organized Christianity past the point that I can even consider participating in it in any real way at any time in the foreseeable future.

I realize that this is a vast generalization, but I heard the venerable Jon Meacham on television yesterday talking about the separation of church and state, a concept enshrined by our Framers, and something just clicked for me. He pointed out, quite correctly, the fact that this cornerstone of our democracy was intended by Jefferson and all else to go both ways: In other words, not only did they intend to keep Christianity, and all other faiths, separate from the three branches of American government for the government’s sake, but as Christians themselves, they also intended to put space between faith and democracy for the sake of Christianity. To entwine the two would sully the faith and hinder the followers’ progress in regaining unity with the divine.

In many places in the Bible, Christ and the apostles lay down the challenge to be in the world but not of the world. This was the other side of the Framers’ goal that Meacham highlighted on TV. It was with that that I realized that I’m officially done.

But more on that in a minute. It was a slow boil. Here’s a little more on how I arrived at this place.

The whole Catholic thing: Shortly after graduating from college, I made true on my word and converted to Catholicism. I love the rites of Catholicism — they’re very comforting to me — and the liturgy that is so focused on God’s word. But the Church does not cohere with my beliefs about the equality of women and God’s love for all His people.

Here’s what I’ve learned in turning 50, and stick with me, because I know this is going to sound a little convoluted. I believe God loves me just as I am, with my beliefs and all. As such, part of loving God is loving who I am, and I’ve arrived at a point in my life where in order to honor myself, I have to stand by what I believe in. So I can’t move forward in good conscience at this point in a church that does not honor women as equals, and that does not love all God’s children and honor them as equals. No rite, no matter how comforting, is worth scorning one of God’s children, telling a woman she is unequal to a man or a gay person that he or she is unequal to someone who does not find his or her expression of love in that same manner.

Gay ministers and gay marriage: My ex-husband happens to work in a Protestant church. His church is warm and welcoming, and I think of them as fairly progressive, although they are not necessarily typical of the entire denomination. They recently had their nationwide annual meeting, the centerpiece of which was a discussion of gay marriage in the church and gay ministers, and these proposals were hotly contested and shot down in favor of sticking to traditional doctrine relating to both. My ex was keeping me posted on the progress of the discussion and how divisive it had been, and I also had a brief conversation with the former minister at his church, a woman with whom I’d become somewhat close while she was there. She told me that it had been a heartbreaking time for many people.

Again, I have so much difficulty understanding how such good-intentioned people can put so much energy into actively denying an equality in Christ’s love to their brothers and sisters. It just makes no sense to me.

Christianity in government and Christian Zionism: Most disturbing of all, however, is the outsized influence that Christianity is having on the United States government, and that Christian Zionism wields on our foreign policy. This country was not created to be run as a Christian state, and yet it is increasingly being operated exactly as such, remarkably by a man who is on the books as having paid hush money to both his mistress and to a porn star to keep word of his affairs with quiet prior to his election to the highest office in the land. The people at the controls of our country are using their personal, faith-based ideology to dictate the policy of our government as opposed to a didactic assessment of what is actually best for the United States and her people. Our Secretary of State sits in Israel being interviewed by the Christian Broadcasting Network, drawing parallels between Queen Esther and Trump and stumping for his ultimate campaign costs. Altogether, this is both an inappropriate way to develop and execute public policy and a ridiculous way to suck up to the base, hiding policy within platitudes.

I don’t want to elect a Savior. I already have one of those. I’d also like for my government to keep its religion off of my country’s policies, thank you very much. I’d simply like to elect a President and let everyone decide how to run their own lives according to their own particular decisions on faith. Would it be possible to just do that next time?

Please let me know the answer to that — but don’t put it in the bulletin. I won’t be in church.

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