HABIT OR HOBBY?

Bishop N. T. Wright, former Bishop of York, makes the statement near the conclusion of his book After You Believe that church going used to be a habit of the many but is now a hobby of the few. After reading the statistics of church going in the United Kingdom where about 5% attend church on any given Sunday, I can agree with his observation and certainly understand his concern being a “professional religious” myself.

Church going, however, has never been the habit of the majority in this country, at least for the last fifty or more years, certainly in the 43+ years of my ministry. And while we in this country attend church more than those who live in Europe, attendance is far from what it used to be even on the traditional two high holy days, Christmas and Easter. We simply do not attend worship services as much as we used to. 

Diana Butler Bass, a sociologist of religion, entitles her latest book Christianity after Religion: The End of the Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening. In a way it is a follow-up to Wright’s observation about what has happened to the practice of our Christian faith, one aspect of it being that most Christians attended church on a regular basis certainly out of habit, most, hopefully, because doing so was very meaningful for their very lives.

Now there are those who would applaud the fact that church going is no longer a habit because they would argue that church going should come from the head and the heart. That would be true. However, we all have habits, good and bad. The good habits, like our daily regimens, are very helpful in keeping us healthful and sane. The bad habits, which we need to eliminate, do the very opposite, which is why we need to rid ourselves of them. As we have all learned, getting rid of bad habits is often more difficult that learning good ones.

Be that as it may, back to Wright’s observation, I suspect he was and is a little piqued because what is very important him to him both as a bishop and as a Christian he finds so unimportant to the people he is called to serve. I get that way sometime when attendance is down especially when the weather is good or bad or for whatever reason church goers go somewhere else on Sunday morning, if the only place they go is to the breakfast table.

What Bass has learned from her sociological observations is that the situation is not as bad as Wright thinks it to be. Yes, church attendance is down and people do not come as regularly as they once did. Where once, certainly when I was a youngster, Sunday morning meant going to church whether you felt like it or not. It was an obligation become habit. Whether I got something out of the worship was not the issue. What was was that I was there, period.

Church going on a regular basis needs to be a habit, a habit of the heart certainly. Where else can we go to find a community of love and support, an opportunity to think about and pray for those we care about and who care about us and an opportunity to collectively and individually give thanks to God for blessing received, both deserved and undeserved?