Individualism and Church Shopping

A recent blog entry on CNN's religion section suggested that the consumerist attitudes towards selecting a church had led to a collapse in the "moderate church" between the "traditional church" which “tells us what is good, what is true, how we should live, and who we are." and the "modernist church" that is "less dogmatic, more tolerant, more open to change." The "traditional church" and "modernist church" are divergent and continue to be so, leading to increased polarization of the country.

The fact that these people no longer attend the church means that ideas no longer are being shared, debated and appreciated. Instead, modernists in church (for example) preach to the choir (pardon the expression) to their modernist church friends about how traditionalists need to change their outdated attitudes about gay marriage and abortion and how Obama needs to end the war in Afghanistan right away as his/her fellow congregates uniformly nod enthusiastically in assent, without anyone to disagree and present a counterpoint. That phenomena is true, but I'd counter that I do see many congregations which hold a diversity in political views. In fact, the Redeemer-affiliated churches which I've been part of in the past ten years tend to be full of congregants who are upper-middle class, sophisticated, highly educated, metro-Northeastern yet evangelical - with that sort of odd combination tends to defy labels. If there's a problem, it's just that we rarely talk about them in a forum which people don't need to feel defensive or judged one way or the other. We did this once at Emmanuel Presbyterian Church prior to the 2008 presidential election, and I'm convinced some people have pigeonholed one lady as the "the liberal woman who doesn't seem to be bothered that babies are getting aborted as long as Obama wins and implements a better foreign policy."

What I found more interesting about the article was the subject of church-shopping and its impact, or lack thereof, on the people who make that choice. The article states that people "are more likely to shop for churches that express our individual values" and a growing number of denominations make this easy. Don't like a church's teaching? Don't like the music? Go find another one. The paradigm is no longer to walk into a church with a humble and open heart and learn - the new paradigm is walk into church looking to "buy" what you like - the sermon, the doctrine, the music - and commit until something better comes along. People are not going into a church so that they can be changed, shaped, and "sent out", people are looking to find something that suits their fits their (sometime frivolous) needs. In this way, Christians become guilty of what they often criticize New Agers of - having a "me"-centered faith.