A Church Insurgency

Bill Morrissey--"Sandy" (mp3)

Damn you, churches of America! Curse you for your continual insinuation into our sacred secular events!

First it was Halloween. Oooooooo, it's a scary world out there! It's not safe for our children to walk the streets of this great land and ask people who aren't of the same faith or race for candy. Solution? Why don't churches have their own little "trick or treat" parties right at the church where they can control everything and give thanks to Jesus for the candy they are about to receive.

It's a dang sucrose and corn syrup communion, using Hawaiian Punch and Kit-Kat chocolate covered wafers! Well, guess what, churches? Halloween is a safe holiday, whether parents go around with younger children or older children are allowed to walkabout on their own. Urban legends aside, kids aren't getting bags full of poisoned Smarties and apples with razor blades in them.

And don't even get me started on Conservative Christian "haunted houses."

The latest incursion is the Super Bowl. Oh, I know churches have been co-opting the Super Bowl for decades, but it is only recently that it's started to affect people I know. This year, I have two friends, make that three friends, whose Super Bowls have been partly or completely compromised by church obligations. I realize that they may not see it that way.

But it's small steps that add up--the Sunday School class that has a meeting and then suggests that the meeting morph into a watching of the Super Bowl, the invite by a church couple that supercedes hanging out with real friends, the need to host a church Super Bowl party when all of your friends are at a traditional party down the street. All of a sudden, one of the great, simple pleasures of life, the joy of watching a game with friends, is full of complications and compromises.

Here is the problem. Church events operate, nay, thrive, on a "have to go" mentality. The sense of obligation that they impose, using a toxic combination of guilt and higher purpose, can cause a person to overlook everything from the most basic manners to the bonds of friendship. What a person thinks he or she should do is likely to triumph over what he or she wants to do, at least when religion is stirred into the pot.

I suppose the logic is that Sunday belongs to the churches anyway, so why not try to reel in parishoners for that holiest of events--the Super Bowl. But let's face it, like Halloween, it's an uneasy fit. The holiday of goblins, ghosts, and vampires doesn't translate easily into church parlor games and safe, youth pastor-led activities.

The Super Bowl, arguably, is more problematic.

Pro football is its own religion. I don't mean that in any kind of sacreligious way; I don't mean to argue that Peyton Manning has somehow supplanted the Christ. But the fact remains that pro football has its own Sunday regimen week after week, its own cadre of like-minded believers who share a common love for the sport. So to try to commandeer the climactic event of the football season by pulling football parishoners in and making them return to being church parishoners is nothing less than an affront.

Why don't you churches get together and form a coalition to take turns taking in families that are homeless or something? Oh. That's right. You do that. Sorry. My bad.

To me, churches are like bars. Like bars, churches have a very specific function, a very specific approach to how one should deal with the troubles of life. And that's fine. But when churches or bars overstep their bounds, start reaching for teams, clubs, social events, commitments that extend beyond the traditional times and purposes allotted to them, then they have stepped way beyond their function. And if you give in to them, they will continue to keep reaching, reaching, and reaching.

Forgive my vitriol. I wanted to watch the Super Bowl with some friends who weren't there. They were taken by the church, either willingly or by implied force. In miniature, this is the story of humanity.

Bill Morrissey's Night Train is available, I hope.