15 Reasons Why

[Jenni]

This is a great article from Rachel Held Evans. She's got another about why she came back to church, but I found this one, with the reasons why she left, to be more compelling. http://rachelheldevans.com/15-reasons-i-left-church

So, what are your reasons? Why did you leave - either the Fundy church or church altogether? Why did you stay - either in a Fundy church or in a church of another stripe?

[Persnickety Polecat]

I stayed in a fundy church this year, even though I had lots of misgivings. I had been in the church for 20 some-odd years, had gotten married while in the church (but not IN the church, mind you -- my husband wasn't a "Christian," although he was born and raised Lutheran), had my kids in the church, etc.

Things I didn't like:
1. The whole "pants" thing. My church didn't push it. Most of the women in the church wore pants at home, including the pastor's (adult) daughters, but while at church, zomg!, we all had to dress just-so. I hated the hypocrisy of it.
2. The rank conservatism. I don't care what political leanings an individual has, but when I have to listen to it constantly from the pulpit, it gets to me.
3. "Faggot." I don't like that word in the first place, but it most assuredly does not need to be used in the pulpit. 'Nuff said.
4. Hell, hell, hell. My kids were developing a very real fear of hell. I get that a lot of evangelical churches use hell to get people to convert, but isn't there a better way? I don't want my kids running towards God because they are terrified not to.
5. Hyles-Anderson. The connection was very loose indeed, but the ladies always attended the ladies' meetings, and they'd bring back those magazines. I read a couple and was icked out beyond belief at some of the things encouraged. I am not my husband's slave.

Now, again, my church was what I think most people would consider fundy lite. The pastor is a genuinely good man. The people care about the community and have a homeless ministry that feeds and clothes people, they reach out to others through a food pantry, etc. It is NOT all bad. I don't even think I'd call it bad at all, just very, very misguided.

My turning point, though, was when my pastor stood in the pulpit and said that those who were suffering from mental illness just "needed to get closer to God." My pastor watched the torment my mom went through with mixed bipolar disorder. Mixed bipolar is its own special kind of hell. Most of her life she was untreated because of other fundy churches telling her she didn't need to be, and the latter part of her life she was poorly controlled because she had gone untreated too long. Because of her lack of treatment, we were all subjected to horrible, volatile mood swings and worse. My entire family suffered terribly because of her illness and the church. And my pastor *knew* this. And he still said what he did. I walked out that day and never went back.

I still haven't gone back to church, and I feel bad about it. I haven't decided what to do. My kids really want to go back, but I'm struggling a lot on the inside. They want to go back to *their* church, and they don't understand why we can't (or won't), and they are too young to understand. I don't know if I even want to try. There's an SBC church right down the road with an amazing children's ministry and that is actively involved in issues important to me like sex trafficking that I'm considering, but again: I just don't know. I don't know what I want to do yet. I don't even know what I believe yet. I know what I want for my kids, and that's to be raised in a good church, but I don't know what *I* am ready for, and I feel bad that I'm putting myself ahead of them right now.

[Darrell]

1. I can't find one that matches what I now believe. Mostly because I'm not 100% sure what that is.
2. Church in the South is a largely social construct and the culture is foreign to me. I don't like it. I don't belong in it.
3. I'm tired of hearing pastors talk about everything in the world but Jesus.
4. Taking care of two kids single handed on Sunday mornings while my wife tries to catch up on sleep makes it very difficult for me to get myself and them out of the house.

That's pretty much sums it up.

[bean]

A lot of the list Rachel Held Evans really resonated with me. Not all of it.
This list pertains to my former church experience.
1. I never felt like I measured up
2. I too did not want to be anyone's "project."
3. I felt the church was silent on social justice issues. Peace. Justice. Inequality.
4. I did not want to sit through 50 minute sermons about how the whole world was going to hell any longer.
5. 95 plus percent were very extreme right wing conservative republicans who constantly bashed labor unions.
6. The part when the pastor mentioned how good a theocracy would be in a meeting kinda weirded me out.
7. I needed a place I could just "be" and not worry about it.

Thankfully, I have found that place.
I think people change.
Ten years ago, I was one of those cheerleaders for what I now see is an unjust war..I was a petition signer for one-man, one-woman marriage..I was ready to leave my teacher's association because my friends at church were telling me how they were promoting sin...Ten years ago, I thought the world was 6,000 years old.

Our beliefs change. Mine did. My eyes were opened realizing that much of religion is indeed a social construct to make the world fit our beliefs and also to keep people in "line."

I don't believe anymore in unjust war..or telling any human being they are less of a person because of their innate sexuality...or that the world is 6000 years old, or that every single word of the Bible is inerrant and literally true.

I do believe in loving God..and in His Son Jesus, who came to show us how to live and love, and who suffered the most horrible punishment imaginable in showing us that love...I believe the Bible is a collection of books, written by man, that God can use to speak to us with.

Like Button Hit for your post !!

[Phatchick]

I read this and found so much that I could agree with. I guess for me the following were the biggest points:
1)#3.I left the church because my questions were seen as liabilities.
To quote Robert Henlein's Jubal Harshaw, "I fell into the fatal habit of thinking," not recommended in fundy churches and especially not in fundy females. Questions weren't encouraged, you just sit in the pew and nibble at the pablum offered to the "babes in Christ".
2)#8.I left the church because it was often assumed that everyone in the congregation voted for Republicans.
I just couldn't reconsile conservative standards with what I saw as liberal beliefs in the New Testament. When I heard from the pulpit that good xtains would NEVER consider voting for a "demoncrate" (and this was back in the '80s, mind you) I wondered what politics had to do with religion.
3)#11. I left the church because I knew I would never see a woman behind the pulpit, at least not in the congregation in which I grew up.
Looking back as a kid, I sometimes wonder what would've happened to me if I'd been a boy. I was good at public speaking and music and might easily have fallen into the preacher-boy track. Might've made a good one too. But because I was born with the wrong set of plumbing, I didn't have a chance to find out.
4)#15. I left the church because one day, they put signs out in the church lawn that said “Marriage = 1 Man + 1 Woman: Vote Yes on Prop 1,” and I knew the moment I saw them that I never wanted to come back.
In my intro story, I mentioned that that was the reason I finally left the baptist church. I just couldn't stand the condemnation being heaped on friends who I loved and respected. I was just so sick of the bigotry and chauvanism week after week. God may love everybody, but fundies have lists.