How Mainstream 'Churchianity' is Corrupting American Christianity

 Many people today understand the church as a building. This is not a biblical understanding of the church. The word “church” is a translation of the Greek word ekklesia, which is defined as “an assembly” or “called-out ones.” The root meaning of church is not that of a building, but of people. It is ironic that when you ask people what church they attend, they usually identify a building. Romans 16:5 says, “Greet the church that is in their house.” Paul refers to the church in their house—not a church building, but a body of believers. – Quoted from GotQuestions.org

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” – John 3:16

“For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink” - 1 Corinthians 12:13

                In the Book of Revelation, Jesus has messages for seven churches that existed in ancient Asia Minor, each with various beliefs, practices, strengths and weaknesses. Have you ever wondered why a book about the end times features messages not written to individual, local churches that exist at the end point of history (the eschaton), but rather, to churches that existed in first century Asia Minor? The answer, I believe, is that whoever believes in Jesus (as John 3:16 states) and manifests that it is a true saving belief by living their life in a way that is solidly grounded in biblical principle (as the epistle of James states in its emphasis on good works) is part of the Church proper, which is the scattered elect in various parts of the world. 1 Peter calls this scattered elect the true “royal priesthood” and building/temple of God. In other words, the church at Thyatira or Philadelphia isn’t the temple of God, properly speaking, but rather, a local manifestation or a small reflection of the worldwide ecclesial body proper. Jesus states in Matthew 18 that he is present – that is, that his body is present - even where two or three are gathered together in his name. This principle is what allows us to distinguish as well between the wheat and the tares within each individual denomination.

                This post is an attempt to deal with a problem that has been called “churchianity”. Churchianity is a phenomenon where individual gatherings that attempt a local reflection of the worldwide ekklesia instead end up usurping that latter holistic title and applying it solely to their own demarcated fiefdoms. This phenomenon contributes to growing problems with worldliness, corruption and arrogance in these bodies, such that in actual fact they often end up repelling the very people they were originally instituted to save through means of the gospel.

                The word gospel means “good news”. In the Book of Acts, many individuals were saved by receiving the good news and repenting of their sins, even though they were not at that time official card-carrying members of any local ekklesia. In the Bible (and this is especially striking in the gospel of John), Jesus is called “the Word”. It is my contention that the true worldwide ekklesia of Bible-believing Christians is saved through Jesus’ atonement, no matter what local body or local building they attend. Revelation and 1 Peter refer to this invisible yet very real worldwide body of believers as “the elect”. It is my contention that individuals in the world who have a copy of the Bible and through it have received God's grace (reflected in subsequent good works) can be saved and can be legitimate members of the Body of Christ.

                Churchianity, on the other hand, would mislead people into believing that attending a certain building weekly, hearing a sermon/homily, ascribing to a list of dogmatic boxes to check off, and regularly consuming a wafer and wine are the primary signifiers of whether people are saved or condemned. I want here to point out that this is not only an error, but even a dangerous error that poses a threat both to the sanctity of individual conscience as well as the separation between church and state.

The four main problems with churchianity, as I see it, are these:

•        Churchianity, with its wealth and worldly influence, has effectively merged itself with the US political system 
•        Churchianity is ‘Holier than Thou’
•        Churchianity is full of unnecessary dogmas
•        Churchianity is conformist

These are side effects of individual local ecclesiastical bodies trying to usurp the proper title of worldwide Body of Christ. Now, according to my definition of salvation, individuals can be saved within a variety of Christian assemblies and denominations: Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican, etc. If you're reading this and you're currently a Catholic, Episcopalian, Orthodox, etc. - know that I'm not here to pick on you or your church specifically - but rather to critique the principle of Churchianity as a whole. Churchianity would hold that *only* in one's local building or denomination can people fully work out their salvation. This belief has been the corollary to the unfortunate historical fact that the unity of the worldwide body desired by Jesus and by the writers of the epistles was shattered long ago and no longer exists. And historically these divisions have led to much unfortunate strife and bloodshed.

    Churchianity is ‘Holier than Thou’. The dynamic behind membership in a church has too often become an ‘in-group/out-group’ dynamic, both among Christian denominations and between the in-group and the unsaved. The Catholic church sees itself as the Mystical Body of Christ, with outsiders who don’t receive the specifically Catholic Eucharist or Baptism too often dismissed as ‘non-Christian’. The thousand and one Protestant sects have for the most part retained that divisiveness; however, they even further magnify the ‘in/out’ dynamic by each carving out distinctions between one another based on slight differences in doctrine and practice.

                The ‘Holier than Thou’ dynamic *was* the dynamic that led the religious authorities of Jesus’ day to crucify him. And why was Jesus crucified? Because he focused on two principles that are always loathed by advocates of Churchianity: first, Jesus represented the principle of progressive revelation, i.e. the individualization of the Old Testament’s faith response and its growing applicability not to an ‘in-group/out-group’ dynamic but rather to the organic response of the individual conscience; and secondly, Jesus focused often on combating the ingrained human tendency to manifest corruption and ossification within authoritative power structures. That is why in the end times, churchianity is reflected in what Revelation calls the daughter churches of the mother Harlot church. They are called harlot offspring, not true churches, and true believers are urged to come out of them and not share in their sins.

                Remember that Jesus wasn’t crucified by prostitutes, tax collectors or publicans. He was put to death by the outwardly most ‘respectable’ and powerful authorities of his day: both religious (the Pharisees and Sanhedrin) and political (the Roman authorities). The intertwined relationship between church and state in Jesus's day was a major reason why the Jews and the Roman government closely collaborated to end the threat they perceived in Jesus's message. Conversely, Jesus stated that the people deemed by those authorities to be the grossest, most offensive sinners probably had a better chance of making it to heaven than they did. Why is that? Precisely because those offensive sinners who Jesus ate and drank with knew that they were sinners, not perfect or established as respectable in the eyes of the world. The Bible convicts all humans as being flawed and liable to sin. And the more you realize that, the more liable you are to being saved by what the Bible calls the grace of the Holy Spirit. Grace isn’t something that perfect people receive; it’s something that only sinners can receive. This should create a humility that Churchianity wars against. Churchianity stifles humility and promotes arrogance and bigotry with its ‘Holier than Thou’ perspective.

                Additionally, Churchianity - both Catholic and Protestant - is full of dogmas that, ironically, actively repel many citizens of the modern world, thereby separating many of the wisest among us from the gospel. It is as though a man were to aim to shoot a bird in a tree but instead were to shoot himself in his own foot. Roman Catholics are required to believe that the mother of Jesus was conceived without sin, remained a virgin throughout her life, and was even so holy that she ascended to heaven bodily at the end of her life, this despite the fact that these supposed events are never mentioned in the Bible and are in some cases even contradicted by it in places. Why should we believe these dogmas, then? Because a worldly, wealthy, politically dominant power structure (the Vatican and its arms of influence) *mandate* it, individual claims to conscience notwithstanding. The thousand and one Protestant sects are hardly behind the Vatican when it comes to dogmas, however. They, unlike the Catholics, fetishize and worship individual portions of Scripture that they cherry pick, literalize and use as cudgels on their flocks. They call this fanatical creed ‘Scripture alone’ (the irony is that many Protestant churchgoers rarely read the Bible with their heart, mind and soul – instead they just cherry pick passages to use as talismans, to show that they're "good with God because they follow the rule specified in this passage”). The Bible says that Mary was a virgin, that Jesus miraculously fed five thousand people, and that apostles in the early church were miraculously released from prison by having doors open of themselves - therefore, we must supposedly believe all these things literally in order to be a Christian. The Old Testament says the world was finished on day 6 of a 7 day process, that the world at one time perished in a flood with only 8 people surviving on an ark, and so forth. Therefore, many fundamentalists assert that we must believe those things literally in order to be a Christian. I call ‘Scripture alone’ a fanatical creed because it insists – flying in the face of history, science and reason – that the only way to be a true Christian is to not only view the Bible as inspired by God, but to believe it to be literally true in all aspects, even in every single figurative or metaphorical passage. But remember this – John 3:16 states that believing in Jesus is the criteria for salvation; NOT belief in fundamentalist biblical inerrancy. St. Paul might call the latter reading the Bible according to the LETTER and not the SPIRIT; as though the only way to be part of the heavenly-bound ‘in-group’ is to subscribe to a long list of boxes that we check off in order to gain entrance to holiness.

                However, being saved is not like that at all, according to the New Testament. Becoming saved is linked in the NT to a saving faith in Jesus’ life and death, a faith that doesn’t just rest on externals and mentally-checked boxes, but is rather such a powerful effect on the heart and mind that it transforms us from selfish, conceited people into purveyors of love, justice and fellowship. John’s gospel calls this being born again. One rarely hears Roman Catholics refer to themselves as born again – they often focus more on their Catechism, which frankly includes a number of bullet points that are erroneous and unnecessary, rather than on the word of God, the gospel. However, Protestants veer off dangerously in the opposite direction: treating the Bible as a storehouse of thousands of directives and mandated beliefs rather than as a document produced thousands of years ago by men in very different circumstances than we live in. That is not to say that Paul, the gospel authors, Jeremiah, Isaiah, etc. were, at the fundamental level, different than we are. They were human beings like we are, and their concerns are absolutely our concerns. But dogmatic obsessives focus on the external, ignoring the internal; they are finicky sticklers for the literal and the letter, ignoring the spirit and the possibility that certain events and facts mentioned in the Bible are not literally true but could still provide insight and guidance on a moral level.

                Today’s American Churchianity is also conformist where Jesus, the apostles and the early churches were not. In many parts of our country, you are not part of the in-group unless you fail to believe that outlawing abortion, LGBT rights and ‘anti-Christian bias’ in the public realm are the highest duties for Christians to strive for, thus (laughably) ‘converting’ the state to Christianity, never mind that Jesus strictly separated Caesar’s coins from anything to do with God’s kingdom. But the reason why this state parody of Christianity (state Churchianity as reflected in the MAGA movement and its large coterie of false prophets of every Christian denomination) subsists in the minds of those whose spirits have been poisoned by lies about God and Jesus and the Bible, is in part because people aren’t educated enough about what life was like in European countries (and New England settlements) when dominant churches controlled and guided political decisions and where there was no separation of the state and the things of God. People burned at stakes because of conformity. That happened under both the Catholic church and under Calvin. People were mandated to avoid eating sausage on certain days of the calendar because of conformity. It's no coincidence that this focus on feasts, holidays, mandated fasting and other religious ritual rules is expressly abandoned in the NT epistles.

                Mandated conformism is destructive of the individual conscience’s rights, and the only way one can be born again is by having one’s free individual conscience choose between good and evil. Therefore, mandated conformism as a hallmark of Churchianity is evil and anti-Jesus. Jesus’ progressive revelations surpassed the the OT law’s focus on group conformity, transforming the choice of salvation into something handled with one’s own hands, not the hands of the authorities in the community. Revelation 3 says that only Jesus himself holds the keys to heaven and hell – and it specifically points out that NO MAN holds the key that can open and shut that door. And Matthew 23 states that we should call no man 'Rabbi', 'Master' or 'Father' - only Jesus Christ himself.

                I am a member of the Millennial generation. Many church leaders these days are asking why they are losing so many members of the Millennial and Gen Z generations. Now, I’m not going to put that whole burden of responsibility on churchianity – the Bible says that the heart of man is wicked from his youth, and so there is an in-born resistance to the gospel that all churches have to fight against- but what I will say is that today’s churches in America should at least accept their own part in this failure to reach younger generations.

                So if these are the problems, what are the solutions if individual American ecclesiastical bodies want to reverse this trend? As I see it, these should be some of the solutions:

·         Embrace humility instead of arrogance

·         Focus on the spirit instead of just the letter of Scripture (the seeds, not the husk)

·         Separate from the state and even be willing to be attacked by the state, by venturing to critique the state when it engages in wrongdoing

·         Focus on Christ’s saving atonement and not on proliferating dogmas and ordinances that have little if anything to do with the salvation issue

·         Embrace individual voices speaking up in the community instead of stifling debate/enforcing conformism

I believe that if churches - or, perhaps, members of those churches - focus on these solutions, we can reverse the growing trend of Americans to identify themselves as “Nones” (i.e., they check the box for ‘None’ when asked what religion they are).