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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: People who attend more than one church
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chris stiles
Shipmate
# 12641
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Posted
Just reflecting on the last few posts - specifically around people who are keen to get others off the list.
I'm sure this is in part a cultural artefact, where there is still a belief that some kind of advantage is accrued by being a member.
In the evangelical world where formal membership is held more lightly, I suspect it can come down to a misplaced sense of mission/residual exclusivism. It's a variant on the kinds of extreme thought that can't see why one would want to do <activity> when one could be at a prayer meeting instead, in this case 'why would you want to meet with those people over there, when God is blessing us here'. Certainly, I've seen and experienced the latter.
Posts: 4035 | From: Berkshire | Registered: May 2007
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sabine
Shipmate
# 3861
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Of course organised religion is a humanly constructed thing - as is unorganised religion.
There's no such thing as a disembodied religion. We aren't disembodied spirits floating around on fluffy clouds.
Who said anything about fluffy clouds? My point is that perhaps we humans care more about who worships within which structure, with whom, with what degree of exclusiveness than God does.
Most of us look to scripture or discernment, or spiritual leaders for clues about things, but in the end God knows the truth about our faith most profoundly.
For some, God may speak most clearly through a lifelong commitment to one way, while for others, God's voice may be heard in a variety of contexts. I imagine the Holy Spirit has a way of getting around and isn't surprised when someone wants to follow.
There is a lot to be said for basic organizational structure, but it would be a shame if someone missed the opportunity to be in a place to know God more deeply because he or she felt uncomfortable going outside the established framework.
Not everyone who worships in more than one place is on this kind of spiritual quest, but I hope all who are feel supported by their spiritual brothers and sisters.
Further up the thread I wondered about those who identify as "None" (spiritual but not religious). It's a rising demographic, and I wonder what wisdom they have for those of us who prefer organized religion.
sabine
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"Hunger looks like the man that hunger is killing." Eduardo Galeano
Posts: 5887 | From: the US Heartland | Registered: Dec 2002
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Gamaliel
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# 812
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Posted
I'm not sure the Nones are relevant to the OP, which was about people who are actively involved in some way with more than one congregation.
It's not about whether God 'prefers' people to attend Methodist churches or Catholic churches or Quaker meetings or whatever else - that's not what I'm getting at. What I'm interested in is why people might 'belong' or be affiliated to more than one expression of the Christian faith and what the practical outworking of that might be either in beneficial or detrimental terms.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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sabine
Shipmate
# 3861
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I'm not sure the Nones are relevant to the OP, which was about people who are actively involved in some way with more than one congregation.
It's not about whether God 'prefers' people to attend Methodist churches or Catholic churches or Quaker meetings or whatever else - that's not what I'm getting at. What I'm interested in is why people might 'belong' or be affiliated to more than one expression of the Christian faith and what the practical outworking of that might be either in beneficial or detrimental terms.
I'm not sure who on this thread feels that God prefers people to attend a specific church. I can say that I attend more than one church because I have grown in faith by experiencing my encounters with God in.more than one context. This practice places a bit of a burden on me in terms of being involved. But I have found that the things that seem best for me to do at my Quaker meeting are not the things that i feel led to do at my Mennonite Church. So it has worked out for me this way. I contribute momentarily to both. And, an added benefit for my situation is the Wednesday Meeting for Worship at the Meeting. Not everyone will want to engage in the kind of calendar planning that I do, but it works for me. Also important for me is the fact that I don't share a total theology with the Mennonites. I'm not a traditional Christian and they are. So I find myself learning a lot. It has been very enriching. And until I started attending the Mennonite congregation, I didn't realize how uplifted I feel when I join in the four-part acapella singing.
sabine
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"Hunger looks like the man that hunger is killing." Eduardo Galeano
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Gamaliel
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# 812
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Posted
Sure, so you have articulated what you feel some of the benefits and challenges are in your particular case, which is interesting and the sort of thing I was hoping to tease out.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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ExclamationMark
Shipmate
# 14715
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by sabine:
Further up the thread I wondered about those who identify as "None" (spiritual but not religious). It's a rising demographic, and I wonder what wisdom they have for those of us who prefer organized religion. sabine
The category of "spiritual but not religious" doesn't actually equate to none: they are two distinct categories despite their common protestations to the contrary.
"Spiritual but not " reflects a set of beliefs that may (in their particular expression) be unique to that person. That description is, to me, a kind of cop out: those who use it of themselves are trying to distance themselves from religion by inventing or using a new category which isn't really there.
I admire the "Nones." They have way more faith than I do. Disingenuity aside, the "nones" aren't actually "Nones" as they have soem core beliefs, even if it that is simply in humanity. They just don't believe in "our systems" but have recreated "otherness" in their own image in their own systems.
Both "nones" and "spiritual but not ..." have a lot to teach those who find their direction in "organised" religion. On the one hand they remind us of the freshness of new discovery, on the other they warn us where we can go when e make ourselves the centre of our universe.
Posts: 3845 | From: A new Jerusalem | Registered: Apr 2009
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Nick Tamen
Ship's Wayfaring Fool
# 15164
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
When I was a kid you did NOT set foot in a different denomination's church. An Episcopalian visiting a Lutheran church was visiting "a different religion." My childhood Catholic friends were taught just setting foot in a non-RCC church was a sin. (Whether that was taught locally or centrally I don't know.)
We live in less rigid times. I suppose multi-culturalism could have something to do with it? When the closest thing to a foreign religion was the Methodists, they seemed totally different from "us." With people more different living down the block, the Methodists no longer seem foreign?
FWIW, this was not my experience at all in small town North Carolina in the 60s and 70s. (Granted, we had few Catholics and no Lutherans.).
I went to church with non-Presbyterian friends from time to time, particularly my Episcopal friends. This wasn't unusual. And churches did formal and informal things together, including vacation Bible school, youth events (it was not unusual to go to the youth group of a different church) and sharing choir members to make sure there was a good-sized choir for a funeral. For years, the Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Methodists did the Liturgy of the Palms together.
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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott
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Belle Ringer
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# 13379
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Nick Tamen:
quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
When I was a kid you did NOT set foot in a different denomination's church.
FWIW, this was not my experience at all in small town North Carolina in the 60s and 70s. ...And churches did formal and informal things together, including vacation Bible school
FWIW, My 50s and 60s Midwest experience was a culturally different time than your 70s. Midwest was years behind the coast on the cultural change. I never saw inter-denominational cooperation until the 70s, and then only at the management level, not the people level, while back east had long been experimenting with ecumenical services.
I hear on the Ship about joint VBS or youth groups. I've never seen it. Maybe everyone feels overworked and the thought of coordinating with another church is just more work? But I have heard church leaders say "we don't want our kids going to there and being attracted away from us."
A decade ago two churches did Messiah selections together, the choirs were thrilled but the two music directors squabbled over whether the soloists would be all from the bigger church (as that director insisted) or some from each church (as the smaller church wanted). Then the next year the bigger church director refused to alternate churches as originally planned saying he works for his church and won't help someone else's church. The smaller one refused to be taken advantage of a second time.
How do churches that do joint VBS get past the assumption users of the program see it as the program of the church whose grounds it is located on?
One year I did the music sessions at two different VBSs, different weeks, one block apart, zero crossover of children (they all rotate through music). I don't know all the "why?"s. (I got to do two VBSs instead of one because I accidentally landed in two membership rosters so got called on by both, yea for dual membership even if accidental.)
Posts: 5830 | From: Texas | Registered: Jan 2008
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Callan
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# 525
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Bibaculus:
I guess the interesting question is can you 'belong' to more than one church? When I lived in London I went to one parish church regularly on a Sunday, but might also go to midweek masses nearer my office, and Evensong as Westminster Abbey from time to time. But that, I suspect, is a city thing.
I used to do that when I worked in Central London. At one point my Sunday church was an MOTR gaff in South London, my midweek church was St. Magnus the Martyr (Nosebleed high Wren Church in the City) and I would also, occasionally, attend my wife's church, which was (and is) Methodist. You can imagine how my hopes were raised and dashed when the Methodist order of service ended with 'The Benediction'! ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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How easy it would be to live in England, if only one did not love her. - G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 9757 | From: Citizen of the World | Registered: Jun 2001
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
When I was a child the Baptists had VBS on the week after the Methodists had had theirs. Many of us went to both, regardless of our denomination.
Moo
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See you later, alligator.
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Gamaliel
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# 812
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Posted
I do agree with Belle Ringer that, over all, increasing ecumenical interaction has been a feature of the 1970s onwards and perhaps wasn't so apparent in the 1950s and 1960s ... but even so, I'm not sure that was universal. My mother and her sisters attended the Sunday school run by the Plymouth Brethren when they were kids but went to the services at the Anglican parish. Nobody found this unusual and it was fairly pragmatic as the long-serving vicar was notably eccentric and incapable of making provision for a Sunday school ...
Mind you, my Gran' soon put a stop to it when my eldest aunt came home one day saying that she'd 'been saved' ...
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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SvitlanaV2
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# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by betjemaniac:
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
The extent to which this all impinges on double belonging is interesting. For some people it's a step on the road to switching over entirely. The Pentecostals and SDAs I know see Methodism (and no doubt Anglicanism) as a kind of half-way house, so they would encourage double affiliation as part of the process - although I don't know at what point you would be expected to pick one or the other.
One story that's always fascinated me relates how a Methodist minister in the Caribbean led his congregation to a neighbouring non-Trinitarian Pentecostal church to be re-baptised... but he and his congregation 'officially' remained Methodist. The blurring of doctrinal boundaries is a symptom of postmodernity (and some argue that the Caribbean was the first workshop of postmodernity) but I would be very interested to know if there's any truth to the story. It's hard to imagine something similar happening in the UK!
Interesting point - I wonder how much that goes also for doing things *outside* Christianity. I know it avowedly claims not to be a religion, but I'm thinking in particular in the UK of Christian Freemasons.
Freemasonry isn't a religion, but it does offer universal non-specific prayers as part of its meetings which implies you'd have to be able to square your attendance at church with praying in a room where you're all potentially praying to different Gods, and different understanding of God - particularly where you've got a Christian mason next to a Hindu one next to a Muslim one.
I don't know much about the Masons, but I think many of them are also Christians. (There are also conspiracy theories which claim that the RCC has some foundational relationship with them.)
Some people are able maintain a connection with two (or more) different religions, to varying degrees, sometimes involving conversion, sometimes not. There always appears to be some spiritual benefit from being with the 'other' faith group, which may make more orthodox believers nervous.
The interfaith worship tendency seems more of a thing with moderate Christians (especially among the clergy and intellectual folk) than with more evangelical types, although the evangelicals are perhaps more successful at drawing Muslims in to Christian worship. YMMV, though.
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Gamaliel
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# 812
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Posted
There are conspiracy theories connecting the Masons with just about anything you can think of, SvitlanaV2.£
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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