c. 2008 Religion News Service
NEW YORK _ Across 96th Street and three stories down, young families from a nearby Orthodox synagogue shared a festive Sabbath meal.
As I finished my evening’s work, I saw two dozen Jews crowded into a living room, laughing and enjoying their common faith, creating a small “village” in the big city.
I felt a tinge of envy at a religious experience that has led to conviviality, weekly community, family bonding and joy. I have wanted this for every church I have served, but Episcopalians usually go about their faith differently, more focused on Sunday and on liturgy, less focused on off-site connecting.
When I talk with Christians who have left mainline Protestant traditions for new churches, I hear delight in less formal music, more life-related teaching, and freedom from denominational arguments and fetters. But mostly what I hear is a version of this scene across 96th Street: people connecting, sharing their faith, creating a village and discovering joy.
Moreover, when I do encounter engaged and excited mainline folks, I hear the same story: friendships formed in church extending into small villages outside the walls.
It’s nothing new. It’s probably the reason most of us endure Sunday church: the hope of finding friends and having our non-Sunday lives enriched. It’s precisely what the first Christians did, when they gathered in each other’s homes; owned property in common; sang psalms, hymns and spiritual songs; told Jesus stories; prayed for each other; and broke bread in informal meals that later would become ritualized and lose much of their transformative meaning.
So why mention it? Because in these precarious times, small faith-centered villages will be religion’s primary contribution to a frantic and divided populace. The recent Sunday when conservative preachers violated constitutional norms (not to mention Internal Revenue Service rules) and endorsed political candidates seems to have passed without a ripple. Who cares what the preacher says about Obama vs. McCain or about Paulson vs. Wall Street?
Our contribution won’t be political or economic theory, but, as it says in the marriage liturgy, “the comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity.”
Judging by what I see among my parishioners, people go to work every Monday waiting for the “other shoe to drop.” They work on “wartime footing” all week long, and they come home on Friday dreading what the weekend news will bring. “I have a constant knot in my stomach,” one banker told me.
People need to hold each other, to give voice to their anxieties and disgust. People need to know they aren’t alone or uniquely cursed. People need to share low-cost, high-impact experiences of joy _ not manic fun, not the boozy “good life” that seemed so compelling a season ago, but the joy of sharing our common humanity.
I recently sat with 15 young professionals for the simple purpose of sharing stories about the financial chaos reshaping their lives. As bad as the storm was raging then _ and it was raging worse a week later _ they found something hopeful and holy in just being together.
If I could wish anything for the religious communities of America, it would be that we put down our swords and spears, relax about being right and pray for our leaders without demonizing anyone. Instead, let us imagine life outside the rituals of weekly worship, hear the desperate stories our people are living, and find ways to encourage small-village faith.
(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus,” and the founder of the Church Wellness Project, http://www.churchwellness.com. His Web site is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com.)
KRE/PH END EHRICH
625 words
A photo of Tom Ehrich is available via https://religionnews.com.
