Christian ventriloquists: better than bad

Since those strange and tawdry days of Charlie McCarthy and (shudder) Jerry Mahoney, ventriloquism seems to have gone underground. It still shows up  on novelty shows like America's Got Talent (or Britain, or Ukraine, or Mongolia or wherever), an update of the old vaudeville show glorified in the '60s by Ed Sullivan.

Though the ultimate ventriloquist was Senor Wencez with his "hand puppet" (literally, a puppet made out of his hand, which is a device that still delights toddlers), I found a particularly juicy sub-genre of the art in Christian ventriloquism. Perhaps dogma sounds better coming out of the mechanical mouth of a wood-carven mutant.

Most of these poses are from record albums that enjoyed huge popularity (I nearly said "pup-ularity") in the 1950s and '60s. No doubt these were small labels, for how else would "Do You Know Jesus?" starring Uncle Les and Aunt Nancy Wheeler (Featuring Randy) find an audience?  Quite a few of these acts proclaim family relationships, mostly uncles and aunts who somehow produced a ball-jointed wooden robot with their contribution of DNA. And I have never been able to figure out how it is that a ventriloquist's dummy would work on a record album. It wouldn't matter if you moved your lips, for sure.

I can't help but notice that all these dummies look suspiciously alike. Creepy, I mean. That mausoleum look on the puppeteer's face is mighty strange, as if she's taking a day off from Madame Tussaud's. Both dummy and "manipulator" (the technically-correct term) seem to have the same hairdresser. (By the way, like harness-makers in the early 20th century, did the dummy-maker go into decline when audiences became more sophisticated? Or did they all flee to Bible camp?)

Then we have squicky little Marcy, who has so many albums that I had to pare it down to a couple. I can imagine she had a squeaky irritating voice as she prattled on about Jesus and salvation. The manipulator has perfect helmet-like Mary Tyler Moore hair, placing this somewhere in the early 1960s. I wonder if these records were discounted at Bible camp. I know they still show up in garage sales and thrift shops, eagerly snarfed up by collectors, else why would we be enjoying this display right now?

Marcy sings some more. Yikes. We see her standing up here, which is odd for a dummy, but I'm not sure the puppeteer has so much skill as to make her mouth move without any physical contact. That WOULD be squicky, if not downright supernatural.

Obviously a bargain basement record, with an incomprehensible cover. Why is it that all these things exude so much guilt? I guess because that's what religion is all about. There are many red arrows that say "AND" on them, and many grainy b + w photos of dummies, plus choirs. And, as it says in the upper left corner, it is all FUN.

Maybe the ick factor never even occurred to anyone back then, but the thought of Uncle "D" with a girl on one knee and a boy on the other, a huge Bible in front of them and stained glass in the background is alarming today. The "D" seems to indicate a suspicious anonymity, like something from an AA meeting where people are afraid to give their last name.

Oh, rapture! Grace and Wilbur Thrush have a whole family of gaudy dum-dums, not to mention furries such as you'd see in one of those bizarre conventions (and you can't tell ME that funny business doesn't go on in those). What's that on the left, a chess game? I'll have to blow this one up and try to get the details.

Woah.

This is a very odd kind of biker ventriloquist act, with Butch and Suzi (both girls, I assume) sitting on Maralee Dawn's lap. This is an obvious pseudonym to hide her Angel Mama past. They all sit precariously atop a cardboard-cutout Harley, with the caption Featuring The Country Ridin' Preacher, which I won't even try to explain.

It's Sunday School pageant time, with a man dressed in his wife's bathrobe and a kitchen towel. His little disciple is no doubt meant to represent a shepherd boy of some sort. The title is hard to read, but it goes (as they say) something like this: Dan Butler and Louie tell the Bible Classics, Volume III.

No shit, VOLUME III! Volumes I and II must've been hot sellers at Bible camp, or maybe they gave them away free. I must try to track some of these down on YouTube. I need some religion about now to salvage this bizarre day before it sinks in a quagmire of wretched depravity.

I've saved the best until last: the inimitable Erick on the Rainbow label, which (believe me) does not mean the same thing now as it did then. Or maybe it did, who knows. Erick's routine is called Pastor Pickin', which sounds so sinister I don't want to go into it. 

My personal favorite. The seeming eroticism of this, the way their foreheads touch, the way they lean into each other, suggests a love that dares not speak its name, because it's not just interspecies, it's - well, what DO you call having a thing for a ventriloquist's dummy? I'm not sure there is even a word for it. It took me quite a while to realize that Erick and his manipulator Beverly Massagee are PRAYING together, that's all. I mean it. And it's on the Rainbow Label, too.

Plastic Jesus

ARTIST: Trad and Anon
TITLE: Plastic Jesus


Well, I don't care if it rains or freezes,
Long as I have my plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
Through all trials and tribulations,
We will travel every nation,
With my plastic Jesus I'll go far.

{Refrain}
Plastic Jesus, plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
Through all trials and tribulations,
We will travel every nation,
With my plastic Jesus I'll go far.

I don't care if it rains or freezes
As long as I've got my Plastic Jesus
Glued to the dashboard of my car,
You can buy Him phosphorescent
Glows in the dark, He's Pink and Pleasant,
Take Him with you when you're travelling far

{Refrain}

I don't care if it's dark or scary
Long as I have magnetic Mary
Ridin' on the dashboard of my car
I feel I'm protected amply
I've got the whole damn Holy Family
Riding on the dashboard of my car

{Refrain}

You can buy a Sweet Madonna
Dressed in rhinestones sitting on a
Pedestal of abalone shell
Goin' ninety, I'm not wary
'Cause I've got my Virgin Mary
Guaranteeing I won't go to Hell

{Refrain}

I don't care if it bumps or jostles
Long as I got the Twelve Apostles
Bolted to the dashboard of my car
Don't I have a pious mess
Such a crowd of holiness
Strung across the dashboard of my car

{Refrain}

No, I don't care if it rains or freezes
Long as I have my plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
But I think he'll have to go
His magnet ruins my radio
And if we have a wreck he'll leave a scar

{Refrain}

Riding through the thoroughfare
With his nose up in the air
A wreck may be ahead, but he don't mind
Trouble coming, he don't see
He just keeps his eyes on me
And any other thing that lies behind

Plastic Jesus, Plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
Though the sun shines on his back
Makes him peel, chip, and crack
A little patching keeps him up to par

When pedestrians try to cross
I let them know who's boss
I never blow my horn or give them warning
I ride all over town
Trying to run them down
And it's seldom that they live to see the morning

Plastic Jesus, Plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
His halo fits just right
And I use it as a sight
And they'll scatter or they'll splatter near and far

When I'm in a traffic jam
He don't care if I say Damn
I can let all sorts of curses roll
Plastic Jesus doesn't hear
For he has a plastic ear
The man who invented plastic saved my soul

Plastic Jesus, Plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
Once his robe was snowy white
Now it isn't quite so bright
Stained by the smoke of my cigar

God made Christ a Holy Jew
God made Him a Christian too
Paradoxes populate my car
Joseph beams with a feigned elan
From the shaggy dash of my furlined van
Famous cuckold in the master plan

Naughty Mary, smug and smiling
Jesus dainty and beguiling
Knee-deep in the piling of my van
His message clear by night or day
My phosphorescent plastic Gay
Simpering from the dashboard of my van

When I'm goin' fornicatin
I got my ceramic Satan
Sinnin' on the dashboard of my Winnebago Motor Home
The women know I'm on the level
Thanks to the wild-eyed stoneware devil
Ridin' on the dashboard of my Winnebago Motor Home
Sneerin' from the dashboard of my Winnebago Motor Home
Leering from the dashboard of my van

If I weave around at night
And the police think I'm tight
They'll never find my bottle, though they ask
Plastic Jesus shelters me
For His head comes off, you see
He's hollow, and I use Him for a flask

Plastic Jesus, plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
Ride with me and have a dram
Of the blood of the Lamb
Plastic Jesus is a holy bar

I did not write any part of this song. I remembered Paul Newman singing it in Cool Hand Luke, and wondered if I could find a video anywhere (which I could), then looked up the lyrics. Most versions had one or two verses, but this one went on forever, apparently written by that celebrated lyricist, Arthur Unknown (sometimes known by his pen name, Anon).

It's a strange thing, obviously a sour parody of What a Friend We Have in Jesus. The thing is, it was not so very long ago that I was a churchgoing Christian and even a lay minister, a preacher. Seems like a lifetime ago. So I can't quite join in wholeheartedly. But when I saw what was happening to "my" church, its slickness and desperate attempts at hipness to attract a "younger" crowd (i. e. people under 80 with more disposable income), I felt sickened. All of it was done in the name of finance. In all the time I was with that church, the main thing I heard about was not the gospels, but a desperate lack of money and the need to give, give, give.

This wasn't about hungry people overseas or Christian education, but (mostly) paying a mortgage 

which always seemed to be shockingly in arrears. If we as individuals had conducted our finances that way, the bank would have put us in foreclosure. As it was, the larger church carried us as perpetual deadbeats.

Guilt trips abounded if you didn't or couldn't raise the amount of your offerings annually, because after all, the church's expenses kept going up, and it was up to us to take up the shortfall. Don't you want to support your church? Tell us, then, just what are your priorities? Didn't we hear you went on a vacation last year? (WHAT, you went to Vegas?) Once a year, incredibly, someone came to each person's house to ask them how much they were giving, and gently but firmly pressured them into giving more. I hated this and felt it was a violation of privacy and completely unfair, but I never said anything because you just didn't say anything.  I knew if I did, I would likely be gently pressured back into the beliefs and policies of the fold (with a vague but palpable ostracism as the penalty
if I didn't), or perhaps genteelly labelled "mentally ill" (well, dear, she can't help it, you know). 

As a symptom of a structure that had been rotten for years , leadership finally caved in, and no one had the first idea why it happened, or how. It's like my "do husbands fall from the sky?" post. Jobs don't fall from the sky. Husbands don't, friends don't. WE PICK THEM. We vote our leaders in, then bitch about them endlessly, even demonize them. We were snowjobbed by a shallow huckster, fell for him hook, line and sinker, then turned him into some sort of Satanic figure who had destroyed our innocent little lamb of a church.

Bullshit!

So I walked away, even tried a few other churches and was suffocated and frankly bored. The wheezy hymns, the lack of life, the lacklustre attempts to inject some enthusiasm and relevance into the services, all of it fell flat for me. More than once, when I tried to sit down, someone put their hand out to cover the spot on the pew and said, "My family sits here." No hello, not even a "sorry", just a "go away".

It left a hole, because for some fifteen years I was deeply involved, but the last several years were just hell for me, because there was absolutely NO ONE I could talk to about it all. It would be seen as "disloyal".

But I could no longer adhere to a church with such shallow values, a church which would not or could not or just didn't want to take responsibility for all its bad decisions.

Plastic Jesus, indeed.

(CODA. As usual , while I work on these things, or after I post them, more comes to me. In this case, it startles me that I wrote the words I just wrote. I had no idea I was going to. Not that I've never written about church disillusionment before. I have, and I will again. But in this case, I merely came across a YouTube clip from Cool Hand Luke, then thought of the song, then Googled the lyrics. Funny stuff, and strange, too. And that, I thought to myself, would be that. But in the world of exploration through writing, "that" is NEVER "that" - and I thank whatever God I still have for the process.)

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If I thought my son was gay

Actual conversation, recently overheard at a party.

(Her) So they're saying, you know, he's (blblblb)

(Him) He's bi-whut?

You know. Bipolar. That's where -

Yeah, I know what it is, baby.

So he says he's like, on this stuff that's like, um I guess it's like lithium, and I'm like

What sort of shit is that?

You know, it's like when you have mood swings?

Shit.

And you take this and it like, levels them out?

Bipolar. That's all I ever hear about. All of a sudden everybody'sbipolar.

Like, I don't think so? Like, he's never been what you'd call normal.

If I thought my son was bipolar, you know what I'd do?

(seductively) Whuu-uut?

I'd take him out back and shoot him.

You would?

Put him out of his misery. Hell, I'd do it for my goddamn dogs.

So, you'd like. . . I mean, kill him if he was like. . .

Like I said, put him out of his misery. I'd rather he be dead than fucking crazy.

What if he was, you know?

(mockingly, but she doesn't get it) Whuuu-uuut?

You know, gay.

Jesus.

What would you do?

Well. (Thinks, with difficulty). I don't know, I guess if he has a job -

And a haircut? (giggles)

If he was, you know, holding it together. If he kept on going to church.

Does your son go to church?

What the hell are you talking about?

I mean, do you know anybody like that.

Of course not. But I mean a person can change.

They can change if they're bipolar?

Shit no. I just told you I'd shoot him in the head and it would be the best thing for him.

But they can change if they're you know. . .(coyly) gay?

I saw this thing on TV. Gospel camp, a bunch of ex-gays. Sure, a person can if they want to.

Can they?

Hey, listen. If you were in love with your boss, would you just come up to him and say. . .

Doubt it (giggles).

So you'd keep it to yourself.

So it's OK to be gay if you keep it to yourself.

That's what I'm sayin'. It's a decision, you just don't act on it.

So if you're like, heterosexual, you can just decide not to act on it.

I guess maybe. . . I don't know, that's different. But I guess so.

So being gay is OK so long as you don't act on it.

If you don't make a big deal out of it. Just keep it to yourself.

But if you're bipolar -

I told you, I'd blow his brains out.

What if he like learned to, like, keep it together? Kept on going to church. 

I see where you're going. No thanks, dear, it's a whole 'nother issue.

I don't believe you.

I told you already. I'd do it out of love. I'd do it for one of my dogs, and I'd do it for my son.

But is it OK if you, like, keep it to yourself?

Forget it, darlin'. Mental illness is the end of the line.


http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Amazing grace: Kevin Rudd's act of faith

Kevin Rudd launches passionate defence of gay marriage

Australia's prime minister, Kevin Rudd, a devout Christian, has stared down a pastor on live television and cited scripture while delivering a stirring defence of gay marriage.

In footage that has since gone viral on the internet, Mr Rudd declared that "people don't choose their sexuality" and said if The Bible were taken literally, slavery would still be legal.

His impassioned defence of his decision to throw his support behind same sex marriage came in response to a Christian pastor who asked on a chat show featuring audience questions: "Kevin, if you call yourself a Christian, why don't you believe the words of Jesus in The Bible?"

Mr Rudd, facing defeat in Australia's election on Saturday, responded: "Well mate if I was going to have that view, The Bible also says that slavery is a natural condition. Because St Paul said in the New Testament: slaves be obedient to your masters. And therefore we should have all fought for the confederacy in the US Civil War. I mean for goodness sake. The human condition and social conditions change."

Mr Rudd said be believed his decision to support gay marriage was in line with The Bible's emphasis on "universal love".

"I concluded in my conscience, through an informed conscience and a Christian conscience, it was the right thing to do," he told ABC TV's Q&A show.

This amazing four minutes is making the rounds. It proves that it's possible to have a lightbulb come on regarding your former beliefs, not just flip-flopping to garner votes but realizing in the clear light of day that human beings in all their diversity deserve compassion, understanding and a fair shake.

The glazed eyes and bolted doors apparent in the faces of the audience speak volumes about their own limited beliefs, and this misguided pastor with the ominous "Republic" shirt (?) seems ill at ease and even afraid. Rudd speaks with poise, confidence, and heartfelt conviction, and with a refreshing absence of shouting, fist-pounding and empty rhetoric. 

After studying it formally for 15 years and even teaching classes, I know my Bible pretty well, and I challenge conservative Christians to find any kind of statement from Jesus on homosexuality. It simply isn't there. And yes, Saint Paul, who could pound fists with the best of them, not only stated that slaves should obey their masters, but that wives should "submit themselves" to their husbands! Rudd didn't need to pull this one out, and to his credit he didn't, but he certainly could have. 

Does this mean we should just toss the Bible away as irrelevant to 2013 and all its multiplicity of views?  In the words of theologian Marcus Borg, it's possible to take scripture "seriously, but not literally." I think that Jesus so embodied near-unthinkable changes in human consciousness that he was put to death for it.  But who has that sort of guts, these days?

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Jesus was homeless. . . wasn't he?

'Survival' of United Church not a priority

(Blogger's note. I was a longtime, active member of the United Church until a sense of alienation drove me away a few years ago. The National Post article below (describing churches scrambling frantically to survive financial hardship) scored a direct hit. During my 15 years as a committed member, I saw churches trying to maintain cavernous old buildings, in dire debt because they couldn't make their mortgage payments. I saw them grabbing people practically as they walked in the door to join committees, shaming people if they couldn't or wouldn't tithe (often actively questioning their commitment if they felt their money was better spent giving directly to charities), and even driving away people who were contributing in a way that was outside the box. Such interlopers made everyone uneasy, as they seemed to be saying: look, guys, the old ways aren't working any more. What can we do that's new? 

So today I found this article online which was written SIX YEARS AGO. I wonder what has changed. Probably not much. Members are still probably sitting through endless annual meetings in which the main subject is financial doom and the reprehensible lack of members' commitment which has brought it about. I remember the gloomy, depressed feeling hanging over us as we left these meetings, shamed into believing we were letting our church down and even letting the United Church die because we didn't care.

Though everything in our culture has changed  so radically that it is practically unrecognizable, the United Church expects to go on operating in the same way it did in the 1950s. Why doesn't it work any more? Can you guess? But shame isn't the answer, nor is panic, scrambling to get the old ways back, or bitterness and gloom.

Ask yourself: how many churches did Jesus build? Only one, and it has no walls.)

By National Post October 13, 2007 

The leader of the United Church of Canada says his Church is too "preoccupied" with protecting its buildings, counting its money and recruiting members, and should instead devote its energies to helping the poor, the hungry and the sick beyond its walls.

Reverend David Giuliano, the Moderator, or spiritual head, of one of Canada's largest Protestant churches, has sent a letter to United Church congregations across the country, urging them to worry less about "buildings and budgets" and become more concerned about the "suffering of the world around us."

"Our hope is not for our survival or even growth," Rev. Giuliano writes. "I am praying that our preoccupation with getting people into church is transformed by a passion for getting the church out into the world.

"I am praying that we welcome strangers with a radical hospitality that sees in them the face of Christ -- not an 'identifiable giver' or a 'potential committee member.' "

Rev. Giuliano's plea comes in the midst of a difficult period for the Church and its roughly 600,000 members. Along with other mainstream Christian denominations, the United Church of Canada is experiencing a long decline in national membership; its congregational lists fell 39% between 1961 and 2001.

In July, the Church announced program cuts and layoffs at its national headquarters in Toronto due to financial pressures -- including the closure of its audiovisual production office and the cancellation of its award-winning current affairs television pro-gram Spirit Connection, which will air for the last time on Vision TV on Dec. 30.

In an interview this week Rev. Giuliano acknowledged, "There's a lot of anxiety in the Church about our institution --about money and numbers."

He said the Church, which once boasted more than a million active adherents, was for many generations a source of cultural and social authority in Protestant Canada.

"Many of us are reluctant to give up [that authority]--even if it doesn't really exist today --but I see the change as liberating, because we don't have to hold on to that any more."

"Jesus's followers were not a huge group of people, and they were not prosperous," he said.

"The measurement of a faithful community cannot be in its numbers."

Rev. Giuliano said that as one example of the Church's preoccupation with survival, too much money is spent maintaining Church buildings that serve little purpose other than to shelter a declining group of worshippers once a week.

"I think we have too much property," he said. "We have places where we have three United Churches within three blocks of each other."

He applauded one of the country's oldest congregations, First United Church in Ottawa, which sold its old building last year and now leases meeting and programming space from a nearby Anglican Church.

Rev. Giuliano likened the Church institution to a treasured car that a proud owner might keep in their driveway.

"The Church is a vehicle intended to get us somewhere. If you keep it fixed and washed and waxed but you don't ever take it anywhere, it doesn't have much purpose," he said.

"If what we do is ask the question, 'How do we get big or even survive,' I think we've lost our way," he said. "For me, the real question is, 'What does it mean to be faithful?' "

© (c) CanWest MediaWorks Publications Inc.

(Post-blog. I can hear the protests now. But it won't work. It won't work. Whether we like it or not, the world runs on money and it can't be any other way. End of discussion.

Show me ONE organization that has survived for more than a couple of years without significant financial support from its membership?

I have one, and it has many branches and exists in many forms. It was started in the 1930s because a doctor and a stockbroker couldn't stay sober. But together, with mutual insight and support, they found that they could. No one told them that survival without money was impossible, so they survived. They did more than survive: their tiny church of two became the most successful worldwide self-help organization in human history. And all this with no dues or fees, so that NO ONE would be excluded.

Maybe just a little bit closer to what Jesus had in mind.)

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Why I stopped going to church

God! I have wanted to write a post about this for a long time, but every time I approached the subject, something stopped me.


Some sort of massive rock of grief.


Some sort of conviction that "someone" from my former church community would see it, become angry, feel sorry for me, try to silence me, or otherwise write me off.


For you see, after fifteen years of involvement that was often draining and frustrating, I had to leave. The immediate cause was leadership and the wrongheaded direction I felt we were travelling in; this had been going on for years and years and could not be pinned on a single individual. But as the Man used to say: if a blind person tries to lead another blind person, they're both going to stumble into a ditch.

Where do I begin? I want to start with the sense of scarcity that has become epidemic among "liberal" (i.e. not fundamentalist) churches in the past couple of decades. These churches, many of them meeting in dowdy old buildings that are outrageously expensive to maintain, are bleeding members at an alarming rate, and not replacing them. The reasons for this are either very complex, or very simple.


For a lot of people,  religion, the churchy kind of religion many of us were brought up in, now seems as dusty and antiquated as wheezy old pipe organs and hard, varnishy pews.  Most churches appear to be more interested in maintaining a pleasant space and keeping their own little private programs going than in even attempting to address the howling need among their fellow suffering humans.


So the trickle of exodus has gradually became a flood. As people peel off, not always consciously but because somehow they just don't get there on Sunday morning any more, the church's debt (which always seems to be overwhelming: isn't there a church anywhere that makes their mortgage payments?) just snowballs because there aren't enough members left to throw enough dollars into the collection plate.

What happens then is a feverish drive to make up the deficit, usually through inward-turning events like garage and bake sales mostly frequented by members. That's what passed for "outreach" in my former church. Most of the emphasis was placed on desperately trying to stay afloat. If you didn't do your part, guilt was laid on with a trowel. A few years back, you'd get a home visit from someone on the finance committee to talk over your contribution: in other words, how much you were giving, and how much you were helping the church via committees and other churchy agencies. If you weren't giving "enough" in the eyes of the church, the pressure was ever so gently applied until one day you discovered you couldn't breathe.


This attitude of scarcity just breeds more scarcity, not to mention a "help, help, we're drowning" mentality that is probably not the best thing for attracting new members. Asking people to get on-board the Titanic isn't very effective. The minute someone new comes in the door, the hands are out, and the lasso is thrown: come, teach Sunday school,  join this or that committee, join the choir! Get involved (but in our way, not yours: fit yourself into a pre-existing slot.)  And whatever you do, for God's sake, don't leave.


I wonder when my feeling of spiritual awe died. It happened gradually, and at first it took the form of feeling extremely alone. I was not able to voice any of my grief to anyone, or I would be ostracized, patronized or pitied, as in, "well, you know, she can't help it, dear." If I felt transported by a service, it was almost by accident, as everyone was scurrying around making the service happen, busy-busy-busy, and even busier afterwards at coffee time when the talk ran along the most trivial lines.

 









I didn't stay fifteen years for nothing, however, and I am sure there was a time when it all meant something to me, but I'll tell you this - I was never able to truly be myself. I had to be a carefully-edited version of myself, and weigh carefully everything I was going to say before I said it. This was so I wouldn't upset the applecart and be ever so slowly, ever so subtly, ever so ruthlessly edged out.


If I got carried away and cried during a service, I couldn't help it because I was evidently "suffering from depression" (poor soul!). The thing to do was remain in the middle of the middle, a kind of blandness marked by hoary old hymns from the 19th century and sermons that were generally very conventional and uninspired.  Don't upset the applecart, remember. Don't lose control.

Several years ago we had a meltdown over leadership, a very bad one (and forgive me if you've read this here before: apparently I still need to write about it),  but NOT ONE PERSON acknowledged at any time that we had created the experience ourselves by choosing that person out of all the other available candidates. He did not fall from the sky, but you would not know it from the victim mentality that prevailed in our church over the next several years, the sense we'd been "wronged" (by, in the words of the Council Chair, "a nasty, evil little man").


If you blow on a church and it falls over, doesn't that mean the structure is just a little rotten? Like is attracted to like, and (as the psychologists say) we tend to recreate the experiences that are most familiar to us. Such as dysfunction, poor communication and the oppression and abuse of the weakest members. But if anyone had suggested that these things were going on BEFORE our meltdown, the congregation would have been aghast.

And, needless to say, the messenger would have been shot.

The problem was "solved" when the nasty, evil little man was ousted by the larger church. Then came the long period of "healing", in which we replayed the awful scenarios over and over and over again, after which we told ourselves it was all over and stuck big glossy smiles on our faces.


For me, it was all gone, just all of it, whatever I had absorbed of the gospel message, of holiness, of compassion at the deepest level. I began to see things I could and would not see before. While a few other churches in our district were making a brave attempt at programs for the homeless (and by the way, they first had to overcome the common perception that no homeless people existed in our community), our church steered needy people to a social agency whose office was so far away you'd have to bus for half an hour to get there, probably to be treated patronizingly. I think we provided them with a bus ticket.


So much for "I was hungry, and you fed me; naked, and you clothed me. . . " But what does church have to do with any of that?

And how's this for muddying the waters? While that "nasty, evil little man" was in charge, he was horrified that we turned away people in need and insisted we keep some non-perishable food in the church to be given to people who were hungry. Everyone thought he was crazy: that's just not the way we do things!

I still long for a sense of community and spiritual belonging, but I see that when I had it, or thought I had it, the personal cost was astronomical. Financially, I gave more than I could really afford (because I couldn't live with the guilt if I didn't), and saw my contribution thrown into a giant abyss where it promptly disappeared, leading to cries for "more, more, more". Every annual meeting was the same. How I hated and dreaded them: it was a dirge of "not enough, not enough," and desperate ploys to make up a hopeless deficit. We seemed to sink a little bit lower every year.


But a hopeless deficit does not fall from the sky either. WE create it out of an entrenched mentality of chronic scarcity. If people stop coming, that situation doesn't land on us from the moon. They stop coming because they're bored, feel that the service is irrelevant, and need the time to catch up on sleep after an exhausting week of working long hours and looking after the kids.

Most conventional churches had their heyday during the Betty Crocker era, when men worked and women stayed home with the children and everyone dressed up in their finest on Sunday morning. It doesn't exactly work that way any more: not if your husband is a violent alcoholic or has just walked out on you, or you've just been laid off from your factory job and have nowhere to turn. It also doesn't work if all you can get is a Sunday morning shift. (I can't count the number of times I picked up subtle disapproval of people who worked on Sundays.) But most churches I know of "don't have the resources" for a service at any other time of the week.

This tells me everything about their priorities, not to mention their inflexibility and (perhaps unconscious) need to keep things the way they are.
For after all, "we've always done it this way" (and we've done just fine, thank you very much).


I sometimes go on church web sites, if they have them, and see a confused mess, with most of the links not even working. One had no email address. One had been "under construction" for three or four years. It was common to see the most recent events listed under 2008 or 2009.


It screams "out of touch". It screams "irrelevant". It screams "we don't know how to change, in fact we don't want to, so let's just hold tight and see if they come back".

There is very little acknowledgement or even awareness of the profound social turmoil that has thrown the care of needy people back on the church's resources. For the most part, government funding is no longer there. But it appals me to see how many churches protest that they have to put themselves first, to keep their little operation going from all those desperately-begged-for donations before they think about those people "out there", those poor souls (whom they'd rather not have in the sanctuary because they're messy and unkempt and drop cigarette butts on the driveway).


There's nothing wrong with being a little old lady. I'm all for it, as that's the direction I am moving in with frightening speed. But increasingly, churches are dominated by very traditional older women from the Betty Crocker era as older men die out and fewer and fewer young people join. A few years ago I went to an ordination ceremony with a couple of dozen candidates, and all of them were women between the ages of 45 and 60.  No men, and no new blood either. Maybe a 60-year-old woman can be a spiritual firebrand, but why not a 25-year-old man? Where are they,  and why are none of them even faintly interested?

But lest I come across as age-ist, let me tell you a story.  One of our most dynamic members, a great-grandmother who gave tirelessly of her time and energy for years, was asked to leave. She and her husband were presented with a report, a long list of grievances neatly typed-up, which listed all their transgressions over the years. They strayed from the Sunday School curriculum, probably making it interesting for the kids for the first time ever. He (a retired minister) preached a sermon that was a little hard to follow, and it upset people. I don't know what else they did except restore the church library from nothing and build professional-level sets for every pageant we ever put on (and this on their own dime, because everyone else screamed that they had no money).

They were coloring outside the lines, obviously, and even though every progressive thinker we ever heard of was begging people to do just that before the church sank, they were asked to leave. The minister apparently didn't want to get his hands dirty with this task (though, to be sure, that report had to be his doing). He had one of his henchmen do it for him. These two were my favorite people in my church. They were told to toe the line or get out, and the choice was clear.


I'm sorry, but I can't be part of this. It's not going anywhere. It's just not. I am tired of being squeezed for money I can't afford to give. I'm tired of editing myself, of biting my tongue. Of being so careful all the time, never saying what I really think. 

I was never much of a joiner anyway, so all those years of participation were kind of surprising. I'm not going to go out and run after another disappointing experience of listening to those howls of scarcity. I wonder if anyone in these increasingly-empty places has ever heard the story about the loaves and fishes. In my former church, people would be running around screaming, "We're running out of loaves, and look at those fishes!  Quick, pass the collection plate again!"


What would Jesus say? I'd say it would make him sick.

(A post-script. Re-reading this, which is never a good idea, I realize it  resembles a post from quite a long time ago called Why I Left the United Church. I hope this piece gets into some other issues, things I may have left out. The fact that I still need to write about it is significant in itself. Roots that deep are not pulled up without pain.)

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.com/2012/01/synopsis-glass-character-novel-by.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm