Four Churches

Experiencing the fall of holiness in a day of church hopping and how we might mend all schisms

We’d just finished watching the movie Jesus Freaks when Andy asked me to marry him. It was early September… he’d planned to wait until I’d met his family in November, but we were ready to start planning our future. By all legalist appearances, we might seem unequally yoked. I was raised in a niche of an already obscure messianic movement, and he, born in and again recently returned to the church, was a traditional catholic. And yet those who know the two of us well and are able to see past the doctrines of man into the mystical hearts of God and His children, saw the inevitability of our union. Never is the material yoke naturally equalized between the two called to work together, not initially. It takes some sort of supernatural strength to put oneself with another, and in that acceptance is harmony cultivated.

Our spiritual experiences, though stemmed out of drastically varying circumstances, have bloomed toward the same aesthetical values. But such matters are not easily seen if one remains pigeon-holed toward ideas of denomination.

Shortly after getting engaged, I told Andy, “I have a really fun idea, but please don’t say no until I present it fully.”

“What is it?”

“Let’s visit four churches next Sunday.”

I needn’t have worried. Ever amiable and chill, he agreed to my random proposition as long as one of the attended churches was a catholic mass.

In Montana, you have to drive a long way before arriving anywhere, and then quite a way further in order to get to some other place. Considering this, visiting four churches might initially seem impossible… we’d spend almost as much time driving from place to place as we would be sitting in the pews. We started our day early, already exhausted from a weekend of sewing with friends. One of my sisters joined us and we drove a little under an hour to our first church: a traditional mass in Three Forks at 8am.

My sister had never before attended a Catholic service, and I was still new to it myself. It was a very small gathering, and the priest was filling a double role: ministering here, then heading to a nearby town to repeat the Sunday sacraments once more to another congregation. The morning felt like the prelude to a revival: the people looked like they had fallen in some sort of stupor, some of them hardly dressed for the occasion, but the priest wore a green robe with tatted lace around his neck, ready to confront the ugliness of the world with truth. He spoke somberly, and between a variety of rituals, delivered a succinct homily that exhorted one to live a beautiful life of service. There were no fancy words. A simple reminder that we are set-apart, not for our own use, but God’s. My sister commented on how it felt almost stiff, and yet there was something refreshing about the sanctity of that.

We had time for coffee and donuts with the church, then drove a good half hour for a 10:30 Dutch Reformed service. It was a larger church with a pile of pews enveloped by radiating stained glass displaying scriptures in Dutch. The music was a little livelier than mass, but the lyrics were merely repetitive, and a toned-down version of the exact same sentiments expressed at the previous church. The preacher used far less scriptures than the priest had, in fact it was bizarre to realize how much he spoke and how little he read. And yet, already a theme emerged: both priest and pastor expounded on the parable of the talents, and there for the second time we sang of the lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world. Instead of coffee and donuts, there were chocolate chip cookies and lemonade in the meeting hall.

The second church service was over sooner than we thought it might be, and we weren’t quite hungry enough for the picnic I’d packed. The conversations with the congregation in the meeting hall were short-lived, so we headed to staples to print photos.

The ensuing lull, unexpectedly, bizarrely won, afforded us a moment of reflection. Of the things we liked best of each place so far, of how the next place might compare, of how the churches might improve by visiting the other, etc. Our next chosen service, a sort of non-denominational Calvinist gathering, began at 2:30pm, but you could show up a little early and there would be a small assortment of food and pastries.

It was a blessed day, indeed, hitting all the churches serving food. This wasn’t a factor in my deciding which churches to attend when I chose four, but it certainly paid off and made the endeavor possible… what a better way to spend a Sunday, fellowshipping with a variety of Christians, eating food, singing different styles of songs, and hearing a constant flow of scripture—with hardly any variance of belief.

If anything, we were experiencing a walk-through of church history and the fall of holiness. In each church we witnessed less tradition, and the decline of sobriety, respect, and love for one another. Sarcasm increased and replaced humility. Juvenile crassness and demeaning comments amplified from church to church. Where the first priest may have said, “I am not worthy to be here before you today”, later degrading comments in the guise of comradery were jarringly substituted in an almost vulgar manner.

“I suppose you didn’t miss me, but you’re stuck with me anyways.”

“I know you all don’t like listening to her, but you’re gonna have to for a few moments as she tells you all about…”

The music, too changed, becoming less sober, contrived to please the senses. The songs lacked any solid profundity. They were simple ramblings of how good it felt to be a Christian, nothing exhorting us to virtue, sacrifice, and the narrow way.

It was one of those days where instead of delivering a sermon, we watched a video of some mission work being done in a third world country. The lights were dimmed and the sort of music that elicits your compassion filled the shadows around our goosebumps. There were no scriptures, no details, no actual testimonies. Just statistics and a request for monetary support. I was used to such emotional strings being tugged at by missionaries, and although I’ve never felt quite right about it, have oddly never thought much of it, until sitting next to Andy who had never witnessed such a thing. Number flashed across the screen. Mostly focusing on Egypt, they shared numerous countries and their populations (often in the tens of thousands) compared with how many people knew of Christ.

This number was shockingly low. Maybe two or three people had salvation according to their records, but there were thousands and thousands supposedly suffering without the gospel.

Andy pulled out his dumb phone and managed to pull up another number that this video conveniently left untold. There are many Christians in Egypt, albeit Coptic Christians. And they constitute the second largest religion amassing upward of ten million souls.

This missionary stood before the congregation speaking of how he was called to preach the gospel to those who didn’t have it and needed $50k to build a church, neglecting to tell us that he was working in a place filled with rich, Christian roots… but to give him the benefit of the doubt, we saved our judgment until we could speak with the man.

“I’m impressed you’ve heard of Coptic Christians.” He told us. No, he didn’t minister to Muslims… that would be illegal and unsafe. Yes, he was aware the Coptic Christians had the same Bible we have, but they were still unreached, because they didn’t understand salvation. Why? Because they view Mary as the third part of the trinity. Andy suggested that perhaps they didn’t, but this minister was determined that he knew how they believed better than anyone else, and then went on to say, that sure they probably weren’t all going to hell, just like Catholics aren’t all lost. They are a worked based faith, he went on. Yes, they have better family values, and we can learn a lot about how to be hospitable from them. But unfortunately, they don’t know how to read the Bible.

It was horrifying.

Not once did he mention in his presentation that he was only preaching to people who already had the Bible. Not once did he clarify that he wanted funds to build a church for a people that already had a church… nor that their church, ancient and beautiful, would be replaced by some drab structure lacking any meaningful aesthetic. And to think that he requested so much to build such a simple, ugly building in a place rich of culture despite poverty… why would it cost so much anyway? Was this just a profitable scheme to confuse the innocent? And yet, others in the church also knew of the Coptic Christians and supported the endeavor, not questioning the outrageous requested sum, because they sincerely believed that they had truth salvation, and these people of ancient practice and faith did not. But the Muslims… they did not care to go to prison to save their souls. It was wrong, after all, to disobey the government.

For a moment curiosity was piqued in that direction during potluck. But the Appalachian missionary in his fitted suit said, “I don’t won’t to ruin your appetite by speaking of unsavory, politically incorrect subjects.”

And so, in their ignorance, these brash, vulgar people did what was right in their own eyes, giving away their money to deconstruct a heritage they knew nothing of, and deemed worthless, conflating their self-righteousness for nobility. It grew to be too much, and so we left, repulsed and wishing for some table to turn over.

This third church further cemented what we saw at the second church: a lack of respect for holy things invites a crude approach to our relations with our neighbors. Andy accredited this to the protestant separation from the Catholic church, somewhat initiated by Martin Luther. He argues that the belief “I know better than the church” never stops, and divisions will continue to splinter until every man is reading the Bible alone, with no neighbor to love, unless he submits himself to the highest, original authority: the catholic church.

I had suggested we do this experiment mostly because I wanted him to understand some of my upbringing and associations, but the comparisons were showing me new things I’d never fully faced despite my years of attendance, and in no other possible way, I was starting to understand what Andy meant. But I felt there must be something deeper even than that… aren’t divisions inevitable where corruption remains? How can the protestants be blamed for their sin of going away, when the Catholics originally separated themselves from the Jews, the original schism.

There are serious, wistful whispers of reuniting the orthodox and the Catholics, and of the protestants return as the final repentant prodigal. This retvrn to tradition, solemnity, and harmony would do something beautiful for Christianity on a whole… but I still believe the fractions are impossible to rectify without a deeper understanding of heritage. We must look further back to the first schism, the one between Jacob and Esau, between the Muslims, the Jews, and the Catholic church, and their unwillingness to be children of the same, Holy God, and of man seeing this weak spot and using it for his own glory, therefore defaming the name of God and the resurrection of the One Saviour who died that all might be saved, the jew and the gentile.

We fell to the very bottom of history and came full circle to early Christian practice all at once, experiencing the non-linearity of religion and faith: a home gathering at 6pm. A teenaged boy chorded on the piano, and we all sang loudly, with abandon. It was everything combined: the beginning, the decline, and the revival. There was no structure… there was a cry for direction. We prayed as we sang. We treated each other with respect, those who were tempted into sarcasm instead showed their wounds, and nobody threw a stone. This was fellowship, communion, and a mending of schisms, where the Jew and catholic and protestant at last reconvene and let go of their own understandings of what it means to be a good person and listen to Jesus.

You are my people.

It isn’t a “you” vs “you”. There is no “but he doesn’t read the Bible how I read the Bible” when we put aside the minds of literate, all-knowing men. It isn’t about who left first, or who left at all, but rather a recognizing of togetherness. The schism is material, imaginary, and evil. There is no individual, no unique testimony. We are all prodigal sons, each given some great talent to cherish and increase and tend over. We all have the same purpose and mission, and it is not to be alone in our bedrooms, saying our own prayers, discovering our own truths, worried over our own bodies, souls, and pride.

When we look past the ways of men, of modern, lackluster ugliness and unequitable beauty of the old ways, we walk in the mystical realm. We lay aside our desire to be right and whole, and we become the gospel. There are no words, no books, no bible, not even rituals or prayers or songs.

We are the living word, not saved by works, but sanctifying the world through our actions. It is a cleansing sensation, that tastes something of bread and wine, not of a narrow, hellish escape. And the proof is in the pudding: if our table is not well-laid and crowded then we have missed the boat, remaining in our own abode, screaming irreverently, “But I am right!”

And perhaps you are… but is truth some collection of ugly facts? Can truth, even when most difficult to swallow, ever be ugly? Is it not something that draws the lost to the light, something that shows the way to beauty, that reconciles us to that which we wish to reject because of fleshly pride.

Because of my love for beauty, and my disdain for the modern robotic method living life and going to church, it seems as if I ought to be orthodox or catholic to those who know anything about such matters. But because I was raised protestant, I think somewhat like one, and I can’t help but insist that the rift of the church is deeper and simpler than we might like to believe.

Protestants must submit to the ancient church. The schism between the Catholics and Orthodox should be rectified. The Holy Church will be made whole when God’s people are remembered and reclaimed. And this can’t happen until the Jews acknowledge Jesus as Master and the Muslims as their brother. It is undeniable that it is God’s will for all of us to be reconciled into His Kingdom, and yet we continue to strive and convert others to our ways of thinking, instead of submitting ourselves one to another.

And so, at the end of this day I did feel more inclined toward Catholicism than I thought I might, if only because of the way it evoked mystical memories of the early church. We didn’t arrive home until late that night, and we were ready for bed right away. And yet we were glad for this vivid step through time, and I began to imagine of ways to continue this spiritual overdose.

But now I am curious… have any of my readers ever tried to go to multiple churches in a day, that were of different sects and energies? What visions were elicited? How was your own faith impacted?