The Internet Monk Archives

Saturday Ramblings, March 15, 2014

Welcome to the weekend, fellow imonkers. It is now about two months that I have had the privilege of writing the ramblings, and I think Pope Francis made the cut every week. But since Martha had two wonderful posts on Francis of Monday and Tuesday of this week, I will refrain from all pope-talk. If you haven’t read Martha’s posts, please do. She is an incredible writer.

Since March Madness is not mad enough, Warren Buffet has announced he will give a billion (yes, with a “b”) dollars to anyone who completes a perfect bracket for the tourney. So our first discussion question of the post is this: what would you do with the billion if you defied the odds? And don’t say “give it to charity” you little do-gooder, unless you specify which charities and why you picked them.

Quick, what’s wrong with this ad for a sniper rifle, at right? If you said, “It desecrates and trivializes one of the greatest treasures of western culture in order to make a quick buck”, then congratulations: you have more sense than the entire marketing department at ArmaLite. The ad is creating quite a stir in Italy, with the Culture Minister calling it “offensive” (which seems like rather of an understatement). And exactly which magazines host full-page adds for $3,300 sniper rifles, anyway?

In related news, ArmaLite has cancelled it’s “Mona Lisa with a sniper bullet through her forehead” print campaign.

Bernice King this week turned over the personal Bible and the Noble Peace Price which belonged to her father, Martin Luther King, Jr. Her brothers desire to sell these, a move Bernice called, “spiritually violent, unconscionable, historically negligent, and outright morally reprehensible.” I would normally find that type of language over-the-top. Not this time.

Best long read of the week goes to the New Yorker, for the first interview with the father of Adam Lanza, the Newtown killer. Peter Lanza comes across as mourning and remorseful, while warning that anyone could have missed the signs of his son’s inner struggles. He also talks about whether his son’s Asperger’s diagnosis actually helped or whether it simply masked much deeper problems. In the end he concludes with this heart-wrenching verdict: “I wish he had never been born”.

Did you know that 2016 will host something not seen in 1,200 years? What is it? An ecumenical council of the Orthodox churches.

Ashutosh Maharaj led the Divya Jyoti Jagrati Sansthan (Divine Light Awakening Mission) which claims more than 30 million followers. He was recently declared dead by Indian authorities in Punjab. His followers aren’t buying the death verdict. And so confident are they that he is merely in a state of deep meditation, they froze his corpse. “He is not dead. Medical science does not understand things like yogic science. We will wait and watch. We are confident that he will come back,” his spokesman Swami Vishalanand told the BBC.

Christianity is estimated to be growing 10 times faster in Asia than in Europe, according to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts. Many attribute this growth to the wide-spread adoption of the mega-church model, combined with Pentecostal prosperity teaching. Megachurches began in the United States, but many of the largest are in Asia (South Korea’s Yoido Full Gospel Church claims 1 million members). “Whatever method that can most effectively convey the message to our generation, we will do it,” said one pastor.

Meanwhile, the pastor of a Swedish Pentecostal mega-church stunned his congregation with the announcement (during Sunday morning worship) that he and his wife were converting to Catholicism.

Continue reading “Saturday Ramblings, March 15, 2014”

Lies, Damn Lies, and [Church Divorce] Statistics

While the phrase did not originate with him, Mark Twain once quipped, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Statistics have always been an interest of mine, and it was my offer of statistical support for Michael Spencer’s “Coming Evangelical Collapse” that resulted in me starting to write for Internet Monk.

Mark Twain wasn’t off by much in his quote. Statistics can be easily misinterpreted by the well meaning, or twisted to fit an agenda. Regardless of intent, much of what you will hear or read when it comes to statistics should be taken with a grain of salt. There is no better example of this than Church Divorce Statistics.

The most common mistake that I run into, is that people fail to realize that correlation does not imply causation. Or to put it more simply, just because two sets of information seem to move in tandem, does not mean that one caused the other. The best silly example of this, is the inverse correlation between the number of pirates and global warming. As the number of pirates has decreased over the centuries, the world temperature has gone up. Correlation? Yes. Causation? What do you think is more likely? That a decreasing number of pirates has caused global warming, or that an increase in world temperatures has led to a decrease in piracy? Of course we realize that both are ridiculous claims.

So here are two more claims of causation which have been made because of correlations. They too should also be taken with a large pinch of salt.

1. Living together before marriage leads to higher rates of divorce.

2. Increased church attendance results in lower divorce rates. (You may have recalled this one from last Saturday’s ramblings.)
Continue reading “Lies, Damn Lies, and [Church Divorce] Statistics”

Another Look: Come to the Quiet

Note from CM: I will be going to The Abbey of Gethsemani in a couple of weeks for a few days of retreat. Having confirmed my reservation today, I was reminded of this simple invitation to silence from August, 2012.

* * *

Yet in our busy, noisy, overstimulating mission field of the world, it is one of the church’s high callings to give the gift of silence, of greater spaciousness to make room for contemplative encounters with the means of grace, so that the Spirit may most freely do the works of salvation to form us in faith.

– Jonathan Linman, Holy Conversation: Spirituality for Worship

The world and our lives are noisy and overstimulating — yes, that is clear. We know this. We feel this.

What gift does the church have to give to such a world, to such lives?

It seems that, for many churches, the gifts they think they must offer entail more noise, more stimulation, more activity, perhaps even more stress.

Why do we do this?

Are there truly sound reasons for imagining that the best ways of introducing people to Jesus must involve competing with our culture’s busyness, frenetic pace, pumped-up volume, and manic multitasking?

What, instead, if our invitation was, “Come to the quiet”?

I remember a lesson a wise coach once taught me about getting the attention of a group of noisy, rambunctious kids. One’s natural instinct is to raise your voice higher and higher, to try to outdo them in volume, to yell and scream and demand that they shut up and listen. Instead, this man learned that a whisper usually did the trick better. He would make a motion to let his players know he had something to say, and then he would start addressing them in a low, calm voice. One by one, they would quiet down and shush each other so that they could hear what he was trying to tell them.

What if we did that instead?

What if the Lord is not in the earthquake, wind, or fire? What if: “After the fire, there was a sound. Thin. Quiet.” (1Kings 19:12, CEB)? What if moments of stillness are the settings that indicate God is present, ready to to converse with us?

Jesus bids us follow him, walk with him. At a walking pace. With a Friend. Having conversation. Aware of our surroundings. Attentive. Quiet. Personal. Peaceful.

What if our invitation to the world was the same?

“Come, walk with us as we walk with Jesus.”

“Come, sit with us at his feet as we listen and learn and contemplate his words.”

“Come, join us at the table for simple food and friendly conversation, for laughter and the pleasure of good company; unrushed, unforced.”

“Come into the sanctuary and spend time alone with God any time you like. Breathe. Light a candle. Watch the light dance and play as it shines through the stained glass. Smell the wood and fabric, saturated with incense. Imagine the saints and angels watching over you. Open a Bible, a hymnal, a prayer book. Listen. Listen. Speak if you must, but try to listen.”

“Come, slow down with us.”

“Come, let’s find the path of peace together.”

“Come, let us learn to do whatever work God calls us to do from hearts that are quiet, from spirits at rest in Jesus.”

“Come to the quiet.”

Imagine. What if…?

Shh.

Lent with Bergman 1 – Wild Strawberries

All along the line, there’s nothing but cold and death and loneliness. It must end somewhere.

– from Wild Strawberries

* * *

It seems to me the movies of Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman would provide fruitful material for us as a source of contemplation during Lent. As part of this year’s IM Lenten emphasis, we will discuss a few of these important 20th century works of artistic genius.

In the 1950s and 1960s Bergman directed a number of European art films that became a canon for students of serious cinema. He used dark, haunting imagery and symbolism concerning the nature and meaning of life, death, God, and human relationships that sparked many a conversation on college campuses and in coffee shops. Jason Ankeny’s bio says that Bergman transformed “a medium long devoted to spectacle into an art capable of profoundly personal meditations into the myriad struggles facing the psyche and the soul.”

Facing our struggles is not the whole of Lent, but certainly forms a part of it. In this season we are encouraged to participate in disciplines of examination and renewal, and as we do we, like Christ in the wilderness, come face to face with fundamental issues of human existence and the testings that accompany them.

A good place to start with Bergman’s films is Wild Strawberries [Smultronstället] (1957), one of his warmest and most accessible early works, thanks primarily to the rich, poignant performance of Victor Sjöström in the lead role.

Wild Strawberries is the story of a day’s journey in the life of an successful and respected doctor, Professor Isak Borg. Borg is a widower who lives an unexamined lonely life, cold and aloof from others, especially those closest to him.

The occasion comes when the doctor is to be honored for fifty years of medical practice. He decides to take his car rather than fly to to the ceremony, and he takes his daughter-in-law with him. She has been separated from Borg’s son and doesn’t really like the old man. But she finds that time together in the car gives her opportunity to have revelatory direct, personal conversations with him. They also pick up hitchhikers — two young men and a young woman — who ride with them to the end of the journey. The woman is a double for Borg’s first, long-lost love and this sparks longing and regret in his heart. The travelers have an incident with a quarreling husband and wife who remind the doctor of his own painful marriage. Along the way, they visit the cottage where Borg’s family spent summers during his youth, the town where he had his first medical practice, and his aged mother in her home.

The road trip in Wild Strawberries provides an opportunity to trace the sojourn in Dr. Borg’s soul. Conversations, images, reflections, and dreams he experiences as they travel help him face himself, his mortality, his regrets and failures, and differences between his distorted self-image and what other people really think of him.

Dreams are particularly important devices in this film. A surreal vision of a funeral carriage forces Dr. Borg to face his mortality straight on at the outset. Later, he has an touching nostalgic reverie of the summer cottage and young love. He also has a deeply disturbing dream: the lecture hall where he once taught becomes an examination room in which he is tested and found wanting. In the end, when Borg closes his eyes and beholds a scene of serene contentment, it reflects that he has, in some sense, begun to come to terms with his life and relationships.

* * *

Lent is the season of mask-destruction.

Listen to your life. Listen to your past. Listen to those around you, those who know you best.

Stop listening to the voices of self-defense that keep you deceived. Stop speaking excuses. Let the truth sink in.

Take the journey. Face yourself honestly.

In a dream, Dr. Borg heard these words: “A doctor’s first duty is to ask for forgiveness.”

It is everyone’s first duty.

* * *

Wild Strawberries [Smultronstället] (1957)
Written and directed by Ingmar Bergman
Starring Victor Sjöström, Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Gunnar Björnstrand

Many of Bergman’s films are in The Criterion Collection and available on Hulu Plus.

Is the Pope a Catholic? (part 2)

Read part one of Is the Pope a Catholic?

* * *

So who is this liberal, progressive, modernising pope with no hang-ups about sex and contraception and divorce and abortion, who constantly preaches on the value and necessity of the Sacrament of Confession and the reality of the Devil, who came back from studying in Germany in the 80s with, not the latest in theological progressivism, but the 18th century devotion to Our Lady, Undoer of Knots, which he introduced to great success in Buenos Aires and which has since spread throughout Argentina and Brazil, who has obvious Marian devotion in how he welcomed the statue of Our Lady of Fatima, went on pilgrimage to the shrine of Aparecida in Brazil during the World Youth Day, and is always popping in to visit the icon of Salus Populi Romani in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore?

As a Jesuit, he is the first pope to be a member of a religious order since 1831 (that was Gregory XVI, who was a monk in the Camaldolese order, part of the Benedictine monastic family). I think you can see the Jesuit influence in his pastoral emphasis and his liturgical style. I also think – and this is my own personal impression – that he is very definitely a post-Vatican II Catholic, in how he approaches everything from the vestments he wears to bureaucratic reform of the Vatican and the role of the laity in the Church.

Please note, this is not a criticism. I don’t think he’s one of the “Spirit of Vatican II” types, the ones who in the first flush of enthusiasm wrecked churches wholesale by pulling them asunder and tossing out everything from devotions to sodalities to altar rails to the confession boxes; who for the past fifty years have been “Any day now!” about married priests, women priests, remarriage in church for the divorced (though Pope Francis is taking a pastoral approach to that problem, too), artificial contraception, abortion, lay leadership, symbolic rather than literal understanding of the Eucharist (can you tell I’m bitter about the craze for teaching children that Communion is “like a meal, or a party with your friends!” instead of “the holy sacrifice of the altar”?) and twenty other matters from the environment to capitalism to union with other faiths and none.

Ahem. My personal prejudices are showing there, I think. But there are orthodox Catholics, faithfully attending parishes where the progressivist wing has been greatly encouraged by Pope Francis and use him as an excuse for “Oh, we don’t believe that’s a sin anymore!” teaching, where stating the official and unchanged teaching of the Church gets you looked at like you have two heads, and maybe you’re a sexist racist homophobe on top of it as well. They feel discouraged at best and betrayed at worst. I have some sympathy for them, but my view is this:

During Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict’s time, we told them “He’s the pope, suck it up!” about teaching they didn’t like to hear. Well, now it’s our turn to do the same.

He’s the pope, not God Almighty. If we truly believe the promise of Christ to preserve the Church from error, he can make a lot of mistakes and still not permanently damage Her. And considering some of his predecessors in the See of Peter, that’s a lot of leeway. In the words of the alleged exchange between Napoleon and Cardinal Consalvi, Secretary of State for the Papal States who was opposing French policy

– Napoleon: Do you not know I can destroy your Church?

– Cardinal Consalvi: Sir, not even we priests have been able to do that in 1,800 years!

Continue reading “Is the Pope a Catholic? (part 2)”

Is the Pope a Catholic? (part 1)

This March is the first anniversary of the election of Pope Francis, the former Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires. Reactions have, in the main, been of two kinds:

He’s the greatest thing that ever happened to the Catholic Church!
He’s the worst thing that ever happened to the Catholic Church!

We’ve heard very few moderate opinions along the line of “He’s the pope, true, but he’s only one pope in the line. He won’t damn the Church (if we believe the words of Christ) and the same way he won’t save the Church.”

For someone who was fairly obscure before the Conclave, elected as a replacement for Pope Benedict XVI, he has gained a lot of favorable attention from unexpected sources, such as being named “Time Magazine Man of the Year” and being put on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.

Mainly, this is based on things he has done which appeal to the media which can be easily characterised, to take a line from the Rolling Stone article, as “conservatives who have gone liberal”. Things such as choosing to reside in the St. Martha guesthouse rather than the papal apartments, the vestments he wears, and even the pectoral cross and ring he wears, as well as the stories about taking the bus, paying his own bills, and the like, make for a very easy presentation of him as being a contrast to his immediate predecessor. Simplicity versus old-fashioned grandeur; extrovert versus introvert; live-and-let-live versus insistence on rules and regulations – it’s a constant refrain of “Francis this vs. Benedict that”. Whether this is his true intention or not, he’s seen as a pope who is in tune with the modern, secular world, one palatable to its tastes.

I can’t help but be reminded of the adulation about Blessed Pope John XXIII and how, in the years since Vatican II, there has been a refrain of “If only he had lived to see it through!” and wistful listing of all the changes we would have seen “if only”. It seems, at times, as if Pope Francis is perceived as a second John XXIII, that finally the liberal or progressive wing of the Church has the pope it has been waiting for so long, and now all its long-cherished dreams will come to fruition.

It’s not only on the left (though I hate using politically-derived terms such as “left” or “right” wing in the context of religion) that this view is promulgated. If some hail these possibilities with delight, others touch on them with horror and despair.

Literally within minutes of the announcement of Jorge Bergoglio as Pope Francis, one particular Traditionalist website (and I’m mentioning no names in the spirit of charity) was prognosticating all manner of doom from the very way he walked out on the balcony – including a breathless live-blogging of how he had to be “forced” to wear the stole before giving the papal blessing (something I can say had no basis in reality as I was watching the same live broadcast they were).

Reports from Argentina alleging that he had, putting it at its kindest, foot-dragged on implementing the moto proprio, and at worst, that he was actively hostile to Traditionalism, were being plastered all over. Here was a pope, it was as good as said, who would destroy all the hard-won progress made undoing the excesses of Vatican II. Here was the long-awaited Antichrist!

Continue reading “Is the Pope a Catholic? (part 1)”

All Is Lost

The other night, I watched the film, “All Is Lost,” which is the story of a lone sailor adrift in the Indian Ocean who struggles to survive. I found it to be a film that lends itself to contemplation, with a couple of good lessons to think about during this Lenten season.

All Is Lost is a remarkable movie. It has only one character, played by Robert Redford, and his character has no name. The credits list him as “Our Man,” and this tips us off that his journey has metaphorical significance. The film has no dialogue. Its only words come in a voice-over at the beginning in which Our Man reads a farewell note, believing hope is gone, and in a couple of expletives that explode from his mouth at key moments. For the rest of the movie he remains mute, engaged in silent hand to hand combat, human being vs. nature, mano a mano, in a context stripped down to basics.

Continue reading “All Is Lost”

Saturday Ramblings, March 8, 2014

UPDATE: Bill Gothard resigns from IBLP and affiliated organizations.

* * *

Happy weekend, imonkers. Here in the Midwest, we are finally above freezing (at least during the day). And, of course, Lent began this week. Did you give anything up? One analysis of the top things people gave up for lent is based on tweets, and looks like this:

Rank	What	Number of Tweets
1.	chocolate	5,395
2.	twitter	4,915
3.	school	3,630
4.	alcohol	3,046
5.	swearing	2,740
6.	social networking	2,690
7.	soda	2,148
8.	sweets	1,993
9.	fast food	1,721
10.	junk food	1,281

Mark Galli has given up self-discipline for Lent. And, no, he is not being facetious. Will Willimon gives a thoughtful (as usual) take on why we can be joyful during Lent. And the Wall Street Journal reports on Ash Selfies.

Who would hate the Dalai Lama? These guys, who have been following him around with pickets signs, and called him “The Worst Dictator in the World.”

Does the Catholic Church have a drinking problem? Some Catholics think so: “From parishes to parochial schools to university classrooms, the Church is failing in its responsibility to talk about the pernicious impact of alcohol (and even drugs) on so many people in our society, along with the detrimental impact it has on achieving the common good. One is more likely to see devout Catholics being flip about drinking—or even romanticizing and glorifying it—than confronting the nihilism, escapism, and despair that are a big part of our nation’s drinking culture and the wreckage that it leaves in its wake.”

From the Truth is Stranger than Fiction Department comes this quote about church outreach: “One of the things we’ve been doing recently is morphing these wild-game dinners into Second Amendment rallies. You know, we get in there and we burp and scratch and we talk about, you know, the right to bear arms and all that stuff….One of the things that we’ve learned in doing these is that when you do an affinity event, you have to have a hook that draws the unchurched. In the event of a Second Amendment rally the number of unchurched men that show up will be in direct proportion to the number of guns you give away.” That’s right, churches are giving away guns as a form of evangelism. Not just one or two churches; it is part of the Kentucky Baptist Church’s outreach strategy. So many questions arise here:

What caliber of church would do this?
Is the Second Amendment in the Bible? Did I miss that?
Are the burping and scratching mandatory? If so, how much of each?

Well, this is interesting. 82% of white evangelicals believe that God gave the Land of Israel to the Jewish people, but only 40% of American Jews who believe the same. Also, 46% of the first group believe American Foreign Policy is not supportive enough of Israel, while only 31% of the second group concur.

The 2014 Oscars were last Sunday night? Did you watch? I confess as I get older I have less and less interest in glitterati worship services. So, no, I didn’t watch. But I did hear of this quote, from the acceptance speech of Matthew McConaughey: “There’s three things that I need each day. One of them is something to look up to, another is something to look forward and another is someone to chase. First off, I want to thank God, ’cause that’s who I look up to. He’s graced my life with opportunities that I know is not of my hand or any other human hand. He has shown me that it’s a scientific fact that gratitude reciprocates. In the words of the late Charlie Lawton who said ‘when you got God, you got a friend and that friend is you.'” I am really, really not sure what to make of that last sentence.

Continue reading “Saturday Ramblings, March 8, 2014”

Reviewing “What is an Average Size Church?”

Chaplain Mike’s post on small churches reminded me of one of the first posts I had made on Internet Monk in July of 2009. As many of our current readers may not have seen it, I thought it would be worthwhile to post again. Based on the last two surveys that were done, the numbers likely have not changed much since this post was originally published.

You may have heard people say that the “average” sized church in the U.S. or Canada is about 75 people. You also may have heard someone say that the “average” sized church in North America is about 185 people. Who is right? It all depends how you define “average”.

Statisticians use three terms when describing populations. “Mean”, “Median”, and a third term that won’t really enter our discussion today called “Mode”.

I have borrowed, and expanded upon, an analogy from the The National Congregations Study that was released last month, to help us understand the differences in these terms and why they are important to our understanding of churches in North America. What you will read here is U.S. data, but the numbers are very similar for the Canadian situation as well.

Imagine you are looking down a very, very long street, and all the churches of U.S. are lined up along the left side of the street from smallest to largest. In behind each church are all their Sunday morning attenders.

If you counted the grand total of everyone standing behind each church and then divided this number by the total number of churches that you see on this very long street, you would come up with a “mean” or “average” size of 184. “Mean” is usually what we mean of when we think of “average”. But this number of 184 is a very misleading number.

Lets say you start walking down the street, passing the churches with 5 people on a Sunday morning, 10 people, 15 people, 20 people. You continue walking until you have passed half of all the churches in America. Half of the churches in the U.S. are now behind you, half are still in front. The “average” church that you are standing in front of is called the “median” church. You look to see how many people are lined up behind it, and you see 75 people. That is right, half the churches in the United States have less than 75 people.

The average or “mean” church at 184 is 2.45 times the size of the average median church at 75. Why is this so? If you continue walking, you will get a better understanding of how skewed church numbers are within the United States.

So, you continue walking, past the churches of 80, 90, 100, 110. You walk until you have passed 90% of all the churches. You look to your left and you see 350 people lined up behind this church. Much to your surprise, although you have passed 90% of all the churches, over half of the churchgoers are still in front of you! This is why the “mean” is so much higher than the “median”. While most of the churches in the United States are small, most of the attenders go to large churches.

You keep walking, past the churches of 360, 370, 380. It isn’t until you reach a church of size 400 that you will have the same number of people behind you as in front of you. This means that half of church attenders in the U.S. go to churches larger than 400. If we were to use the word “average” again, we would see that the “average” or “median” churchgoer was in a church of 400. Not only that, but this means that half of all those who attend church are in less that 10% of the churches!

Continue reading “Reviewing “What is an Average Size Church?””

The Dark Side of Small

In forsaking the ability to change, they diminish the capacity for hope.

– Kathleen Norris

I have often praised smaller churches. I continue to hope in the restoration of community life across the U.S. and the revitalization of neighborhood churches that will bring the Gospel back down to its proper human scale.

But I am not wholly idealistic and naïve. Wherever there are human beings trying to make it through life together, there are problems. It matters not whether the setting is large or small. Every community of people faces challenges which, if not handled with wisdom, grace, and love, will threaten its health and perhaps even its existence.

Re-reading Kathleen Norris’s contemplative classic, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, I was struck by the chapter, “Gatsby on the Plains,” about how folks in small settings can become insular, resistant to change, quick to turn on one another, vulnerable to conspiratorial thinking, suspicious of “outsiders,” and incapable of absorbing new information. I have seen all these tendencies and more in small communities and congregations. I recognize them in myself.

Kathleen Norris observed how people in her small South Dakota community tended to live in the past, when life was more prosperous and satisfying. “If we could only go back,” they said. Forgetting the problems that were present then and ignoring the progress and positive changes in the world since their community was “Eden,” they long for an idyllic time in the past that was somehow taken away from them. As Norris notes, “Paradise wasn’t self-sufficient after all, and the attitude and belief that it ever was is part of the reason it’s gone.”

She also describes a commitment to stability that becomes, in reality, a death wish. Though the world “outside” may change constantly and dramatic ways, we remain the same and this is to be preferred. “Values that once served to protect and preserve the town become threats to its survival,” Norris notes. When new opportunities that will open up future possibilities present themselves, the cry goes up, “We never had to do that before, and we did alright, by God!”

This leads to new lines being drawn and conflicts. Those who are more open to change may suddenly find themselves on the other side of the aisle in church from those committed to stability. Of her town Norris laments, “It is painful to watch intelligent businesspeople who are dedicated to the welfare of the town spend most of their energy combatting those more set in their ways.” And thus inertia not only cuts us off from the future but also from one another.

Because of this small churches may lose their best and brightest people. This has been happening for a long time in rural communities across our nation. Many leave, never return, and suffer no regrets in staying away from their provincial past. Some do return, often with romantic notions of a simpler life and a supportive face-to-face community. However, Kathleen Norris observed that these returnees themselves often shrank in soul over time: “As their frame of reference diminishes, so do their aspirations and their ability to adapt to change.” She noticed teachers who had stopped reading, youth who saw no point in preparing themselves for anything, farmers who couldn’t grasp the need to learn about changing markets. Many couldn’t imagine the point of taking and reading the newspaper. They lost the virtue of curiosity.

It becomes easier for people who have come to “idealize their isolation” to latch on to conspiracy theories. They see themselves as the holy remnant, guardians of the old wisdom vs. the new, who pridefully lean on their own understanding and skill and threaten the ancient ways of righteousness. Various “shamans” become their guides: political extremists, prophecy teachers, or maybe just the local “expert” who continually dampens enthusiasm for anything outside a local perspective.

This insular thinking sees outsiders, particularly gifted outsiders, as threatening. As Norris says, “Such outsiders can unwittingly pose a threat to the existing social order, and if their newcomers’ enthusiasm doesn’t wear off, if their standards don’t fall to meet the town’s, and especially if they keep on trying to share what they know, they have to be discouraged, put down, or even cast out.” Once evicted, community members may speak of them for years as scapegoats for their own problems. Unfortunately, Norris observes that resisting outside influence to protect our institutions only leaves us with mediocre and unstable institutions.

Summarizing these tendencies, Kathleen Norris quotes G. Keith Gunderson, a Lutheran minister intimately acquainted with the region, who describes the darkness that threatens small communities (and small congregations) with these devastating words:

Progress is illusion and hope is folly. We are born, we live, we die. Leave us alone.

Churches that stay small and isolated because of such attitudes can’t die fast enough.