UCC Experience

Marie and I went to a United Church of Christ service this morning. Jacob was away for the weekend celebrating his anniversary.

UCC was recommended to me by several folks who heard that the UUs weren’t “churchy” enough for me. It was described to me by several people as “like-UU, but for folks who believe in Jesus.” The two churches develop some education classes together for young people.

It may be because today is Earth Day, but the service was particularly skewed toward that theme. Both the pastor (a woman, yay) and a congregant who spoke during the service, talked about the importance of environmentalism to the church. We were all asked to read a book about the environment. The importance of recycling was reinforced as was the importance of appreciating nature.

To be honest? I’m not outdoorsy, and most talk about nature doesn’t resonate with me. To be completely bald about it? I canvassed door to door all over Southeastern Michigan in high school for Greenpeace and I give money to Clean Water Action now and call it good. I feel guilty for not recycling with more vigilance but I also feel like I’ve paid my dues. I know I said environmentalism was important to me in a church but upon further reflection, I’m not interested in hearing about it from the pulpit. I’m interested in hearing about God from the pulpit. And service. Because that directly reflects Jesus’s teaching. But Jesus wasn’t mentioned today, not even in a hymn, and once Marie noticed that, I realized I missed it, too.

Also, and I might as well say it because it did affect my experience there, while I did like the sanctuary, I was physically uncomfortable. The pews were hard and bit into my back. I noticed that a really nice, big portion of the parking lot was devoted to handicapper spots but there was no room for wheelchairs or walkers anywhere that I could see and the pulpits were so cramped that I couldn’t even stand comfortably for the hymns.

Also, there’s one other thing, and this may damn me in the eyes of some of my peers, but if you’ve hung in with me during this 15+ month long odyssey of church talk and all my endless ruminations, I think you’ve earned it.

There are levels of left wing political entrenchment that I haven’t reached. I came of age in the 90s. That’s when I came one class shy of a double major in Women’s Studies. I still live in that space. Gender Studies came after me and I didn’t follow. I came across a recent study that says 50% of Millennials believe gender is a fluid concept. That is an incredible sea change to me. And it is far from my personal experience, and the experience of the people: gay, straight, and somewhere in between, that I know. Maybe I live a sheltered life, but I don’t personally know anyone who has undergone gender reassignment, with or without surgery. Today at church there was a large example sign of how to fill out our visitor name badges with our preferred pronouns. Some regular churchgoers also had their preferred pronouns on their pre-printed name badges. I would always respect another person’s chosen pronouns, but I’m not going to announce my own, and I’m not comfortable with bringing cultural politics to such a prominent place in my church. I want to find God in church, not demonstrate or otherwise prove my left-wing credentials, which is what this feels like. Maybe it’s totally me and I’m old-fashioned and behind the times, but I’m obviously female, I’m comfortable with that, and I don’t feel like I need to explain it in any way. I don’t need to announce my pronouns on my own name badge and I’m suspicious of a group decision to encourage everyone to do so.

So, in short, I think I realized today that as liberal a person as I am, I’m not looking to have those credentials reinforced by my church in the world of the culture wars. When it comes to cultural politics, I’m going to choose a church that puts spiritual sophistication above cultural modernity by focusing on applying scripture in a loving, open-minded way but not using today’s most extreme left wing positions as the church’s norm for everyone.