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"Over the past year, I’ve engaged in an ongoing conversation with a forty-year-old clergyperson struggling with institutional religion. Like many other pastors, he’s grown weary of church work. COVID certainly didn’t help. However, he felt close to burnout even before the pandemic arrived. It wasn’t just routine congregational pettiness, conflict, and criticism that troubled him. “I can put up with church crap,” he told me. “But I can no longer tolerate the disconnect between Jesus and the institutional church. They don’t remotely resemble each other anymore. I’m not sure they ever did.”

Several months ago, he resigned from his church, left vocational ministry, and took a job as a social worker. He also quit going to church and doubts he’ll ever return. He explained his life-altering decision by saying, “I’ve finally come to the sad conclusion that if I want to authentically follow Jesus, I have to leave organized religion.” 

Being in the church has been like staying in a long-term abusive relationship. The problem is I love the girl so much. At least I think it’s love. Maybe it’s infatuation. Perhaps it’s Stockholm syndrome. I’m not sure. Anyway, I stayed because I had this stubborn hope she would change. I dreamt of being the valiant hero who came along, swept her off her feet, and dramatically transformed her into the stunning princess she was meant to be. Unfortunately, nothing I did seemed to work. Over the years, things just seemed to get worse.

Time after time she abused me. She verbally assaulted me. She tried to control me. She manipulated me. She gaslighted me. She stabbed me in the heart with a rusty and serrated knife. But like a lovesick idiot, I kept coming back. I thought, “Maybe tomorrow it will be different. Maybe tomorrow she’ll love me for who I am, in all my theological quirkiness.” But she didn’t. And after some reflection, I finally came to the realization we needed a break. (p. 15)

In his best-selling book, If God Is Love Don’t Be a Jerk (WJK, 2021), well-known blogger John Pavlovitz speaks openly about his disappointment and disillusionment with institutional religion in America, especially in the evangelical sector: “I am sickened by this thing claiming to be Christianity. . . this monstrosity. . . would be unrecognizable to him. . . . Sadly, the American Church has in many ways become the greatest argument for someone not becoming a Christian, for rejecting organized religion and never looking back” (pp. 136–37).

In the introduction to her most recent book, Freeing Jesus (Harper One, 2021), Diana Butler Bass puts a provocative spin on the theme of leaving church. She tells about a religious experience she once had while looking at an image of Jesus at the Washington National Cathedral. As she knelt at the marble altar, prayed, and gazed at a massive icon of Christ, she heard the voice of Jesus say to her, “Get me out of here.” Diana’s husband still laughs about “that time Jesus asked you to spring him from the slammer.”

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