"The Church Alumni Association" is a tongue-in-cheek term describing people who were once active members of an organized religious body but no longer are. Its common meaning is derogatory of the church, implying that the "alum" left the church because the association was unsatisfactory or unpleasant in some way. Sometimes he/she was asked to leave — or flat driven out.
This is not an alumni group likely to cheer for its alma mater. There is a lot of hurt, bitterness, and scorn among the membership. Whether that negativism is justified or not is a personal judgment call. In some instances, the church gets a bum rap; in others … well, we have all heard the stories.
A lot of the response to my columns is from members of the CAA. There are a lot of them out there! Their reasons for being ex-church people vary widely — some that are superficial, silly, some very sad.
That this amorphous Church Alumni Association far outnumbers the active faithful and grows apace is a cause for great distress among church leaders, who are focused to the point of obsession on the statistics of church membership and attendance.
Churches have always played the numbers game. Especially in the United States, success is quantifiable and is attested to by the number of names on the roll, the number of bodies in the pews, and the number of dollars in the plate.
What we know about Jesus strongly suggests that approach would have been foreign to his way of thinking about the reasons for God people getting together. The essence of church is not doctrine or dogma, it is spirituality and community. Faith is a spirit to live in, not a set of propositions to be believed.
I am not a member of the CAA, though some think I am, or should be, and some of the faithful wish I was.
I have been a member of the church, some church, since I was born, an ordained minister for 61 years. My feelings about and relationship to it have become increasingly bipolar, sort of a love/hate thing. It has not been an altogether comfortable or pleasant trip.
The Dalai Lama is quoted as saying, "Remain open to change, but don't lose your values." But sometimes it is precisely the values themselves that need to be changed.
I am repelled by much of what passes for Christianity, and I'm not referring to the lunatic fringe, or its patently pathological elements.
I mean institutionalized ignorance, prejudice promoted as having its source in God. I am appalled at the mindless, incoherent, unintelligible drivel peddled from some pulpits, sometimes by preachers holding Ivy League degrees. Pious use of mind control, power ruthlessly exercised in service to sick egos. I am disgusted by the turf battles that become increasingly vitriolic in proportion to the dollar value and historical significance of the real estate involved, sickened by leaders driven by their pursuit of a shallow, superficial, self-serving success.
But somehow the church has survived the efforts of its own members to destroy it, and I gratefully acknowledge that most of the good things in my life have come in, through, or been facilitated by my church.
A concept of civil society which, with all its flaws and failures, has facilitated some transcending good and grace and is superior to any other I know of. A culture that gestated, birthed, and nourished the genius of the composers of incomparable music, art, and literature. An ancestral pool from which an ever-flowing stream melded to produce the individuals who passed their life on to me, and a life companion who embodies steadfast love.
Maybe these good things would have come to me without the actions of the church, but they didn't.
I hate it, but I love it more. The Church Alumni Association will have to get along without me.
Editor's note: W. Jackson "Jack" Wilson is a psychologist, an Episcopal priest, a sometime academic and a writer living in Colorado. He writes with humor, whimsy, passion and penetrating insight into the human condition. And in Pushkin, Russia, a toilet is named in his honor.
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