Maria Fahrenholtz, Former Kansan
Maria is growing up while parenting three kiddos in Iowa. She has loved books since childhood, but has realized in adulthood that books can't answer every question--or at least, there's not time to read for all the answers! She's on a journey away from obsessing over "right" beliefs, learning, as Madeleine L'Engle said, to believe "with lots and lots of doubts."
Two weeks ago when Kendall invited us to re-imagine church, her reflections on community sparked the tinder of my experience with evangelicalism. I find myself reactive these days, easily frustrated, even despairing over, the state of the faith expression that has always been my (dysfunctional) spiritual home. Turning from frustration to imagination feels a lot like taking a deep breath after crying: it infuses some hope.
I subscribe to a newsletter called “Hope Club,” from musician and civil resistor Andre Henry. He recently shared this quote from Stokely Carmichael: “In struggle, one not only fights against something, but one must struggle for something equally real but positive. That’s the other part of the equation.” What Carmichael found to be true of the struggle for racial equality we may also find to be true of the struggle for true community.
Right after I graduated high school, my mom initiated a long-overdue separation from my abusive dad and took my sisters and me with her. In the turmoil of that summer, we needed a new church. Evangelical churches in our area frowned upon wives leaving their husbands for any reason; we turned to Episcopalians for safe harbor. I’ll always remember JoAnn, the gray-haired lady in high-waisted slacks who rushed into the pew behind us and guided us through the whole bewildering service of prayer books, song books, and group call-and-response that everyone else in the sanctuary had memorized. My sisters and I, emotionally-raw high schoolers, were embarrassed to have been singled out as the outsiders who so obviously needed help. We told our mom we didn’t want to go back. But we decided to give it another chance, and spent the whole summer with that congregation of old folks and their high-church liturgy. Thanks, JoAnn.
Fast-forward to the weekend before the COVID-19 pandemic pushed many congregations to a streaming setup. My husband, kids, and I, unsettled since 2018 when we left the church we’d attended for five years, visited a Greek Orthodox church. This time our helper was an Einstein-haired man in a colorful bow-tie. He whispered loose English translations of the chanted Greek as he pointed out which text the chanter was intoning moment by moment. Again, it was awkward but again, we were grateful.
I want all of church to be like that. I want us to notice each other, especially the ones who don’t belong…yet. I want us to come alongside people we don’t know, showing them they’re welcome and helping them find their place, whether in the order of service or in the community itself. I want us to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep (Romans 12). Too often in the evangelical tradition, only certain delights are celebrated and certain griefs wept over in community. That can change.
What if we wept not only when people were sick or died, but also when people were abused or lonely? Could we come alongside a dominated wife and say, “We believe you; we’re going to help” and then do something meaningful and sustained? Could we help her pay for housing, find a job, secure reliable childcare, and pursue accountability for the abuser, instead of brushing her off with a simplistic mandate to forgive? Sheila Wray Gregoire, Rachael Denhollander, and many others are speaking practically on such matters as they pertain to the church.
And what if we mourned with lonely single people who long to be married, instead of trying to set them up with other random single people or repeating platitudes they’re tired of hearing? Could we come alongside a young professional and say, “You can come to dinner any time. Here’s my number; just text me and I’ll let you know what to bring”?
These things would be awkward. Inconvenient. Sometimes, probably even messy. The counterpoint, communal rejoicing, could help bolster a community that wanted to commit to communal weeping in spite of the deterrents. A culture of celebration would allow us to know more about each other, feel more connected to each other, and have reservoirs for when we need to collectively mourn.
So, what if we rejoiced not only when people got engaged or had babies, but also when people found apartments or jobs? Not every life event needs to be a gifts-and-balloons affair, but it would be nice if people got housewarmings, or even just house blessings with some snacks and company afterward, for any type of housing, not just a first mortgage. We could also make a point to remember to say something, send a message, or share a meal to mark occasions like cancer-remission anniversaries, or graduations for adults who’ve gone back to school.
The past offers us hints about what it means to see everyday life and spirituality as whole cloth, but it’s up to us to tailor that perspective to the world we live in today. A world with a loneliness epidemic is a world full of people who could use some community.