Volume 6, Issue 6, February 1997

THE INVISIBLE BOUNDARIES

from "God Hates Religion" by Christopher Levan, principal of St. Stephen's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, The United Church Publishing House, Etobicoke, Ontario, page 90.

"Besides the obvious boundaries of insider/outsider, there are layers of divisions that keep people away from church. Take gainful employment as a case in point, and reflect on the position of an unemployed person. Unlike the Mediterranean world in which Jesus lived, our world assigns honour and shame according to ones capacity to produce. Whereas the people of Palestine linked ones relative importance to family connections, our culture reserves its highest honours for the "doers," the "achievers." We are a "can do" society, and those who can't do, who can't produce anything worth some form of remuneration, are disowned. It's such an obvious standard that we hardly give it a second thought. Long-term unemployed persons are considered to be lazy, unwilling to try hard enough to create their own labour - social leeches. It is not a coincidence that people living on welfare are also the first to be scapegoated when economic trends decline.

Of course, the church never bars its doors to welfare recipients or unemployed workers. On the contrary, we make plenty of sympathetic noises about caring for them, but they are always "them." Listen to our weekly announcements. When matters turn to issues of charity, preachers often assume that food aid or benevolent money are for those outside the church community. Consequently, we never explain aid in a way that would make it clear to the worshipping community that they could use it should they ever be in trouble. The unspoken message is clear. Unemployed people aren't expected to be part of the church family.

....In a mercantile culture like ours, economic boundaries are the most distinctive and overtly oppressive. Money confers respectability, while poverty engenders ignobility. But there are other boundaries, ones of a strictly religious nature, that also exercise influence in the church family. Those who have broken the moral code, young single mothers for instance, can feel the invisible walls that dissect a church sanctuary. They are on the business end of an unfortunate assumption that if you are not within the social norms, you must have done something "wrong." Such people are not actively solicited as our prospective members. Rather, we keep a wary eye on them or give them a wide berth. Their lives are tainted. Would they be good believers? (P.92)

....A final boundary, one which exists as firmly today as it did in the days of Jesus of Nazareth, is propriety or deference to the holy. Those who wish to be admitted to the inner sanctum must show themselves worthy. Having a polite and appropriately penitent deportment was and is essential. Faith is equivalent to propriety, to respect for the way things are, to not pushing too hard at the edges. The reign of heaven is not open to the vulgar or to those who use foul language or lack the necessary etiquette."

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"Religion NOW" is published in limited edition by the Rev. Ross E. Readhead, B.A., B.D., Certificate of Corrections, McMaster University, in the interest of furthering knowledge and participation in religion. Dialogue is invited and welcomed.