At the end of the service, as I rose with the congregation to receive the benediction, I thought, So this is what it’s like to practice dead religion.
I’d been warned for years by my evangelical friends about the watered-down faith I’d find in mainline churches. And yet here I was, worshiping in an Episcopal church, complete with pews, kneelers, stained glass, a paid choir, and, at some services, incense that made my lungs burn. The space bore little physical resemblance to the start-up churches I’d attended, which met in rented elementary school gymnasiums or in buildings that looked like warehouses.
For most of my adult life I had worshiped in nondenominational congregations. A fair percentage of the people in these churches had been brought up Methodist or Lutheran or United Church of Christ and had left these traditions in search of a born-again encounter with Jesus. I’d heard their critiques of their former church homes: the liturgy was dry and repetitive, the pastors didn’t take the Bible seriously, the programming was irrelevant, the denomination’s politics leaned too far left for their comfort. As part of their new faith identity, they’d shaken the dust off their feet and headed down the road to join the evangelical world.
