As the authors of “The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?,” all of whom are pastors, write:
In our opinion, America is largely built for a specific type of person. If you belong to a nuclear family, graduate from college, and have children after marriage, America’s institutions tend to work better for you. If you get off that track (or never started on it), the U.S. is a more difficult place in which to thrive.
They go on to say that church culture can feel unwelcoming and even shaming to people who are struggling financially or have family structures outside of the model they describe. What’s more, they write:
Modern American churches are financially incentivized to target the wealthy and create a space where those on track feel comfortable. Biblical hospitality, though, is so much more than just throwing money at a problem, and the net result is that the average American church is not truly hospitable to the less fortunate, making them feel like outsiders in our midst.
Many readers who replied to my query mentioned leaving churches that rejected them during their divorces. Others talked about being constantly hit up for money they couldn’t afford to donate.
I’d like to see faith communities do a better job of including people who aren’t on that, if you will, ordained track. Not because I think people need to be religious to live good lives — I don’t believe that — but because almost everyone needs community to flourish. As the Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, whom I spoke to for this series and who wrote “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community,” has been preaching for decades, increasing social isolation is bad for all of us.
As Carson Curtis, 36, who lives in Arizona, wrote about missing a general sense of community from attending church, “Being socially atomized is hard on the spirit.”
Burge told me a story about his church that illustrated organized religion at its best. He described a section of the service where they asked for “prayers of the people,” where members of the congregation would describe a tough situation and ask for prayers. A young man, probably in his early 20s, with a baby, said he had just lost his job and wouldn’t make rent that month, and asked if the congregation would pray for him. Burge said an older man in the congregation went up to the young man after the service and said, “Son, if you need a job, you can come work for me tomorrow.” While that might sound like a scene from a Frank Capra movie, church really does wind up being one of the few places that people from different walks of life can interact with and help one another.
At the same time, examples of that kind of grace don’t erase the damage that is sometimes done in the name of religion. Americans of all backgrounds are clearly in the midst of a profound shift away from trusting many different kinds of institutions beyond just religious ones, and sometimes there are good reasons behind this lack of trust. There is a lot of pain and alienation fueling many people’s rejections of their religious upbringings: I’ve heard so many stories of racial prejudice, misogyny and outright abuse over the course of my reporting. That is a betrayal and a failure.