Politics, Nutrition, Money and Religion

So I got thrown off the scent by builders and general domestic mayhem compounded by an immune system crash and mega-tiredness, but now I've remembered that one of the things I wanted to explore with you was an anarchist church issue about politics, nutrition, money and religion.

Because I have a problem about topics that are admissible in different contexts.

The thing is that, as a preacher, what I can talk about in church is religion, in the narrow definition. 

Let me give you an example. Let's think about intercessions. 

I can pray for peace in human society, for God to help the poor and the homeless and people in prison — but I'm not allowed to offer any opinion about the reality that poverty is substantially a political creation, and so is homelessness, and unjust (political) imprisonment certainly is — plus a lot of legitimate imprisonment also stems from social exclusion and disadvantage which has a political root.

I can also pray for the sick, asking for God to work a miracle and heal this or that person. But I will bring a whole big heap of trouble cascading on my head like an avalanche if I dare to express the opinion (which I firmly hold) that a lot of sickness — mental as well as physical — has a nutritional root, and all sickness whatever its cause can be helped and supported and health improved by right diet. I do realise that many of you who read here strongly disagree with my views on health and nutrition, which is why I now mostly keep very quiet about my thoughts on the matter — it is contentious and generates more heat than light.

I can pray for the church, too, and for more members. But I cannot express my view that one of the church's biggest problems is that it colossally wastes money by a) maintaining large, expensive buildings to house small congregations, and b) paying professional clergy. 

But then the problem arises of a group of people earnestly praying for the cessation of a problem they are directly and persistently causing. It is now known that sugar and refined carbs are at the root of a whole raft of clinical conditions, and refraining from eating them will ease or remove much ill health. So we get the scenario where the congregation earnestly prays for people suffering from a range of ills, then serves tea/coffee with cakes/biscuits/cookies at the end of the service. My husband used to joke that the Methodist Church is fuelled by cake. We encourage people into illness then pray for them to get better. 

Same with money. A week or so back, a member of a church near us encouraged us to go to a church social event and concert with a £16.00 ($20.00) entry ticket. Two days later, the same church had a concert on where one of our household was performing. Entry ticket £15.00 (£18.00). As some of us were really strapped for cash at the time, it ended up with the one who was performing buying our tickets to hear her play! 

But it didn't end there. When we arrived at the church and went to the desk to collect our tickets, the woman at the desk said, "To get in you need three things. Your tickets, your programme, and some raffle tickets. They're £1 a strip."

I stared at her horrified. I had absolutely no money with me. I said, "Are you telling me that even though I have a ticket, I cannot go in unless I buy raffle tickets." 

She laughed (one of those jolly, unctuous, dismissive laughs that makes you feel stupid) and said, "Of course not!"

What? 

That same church costs in excess of £95,000.00 a year to run! 95K! I kid you not! 

I used to go there. One of the things that put me off was the constant harassment for money. I vividly remember an occasion I attended — one of many events held on a regular basis. This was an auction of promises. The promises were donated by church members, and many were valuable, eg a meal out or a ticket into a stately home or something. It was, it's only fair to say, possible to donate something free like baby-sitting or dog-walking. But that was only the beginning. The occasion included a meal, for which you had to pay if you were attending, and you were also expected to bring with you a bottle of wine to share with other attendees. A bottle of wine costs several pounds and so did the meal. Then, you were expected to bid with generosity, paying over and above what the promises were worth, to raise funds for the church. In addition to this, at the same event they held a raffle, for which they wanted prizes donating and expected all attendees to be generous in buying raffle tickets at £1 a strip. I attended that event. I made no promises, but as we were allowed to auction items as well, I gave them a favourite figurine I had of St Francis. I didn't bid on anything, I didn't take any wine, and my husband paid for my supper. Not long after, I left the church. I think the tipping point for me was when the annual financial figures were published, and that church broke even at £95K, where the one I now go to had to make £6K a year to stay afloat. 

The church is meant to be inclusive, isn't it? But these things must never be mentioned. I remember an old lady in a church I once pastored telling me about how she lived in a hostel in her youth. When I knew her, she had a modest home in a rich suburb of London, but as a young woman she barely had two pennies to rub together. She said that the (church-run) hostel places were free, but in the reception area was a collecting box into which those living there were encouraged to put whatever they could afford. They were supposed to pray for God to help them pay their way, and she said she used to feel so ashamed that she did pray but still had nothing to give. She said she used to be so hungry, when she was out and about her eyes were always scanning the pavement in the hope that somebody might have dropped a bit of chocolate or something she could pick up and eat.

When I preach, I'm meant to stay off politics, nutrition and money, and just talk about faith. But I have a difficulty with that, because once you subtract from my life my political views, my nutritional discipline, and the way I spend my money, then you've lost the most substantial ways by which I express my faith.

Now, like most people, I often make poor choices — I waste money, I succumb to a delicious cake, and I can fall prey to simplistic or mendacious socio-political analysis. It's not getting it right I'm talking about, but seeing that faith is holistic.

This comes right down to details. Let's take the simple for-instance of Jesus saying, "Love your neighbour as yourself." What does loving your neighbour mean? Well, we have St Paul to clarify that for us in the famous 1 Corinthians passage about love. Love is patient, he says, love is kind, love is not easily angered. The thing is, we all know in our household that if we eat sugary food we become moody and irritable, our adrenals go out of whack, we get exhausted and snappy and the slightest thing annoys us. We have no chance of living up to what our faith asks of us, in other words, unless we stay off the sugar. This may not apply to you, I'm not saying it does; but it is most certainly true for us. You could preach at us until you were blue in the face, but unless we stay clear of the sugar it is biochemically impossible for us to achieve the moral status recommended and expected. And yet, the place I most often run into the social gatherings structured around the food that scuppers my chances of being any kind of loving at all — is church!

I find I'm drifting further and further out to sea with this. The gap between what I privately believe and practise and consider important, and what I can express and publicly espouse in church, is steadily increasing, so that the teaching under which I sit feels less and less relevant. It's not that the preached word as I presently experience it is untrue, it's that it's uncoupled from the practical expression of daily life. It's like a recipe that gives the ingredients but not the method, or scientific theory without the backing of practical experiment. And I'm not sure where to go with this; my faith discipline is becoming increasingly a private bubble inside but dislocated from the body of believers in which it sits.