Title: Religion in the Pacific Northwest
Scripture: Matthew 5:1-12, I Corinthians 1:18-31
1/30/05 Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A
Rev. Joy R. Haertig
Last week I shared with you some research that Dr. Patricia O'Connell Killen and Dr. Mark Silk have found about religion in the Pacific Northwest and I left you with the question as to whether the church will survive in this part of the country.
I want to begin this morning with a brief refresher from last week and a bit more background. We live in a part of the country known as “the none zone” - (n-o-n-e) - as in we have the largest number of folk in America that do not belong or participate in a religious institution. Only 37% of people in Washington, Oregon and Alaska attend a religious institution compared to 59% nationally. I don't think I mentioned last week that this is nothing new in the PNW, it has always been this way. In 1890 only 16% of the population in the PNW attended church, and now, even as our population grows, religious adherents remain the same and for those of us that do belong to a religious institution, it is often not a life-long commitment.
Unlike other parts of the country, there is not one religious group that has been dominant but the most successful ones have been Catholic and Mormon because of their emphasis on salvation (we in the PNW like to see results from our involvement!), and Pentecostal because we like emotionally intense experiences of the divine. But overall, a particular religion or denomination in a religion does not mean that much, we value the freedom to choose and we tend to trust our own experience over the word of a particular religious authority.
In general, we are not an institutionally oriented people and we are very diverse due to “waves of immigration” and economic ups and downs, but we are a spiritual people. According to research, the majority of us do believe in God. The group that researchers believe will eventually become the dominant religion in the Pacific Northwest is nature spirituality, not an institutional religion, as we know it, but a deep connection to God in nature and a passionate commitment to preserving the precious landscape of the region.
Dr. O'Connell said in one of her lectures about the PNW: “We are a place of thin consensus and lose connections.” So what will happen to the institutional church in the PNW?
First let me say that the institutional Church that formed itself in the mid 1940's and thrived through the very early 60's when American Christendom was at its height, is in the process of either dying or transforming all across the country, and has been since the late 1960's. I believe it is happening here earlier than other parts of the country because our roots in American Christendom were never very deep to begin with.
Rev. Anthony Robinson writes, the era of de facto American Christendom and “modernity and its hallmark values of reason, self-sufficiency, progress, and optimism” have lost their inevitability and their taken-for-granted status in our American culture. A new secular, religiously pluralistic, and postmodern culture is emerging.” The culture is changing so what was known as the Mainline Church and the Civic Religion of the 1950's will change or die as well.
This is not an easy journey, particularly for those of us that grew up when American Christendom was alive and well and gave us a sense of being united. We were not taught how to talk to our Muslim neighbors because we were sure we did not have any and we just assumed that everyone celebrated Christmas! Some of us are kicking and screaming our way through this transformation, others of us just quit and stay home, and others still cling tightly to “the good old days”, while still others of us see it as good news.
Because our roots in American Christendom were not quite so deep to begin with in the PNW - many of us have already been living with this reality for quite some time. I remember as a young person in Junior high on Mercer Island having to explain to my peers what church was like because they had never been inside of one! The form of American Christendom I had known in the Bible belt of Kansas was not present on Mercer Island.
I believe that the ultimate question of whether the institutional Church will survive in the PNW is “yes”, but only as one spiritual option among many. With this in mind, our God-given task then, is to focus on being real rather than successful.
Writer Kirk Hadaway writes:
“Our goal in congregations is not necessarily to be large churches or even to be great churches, but rather to be real churches. By “real” [I mean] communities of faith where the sacred is experienced in life-transforming ways, and where the Christian faith becomes incarnate in the life of a congregation and its members.”
This is what the prophet Micah is speaking about in today's reading from Jewish scriptures. “What does God require of you?” God wants you to “do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with God in your life.” The focus of what God requires then is not on the institution but on the wisdom and the life-transforming process of learning to seek God and God's way within a safe community.
People in the PNW have a general distrust of institutions, making it all the more important for us in the church to remember Micah's words that the primary experience of faith is not ABOUT THE CHURCH, but about God and our relationship with God. (Tony Robinson) If the focus is on the church and the survival of the church it becomes a club and clubs tend to take in enough members to meet their own needs, to pay the bills, to fill out the committees, and to add “people like us”. (Robinson) If the focus is on God and spiritual formation, then the focus is on human transformation and healing, and then the community itself will be organic, diverse and Spirit-guided as well.
The researchers studying religious life in the PNW found a general ambivalence regarding community and a tendency towards “lose connections”. We are an independent people and private too. Our call in the church is not to make people come or to compel them to join the church or even to become Christian. It is only ours to share an invitation. (Robinson) If indeed we in the PNW are generally a spiritual-minded people, it will not hurt for us in the church who have found meaning and joy, to say to our friends or co-workers, “come and see”. “Come sometime and see.”
And if they do take us up on our invitation, what will they see? A half-hearted civic faith of yesteryear or “a congregation engaged in the work of change and healing.” Will they come and find a church or a club?
Religious life in the PNW has its challenges - but it is a rich and beautiful place to praise and serve God within a church community when one is not focused on success or on being right, but on being real.
Let us pray…