Letters From Leavers

When I was in high school (just over 20 years ago), I was pretty religious.  I was a member of a Presbyterian PC(USA) church in Northern NJ.  When I was a high school junior, I was ordained as a deacon in that church.  That same year, I was a YAD (Youth Advisory Delegate) to the Synod of the Northeast meeting.  I then became the youth member of Synod Mission Council and the Synod Nominating Committee.  At the same time, I was involved in Camp Johnsonburg (the local Presbyterian church camp) as a camper, CIT (Counselor in Training) and a full-time counselor.  I also went to the Presbyterian Youth Triennium during those years.

Right about the same time, I went to college at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ (the state U of NJ).  I started taking religion classes and computer science classes, intending one to be my major and the other to be my minor.  I was thinking that seminary could be in my future.

Then, a few things happened.  On campus, I got hooked up with an extremely conservative chapter (”you can’t be friends with Jews unless you’re trying to convert them”) of a conservative Christian campus organization.  That only lasted two months, ending after a cult-like weekend retreat.

After that, I experienced some disturbing events at Synod-level meetings involving racism and politicking in a church organization.  In one case, a minister chose to “renounce the jurisdiction of the church” at a Synod Mission Council meeting because a decision of that body had gone against him (to fund a program).

In the other case, I was serving as the youth member of Synod Mission Council.  One organization that reported to the annual Synod meeting was the Committee on Representation (which was responsible for making sure that all Synod committees, boards, etc were balanced along racial, clergy/lay, and gender lines).  The minority woman who headed that group made her speech praising the Synod for having all groups properly balanced.  Then she chose to complain that the Youth Advisory Delegates were not racially balanced.  That particular year, all but one of the YADs were white (in my opinion totally by coincidence - the YADs had been racially mixed in other recent years).  A 15-year-old Youth Advisory Delegate from the presbytery covering the Northern New England area rose and stated that the reason that her presbytery (which only contained one mainly-minority church) was because they didn’t find any minority youth who was “interested and qualified”.  The word “qualified” in this instance referred to the fact that the one minority church in that presbytery had a pastor who required youth to write a 5-page essay in order to be submitted to the nominating committee - the result being that nobody wanted to fill out the essay.  The committee chair then said something along the lines of “I can’t believe that I just heard a racist statement on the floor of this Synod.”  The girl fled the floor in tears.  I and the current and former chairs of the Racial/Ethnic Concerns Team decided that this was unfair, and we met the Committee chair coming off the podium.  We told her that she needed to apologize to the girl.  We went back behind the divider to the area “off the floor” in the gym and met the girl who was sitting on the bleachers crying, being comforted by the youth chaperones.  The committee chair said to her, “I’m sorry that you’re upset, but I hope that you understand why what you said was racist.”  We (the R/E team members and I) decided that this was the closest thing to an apology that we’d get and let the chair go and comforted the girl.

Additionally, my home church had a cabal of leaders who were unwilling to give up power.  There was an unwritten rule that nobody under the age of 40 would be elected as an elder.  On top of that, the elders tended to serve their maximum 6 years and then spend a year on the nominating committee, which (surprise) submitted their names for election the following year.

All of that led me to believe that church was a place where a small number of people in power used the structure to control the behavior of a large number of people.  This control was not particularly Godly, but rather of human origin with the accompanying pettiness.

I had already resigned my post as a deacon because of distance issues at college (it’s hard to serve at a worship service 50 miles away when you don’t have a car).  I resigned my Synod posts and essentially left the church.  I filled out my religion minor with eastern religion classes.

About a year later, I ran into an officer of Presbyterians for Lesbian and Gay Concerns (now part of More Light Presbyterians).  They were looking for someone to serve as their liaison to Presbynet (a part of Ecunet - a discussion network for church issues).  I agreed with their cause, and began helping them for about 5-6 years as a supportive straight person.  This ended when again I ran into human politics and found myself being called homophobic due to my support of one strategy over another.  I turned my responsibilities over to another and left that service.  Thus ended my church career.

About 15 years later, I have searched for and rejoined another church.  I hope that I will be able to avoid the problems that caused me to leave previously.