My final bout with church—and no wonder

Years ago, I was steadily moving toward the Truth while still struggling to include other Christians in my world. I didn’t want to dismiss believers who didn’t agree with the early Quakers, so I kept attending church.

One Saturday evening, I participated in a singles group at a Charismatic church. There were about 15 of us. After we played volleyball and some board games, the youth pastor led us into an adjoining room, where we all sat together facing him. On a table next to him was a stack of Bibles.

“Now,” he said, “repeat after me: Jesus, I trust you…”

It was the usual “conversion prayer.” I sat stunned, and probably silent.

When he was through, he said, “There, you’ve been born again; now you have to grow up. Each of you take a Bible and go home and study it.”

Puzzled, I was also left with a sense of futility. Why would anyone professing faith in Jesus act like that? It was patently false.

After that I quit going to church, never to return. But I couldn't dismiss the episode because the mystery remained: Why had the pastor done that?

Years later, I was discussing this incident with my husband. He’d grown up attending an Evangelical Quaker church, and was therefore more attuned than I to the culture of human-made religion. I’d grown up participating in Unitarian Fellowship meetings, excursions, and pot-lucks.

“Why, oh why,” I asked Ellis, “would anyone professing Christianity behave that way? He must have known he was perpetrating a farce.”

“He probably had to report to a committee that required him to ‘save’ a certain quota of souls each week.”

That accounted for it. Finally I could quit wondering—except, occasionally—why I can't tolerate false religion when so many others apparently can.