That did it. Mr. Crankypants just heard another religious liberal complain about the Religious Right: “Ooo, the bad ol’ Religious Right is running the country, the Religious Right is taking over.”
Mr. Crankypants snapped back, “And what about you, Mr./Ms. Religious Liberal? Do you go to church nearly every Sunday, year-round? Do you give ten percent of your income — your gross annual income — to your liberal faith? Do you actively invite people to your liberal church, people whom you know would benefit from liberal religion? Do you tell others how your religious faith calls you to make this a better world? ‘Cause that’s what the Religious Right does with their faith. And if you’re not willing to be as devoted to your liberal faith as they are to theirs, then you better not be complaining about the power and influence of the Religious Right.”…
Well, no, Mr. Crankypants didn’t say that out loud. To be honest, Mr. Crankpants is a bit of a chicken when it comes to saying things like that out loud. He just writes them on the blog of Dan, his stupid alter ego, hiding behind a screen of anonymity.
It’s so much easier to be a vocal religious liberal when no one knows your name….
Shame about that “chicken” thing.
I had a vision of a “Mr. Crankypants Pulpit Supply” or sermon series.
Dear Mr. Crankypants:
Okay, wait a minute. Isn’t part of the creed (is that the right word?) of the religious right/conservative christians to actively proselytize? And isn’t it possible that those of us of a more liberal religious bent — okay, persuasion — think there’s something intrusive and wrong about that? And that our religion is a fairly private matter? As is whether or not we go to church? And don’t most of us believe that it’s our deeds not our creeds that matter? I don’t know. Maybe I have no idea. I’m only an English professor. But maybe that’s it: I worry about taking on the rhetoric, language, and by extension the tactics of the religious right. Isn’t there another way?
Your sis from the Midwest
Jean
Hiya, Jean — I can’t speak for Mr. Crankypants (who can?), but I do know that here in Bristol County, Massachusetts, between 0.3% and 0.6% of the population report themselves as Unitarian Unviersalists on national questionnaires. Our church in New Bedford serves a population of at least 120,000 (within a 20 minute drive west of the Acushnet River), yet we only have 91 members, which is less than 0.1% of that population. Whereas we should really be at 360 to 720 members, according to what people already report as their religious preference. This is true across the country. From my observations of Unitarian Universalist churches, I have seen our efforts not to proselytize go so far as to keep out out people who already think of themselves as Unitarian Universalists.
In a similar vein, sociological research in liberal churches shows that what really limits the size of liberal churches is mostly group dynamics. We tend to have group structures that keep us at a small size level; whereas conservative churches are more willing to rely on sociological research to create group structures that welcome people in (thus ironically creating an example of religious conservatives trusting innovative research, while religious liberals hold on to outmoded beliefs). To be more blunt, liberal churches have become adept at not letting newcomers in (and interestingly while liberal churches remain predominantly white, groups like Pentecostals have been successful at becoming truly multi-racial — hmmmm).
So I believe it’s not about proselytizing (or not proselytizing), it’s about excluding people who want to be religious liberals; which strikes me as contrary to liberal religious values.
Jean writes: “And that our religion is a fairly private matter? As is whether or not we go to church?”
Well, yeah, but it seems to Mr. Crankypants that if we religious liberals all stay away from the liberal churches, the liberal churches will go out of business (and they’re half the size they were twenty years ago), leaving the field to the conservative churches, who aren’t afraid of being public and who will proselytize our children, formerly liberal children who will get sucked into increasingly powerful fundamentalist churches. It won’t be fun when our children tell us that we’re going to Hell (little ungrateful brats). It’ll be sorta like Afghanistan, only Christian instead of Muslim. Hey, the Christian Taliban is already taking over South Dakota.
Not that Mr. Crankypants goes to church! He likes to have his choice in the matter, and his choice is to stay home on Sunday morning, especially when his stupid alter ego Dan is preaching (ya wanna talk about boring?). Nope, Mr. Crankypants is just sayin’….
I dont understand the talk about the kinds of group dynamics. How is that defined by a church?
Hi JM — Great question! I’ll try to answer for Mr. Crankypants (since he’s the kind of guy who can’t be bothered to explain himself). What Mr. Crankypants is referring to is a well-documented phenomenon where churches find it difficult to grow beyond certain membership sizes (unless the church plans carefully for growth). I witnessed this last year when I was an interim associate minister at a church in Geneva, Illinois — after growing steadily for a dozen years, that church stalled at about 200 active members and sat on a growth plateau for a decade. Recently, I wrote about this topic on this blog, saying:
“The Alban Institute, a group of church consultants and sociologists, have been studying the group dynamics of congregations for some time now. Arlin Routhage of the Alban Institute found that congregations operate in quite different ways depending on what size they are. Routhage identifies four different types of congregations based on size: family size, with up to 50 active members; pastoral size, with 50 to 150 active members; program size, with 150 to 350 active members; and corporate size, with 350 to 500 members. And do remember that “active members†does not mean how many people have signed the membership book; it means average worship attendance — adults and children — each week for twelve full months.
“Arlin Routhage says that each of these four different size congregations looks quite different to a sociologist. And he contends that it is quite difficult to move up to the next size. The most difficult transition can be the transition from a pastoral size church — 50 to 150 members — up to a program size church — 150 to 350 members. The church in Geneva, Illinois, was facing just this transition. In order to make the transition, they discovered that they have to change the way they made decisions, the way they communicate with each other, the way they treat their senior minister, the way they do worship — in fact, there is very little they won’t have to change.” [Link to complete post]
So you can call this a problem of group dynamics because to navigate one of these size transtitions, a church will have to change the way group operates.
Hope this explanation makes sense! If you really want to explore this topic in depth, check out the Alban Institute book Size Transitions in Congregations. [Link to Alban Institute Web site]
I just read the Hamilton article. I think its right on.
I, myself, was raised a Catholic but only found out about UUs after my mom read a murder mystery in which she learned one can be a UU and not even believe in a god. And then I only found my church after doing a search on Yahoo (this was in pre-google days). I live a 15 min drive from my church but never heard of it.
I think too if the church doesnt have a creed then people dont feel its a religion. If we are not the types to push ourselves forward as “the answer” then we end up as the wallflowers that no one pays attention to because the belles are all out there sucking up the available bandwidth. And, I think most people dont want to actually think about what they’ve been raised to believe. I am well educated – I have an MS in Computer Science and I’ve done post-grad work plus am now working on certification to teach high school math – but I never questioned what I was taught until a series of coincidences opened up my mind.
My son’s girlfriend is a Methodist and they are big into missionary work. Her family thinks its right to do that while I feel uncomfortable just thinking about telling someone else what to think.
So I dont know the answer to this. But I guess it gets talked about at all the right levels. I belong to that Geneva church and we have just hired another minister. So I guess we are all right on the growth but I still dont see us out there making ourselves known. Lindsay is going to have a series of lectures related to the book The Left Hand of God which I think (as I understand the “trailer”) partly deals with some aspects of this.