“Some will leave the faith”

Livestreamed service

I Timothy 4:1-6, 9-10 (Gafney, Year W)

Prayer…

Some will leave the faith…

We’ve heard for years about the decline of Christianity in the United States — or rather, the decline in the number of Christians in the United States.

When we hear or read about the statistics, what we’re usually talking about is actually the ethnocentrically focused decline in the number of white Christians in the US. The landscape looks different for Black folks and other People of Color, and these numbers vary depending on the denomination or affiliation.

A 2020 survey by PRRI — the Public Religion Research Institute — found that 70% of US Americans identify as one flavor or another of Christian. The Pew Research Center recently published numbers saying that it ’s 63% of US Americans that identify as Christian, down from 78% in 2007.

But numbers are numbers and we need to give them meaning. The fact that 6 or 7 out of every 10 US Americans identify as Christian doesn’t tell us much about the role faith plays in their life.

Some will leave the faith…

If you have the time and the inclination, I invite you to check out the articles and studies published online by the Pew Research Center. After all: I’m not here today to give a statistics lecture.

But these numbers do tell us — yes — that over the past decades, fewer US Americans identify as Christian, fewer people below retirement age identify as Christian, fewer regularly or even occasionally attend religious services, so on and so on.

Little side note from these studies: The percentage of those who identify as another religion has largely remained the same. It’s the percentage of those who do not identify as any religion that has increased from 16% to 29% over this same period. These numbers indicate people are leaving Christianity.

Yes, there is a decline in the number of Christians in the United States.

We can all come up with reasons why we think this is the case. I bet each of us knows someone who never identified as Christian to begin with. And I bet each of us knows a number of people who grew up in the faith and decided to disaffiliate for any number of reasons.

Some will leave the faith and all that goes with it in its entirety— that is true.
And some will leave the church but not leave the faith.

And then there are some who will leave the faith in other ways.

In our scripture today, we heard an excerpt of a letter from a spiritual mentor to his young and faithful protégé.

Tradition tells us that the Apostle Paul is the author, writing to a young man named Timothy. There is wide scholarly agreement that this is an example of Pauline fan fiction — not really written by the actual Paul to the actual Timothy. But we’ll set that aside for today.

In both the First and Second Letters to Timothy, Paul shares “sound teaching” that he wishes to pass down to his student, so that Paul’s legacy and his theology will continue through generations. Our modern minds read many of these lessons as quite conservative — concerned with achieving “godliness,” purity, piety, and maintaining a strict patriarchal hierarchy.

In these letters, there are words of encouragement for enduring hardship, admonishment to respect elders, and the instruction that those who are enslaved are to honor their oppressors, especially if their oppressors are Christian.

All in all, a mixed bag. And not a set of epistles we turn to that often in the United Church of Christ.

In this section of the letter, Paul cautions Timothy against other evangelists and apostles who would lead people away from the faith as it was laid out by Paul. 

Dr. Wil Gafney translates the passage like this:
“Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will leave the faith by paying attention to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are seared with a hot iron.”

In his authentic writing, Paul was indeed concerned with faithful people being led astray by false prophets — those who would come preaching a different interpretation or a different gospel. Yet as Paul writes to the Galatians:
“…not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.”  

Given his teachings in other letters such as Galatians and 2nd Corinthians, Paul was most likely warning Timothy about the faction of apostles and evangelists who required that a new convert to the faith must follow certain Mosaic laws such as circumcision and food prohibitions.

We must be careful and nuanced in our reading and understanding of this, because it can very easily become anti-Judaism and anti-semitism. This diatribe is not against Judaism. 

These were things that Paul saw as barriers to people joining the faith — conditions set out by others that we more like stumbling blocks laid down. In his authentic letters — remember, the actual Paul did not write this letter — Paul’s invitation to follow Christ was much more broad, specific to Gentiles, and was inclusive of all genders equally.

In the world of this letter, Paul cautions Timothy that there are those who will be led astray, convinced by deceitful and hypocritical liars that their way and not Paul’s way is the right and faithful way.

Paul is not saying that these people will cease to proclaim they are following Jesus — that they would disaffiliate and become “Nones” — N O N E S — in the survey.

Paul’s invective is against those who would stray from his teachings, yet proclaim that they remain a follower of Christ.

And friends: I believe that same danger is alive today.

See, not everyone who has left the faith has left the church.
Let me say that again: Not everyone who has left the faith has left the church.

Not everyone who has left the faith has left their claim to be Christian.

We’ve heard for years about the decline in the number of Christians in the United States.
But I’m more concerned about the decline of Christianity in the United States.

Let me be plain:
What I’m talking about here is Christian Nationalism.

My invective is against US American Christian Nationalism — that inwardly and outwardly fatal disease that has metastasized throughout the Body of Christ.

It runs rampant, and it is contagious.

US American Christian Nationalism conflates Christianity with whiteness and white supremacy. The proverbial golden calf takes the form of the cold steel of a gun. Love of neighbor is does not extend beyond one’s household. Care for the poor is called socialism or communism. Welcoming the stranger is prohibited by laws and walls. Care for the sick is monetized and seen as a privilege to be earned. Care for the prisoner is likewise monetized and seen as the consequence of inherent moral failings.

The image of Jesus is mutated from a brown-skinned, Jewish, Middle Eastern, peasant class, itinerant radical healer and prophet to a white-skinned, Euro-American, elitist, science-denying, gun-toting, racist, xenophobic, homophobic and transphobic, free market capitalist.

Deceitful spirits with lying tongues and damaged consciouses teach that an argument against their political stance is an outright attack on the Christian faith.

On all manner of things: public health and healthcare, firearms, immigration, history, school textbooks, taxes, voting, policing, civil rights and even human rights for Black and Brown folks and for trans and Queer folx —

Anything that would question or threaten the established power of white supremacy is twisted as an attack on Christianity — when it is really an attack on Christian Nationalism — which, itself, is what is truly attacking Christianity.

Yes, yes: Some will leave the faith.
Some will leave the faith, but they do not leave the church.

They do not leave the claim to be Christian.

And so, sisters, brothers, and siblings: May we in our day write these same letters as reminders to ourselves and warnings to future generations.

The Spirit is saying to us that in our present days there are those who are led astray, who leave the faith due to the teachings of deceitful, lying, hypocritical people with a decimated conscience.

Teach these stories and write these words: That our hope is in a living God who desires justice and righteousness for all and who made the lowly, holy. That God became flesh in the person of a poor, vulnerable, itinerant, brown-skinned prophet named Jesus who sought out the lost, the lonely, and the least — the beaten up and the beaten down.

Teach that Jesus said you honor and serve God by loving your neighbor, by feeding the hungry, visiting the sick and imprisoned, clothing the naked, giving sanctuary to the refugee and stranger.

There are those who will come to the faith and who will return to the faith because of these teachings, and we will be nourished on the words of the faith and of the good teaching that we have followed.

Amen.