My childhood congregation was a progressive Christian dream come true
So why don’t more of the people who grew up there practice Christianity as adults?
Members of the Community of Christ walk a labyrinth at a 50th anniversary reunion in 2016 (Photos by Martin Johnson, Bert Glenn, and Sandra Wojahn, and courtesy of the Community of Christ reunion planning committee)
We stood on a hilltop, near a labyrinth formed in the grass, at the retreat center that was for years an annual destination for the Christian community where we were raised. Now in our 30s and 40s, we gathered with others for the community’s 50th anniversary reunion and final retreat weekend. Later that year it would transfer ownership of its building and hold its final service.
About two dozen of us—mostly born in the late 1960s through late 1980s—spent all or much of our childhood in this community. As we stood talking that weekend in 2016, I felt a kinship even with those I knew least. We hadn’t been able to find anything else like the Community of Christ in our lives, no other place where we felt so at home.
Our ecumenical congregation was open to questions and doubt. It emphasized belonging over belief, and it placed both worship and social justice at the center of its life. Its building, a storefront in a city neighborhood, was first and foremost a community center. But today, the Community of Christ no longer exists—and only a half dozen or so of us who grew up there are still active Christians.
