Free-Range Christian

Yesterday I went to the library, and came home with the book "Quitting Church" by Julia Duin.  Duin is a long-time religion reporter for various publications, and a regular contributor at the "Get Religion" blog, which I have been reading for years.  (It is a blog about how the press covers religious news, usually poorly.)  But until lately I had not known she had published books.

In this post I am going to write about my own background and how I ended up quitting church.  In some followup posts I will discuss my experiences and thoughts about some of the topics she explores in the book.

My parents were church-going Christians, so I was brought up in church from the beginning.  We mostly attended Christian Church/Church of Christ congregations, which my father had grown up in.  After high school I went to Cincinnati Bible College, one of their schools, and graduated in 1972 with a degree in Christian Education.

For seven years I was part of a group of students and former students from the Bible college who operated a store-front mission church in a slum about a mile down the hill from the campus.  We did not have a pastor; all we could have afforded would have been a part-time student preacher--we all were or had been students, so we divided up the duties and did them ourselves.   I preached several times a month, led singing, served on the provisional board, was treasurer for a while.

Over my lifetime, I have been part of 15 other churches.  About half were Christian Church congregations.  Of the rest, two were mainline Protestant--a Disciples of Christ church, and a rural United Church of Christ (the locals paid very little attention to the denomination--the part-time preacher who served them and two other small churches every Sunday was usually a Methodist student minister).  Of the rest, one was part of the discipling movement for a while, one was an independent church, one was an Assemblies of God church.  

And one was the Vineyard Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio--the only mega-church I have been part of, and also the best church I have ever seen.  They didn't get to be a mega-church because of a spectacular preacher; Steve Sjogren was good, but not earth-shaking in the pulpit.  But he and the others who started that church stumbled on a new idea--they called it "Servant Evangelism" in the beginning, later shifted to the term "Kindness Outreach."  I have concluded the reason for their success was that they gave ordinary people things to do to express their faith outside the church doors, all week long.  Most Saturdays they had some kind of outreach going on somewhere in the city--and you didn't have to be ordained or take Bible college classes to do it!  They grew to a peak of 7,000 people; they also planted around 3 dozen other churches.  For a while they were running 7 services each weekend--their building was built to accommodate about 600.  When they did build a new building, they cut back to only three services--they chose to spend more of their budget on outreach rather than a bigger building.  I might still be there, but we had to move to another city to be available to care for elderly parents.

For most of my adult life, another factor in church life has been small groups.  I have been involved in them most of the time since my late 20s.  Some were okay.  A few were very good.  The worst I have been in were led by either preachers or professors; I concluded the skill set needed for those is not conducive for good small group work.

Of the groups that I have been in over the years, the best were those that did more than just study the Bible and discuss.  One of my early groups--and one of the best--made a choice:  we were all young couples, some with kids, others without.  But we all moved our residences at times.  A few had been stuck moving without help in the past.  But we made a custom to pitch in whenever someone moved...we would change our meeting to Saturday, show up in the morning to load the truck, and go over to the new place to unload.  The ladies in the group would bring food for lunch, and help with packing and unpacking.  One major thing I learned from that group is that you get to know people a lot better when you do other things with them besides Bible study!  There is something about working together that builds stronger relationships.  Sadly, most churches don't do much of that.

Sadly, the move to Indianapolis in 2006 was what started me out the back door of the church.  We visited an assortment of churches--most of the Vineyards in the city, and a few others--and never felt at home.  Part of it seems to be the local culture; Indianapolis is a very different city from Cincinnati, going back to the early settlers.  Some of it was that so many churches were trying to grow to mega-church status, but they couldn't make it happen.  And some of the problems seem to relate to other items Duin wrote about in her book; I just was not so much exposed to them until leaving the Cincinnati Vineyard.

So by the spring of 2009, I left the organized church.  We looked for a house church, but Indianapolis is not prime territory for those.  George Barna wrote some years ago that the Midwest is the last stronghold of the traditional church, and I am afraid he was right.  I still have fellowship with other Christians; there was a group I fell into that year that met regularly, just not even as formal as a house church.  Some of the original group have moved away; others of us still get together at times.  And I have made other Christian friends online.  We are part of the group variously called "Nones" or "Dones" by some writers.  Some of us prefer to call ourselves " free-range Christians," hence the title of this post.

That is a summary of my journey.  I will have another post or two related to Duin's book in the coming days.

Not So Solid Teaching

The title above is from a chapter in Duin's book about why people leave churches.  And while I appreciate her efforts, I am afraid she barely scratches the surface.

I spent more than sixty years of my life in churches, usually there every Sunday.  In all that time, if I were to count the sermons that actually made a difference in my life, I would not even need all ten fingers.  The sad truth is, most sermons are made to follow custom, but they are not particularly effective.  Most local ministers are not particularly great orators.  I have known one who routinely took 45 minutes to preach about 25 minutes' worth of material.  He apparently did not plan his introduction and conclusion.  So he would get up and start speaking, wandering around for 10 minutes or more to find his way into his sermon outline.  And at the end he would wander around for 10 or 15 minutes trying to finish it.  I also knew a man who talked so fast that he could get through a half-hour sermon in twenty minutes.

During my time in Bible college, in the chapel services we heard almost all of the local preachers in the area, and many of the "Big Men in the Brotherhood."  One of the latter group was either so proud of one of his messages, or just didn't keep track of when and where he had used it, and preached the exact same sermon at our chapel three years in a row.  The professor who taught public speaking and homiletics (how to preach) had an impressive voice and was a dramatic speaker; I would have to say his content was not nearly as impressive as his delivery.

From what I have seen of Bible colleges, the professors of Bible and theology got most of the glory on campus.  But over the years, I have reached the conclusion that the greatest mind of all the men I studied under was John Richardson, the head of the education department.  He taught everything from an introductory course that was required for every major to small specialty classes of a dozen students or so.  But one of his mantras was "What's the worst method of teaching?  The one that's used ALL THE TIME."  Where he had to, he lectured; in the smaller groups, he preferred back-and-forth discussion.  He had a tendency to think outside the box, and take different approaches to topics.

So, in most churches, what is the method that is used all the time?  The sermon.  And even a lot of Sunday school classes use the lecture method, at least past the primary school age classes.

Add in the sad fact that most students in Bible colleges and seminaries are not the greatest scholars--the few who are usually end up as professors rather than local ministers.  I studied under some serious scholars; one of my New Testament professors was part of the group who produced the original NIV translation of the Bible.  But the vast majority of local ministers are not great brains.  They may be good Christians, trying to do their job well; but intellectually, they are average at best.  

One issue Duin mentioned was pastors downloading someone else's sermon outlines from the Internet, rather than composing sermons themselves.  That is just the latest version of an old custom.  Fifty years ago you could buy books of sermon outlines in the bookstore at my Bible college.  Those books would never have been published unless there was a demand for them.  But using borrowed material does not make one a better preacher--as one pastor she talked to put it, "If you do this regularly, your brain shrivels up."

One thing I have observed throughout my life:  people try to spend their lives doing or teaching what they learned when young.  I have seen professors who apparently had not learned much since they finished grad school.  (By the time they get into their 70s they may be clueless about what is going on now!)  I have worked with carpenters who were still mostly doing things the way they learned when they started out--and had a lot of trouble with new ideas or new materials (that is a major reason why home construction has not changed all that much in the last fifty years!)  And you can count on many local pastors going through their career the same way--it seems to be a common thing in human nature.

Pastors

Continuing my thinking about Julia Duin's book "Quitting Church," here are my thoughts on her chapter "Is the Pastor the Problem?".

For most people, inside and outside the church, it seems unthinkable to have a church without a pastor, unless it's just a temporary situation until a new pastor is hired.  But the truth is, the professional pastor is a human tradition, with very little evidence for it in the New Testament.  The Greek word poimen is usually translated as "shepherd"--because it normally referred to people who worked with actual sheep.  "Pastor" itself is a transliteration of the Latin word for shepherd.  There is only one passage in the entire New Testament that lists "pastor" among the leaders of the church--Ephesians 4:11-12.  "And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ.  (NASB)  That's it--that's the only reference to "pastor" or "shepherd" in the functioning of the church.  Is that enough to justify the institution the modern church has built up?  Is that why we have a profession, a full-time job for most who are in it, starting with a degree from a seminary or Bible college?  Just that one verse justifies this whole edifice?

What about Paul's "Pastoral Epistles"?  Guess what?  Nobody called those letters to Timothy and Titus by that label in the early church!  That name was applied to them in the 1700s, after the modern institution of the pastorate had been established in the Protestant churches of Europe.  Actually, Timothy and Titus were part of Paul's missionary team, not local pastors.  They were sometimes on detached assignment--staying a bit longer after Paul moved on, to help get the new church established, or sent somewhere when Paul was unable to leave where he was.  But the strong indication they were not local pastors is in the closing verses of both II Timothy and Titus, where Paul told them to wrap up their work there and rejoin him.  He did not intend for them to stay there as local pastors!  They were on temporary detached assignments, not anchored to one church.

So the institution of the pastor is, at best, non-Biblical, a human tradition.  Does that make it wrong?

Well, to start with, it has created the clergy/laity division in the church:  an artificial distinction that divides the mass of the people from their supposed leaders, and all too often sets the leader on a pedestal.  Somehow, being in "full-time ministry" is perceived by most as being holier and more important than the ordinary church-goer.  It sets up a "first-class" and "second-class" system among the members of the body of Christ.  When I was in high school, in the church my family attended, there was a certain status implied if you were going to enroll in Bible college rather than a secular university.

This next part is personal.  During my years in preaching, I eventually learned that the biggest occupational hazard in professional ministry is that a person's pride gets wrapped around their position in the church.  In some cases, they just become a little too impressed with their own eloquence in the pulpit.  In the worst cases, it ruins the individual.  I saw it happen to one of my friends from college in less than a year. And I saw signs that it was happening to me.  I made the decision to walk away from preaching; I thought it was more important to stay close to Jesus than to be a pastor. Shortly after that decision, I came to know a man in his sixties who was so eaten up with pride that he could not tolerate any disagreement.  If someone disagreed with one of his ideas, he did not defend his opinion; he re-interpreted the disagreement as an attack on his office in the church, and defended his office tooth-and-nail, no-holds-barred.  This man had been a pastor and Bible college professor.  And in a period of five or six years he destroyed a very promising startup church; he ran off every other leader or potential leader, because of his pride.  And that church declined in number and soon ceased to exist.

Those two are not the only ones I have known with a pride issue--many of the pastors I have known as an adult have had some problems in this area.  Being on a pedestal and constantly in the spotlight does that to you.  I have known a few who have beaten it; some of them went through some kind of personal hell--for two, being kicked out of their lifelong fellowship over tongues may have cured them of it.

This issue of pride may well be a factor in the rash of sexual offenses that are troubling the church today.  The scandals in the Roman Catholic church may be the most covered by the press.  But the Southern Baptists and other groups are having to deal with it as well.  It has been going on for a long time--the minister who performed my wedding ceremony eventually got into an affair with the church pianist, and lost his profession and his family--50 years ago!  In her book, Duin refers to several of the big-name preachers that she knew of who ended up in scandal, and there have been more since the book came out.  Something I read many years ago:  psychologists and psychiatrists have been saying for years that often rape is not a matter of just lust, but of the sense of power it gives the perpetrator.  Who is the most powerful person in the church?  the pastor!  Given that kind of power, is it that surprising they fall into sexual sin?

But if we do not have professional pastors, who will lead the church?  The New Testament teaching on local church leaders is found in Paul's letters to Timothy and Titus.  Elders and deacons were the original pattern:  "An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, uncontentious, free from the love of money.  He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity (but if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?); and not a new convert, lest he become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil.  And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he may not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil."  I Timothy 3:2-7, NASB

How does that compare to taking kids just graduated from high school, giving them a few years of specialized college classes, and then putting them in charge of churches?  If you hire a new pastor from out of town, how do you know all the things Paul cited about that person?  My own experience was that the Bible college I graduated from did not do that much to vet their students.  I had to submit a letter from my pastor or other church leader vouching for my character--that's all.  Did they actually know that much about my personal character?  Not really--they only saw me on Sundays!  For how many pastors evaluate their members, look for the quote from Wesleyan pastor Robert Girard in my post from Jan. 11,2022.  I strongly suspect the majority of Bible colleges and seminaries are no better, based on what I have seen of preachers over the years.

Over the centuries since the Reformation, there have been a few groups that bucked the system.  The modern Quakers now often have pastors, but for most of their history they did not.  From what I have read of the Amish, they pay their bishops, but not their local preachers; many of their local groups meet in homes rather than church buildings, and each group has three or four men who handle the preaching.  They work for a living all week and take turns preaching on Sunday.  Apparently it is considered a burden rather than a higher status.  But the history of both groups is a story of persecution by both Catholics and other Protestants.

Duin has another chapter on "Not-so Solid Teaching."  I will deal with it next.

Stalled Movements

 This will likely be the last post I write about Julia Duin's book "Quitting Church."  The next-to-last chapter of the book is "Bewildered Charismatics" about people wondering what had happened to what seemed to be a strong and growing movement.

Over the years, I have been part of several Christian movements:  the small group movement of the 1960s and after, the Christian homeschooling movement, the discipling movement, the charismatic movement, the praise and worship movement, the Vineyard movement...I was interested in the house church movement, but there was not much of it where I lived.

I also grew up in a denomination that grew out of a movement in the early 1800s--the Campbell-Stone New Testament Restoration Movement.  Their goal was to break free of denominations and creeds and unite Christians around the New Testament pattern.  Many of their early preachers would not take a salary from their local congregation; they chose to support themselves by farming, writing, teaching or other activities.  They did believe in financial support for foreign missionaries, but not their neighborhood pastors.  But by the late 1800s, most of their churches were back to paying their pastors; and by the 1960s what had started as a reaction against the rampant sectarianism of the early 1800s had become one of the most sectarian groups in the US.  They had also split into three groups--the liberal Disciples of Christ denomination, the independent Christian Churches, and the acapella Churches of Christ.

Between the history of the group I grew up in and the experiences of the modern movements I had been involved in, I reached a conclusion about Christian movements.  Typically, they have a useful life of about twenty to forty years.  After that, they usually don't go away or disappear; but they quit "moving"--they don't learn any more, they don't gain any new ground, and often they actually backslide a bit from their original ideas and practices.

I experienced this in the praise and worship and charismatic movements.  I was in places where we were singing the "new music" back in the 1970s.  Back then, we did not have PA systems or even bands--if we had a two or three guitar players who could take turns leading the singing, it was good enough.  In the '80s, bands were coming in, and things got more active; we stood up and sang our hearts out, danced in the pews, and sometimes broke into marching around the room as we sang.  But even then, the music was starting to be commercialized.  By 2000, much of it needed a band and backup singers to make it work.  In recent years, I have been hearing that in some churches, most of the people no longer sing; they sit in their chairs listening to the concert.  And in what I have personally seen of the current music, I am not all that impressed with the melodies or the words of the modern products.  And even the Holy Spirit seems suppressed; apparently in a lot of congregations, there isn't much prophecy from the people--they expect the pastor or guest speaker to tell them what the Holy Spirit has to say.

I am now 72 years old, and a lot of the excitement we knew when I was in my 20s and 30s has subsided.  I am afraid that's what people do.  When God moves, they are caught up in it for a while, but eventually they sit down and start building a monument to what God did.  That's how most of our modern Protestant denominations started--Methodists, Baptists, Lutherans, Christian Church, Pentecostals, and more.  But I have chosen to skip the monuments and keep my eyes open for what God does next.

Books

 From the time I learned to read in first grade, I have been a lover of books.  In fact, it started earlier than that--my parents read to me.  I kept at it through the years.  My kids picked up the habit as well.  During the '90s we lived in Dearborn County, IN; we had the Lawrenceburg Public Library, but because of an agreement between the districts we also had access to the Cincinnati Public Library, which was considered one of the best in the US.  We would go to the Main Library in downtown Cincinnati--me, my wife, and our three kids--and check out as many as 80 books for the five of us.

Even now, while I do a lot of my reading on the Internet, I still go through six or eight library books every three weeks.  Sometime around 8 to 9 in the evening, I shut down the computer screen and read a book before going to bed.  I read some ebooks on my iPad, but I mostly prefer real paper books.

I mentioned several books in my last post that have shaped my thinking over the years.  I am going to recommend a few here that I have read in the last year or two.

"Albion's Seed" by David Hackett Fischer

While most history books pay the most attention to Jamestown and Plymouth, the first major settlements, there were actually four major waves of settlers that came to America after those first two.  Each of those four waves came from different areas of the British Isles, and brought different sets of customs and cultural traditions to America.  Fischer traces their background in the homeland and their history here, and the effects they had on the basic cultures, especially in what are now the eastern states.

"Born Fighting" by Senator Jim Webb

Webb tells the story of the last of Fischer's four groups of settlers, the Scots-Irish (also known as Scotch-Irish and Ulster Scots).  He is of that heritage himself, and includes some stories about his own family.  But he starts with their history in the north of Britain, in the area that became the Border between England and Scotland during the Middle Ages.  In the early 1600s, many Borderers, from both sides of the line, migrated to northern Ireland, which had been largely depopulated during wars and civil unrest under the Tudor monarchs.  Because of ill-treatment by English landlords and the Anglican church, many of them started migrating to America, starting around 1715 and lasting almost to the start of the American Revolution.  They were not appreciated or welcomed by the three earlier groups, and tended to settle in the back country, away from the coastal cities and the government authorities.  To this day, the culture of the Appalachian region is still largely Scots-Irish.  So is much of blue-collar working-class culture as well.  And I must admit, it is a major part of my own heritage as well.

"Dignity" by Chris Arnade

Arnade was a Wall Street trader who got bored with his job and started hanging out at homeless camps in Brooklyn.  Eventually he left his job through a buyout, moved his family to upstate New York, where living costs were lower, and began traveling the country.  He went to the small towns in the Rust Belt, and the run-down neighborhoods in the cities, and talked to people.  His book includes a lot of photos of the people he met.  He would go into a small town, find a McDonalds, and talk to the people of all ages who hung out there.  He went to the run-down and store-front churches in inner-city neighborhoods, and was impressed by how many people he met who got free from drugs and alcohol through those churches.  He sorts people into what he calls "front-row kids"--the elites of business, academia, and politics--and "back-row kids"--the poor, the disadvantaged (of all races), the ones who didn't "make it."  By the end of the book, Arnade admitted moving from being an atheist to becoming an agnostic; he has since returned to the Catholic church of his childhood.

"The Revolt of the Public" by Martin Gurri

Gurri was a CIA analyst, monitoring foreign news media.  What his book documents is that much of the worldwide unrest of the last twenty years or so is rooted in the rise of the Internet and social media.  The mass of the people are no longer dependent on the traditional news media.  In the past, someone had to won the printing presses, the movie studios, and the TV and radio stations.  Therefore, communication was mostly from the top down.   With the Internet, information can go in all directions--top down, bottom up, sideways...and the elites have lost control of the flow of information.  His book was self-published first as an ebook in 2014, then an updated version came out in hardback in 2018.  He discusses the uprisings in various countries of the Arab Spring; at one point, the Egyptian authorities caught a young man who had started the first protests through a Facebook post, and tried to negotiate an end to it with him, only to find out he had no control or authority--he just started the thing and it went on without him.  Gurri covered other disruptions in Spain and Israel, and the Tea Party movement in the US.  The hardback added a chapter on Brexit and Trump's election.  For a while he was writing a blog called "The Fifth Wave" and covered the Yellow Vest protests in France and other events.  I would not describe him as a Trump supporter, but he sees Trump more as a symptom than a primary cause--the dissatisfaction of the people was already there, and Trump stepped up to give it voice and ride it to office.

"War and Peace and War" by Peter Turchin

Turchin is a Russian-American academic, who has written about the rise and collapse of societies.  Two concepts in this book are striking.  One is "asabiyya"--a concept of social solidarity, first described in the Middle Ages by the Arab thinker Ibn Khaldun.  A group with great asabiyya will often defeat a seemingly more powerful enemy--think of the ancient Greeks repelling the invading Persians in the 5th century BC, the American colonists defeating the British in the American Revolution, and possibly today's Ukrainians holding off the Russian army.  Another concept is a problem for nations that he labels "over-production of elites" where the upper-class becomes too numerous to be supported at the level they expect.  There was such a situation in medieval France, until the Hundred Years' War reduced their numbers; the English got their turn at it with the Wars of the Roses just a few years later.  The French again took another turn at it with the French Revolution and Reign of Terror.  I see a possibility that we are in such a position today, with one difference--our modern elites mostly do not send their sons to fight our wars anymore.  While the draft was in force in the US, they had to make some effort; now they do not.

I am going to end this post with a bit about a pair of books that deal with the regional cultures of the US.  One is Joel Garreau's "Nine Nations of North America," published in 1981.  The other is more recent--Colin Woodard's "American Nations" which was published thirty years later.  They both go into the regional cultures of America, which are quite different from the official state lines.  They both look at the history and the early settlers, who usually determined the local culture.  There are some differences in their regions--what Garreau calls "Dixie," Woodard splits into three areas--Tidewater, Deep South, and Greater Appalachia.  He ends up with eleven regions compared to Garreau's nine.  Garreau tended to look more at modern economic differences, Woodard at dealing with ideas and ways of doing things.  Woodard also looks at how the regions interact politically, with the northeast and West Coast usually working together, the southern regions having their own alliance, and the rest switching back and forth depending on particular issues.  Both books are valuable for understanding the US; neither is perfect, because both miss some things and each emphasized some things and ignore others.  But together they help in understanding the background of what is going on.

These are books on secular topics that I have found interesting the past couple of years.  I may put together a post about the Christian books and authors that have influenced my thinking over the years.

An Important Distinction

This post will cover a topic I wrote about twelve to fifteen years ago, but current events seem to me to make it relevant still.  I am not going to reproduce the older post; this one will have some differences because of events and situations since that time.

More than twenty years ago, I read the book "Modern Times" by British historian Paul Johnson.  It covered the twentieth century from the end of the First World War to the Reagan-Thatcher years.  But there was one matter he discussed in that book that has stayed with me ever since.

Johnson wrote that the most important political distinction was not between liberal and conservative, or Labor and Tory, or Republican and Democrat.  It was between those who put a high value on individual freedom and those who saw the power of the state as the solution to every problem.  He went on to add that you can have both liberal and conservative statists, and liberal and conservative freedom-lovers.  (My own observation is that liberal freedom-lovers are getting scarce these days--Tulsi Gabbard might qualify, and maybe Kyrsten Sinema, but not many more.)  At the time, I could see Ronald Reagan as a freedom-lover; his successor, George H. W. Bush, was clearly a statist.  I was willing to give George W. Bush the benefit of the doubt when he was elected, but he showed himself over time to be a statist also.  

The difficulty for statists is, not all problems can be resolved through use of government power; in fact, since government often has a tendency to be heavy-handed, it may take a wrong approach and make an issue worse rather than better.  There are some things that may be better to resolve at the grass-roots level, rather than from the top.  But a statist can get so enamored with government power that he fails to see its limitations.  

Clear back in the days of the Roman Empire, the government tried to suppress the new religion of Christianity.  Most of the original apostles were executed; persecutions continued off-and-on for more than two centuries.  But it did not work.  And the Roman Emperors had more absolute power than any American president.  You cannot change all people's minds by government decree.  

But power can be intoxicating.  The English Lord Acton wrote in the late 1800s, "Power tends to corrupt; and absolute power corrupts absolutely."  And intoxicated persons, whether intoxicated on alcohol or power, will think they can do things that they would not have tried when sober.  (I am afraid some of our modern politicians have not been sober for a long time!)

It might seem more efficient to impose things by government decree.  But it is usually more effective to persuade people, even if it takes longer.  And using authority does have its limits.  I learned this a long time ago--partly from two different bosses that I worked for, and partly from the book "The Velvet-covered Brick" by Howard E. Butt.  Butt wrote this zinger in his book:  "Authority is like soap; the more you use it, the less you have."  If you rely on raw authority all the time, you may not have enough left in an emergency.  It is better to use it lightly, and rely on persuasion and other methods as much as possible, and save authority for when there is no other way.

Another book that illustrates this principle in history is Barbara Tuchman's "The March of Folly."  Most of the book covers three major historic events, and the results that an intoxication on power produced.  The first was the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, which was triggered by the corruption and immorality of the Renaissance popes.  The second was the American Revolution, which was a direct result of the arrogance of both King George III and his Parliament.  The third was the Vietnam War.  The book is worth reading, because it does show the limits of power, and how it seduces people into making serious mistakes.

How our present situation will turn out, I do not know.  It does seem that freedom-lovers are becoming more evident, some in local and state government, many outside of official positions.  The authoritarians have made some major missteps in the last few years, and I am afraid we can count on them making more, which will just cost them more support.  We shall see how this turns out in the coming years.

Thoughts on Inflation

Inflation is in the headlines again, after a long absence.  For me, this brings back unpleasant memories, because I lived through the "stagflation" of the late '70s and early '80s.  The rising prices of that period made it harder to develop my first small business, and affected our lives in a lot of ways.

But the roots of the problem actually began much earlier.  In 1933, the Roosevelt administration barred Americans from owning gold (an exception was made for jewelry, which is often plated rather than solid).  At that time, the official price of gold was $20.67 per ounce.  The following year, the government reset the relationship of the dollar to gold to $35 an ounce--reducing the value of the dollar by 40%.

In the 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson made the decision to pursue two expensive goals at the same time--the escalation of the US involvement in the Vietnam War, and his "War on Poverty" programs.  This stepped up the pattern of government deficits--expenditures exceeding revenue--that we have lived with for nearly all the years since--you don't even need two hands to count on your fingers the number of years where the US budget was balanced.  Ever since then, the government has spent more than it received in taxes, and financed the deficit with debt.  For most of US history, the government mostly ran deficits during wars, and ran a balanced budget during times of peace.

Johnson's successor, Richard Nixon, took the US off the gold standard completely in 1971.  That action, plus outside factors like the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo, set off a long-term inflation that we still live with today.  In recent years, the Federal Reserve system has set a target of 2% annual inflation--they regard that as desirable.  That allows our money to lose only a third of its value in five years!

Today, April 4, 2022, the price of gold is $1931.95 per ounce--96 times what it was in 1933!  Yes, Americans are allowed to own gold again (if they can come up with the money to pay for it).  But the value of the dollar is what we have to live with.  And that affects the prices we have to pay for the things we need.

What difference does this make on the commodities we actually use?  I am old enough to remember what those old prices were.  When I was learning to drive a car in 1966, you could buy gas for 29 cents a gallon.  You could buy a brand-new car for about $2000.  You could get a Milky Way or Three Musketeers candy bar for five cents.  Yes, wages were lower then--but you could buy more with what you earned.  When I was first married, I had a minimum wage job at $1.60 an hour--but if I worked 40 hours a week, we could live on that, because of the low costs for rent, gas, cars and food.

Housing costs and rents were lower then.  My parents bought a brand-new house in a fast-growing suburb on the north side of Cincinnati in 1962.  The price of the house was $16,000.  It was typical of the time--about 1200 square feet, 3 bedrooms, one bath, full basement, attached one-car garage (most families only had one car back then).  In 1970, my bride and I rented a one-bedroom apartment for $110 a month.  Later we moved into another one that was only $100 even.  When we moved to Indianapolis for a year in 1973, we got a two-bedroom apartment with laundry hookups for $150 a month.

In some of these areas, there have been other factors besides inflation affecting prices.  Cars in the 1970s were simpler--most had no air conditioning, no electric locks or windows, simple AM or AM/FM radios, no tire pressure monitors and so on.  New houses have gotten bigger--"master suites" with private bath for the parents and a separate one for the kids (maybe even a half-bath downstairs for guests).  Two and even three-car garages are expected these days.  Building codes have gotten more complex--demanding changes in wiring and plumbing from the old days.  But the cost of housing rose.  In 1977 I bought my first house for $17,000--a run-down 50-year-old house in an older neighborhood.  By then, new houses were costing $28,000 or more.  Now, the median price for a new home in the US is $400,000.  My second house, which I bought in 1979 for $31,000 (built in 1913, a bit larger, brick, but still needing a lot of fixup--I cashed it out in 1990 for $60,000) sold a few years ago for over $200,000.

So the high inflation of the '70s and '80s was not fun to live through.  And I am not real pleased to see it apparently returning.  It looks like the people running our government are just as stupid now as they were fifty years ago.

I saw an item on the news this morning that Putin has put Russia back on the gold standard--they have set a price of gold for the ruble, the Russian currency.  I am not a Putin fan, nor do I have much trust in him.  But in the area of finance, he may be a bit smarter than our own politicians.

The Most (Un)wonderful Time of the Year

So we're coming up again on the annual aggravation called the Time Change, when Daylight Savings Time kicks in.  On March 13, we set our clocks forward one hour.  In November, we'll set them back again.

Every year at this time, there are articles circulating about the health issues that are affected by this time change--I saw one yesterday online from the American Medical Association.  By changing people's biorhythms, the body's systems are stressed.  Yet we still do it.

Farmers have hated it for years--because their animals do not change with the humans.  If you try to change the time schedule for milking your dairy cows, it is not going to go over well.  And no, you can't just explain it to them.  But we still do it.

The original reason for adopting DST was to save energy, by lowering the use of lighting.  In recent years, lighting for home use has gotten a lot more efficient.  Many of us are using LED light bulbs--to get the same amount of light as a 100 watt incandescent bulb only takes 12 watts for an LED.  So the energy savings are a small fraction of they once were.  But we still do it. 

DST used to start later in the spring, and end earlier in the fall.  During the energy crisis caused by the Arab Oil Embargo in the 1970s after the Israelis won the Six-Day War, the starting and ending dates were changed to the current ones.  That was 49 years ago, and now some Arab nations are making peace treaties with Israel.  But we still do it.

I can see a possibility that it may have more benefit in some areas of the country than others.  I live at the western edge of the Eastern Time Zone; maybe people on the east coast get more out of it than we do out here.  But I don't particularly like them imposing it on people who don't get as much out of it--that's selfishness.  But we still do it.

I read years ago that one of the early proponents of the idea of Daylight Savings Time was a British lord--he wanted more daylight in the evenings for golf.  So did he adjust his schedule to allow more time?  No, he pushed for making his whole country make the change he wanted.  That is as good a case of arrogance and selfishness as you are going to find.  But we still do it.

Personally, I think that if Trump, or DeSantis, or Cruz, or anybody else wants to win the presidency in a landslide in '24, they could make doing away with DST the number one plank in their platform and clinch the deal.  Maybe the political class likes it (I don't know why!) but ordinary people don't.

Life Happens

Two things have happened this past week, one a source of sorrow and one a good thing.  For the first, I found out that a fellow blogger, the host of the group blog "Alexandria--Crossroads of Civilization" had passed away in the last few weeks.  He had invited me to join them back in 2010, and I blogged on that site for that year, along with this blog.  I left because of family issues--it looked for a while like I would have to be taking care of my mother.  That changed, but I was busy and did not go back there.  Last year he emailed me, inviting me back.  The group was smaller--only three of us rather than the dozen or so we had in 2010.

He had emailed me in mid-January saying he and his wife both had come down with Covid--he said it was mild so far.  I checked back on the blog regularly, to see if he was back to writing--nothing.  Last week I tracked down the third remaining author, and she had just found out he had passed away.  Since he managed the postings and editing for the site, and was the owner of the URL, there probably is not much anyone can do to keep it going.  The site is still online, but probably only until the next fees come due.

I will miss our discussions.  I had been putting my posts on current politics over there.  Now I have nowhere but here for those.

The other happening was a happier event.  I was able to re-connect with an old boss and friend that I had worked for fifty years ago.  I had not seen him since the mid-'80s.  But I had done an online search and found his current address, and wrote him a letter.

At the time I met Ken, I was a senior in college, and working part-time.  I had just been laid off after Christmas from a job at a discount store in Cincinnati.  Somehow I got wind of a company hiring.  It turned out to be a new startup franchise company, cleaning office buildings at night.  I was the sixth person hired by the new company, and the second to last a full year.  After two years, I took a post as assistant manager of the Indianapolis franchise.  That did not work out--partly because of the local boss, partly because of problems in the franchise organization.

When I moved back to Cincinnati, Ken had left the organization too.  He helped me get a janitor service of my own off the ground--not with money, but with potential customers and suppliers that he knew.  I did that for twelve years, until I found my way into the home remodeling field.

But the big thing about Ken was that he modeled what it really meant to be a Christian in the business world.  It was not about having fish emblems or crosses on your vehicle or business cards.  It was not about going to the meetings of the Christian Business Mens' Committee or similar organizations.  It was about how you treated your employees and your customers.  One of my earliest posts here, from April 2007, was "Authority and Respect," about the difference between the temporary respect that comes with a position compared to the respect earned by good relations with others.  That was one of my most important lessons from Ken.  He never asked anyone to work harder than he did.  He was not afraid to get his own hands dirty.  He knew my job and could do it better than I could.  His customers respected him because his word was good.  His employees respected him because he treated them as well as he could.

He also taught me some basics about running a business.  Back then there were no cell phones, and no such thing as voice mail.  His rule was, if someone calls you on business, you get back to them within twenty-four hours.  Years later, after I moved from Cincinnati to Dearborn County, IN, it seemed I was the only contractor in the county who always returned calls.  He would not use an answering machine--he said people want to talk to a real person, not a recording.  (I still think the modern computerized phone systems are the dumbest thing American business has ever done!)

Anyway, I thought about what I had learned from him all those years ago, and how it had helped me ever since.  I managed to track down his current address, and I wrote a letter to tell him how what I learned from him had helped me, and that I still appreciated it.  I put my current email and cell phone number at the bottom.  Yesterday, he called me.  He was touched that I still appreciated what I learned from him.  We caught up on each other's families, where we are now, and other things.  I think we both enjoyed the talk.  I may find an excuse to go visit him later this year.

So, some sadness, and some joy.  Not a bad week at that.

How Much Faith Do You Have?

Recently a friend recommended a book to me--"I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist" by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek.  I managed to borrow it from the local library and read it.  Many of the arguments presented in the book were things I had seen before, but never all in one place.  I had been introduced to both C. S. Lewis and Francis A. Schaeffer when I was in Bible college, and had read other works on apologetics back then.  But I had not read much recently in that field.

One of the major problems in modern higher education is the narrow focus on a limited area.  There's an old definition of a high level scholar as someone who studies more and more about less and less until he reaches the point where he knows almost everything--about almost nothing! 

And there have been some once-major topics that have been ignored now for many years.  One principal one is Logic.  This was once taught to most students--it was considered an important part of education.  Now the only exposure to it is in math classes.   The problem with that is, while mathematics uses some logic, it does not use all of it.  And teaching only math does not prepare a student to deal with bad arguments.  Here's an example:  I was hearing the idea in high school (back in the late '60s) that our thoughts are just the results of chemical and biological reactions in our brains.  And what follows from that is that there is nothing more than that involved in our thinking.  Well, one basic principle of traditional logic is that any line of argument that undercuts the validity of human reason is automatically invalid--because you are trying to use human reason to say there is no such thing as human reason!  If what you are saying to me is only the result of random chemical reactions in your brain...why should I listen to you?

One sad truth is that the typical modern scientist does not even know the limits of his field.  Speculation about the origins of the universe used to be considered part of the field of Cosmology--and it was regarded as a part of Philosophy.  Now the scientist--including some of the big names in the field--does not even notice when he strays out of his field and into philosophy, because he never really studied any of it--it wasn't required for his science degrees!

For years there has been all sorts of speculation about life on earth being brought here by aliens--and the people saying it do not realize that is just kicking the can down the road.  So where did the aliens come from?  Who created them?

Another idea popular these days is that we live in some sort of computer simulation.  To me, that's simply another Creation myth.  If this is a simulation, then who created the computer?  In the past I have read the Creation myths of the Greeks, Vikings, Babylonians, Egyptians, and others, including some Native American stories.  The Creation story in Genesis is simpler, less extravagant, and more sensible.  If you are bothered by the Genesis account of Methuselah living 969 years, the Babylonian King Lists claimed that their earliest rulers lived for 10,000 years and more!

One of the basic principles of modern science is Uniformity of Natural Causes.  This means that the natural processes we see today have always worked throughout history in the same way, and at the same rate.  And atheistic scientists also believe the universe is a closed system, with no God to intervene.  The catch with this principle is that it is an assumption--it has never been proven; and by its very nature it cannot be proven!  There were no scientists hanging around during the Big Bang to measure the reactions and their results, and write it all down.  They can observe the reactions and rates in the present; but they have only been doing that for the last few hundred years.  They think they can trace the results of the Big Bang in the movements of stars and galaxies--but they have only been doing it for a short period of history.  The vast majority of what they say is an interpretation--what if it is a wrong interpretation?  The assumptions people take into interpreting physical events do influence their interpretations.  And sometimes they are wrong.

Here's an example from modern history, one that I am familiar with because of my being on the autism spectrum.  The first doctors in the US to notice and study autism, back in the 1940s, decided it must be caused by environmental factors.  In fact, Leo Kanner, the first doctor in the US to write about it (and name it) thought it was caused by mothers who were not affectionate enough.  That assumption of his drove most of the care and treatment of autism in this country until the 1980s--and still pops up among some psychiatrists today.  In contrast, Hans Asperger, working in Vienna in the 1940s, guessed it was genetic--because he noticed the parents of the children he was working with had some of the same traits as the children.  But Asperger's writings about his studies were not translated into English until the 1980s.  Now it is known that autism is primarily genetic--you get it from your parents!  The CDC has a section on autism on its website, that I have seen, that estimates autism is 70-80% genetic.  That seems to be the conservative estimate--I have seen mentions of an Italian study that came up at 95%!

It is worth remembering that when Charles Darwin published his book "On the Origin of Species" in 1859, nothing was known about heredity and genetics in the universities in Britain or the US.  Gregor Mendl's studies about heredity were not published until later.  Microscopes were still quite primitive compared to what they are now.  Darwin had no way to know how complex even a single-celled creature is, as shown by our modern equipment.  An awful lot of his work, and of those who came after him, was based on pure assumptions, including that law of Uniformity of Natural Causes (in a Closed System) that I mentioned earlier.  Before the development of nuclear science that led to the use of Carbon-14 dating, and use of other isotopes for longer periods and other materials, the joke was that geologists used to date rock formations by the fossils found in them, and paleontologists dated fossils by the rocks they were found in!  Even to this day, there is a lot of interpretation involved in scientific work.

So remember, there is no such thing as "settled science."  It can always change, sometimes unexpectedly.  And there are some things it simply cannot account for or explain.

A Possible Cause of Church Decline

A couple of weeks ago I ended up making two comments on an opinion article at World Magazine on Populism.  I may end up making a post at Aleksandreia.com on the political aspects of that discussion.  But I want to go into some issues related to that discussion that affect the church in the US.

In recent weeks I have seen reports about a study showing that membership in religious organizations in the US has dropped below 50% for the first time since such things were recorded.  And in recent years, my own adult children have noted that the gap between blue-collar workers and white-collar workers has widened over the years, compared to when I was growing up.  And I strongly suspect that what the churches are experiencing is mostly the loss of the blue-collar people.  I also suspect strongly that the loss is the fault of the church leadership.  Let's look into that.

In 1962 my parents bought a brand-new house in a rapidly-growing suburb on the north side of Cincinnati Ohio.  I was 12 years old at the time.  We moved there from a rural area east of the city--my older sister had married a boy there and remained out there.  My parents bought that house for $16,000.  It wasn't a mansion; it would be considered small by today's standards--probably in the 1000-1200 square foot range, with a one-car attached garage.  My father was an hourly employee at a Ford Motor Co. factory less than ten miles away.

In those days, blue-collar workers and white-collar workers still largely lived in the same neighborhoods, mostly shopped at the same stores, sent their children to the same schools, and often attended the same churches.  At the Church of Christ we attended, there were both blue-collar and white-collar workers among the elders and deacons.  Even among my schoolmates and the boys in my Scout troop, if their fathers were white-collar workers, they were usually the first in their families to attend college (many of them through the GI Bill after WWII).

And those veterans and GI college grads, along with their blue-collar neighbors, had mostly grown up in a society where college was not common--in most places, the only people around them with a college education were doctors, lawyers, preachers and school teachers.  College just was not that big a thing for most people before WWII.  It was an upper-class thing, not for ordinary folks.

Even in the '70s, as I was becoming an adult, marrying, starting a family and starting a business, the gap was not that big.  In 1977, we bought our first house, a run-down place in an older Cincinnati neighborhood, for $17,000.  Two years later we had it fixed up, sold it for $25,000, and bought another run-down house in another neighborhood.  And at that time, you could still buy a brand-new house for $30,000 or less.

The inflation of the late 1970s and early '80s hit the cost of housing hard, and started a spiral of costs that continues to this day.  Mortgage rates rose.  Expectations rose, too.  Where once families mostly had one car, now they had two, and expected a two-car garage for their house--until they wanted a three-car.  One bathroom in a house was no longer enough--there had to be one bathroom for the kids, and a "master-suite" with its own bath and walk-in closet for the parents.  There was also an increase in local regulations on housing, also--both government building codes and homeowners' associations added rules that added to the cost of housing.  

In 1990 and '91 I built a house for my family.  We found a plan we liked--but I had to alter it because of the rules of the homeowner's association.  It was a two-story, 1500 square foot house, and would have a full basement.  But to get it approved we had to enlarge it--because the HOA insisted all houses had to have at least 900 square feet on the ground floor.  They would approve a 950 sq ft ranch, but not a 1500 sq ft two-story!  So I revised the plans to get it up to 928 square feet per floor.  Eight years later we sold it--for $125,000.  (Our second rehab had sold for $60,000.)

The rise in housing costs did a lot to separate the working populations.  The higher-paid people could afford the higher costs; the lower-paid, not so much.  They were stuck in the run-down sections.  Over time, that separated the blue-collar and white-collar people more and more.  Now their kids didn't go to the same schools, and often the parents did not shop at the same stores.

There was another factor in this that affected the churches.  And I have seen this even with some pastors that I knew in college.  There had always been some problems with pastors showing favoritism to the wealthier members of their congregations.  But as more and more of their congregants were college grads, that became more pronounced.  Some of the older pastors I have known were not like that.  They treated all their members the same.  But the younger pastors, of my generation and later, seemed to have more trouble relating to people who were blue-collar--and less inclination to try.

If someone was to try to analyze the decline in church membership, I suspect that they would find a large part of it is the loss of the blue-collar demographic.  I am not saying that is the only cause; but I do think it is part.  If a leader of the church is not welcoming to people he perceives as being socially inferior, sooner or later, those people will get the idea, and quit showing up.

I know there are some churches that are not so uppity.  Chris Arnade, in his book "Dignity" was impressed by the churches he saw in the run-down neighborhoods that tried to minister to the poor around them--so impressed with them, and the results he saw of their work, that during the time he wrote the book he shifted from atheist to agnostic (and since then he has returned to the Catholic church he grew up in).  But many of the churches in this country do little to reach the less affluent.

The best church I was ever part of, a Vineyard in Cincinnati, (on the north side, just a few miles east of where I grew up), made an official policy to be welcome to all.  They also spent a lot of money to minister to all, including the poorer neighborhoods.  They had the largest outreach to the poor I have ever seen in any church--not only a food pantry (a big one) but also clothing, basic medical care, some job training, and more.  But they were rare among churches.  And people flocked to their services--in twenty years they went from 35 people to 6,000, and planted more than three dozen other churches besides.

But sadly, they are an exception among modern churches.  The mainline Protestant denominatons--the so-called "Seven Sisters" (Episcopals, Methodists, Evangelical Lutherans, United Church of Christ, American Baptists, Presbyterian Church USA, and Disciples of Christ) have been in decline for over 60 years.  The Episcopalians, for instance, have half the number of members they had in the 1960s--while the US population has doubled.  The rest of the Seven are not much better off.  The Methodists are looking at a liberal-conservative split in the next year or so.

But conservative denominations are mostly not much better off--their growth has slowed or even stopped.  The Southern Baptists are having to deal with the problem of sexual abuse by their pastors and other prominent members; some of the top brass are resisting, but the members are getting fed up.  Others are having problems, too.

I think the religious scene in this country is changing.  What will take shape is to be seen, and whether it will be good or bad in the long term.

I mentioned a discussion I was in on World Magazine's website in the start of this post.  In my second comment I ended with a question to the others (a question I once posed to the founder of the magazine in an email a few years ago).  Here's the question:  At the congregation you attend, on any given Sunday, are there any blue-collar people in the group?  And do you ever talk to any of them?

The truth is, there are more people in this country without college degrees than with them.  When the chips are down, there are more blue-collar workers than white-collar.  And the executives and management people are a minority, not a majority.  But if the local church leadership mostly writes off the majority of the people, it is no wonder that church attendance declines.

Church--Or Life?

 When you look into the world of Christianity today, most of the statistics you will find are focused on the modern "church system'--the buildings, the people who come to them, the clergy, the denominational structures.  Even with the "non-denominational" churches, the records and numbers all home in on the buildings and the staff and the people who go there.

But what if that traditional vibe is not what was originally intended?  Here's something to think about:

If you go through the New Testament, obviously a lot of it is about the events:  where Jesus went and what He did, what the apostles did after the Resurrection, the places Paul traveled to.  But if you look into the things that Jesus and the apostles said and wrote, there is actually not that much about what goes on inside the gathering of believers on the first day of the week.  If you took all the passages in the New Testament about what to do in a church gathering and strung them together, you would not even have a full page!  

But throughout the New Testament, there is a lot of things said by Jesus, and said and written by the apostles, about how we should conduct our lives all week long.  Does that give you any idea about what they considered important for Christians?

One of the books that started me on a lifelong journey away from tradition was "Brethren, Hang Loose" by Robert C. Girard.  Girard was a Wesleyan pastor who had planted a new congregation in Scottsdale, AZ.  The startup seemed to begin well, but then things stalled.  And in trying to sort through what was going wrong, he began to look at his own approach, and was bothered by what he saw:

"I found myself measuring individual spiritual growth by some of the same outward standards I had deplored in the established churches:

--how they were picking up the "language"

--whether or not they would pray in public

--regularity of attendance

--how many of the church's activities they involved themselves in

--availability to the organization

--agreement with the pastor!

All the marks of a truly "involved" churchman."

That is actually fairly typical of a lot of churches--the ones I grew up in over fifty years ago, and even today.  All too often the pastor evaluates people in his church by those standards--and has little to no idea what is going on in their lives outside the building.  In the larger churches, there is no way one pastor can know much about that many people.  Even in the smaller ones, the pastor usually doesn't know that much about any individual.

But there is another problem with that way of evaluating church attenders:  if you think about it, every last one of those "standards" can be faked!  People who are not believers can mimic those activities and pass themselves off as Christians even if they are not; once in a while such a person ends up in church leadership!  There have been a few cases in the religious news of the past few years where pastors have admitted to being atheists and resigned their positions--and those are the honest ones!

When I was a teenager planning to go to Bible college and study for the ministry, all the college did to evaluate my character was to request a letter from one of my local church leaders.  Think about that...in the light of that quote from Girard above. 

There is a standard for local church leadership set out in the New Testament, mostly in Paul's epistles to Timothy and Titus.  The picture he presented was of older men, men with families, men whose children showed signs of living by Christian values, and men who had a good reputation in the community outside the church.  Taking young people and sending them to a college to teach them how to lead a church is the opposite of what Paul was teaching.

And while some denominations and individual churches do have "elders" supposedly working with the pastor, in the real world the pastor usually ends up the supreme authority.  In the first place, he is respected as the Authority.  He also has the free time and flexible schedule to end up doing most of what gets done.  And he often has influence on who becomes an official "elder" or board member.  And people who disagree or are just not "respectful" enough get sifted out.  Sometimes they step down after a tiff, sometimes they are not re-elected.

I suspect that this non-Biblical church system is the real reason so many denominations and local churches are in decline.  There is speculation that the Episcopal Church may nearly disappear in the next 20 years or so.  All of the traditional "mainline" Protestant denominations have been shrinking for the last half-century and more.  Many individual congregations, of all groups, are closing their doors.

But there is a growing group of Christians who are not tied into the old denominations and church structures.  Some are part of "house churches" that do not have buildings and often no official pastors.  Others are a group that was labeled "Dones" in the book "Church Refugees" by Josh Packard and Ashleigh Hope.   https://www.amazon.com/Church-Refugees-Sociologists-reveal-people/dp/1470725924

They were writing about people who were often core members of their congregations, but left the system--without abandoning their faith.  While their aim seems to have been to help the system sort out what they were doing wrong and win people back, I do not see much sign of that happening.  The traditional churches are still declining.

I admit I am one of the leavers (some of us prefer the term "Free-Range Christian" to "Done").  I get together with brothers and sisters when I can, and also communicate with some online.  But my energy and effort goes into how I live all week long, not just what goes on inside a building on Sunday morning.

Autism and Me

I need to start out here by making clear that I will be describing my own issues and quirks.  Someone else's may be different.  There is actually a lot of variety among people on the Autism Spectrum.  One of the leading experts on autism today is Tony Attwood, an English psychologist now working at a university in Australia (the Brits and the Aussies have been doing better than the American med/psych establishment on dealing with autism for at least the last 40 years!).  Anyway, here's one quote from Attwood:  "If you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism."  Meaning--the second one you meet may seem totally different.  None of that "If you've seen one you've seen them all" business.  Even my own kids and grandkids are different from me.  But we are all on the spectrum. 

That said, autism is not just a disability.  It is a mix of traits, some of which can be detrimental and some that can be helpful, depending on the circumstances at a given time and place.  And sometimes the particular strengths and weaknesses cannot be separated from each other.  You just have to learn to cope with them.

One common autistic trait that I share is a basic clumsiness.  I was never much good at sports.  I wasn't just the last one chosen for a game at recess--it was like, "If we have to take him, then we get______!"  (One of the best players, to offset me)  Over the years, I found that I could learn some physical things--if I wanted to badly enough.  It was hard for me to learn to ride a bicycle, too.  I tried three times to learn to play guitar; I finally succeeded when I was 15.  When as a newlywed I was trying to put a shelf up in our apartment closet, my wife broke out laughing at how bad I was with a hammer; twenty years later she was amazed at the quality of my carpenter work.

I mentioned above that some traits may be both strengths and weaknesses.  One common autistic trait I have is called "hyper-focus."  On things I like and want to do, I have tremendous powers of concentration.  But the flip side of that is that I cannot multi-task.  When I first started doing interior trim on houses, the men I was working with were impressed with how precise I was; some would even bring me their measurements and ask me to cut the pieces for them to install.  But I can't lead a crew--unless I have nothing else to do.  One time the church we were attending put a new roof on the preacher's house, and as the most experienced, I was leading half the crew.  But then I got tied up in one of the picky jobs, putting flashing around a dormer wall, and my son had to run the crew for an hour (fortunately, he was up to the job!).

Partly because of the hyper-focus, I was very good at school.  Attending elementary school in a rural area, that did not endear me to the other kids.  But we moved when I started 7th grade, to a suburban district on the north side of Cincinnati, OH.  I was in every accelerated class they had in high school--English, math and science.  I graduated fourth in a class of 265.  I got a scholarship for college, and was salutatorian of my college class, and spoke at graduation.  A lot of people in high school and college thought I would end up a professor.  That did not turn out, in part because of my other traits.

One of those seems to be not doing well with bureaucracy.  I don't do well in corporate settings.  I managed to start a small business when I was 25, as a janitorial contractor.  Going into offices as an outsider in the late afternoon and evening, I did not have to deal with office politics--I sometimes saw it going on, but I was not involved in it.  In my late thirties I transitioned into working as a carpenter and remodeling contractor.  Occasionally I worked as part of a larger crew, but mostly I worked with a close friend for the first five years, and after that alone--with my son as a helper at times. 

One thing that helped me with my customers, and is probably related to the hyper-focus, is that I am very detail-oriented.  And that not only applies to the details of the work itself, but also to things like showing up when I said I would, returning phone calls, getting one job before I left to do another, and cleaning up after I finished my work. 

One area that is difficult for me is emotions.  When things get emotionally charged, it's like something inside me freezes up.  My ex-wife could talk rings around me, and I could not respond quickly enough.  And that was probably a factor in our divorce after forty-eight years of marriage.  It is still hard for me to express my feelings.  Sometimes I can vent the emotion through music--singing and playing guitar.  But in interpersonal communication, it is hard for me.

In other areas, I am often a bit of an oddball.  When I was learning to play guitar, the Beatles were the big thing; I was into folk music rather than rock.  Instead of sports, I went into Boy Scouts, where I could hike and camp and stay individual.  And as a Christian, I am no longer part of any organized church, but what some now call a "free-range" Christian.  Some, especially people in the clergy, may be bothered by that.  But just as offices have politics, so do churches, and it frees me from that aspect.

There are other things that are not necessarily related to autism that also affect me and add to the effects of autism.  For instance, I am very much an introvert--on the Briggs-Myers test I scored as a 9 or 10, the severe end of the scale, as an introvert.  The big difference between introvert and extrovert is not whether or not we like people; it is how we re-charge.  An extrovert re-charges by being with others; an introvert has to be alone to re-charge.  That is likely also a factor in why I have spent so much of my adult life working alone.

There was an event in my childhood that probably masked some of my physical issues when I was growing up.  During kindergarten, I came down with rheumatic fever, which is a complication of strep throat.  I was really sick--I was in a hospital and then in bed at home for eight months.  It gave me issues with my knees for a few years, and left me with a heart murmur.  They gave me so much of what was then a new miracle drug, penicillin, that I ended up allergic to it a few years later.  Because of the heart murmur, I was restricted on physical activity for some years.  For a long time I attributed my being behind in sports and other physical games to that.

One thing that is common in autistic people is sensory issues.  There are an amazing amount of different ones we may have--and everybody has different ones.  My family members do not have the same ones I do.  Issues with foods are a part of this, but again, each person is different.  My ex-wife hated mashed potatoes; I was okay with them, but not peas or dried beans, even cooked.  One of my sensory issues that has protected me from becoming an alcoholic is that I cannot stand the feel of an alcoholic beverage in my mouth.  If a church is using wine instead of grape juice for Communion, I know it instantly.  As a teen, my father let me taste a beer one time (he was a very occasional drinker--about once every ten years he would get the urge to have a beer).  I could not stand it.  I never did have enough beer or wine to get a buzz on, and then want that enough to put up with the feeling in my mouth, so to this day I am a teetotaler--not for religious reasons, just because of my sensory issue.  But for years, I thought it was a result of that bout of rheumatic fever.  After that year, every time I got a sore throat, out came the prescription cough medicine--which, back in the 1950s, was probably about 40 proof!  I thought that caused my aversion to alcohol, until I began to learn about sensory issues with autism a few years ago.

This is just a start.  There are probably other aspects of autism in my life that will come to mind later.  Maybe I will post some more another time, after I think of them.  But this may give readers some idea of how being on the autism spectrum can shape people's lives.

I Dood It!

The title above is borrowed from one of Red Skelton's characters.  ( BTW, if you are ever in Vincennes, IN, there is a cool museum of his career, with his costumes, audio and video clips, and displays.  He was one of the few who started in vaudeville, made the change to radio, but then successfully went on to movies and TV--some, like Fred Allen, made it in radio, but went no further.)

And I have bit the bullet.  I have changed the name of this blog!  When I started blogging years ago, "postmodern" was a trendy term.  Now it is mostly forgotten.  And there have been changes in my life and situation as well.

The part that has not changed:  I am still a Redneck.  If anything, as I get older, my redneck traits seem to become stronger.  I get it from both sides of my family.  My father was born near New Richmond, OH, where his ancestors had settled in the 1790s.  It is now a small town east of Cincinnati, that's been turning into a Cincinnati suburb.  It is also historically considered the eastern edge of Appalachia in Ohio.  While the family had been farmers and small businessmen for generations, my grandfather pulled up stakes looking for work during the Great Depression, and ended up a cooper (making and repairing wood barrels) at a Seagram's distillery in Lawrenceburg, IN that had reopened with the end of Prohibition.  My father went through assorted blue-collar jobs over the years, but settled in Cincinnati (with a stay of 6 years in Brown County, OH, a rural area about 40 miles away from the Ford factory where he worked).

My mother was born at a coal mining camp called Blue Diamond, near Hazard, KY.  She was the fifth of seven children (the first two died before age 3).  Her father and her older brothers all worked in the mines in that area.  Her mother died of cancer, and her father died of injuries from a mine accident.  From the age of 12, she was passed from one relative to another depending on who could afford an extra mouth for a while.  This was also during the Depression.  When she was 16, she and a friend hitch-hiked to Cincinnati to live with her older sister.  A couple of years later, she was out with a friend (also from KY) and met my father.  They got married in 1940.

On the Autistic side, I first found out about what they then called Asperger's Syndrome in 2005.  The lights came on for a lot of things in my past life.  I was fortunate enough to be good at school; a lot of autistic kids struggle there.  But over time I learned I did not fit well in most corporate settings.  I found my way into the world of small business and have been self-employed since 1976.  I didn't get rich, but I usually made a living; there were a few rough stretches.  But as my three kids grew up and got married and had their own kids, the autism matter came into sharper focus.  The schools never diagnosed me as autistic or Asperger's, nor my kids; but they have been finding my grandchildren.  So far, at least 8 of my 10 grandkids have a diagnosis.  The rest will probably get identified sometime.

Why so many?  Some families go along for generations, and then suddenly they get an autistic kid.  In my family, from what we have figured out, we have been marrying other autistic people for at least three generations that we can tell.  We don't know enough about the people to go back farther than that.  So the genetics have gotten a bit more concentrated than usual.

How many are there of us?  Nobody really knows.  In the first place, autism was not even recognized by the medical and psychological professions until the 1940s.  Even after that, for many years they weren't that good at finding us.  It has picked up a bit in recent years.  The conservative estimate is that there are roughly as many of us in the US as there are Jews--2-3% of the population.  The number of school-age children seems to conform to that these days.  The wild-and-woolly estimate is that we may be as much as 15% of the population.  And we aren't just rednecks--we are found anymore in just about every ethnic group and every skin color.

Autism is a complicated thing.  Psychologists in the US are now calling it a spectrum, a range of characteristics.  Many autistic people have adopted the name "Neurodiverse" because we are not only diverse from the "Neurotypicals" but also diverse from each other.  In my own family, we have musicians, artists, science geeks, a computer programmer, a high-tech repairman (who is also a musician), and more.  I will probably be posting about some of the things I have learned about it in the past few years.

I will also keep posting about Christian matters as well; I have done that for years.  I probably will not add much political stuff--I will likely keep posting that at a group blog I am part of, "Alexandria--Crossroads of Civilization."    (https://www.aleksandreia.com/)

I may come up with other things to write about as well.  We shall see.

What is Worship?

 I grew up in churches, went to a conservative Bible college, preached for a few years, and "led the singing" in the old-style services, and have been a "worship leader" with my guitar in small churches and small groups over the years.

When I was growing up, mostly we sang hymns and gospel songs in church services (the difference between the two was, gospel songs had choruses, hymns did not).  Hymns had come into fashion in the English-speaking churches around 1700 and after; gospel songs started with the revivals of the late 1800s and early 1900s.  Before 1700 many sang the Psalms--passages from that book of the Bible set to music.

During my time in college things began to change.  Some new music was coming out, from several writers, that did not fit exactly in either category.  They were more complex than the simple choruses used in children's church services and youth groups, and had some feel of modern popular music.

By the mid-1970s the church I was part of was getting in on the new style music at least part of the time (we still used the hymnbooks, too).

There were several factors influencing the new music.  I was in Cincinnati, a city where Roman Catholics were a majority of the population.  Most Protestant churches also had some ex-Catholic among them.  So it was fairly easy for us to pick up on the songs coming out of the Catholic folk mass trend that started in the mid-'60s.  The Jesus Movement was going on a bit later, and added more music.  Meanwhile, the Charismatic Movement was starting up, and producing new music also.  A lot of this music initially had a lot in common with the folk music trends of the period.  And in the churches I was in for some years, we did not have fancy sound systems.  We did not have "bands" for worship; if we had a couple of guys who could play guitar and take turns leading the singing, that was good enough.  And some of the music would be written by local people.  Some of it was Scripture verses set to music.  Some was borrowed from the new movement of Messianic Jews.

As the Jesus Freaks and the Charismatics began converting rock musicians, the new music began to change.  There were bands and sound systems, and vocalists to do solo parts.  It did not happen all at once, but it began.  And new companies sprang up to market the new music.  One was associated with the Vineyard churches.  Another was Hosanna Music, which started putting out new albums 6 times a year, and books of music scores for the musicians.  Even at the time (late '80s) I was getting a sense that they were falling into the pattern that prevailed in the regular recording industry in Nashville--each new cassette/CD had one or two songs that were good or even great, and the rest were either so-so or even just filler.  And for smaller churches one problem was that their musicians got the idea they had to sound like the big worship bands on the recordings.  All too often they did not have the number of musicians, or highly skilled musicians, to make it work.  And over time it leaked out that Hosanna was recording a live worship set, but then taking it back to the studio and dubbing in additional instruments!

Even then, not all were happy with the developments.  From 1995 to 2005 I was part of a Vineyard Church in Cincinnati.  The head of the national Vineyard organization until his death in November of 1997 was John Wimber.  He was also pastor of the Vineyard Church in Anaheim, CA.  He had a background in music--he had been a member and manager of the group "The Righteous Brothers" until he became a Christian in 1963.  He walked away from that life and went into ministry.  But he also wrote a number of worship songs.  Some time after his death I read an interview with his widow, Carol Wimber.  She said her husband was concerned with the direction praise and worship music was heading; he thought worship songs should be kept simple enough that the average guitar player could play them for his small group gathering (no sound system, no band, no backup singers).

Over the years since, what I have been hearing from all over is that in many churches, worship music has turned into a spectator thing.   In the '70s and early '80s many of us sang our hearts out, standing the whole time, shouting out lyrics, going off script and singing choruses over and over, even sometimes making up new verses to a song.  In recent years, reports I have seen talk of people sitting and watching the band perform, as if it were a concert.

After 2009 I became what some of us called a "free-range Christian"--not part of any organized church.  I looked for a house church, but in Indianapolis there isn't much of them.  I did find a group of several Christian families that got together regularly, not even as formal as a house church; some of that group moved away, but others of us still get together a couple of times a month.  But I got away from the Contemporary Christian Music field and the praise and worship music market.  For a couple of years after my divorce, I was attending a local church in town, primarily for their men's fellowship group.  Their services were a mix of the old hymns and what was apparently more recent modern worship music.  What they were using did not impress me--the melodies especially were kind of blah.  I do not know for certain whether that is where the whole field has gone or if it was just the tastes of the local group.

But one thing I have learned over the years is that no Christian movement goes on forever.  I have been part of several--the small group movement, the charismatic movement, praise and worship movement, home schooling, and more.  But the useful life of any of them seems to be in the range of 20-40 years.  After that, they don't go away--but they quit "moving"--they don't really break any new ground, they just stay settle down and keep doing the same old things.  And the praise and worship movement is following the same pattern.

Personally, I have always loved music.  My own family was musical--my two sons are fifth-generation guitar players (plus other instruments).  I sang in church choirs and high school choir and ensemble.  I still love a lot of the old hymns and the new music as well.  But I have also come to the conclusion over the years that music is only part of worship.  I have seen too many people who were active in worship music, but their personal lives did not match what they sang.  This goes clear back to my high school years as well as modern incidents.

I have come to believe that musical worship can express your Christian life, but the music is not all of it--if it is all of it, you are not there yet.  There really is not that much in the New Testament that talks about what goes on in church meetings.  There is much, much, MUCH more about how you live all week.  There is a saying attributed to the Amish:  "Work is worship."  I think a lot of Christians need to learn to live that.

I am going to close this post with the words to one of those Scripture songs we sang back in the day, from Micah 6:8:

He has shown thee, O man, 

What is good and what the Lord requires of thee (repeat)

But to do justly, 

And to love mercy, 

And to walk humbly with thy God.

I Am an Exile

 A while back I found a book by David Kinnaman, of the Barna Research Group, at a thrift store.  The title is "You Lost Me" and it is about the departure of Millennials from the traditional churches.  [Barna Group prefers to use the term "Mosaics" for that generation "because it reflects their eclectic relationships, thinking styles, and learning formats, among other things." p.246]  Kinnaman actually sorts these wanderers into three distinct groups.  Some are what he calls "Nomads"--younger people who have drifted off after growing up and leaving their parents' home for college or work, but are likely to drift back as they marry and start families.  Many  people of previous generations followed that pattern.  A second group he calls "Prodigals"--people who grew up in the church, but have now rejected the faith and have no intention of coming back.  The third group he labels as "Exiles" which he defines as "those who grew up in the church and are now physically or emotionally disconnected in some way, but who also remain energized to pursue God-honoring lives....One hallmark of the exiles is their feeling that their vocation (or professional calling) is disconnected from their church experience." [p.75]

I am not a Millennial or Mosaic; I am part of the post-WWII Baby Boom generation.  But I am an Exile, by Kinnaman's definition, and have been for a while.  Even during my many years in churches, the only "vocation" that got much attention, in nearly all the congregations I was part of, was being in "ministry"--preacher, missionary, Bible college professor, and in later years, worship leader.  Nobody seemed to care what the rest of the people did from Monday through Saturday, as long as they tithed their income to the church.  Even when they did a sermon or teaching series on "spiritual gifts" most people got excited about the "gifts" that would get them up on the front platform, not things they could do outside of the building during the week.  When I was finishing high school and preparing for college, at the church my family attended in the northern suburbs of Cincinnati, those of us in the youth group who planned to go to Bible college were a notch above the others.  The rest were just going to college or jobs--we were going into "full-time Christian service."  That was the prevailing attitude in many churches in the area in those days.

Over time, it turned out my "vocation" was something else.  In my late 20s, my wife and I bought a run-down house and fixed it up.  "Rehabbing" was a big thing in the older neighborhoods of Cincinnati in the '70s, and back then it was focused on homeowners doing it themselves.  Most were younger people like us, and they did not have the money to hire contractors to come in and fix stuff.  (If they did have the money, they could have bought a fancier house elsewhere.)  But I found that I liked doing it.  And I had learned how to do research in high school, so I was able to learn to do more and more.  By the time we were halfway through our second house, I was working on other people's houses and getting paid for it.  It turned out I was good at sorting out problems in houses and finding ways to fix them.  Even now that I am mostly retired, I still do some of that for family and friends.  I may not do all the fixing, but I can help them figure out the problem and how to solve it.

There's a saying attributed to the Amish:  "Work is worship."  I am afraid that attitude was mostly missing in the churches I grew up in, and still is in the majority of churches today.  All too many Christians do not have that idea.  In the years between graduating from Bible college and learning to work on houses, I had jobs under two different men in a franchise organization.  The first, in Cincinnati, held to more of an Amish view:  for him, being a Christian in business was about servicing his customers well and treating his employees well.  The second, who I worked for in Indianapolis for a year, thought being a Christian in business meant going to all of the Christian Business Men's Committee functions.  He eventually became a bigwig in their organization.  By the time I left that job, it was obvious to me that both his customers and his employees had little respect for him.  But he is still highly regarded by the CBMC and his local church.  I guess he has his reward....I personally prefer, mentally at least, to take the Amish approach.

The Decline Continues

 The decline I am talking about here is that of the American church.  For my thoughts on political stuff, look for my posts at https://www.aleksandreia.com/--"Alexandria--Crossroads of Civilization."  I am likely to go back to keeping my posts here less political, and do my politics over there.

Back to the church:  I have posted back in the early years and my recent posts about the weakness of the church in America.  I am still seeing more signs of this condition.

About a week or two ago, I saw a news item about the United Church of Christ.  This is one of the mainline "Seven Sisters" denominations--part of their roots are in the Puritans who settled New England in colonial times.  The Puritans eventually adopted the name "Congregational."  In the 1930s they merged with another group, one known as the "Christian Connection" to become the "Congregational-Christian" denomination.  In 1957 they merged with the Evangelical and Reformed Church, and re-named themselves "United Church of Christ."

Anyway, the news item said they were selling their national headquarters building in Cleveland, Ohio.  The article also revealed farther down that they had moved to Cleveland from New York City in the 1990s to save costs (both commercial real estate and living costs were cheaper in Ohio).  But now, the 9-story office building they had needed for their 300+ staff was too big and too expensive for the 100 people that their national office was down to.  So they are moving to something smaller and selling the old office.

The article does not mention their decline in membership, but it has been substantial over the years, just like most of the other mainline groups.  Most of the Seven Sisters--the UCC, the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church USA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the United Methodists, the American Baptists, and the Disciples of Christ--are around half of the membership they had in the 1960s.  Some of their loss has been because of the growing secularization in our country, but a lot of it has been people leaving for other churches that are more conservative on theology.

I have a little bit of background in the UCC myself.  When I was in elementary school, my family attended one of their churches near a little crossroads called Five Mile, Ohio.  It wasn't because my parents were into the UCC--it was just the closest church to us, and my parents felt at home with the people.  It was a little country church, a simple building--no separate classrooms, just a big room with a coal stove on one side for heat, an old organ on one side and a piano on the other, with two sets of pews and an aisle between.  There was no indoor plumbing, just an outhouse out back (a fair number of the neighboring houses didn't have indoor plumbing yet, either).

They didn't have a full-time pastor, just an older retired preacher who came out on Sundays to preach.  When he quit, they went together with two other small churches in the area to hire a Methodist student from Kentucky to come out and preach on Sundays.  Occasionally, the UCC sent a couple of people out from the district headquarters, who lectured the local farmers about their current hot thing, the Civil Rights Movement.  It didn't go over all that well...not because the farmers were for segregation, but because it just was not part of their lives.  Ohio was never a slave state--the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 that set up how the Northwest Territory was to be organized, settled, and formed into new states, actually banned slavery in the Territory.  And now this was Brown County, 50 miles east of Cincinnati, a rural area with few blacks living in it.   In the six years I went to school at Greenbush, a few miles away, we had one black student in our class for a year or two--no others.  There had always been free blacks in Cincinnati itself, and there may have been some in Ripley or other small towns along the Ohio River, but we were about 20 miles north of the river.  Five Mile itself was a little crossroads, named because each road took you to a larger town five miles away.  At that crossroads there was a general store (oldstyle, not like today's convenience store) with one gas pump.  On the opposite corner there was a small barn; the other two sides of the corner had farmhouses.  That was it!  Even the church was about a half a mile down the road; our house was about halfway between the crossroads and the church.

The church itself was small in numbers, maybe 40-50 people most of the time.   There was an old-style placard on the wall with places to post the attendance for the last couple of weeks.  It also said there were 64 (if I remember correctly) church members.  The standing joke was some of those were only there in spirit--they were out in the cemetery, not in the building!

We moved back to Cincinnati in 1962.  My father was working at a Ford Motor factory on the northeast side of Cincinnati, and the fifty-mile drive each way was hard on him and on cars.  But in 1972, when my grandfather died, my parents went back to Five Mile and bought a cemetery plot with space for 6 graves.  They buried my grandfather there; my grandmother was put beside in in 1979.  When my father died in 2010, he was interred there, and my mother in 2012.

Why did they do that?  I don't know for certain, but I suspect that in terms of community feeling and neighborliness, that little church was better than anything they had known since.  When we left there, we moved to a new suburban development on the north side of Cincinnati--a place that had recently been farmland, and was now growing rapidly with new houses and streets.  The schools were bigger.  The churches were bigger and fancier; but there was not as much love for your neighbors.  There are some things that growth alone cannot do.

The UCC finally gave up and sold the church building, I believe sometime in the 1980s.  A startup church bought it from them.  The old members from the area kept coming to church there.  If I recall correctly, it was some kind of independent charismatic church.  But the new church took off and grew.  First they added a kitchen and bathrooms to the building. and maybe some classrooms.  Finally they outgrew even the expanded building, and bought land and built a new church not far away.  When my father was buried in the cemetery, another startup church was using the old building.

If this pandemic slows down, I want to go back there.  I haven't been back for some years--it's 150 miles each way, a third of it not reachable by Interstate highways.  But I would like to stop by to pay some respect to my family, and to the community that they loved in that place.