Note: This testimony was given at Andrews University’s Honors Church (November 6, 2021) as part of a section addressing ways in which worship can be isolating.
I am in the business of studying both the human mind and the English language. This means that I hear a lot of stories–all kinds of stories. Textbooks, play reading, research papers, all of it. I hear stories about power, I hear stories about behaviorism, I hear stories about the Renaissance, I hear stories about hope. The one thing that remains constant in all of the stories that I hear is that I hear stories about people. So let me do what I do best, and let me relay to you some stories that are not mine–not because I am ashamed of them, or that I want to somehow distance them from myself, but because to deny the original tellers their voice would be to minimize their pain while inflicting it upon them again. So with your permission, let me tell you a story.
A young man who loves someone sits in a pew and listens to his father preach about what a shame it is that some people almost make it to heaven, that some people fall short of the standard of a God who is foundationally based in love. He sits on a cold wooden bench and listens to lectures about a God that loves everyone equally except. That God has created him wrong. That his person is disgusting to God. That sure, God hates the sin and loves the sinner but his sin and his sinner are so deeply intertwined that the only thing he can do is to cut his identity out of his chest and place it, beating and bloody, on an altar of sacrifice to a loving God that hates him.
A middle-aged woman stands in a house of worship and hears from the pulpit that her voice does not exist. That her person, her being, her ‘she’ is worth less in the eyes of God than the man sitting four rows in front of her. When she speaks she is ignored. When she communicates to God as a leader in congregational prayer, the front rowers whisper to themselves that “it was better when the head elder did it.” She has ideas, good ideas. For years she has trained in organizational skills; she has a powerful speaking voice and a working car. But when she applies for eldership they tell her that her services would be better used in potluck.
A young person wears earrings. I think you can fill in the blank.
A community with a long, rich history is suddenly met by strange, new people. They call themselves ‘missionaries’ and they bear a strange symbol on their chest. They build schools, these guests, on land that isn’t theirs, they fill these schools with the people who owned this land to begin with, and they teach them how to hate themselves. They teach them that their families' art, history, songs, and faiths are barbaric, wrong. Eventually, more strange people come. They may not call themselves missionaries, but many carry this cross on their chest. And they start to steal people and take them away. They steal more people. They steal more. And more. There are ten thousand bodies lying on the Atlantic floor in the name of the cross.
The natural state of the human being is to crave others. We are built for community. We are designed for companionship. The togetherness of worship is its greatest strength but it is also its greatest flaw–the moment that worship becomes for ‘everyone except -/-’ is when it ceases to be worship and becomes a weapon. Worship can be alienating. And alienation is a powerful, powerful thing. As we take part in worship, a cultural practice with a very long history, I encourage you to take a moment and reflect on how it has failed. To change, we must listen. There are voices that historically have not been heard, and if worship is to be a warm, welcoming, and accepting place then it has to be a place that will listen without argument, without the ‘I am right and you are wrong’ that so often turns into ‘I am right and you are damned’. A genuine community of worship is a community that allows everyone–everyone–to speak. Now, I am not saying that the way that you have been worshiping is wrong, or that who you worship is wrong. I am not saying that at all. I am saying that to ignore the voices of those whom Christian worship has hurt would be to participate in the long history of oppression that will haunt Christianity as long as it lives. God is not our traditions. God is not our worship. God is above these things. But we use God’s name for everything. So what, pray tell, have we been using God’s name for?
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.