Yes, you have to go to church
Plus: a new federal database, ICE goes after persecuted Christians, and more
Good morning! It’s Wednesday, and here’s this week’s post.
A take I haven’t written elsewhere
Yes, you have to go to church
A few weeks ago, I ran across a post from the ever-informative Ryan Burge about the religious attendance habits of different generations of Americans, especially those in Gen Z. You can probably find this post if you search, but I’m not going to link to it here, because I want to discuss one of the replies without hassling the Substack user who wrote it. Here’s what he said:
I did Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) for a bit in high school. It was around the time I spent six (6) business days on the track team before quitting under the conviction that my legs were in danger of simply falling off (I didn’t get into running until after high school), so I can’t say FCA struck me as terribly serious about the athletics aspect of the whole thing.
The Christian part was fine, though. It was basically a Bible study at school. We met in a classroom for maybe an hour, once every week or two. We talked and prayed. It didn’t exactly change my life, and I probably argued with my mom about whether I really had to go, but overall, it was nice.
It wasn’t church, though.
Yes, we gathered few were members of the church universal, and yes, I know about Matthew 18:20. But it was not a church in anything like the common usage of the word, not even on the micro-scale we would see in an underground house church. It was not a church in many ways that matter.1
A Bible study like this is a good thing, to be clear. Not a word of this is meant as criticism of the FCA or gatherings like it. But, realistically, it’s an affinity group for student athletes (or non-athletes, as in my case).
It’s not housed within any one church tradition, bound to longstanding catechisms, confessions, or creeds. It isn’t subject to denominational oversight or the scrutiny of an elder board. Group leaders are not necessarily trained in theology or ministry work, let alone ordained pastors who wield meaningful spiritual authority (the leaders at my group were math teachers). Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are not on offer.
In an inherently short-term group like this, we find but a fragment of the church as—to borrow from theologian Brad East—a God-founded institution “finely tuned to the complex needs of the human experience—to help us with everything from early socialization to midlife crisis to dying well.” And even a good fragment is no substitute for the whole.
Now, I don’t want to dwell on this one comment too much. My real interest isn’t in this guy and his granddaughter, nor yet the FCA, but in the attitude about church he perhaps unwittingly encapsulated.
This is an attitude I see a lot. It was one of the most surprising things about coming to work at Christianity Today: the amount of pushback we receive on social media when we publish articles assuming or insisting that yes—under ordinary circumstances, especially in a place as free, safe, and bursting with local churches as the United States—you do have to go to church if you profess to follow Jesus.
And you do. You do have to go to church. With all due allowances for illness and disability and church deserts and persecution and other, more unusual impediments to weekly assembly together, you have to be in that pew every week you can. You should go in all weathers and when you didn’t sleep well and when you shouldn’t have had that second beer last night and when you just do not want to deal with it today.
Beyond showing up, pay attention and engage as best you can. Stay for the coffee hour, if there is one. (Maybe start one if there’s not.) Accept invitations and offer them. Join a small group. Volunteer for a practical ministry that’s realistic in your season of life. Talk to people. Learn the rhythms. Learn the songs. Learn the prayers. Learn to be there. Learn to be the church, not merely to go to church.
But also, go. Go in person, to a physical building. See people face to face. Again, I understand that sometimes hardships and obstacles make this impossible. But for most of us most of the time, there’s no good reason to settle for a livestream. A sermon podcast while you wash the dishes is a perfectly fine way to catch up on a service you missed for travel or sickness. But week to week, it is not enough. It is not just as good. It is not the same.
Church is more than a weekly information download, a pithy delivery of new theological tidbits and prayer tips. (That we even toy with the notion that a livestream or podcast—let alone AI-generated “spiritual content”—could adequately replace it is telling.) It is also more than Bible study with people like us. It is “not an optional add-on to Christian faith,” as East explains. “It is how we learn to be human as God intended. Indeed, it makes possible truly human life before God.”
The concept of a “very strong Christian” who—though apparently able-bodied, reasonably well-off, and probably a U.S. resident—“rarely attends church” is nonsensical. A very strong Christian who is in the luxurious position to skip church for travel sports will skip the travel sports instead.2
I would never speculate about the reality of this girl’s faith. But given the information I have about her age and priorities and the implied priorities of her family, I am willing to venture that it is likely an immature faith. And I’m also willing to say that this particular immaturity is all too common in American Christianity. How much of that is about insufficient discipleship or disordered individualism or social anxieties or technological infantilism or careerist competition or just plain laziness, I don’t know. But I do know you have to go to church.
Intake
“The Trump administration is building a national citizenship data system,” by Jude Joffe-Blocks and Miles Parks for NPR
The Trump administration has, for the first time ever, built a searchable national citizenship data system. […]
Such integration has never existed before, and experts call it a sea change that inches the U.S. closer to having a roster of citizens—something the country has never embraced. A centralized national database of Americans’ personal information has long been considered a third rail—especially to privacy advocates as well as political conservatives, who have traditionally opposed mass data consolidation by the federal government.
“How DHS facial recognition tech spread to ICE enforcement,” by Autumn Billings for Reason
“At basement ICE detention facility, clergy face barriers to visit congregants,” by Emily Belz for Christianity Today (unlocked link)
“ICE goes after church leaders and Christians fleeing persecution,” by Andy Olsen for Christianity Today (unlocked link)
On Tuesday, the pastor recorded on his phone as masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested two of his church members on a Los Angeles sidewalk. The Iranian husband and wife had pending asylum cases, according to Torosian. They fled Iran for fear of persecution for being Christians and had been part of his congregation for about a year.
“Is Iran a threat to the United States? A debate,” by Bret Stephens, Rosemary Kelanic, and David Leonhardt for The New York Times
“The birth-rate crisis is even worse than you’ve heard,” by Marc Novicoff for The Atlantic
“Inoculated,” by Doctrix Periwinkle for Flower beats rock
Output
New work:
Following U.S. strikes and ceasefire, what comes next | Defense Priorities (newsletter)
Newly relevant work:
Re: the federal government making databases, restricting movement, and tracking faces, I wrote about the TSA’s facial recognition machines for Reason in 2023:
The way this is going, TSA facial scanners will become a new example of a too-common pattern in state surveillance and law enforcement more broadly: What isn’t banned often becomes mandatory.
It’s easy to understand how this happens. It’s the result of an unconstrained interplay of technological advances and human fear. Better safe than sorry, we say when a new policing technology drops. Why wouldn’t you want law enforcement to have that tool at hand for catching criminals? we ask. Why would you hobble the TSA as they try to protect us from terrorists? Seems kind of suspicious that you don’t want to take advantage of everything science can offer to keep us safe.
Read the rest here.
Nor, to my knowledge, does it claim to be.
Read Tim Carney on travel sports.
Entirely agree with the necessity of physical presence in worship being very nearly non negotiable.
Churches all too easily closed their doors without much of a fight when governors decided COVID warranted it. It was a time when the church needed desperately to be the church- and failed, almost universally. A message was sent, and received: attendance optional. I was shocked that the Catholic church acted in concert with the rest, at a crucial time in my mother’s life. From the time the doors shut until her death she remained at home, with Eucharistic ministers visiting her each Sunday. She could have returned to church, and we offered to bring her, but she never went back. She spent the last four years of her life at home alone, separated from a congregation she had been part of for 50 years, except for the ministry of three faithful friends. Her pastor visited her once when she was hospitalized (2020) and the week before she died (2024). The closure of the churches inflicted serious injury on the faithful.
I have seen the need for fellowship. I can get caught up in semantics so I want to be careful. I have heard the encouragement that we need to be the church all week long so that we have something of spiritual life to offer when we gather. In that context, I have heard it said that we don't "go to church", rather we are the church 24/7. I know you get that. I appreciated how you encouraged the hang ou time. The church I am with has grown and gone to 3 Sunday services. That is great but it seems some just come and go. Better than not at all. I think I have mentioned, they expanded the building and they did that for hang-out space, complete with a corner for lattes and mochas and light snacks. People will talk and you may see pray for one another. Appreciate your direct words.