Church Shopping

by Caitlin

There are a lot of downsides to the consumerization of church selection, but there is one that really bothers me—compromising personal beliefs about the equality of women.

Yes, as much as I hate to admit it there are a lot of churches out there who don’t allow women to be leaders in the church but who may have good preaching, wonderful music, beautiful sanctuaries, great community, and fun Christian education programs. And so you are new to town, see a church down the street that looks nice, it says Presbyterian or Lutheran on the front so you are probably safe. You drop by on a Sunday morning, it feels welcoming and the service is nice so you come back. Then a couple months down the road you realize—this church doesn’t have any women pastors, or any women elders or deacons, or any women that teach adult education classes. Because you picked the church for the good choir or the great young adult group you didn’t realize that you disagree on a deep level with the role of women in this church’s theology.

It’s no surprise that people end up in this sort of situation, complex theological positions are not the first things people notice about a church and often they are difficult to uncover. But the problem is that once people get used to a church and meet a few good people it is hard to think about trying to find a new one. This is the laissez-faire side of church shopping.

But how could you not leave.

If you have grown up in a tradition and you feel passionately about staying and working for reform that is a different story. But I am talking about people who have made a connection to a church without realizing that it holds a theological position that conflicts with their personal faith and claims that their sisters, mothers, wives, and female friends do not have the ability to feel a call from God to be leaders in God’s church.

Staying upholds a system of repression and injustice, staying is supporting the propagation of a theology that you do not believe in. Would you work for a company that wouldn’t hire a woman? Of course not, that would be a deal breaker! Would you still give to your alma mater if they stopped admitting women? No, you wouldn’t, you would be outraged, you would probably start a boycott. But somehow it has become okay to stay at a church that oppresses women whether or not you agree because it seems like a pretty nice place in other ways.

Please tell me if I am letting my emotions get too strong here, because this one is personal. I have friends who have ended up at churches that I would never be welcome in and yet have chosen to stay. I feel betrayed not because they disagree with me—I can have friends who come down on the other side of this issue—but because they agree with me but are unwilling to stand up and do something about it. It has irreparably damaged my ability to trust these people because they chose to compromise their own beliefs and continue to knowingly attend a church just because it is the easier thing to do. And after a while I start to wonder if staying has changed their mind. 

Do you have stories like this too? How can we learn to “church shop” without compromising our values? Do you share my feeling of being more hurt by these people than by those who just outright disagree with you?