Empty the Pews: Reflections on Stories and Truth-Telling
Chrissy Stroop
Day 1 of 10
Stories are one of the most powerful expressions of the human spirit. Think about it for a minute. If our stories did not hold power, then why would defenders of the status quo pour so much effort into gatekeeping with respect to what stories get told, and who gets to tell them, in major news outlets? But that is exactly what happens.
As Chris Hayes once illustrated—quite exceptionally—on MSNBC, when the news fails to cover rioting by (largely white) college students after sporting events, but often draws our attention to “black on black crime,” those choices serve to uphold the white supremacism that still pervades America.
While most major media outlets continue to tell the same kinds of stories—using framing choices that distort certain aspects of reality and that erase certain people and voices—we are living in a time where there is increasing understanding, at least in progressive circles, that hearing a variety of human stories from a variety of diverse perspectives matters for the pursuit of social justice. (Our Bible App understands this and takes a deliberately diverse and inclusive approach, which is one reason I’m proud to write for it.)
One type of story that is still far too rarely granted a hearing in our elite public sphere is that of the individual who lived and experienced conservative Christianity over a long period of time, and then made the very brave and difficult choice to leave that religion behind. Empty the Pews: Stories of Leaving the Church (Epiphany: 2019), co-edited by myself and Lauren O’Neal, is an intervention that, building on the #EmptyThePews protest hashtag campaign, showcases personal essays by a racially, sexually, and gender diverse group of writers from evangelical, Catholic, and Mormon backgrounds speaking in our own voices.
While today and tomorrow I’ll be focusing here on the power of stories for social change and individual empowerment, over the rest of this series of secular meditations, I will be drawing on the content of the book to explore the kind of meaningful insights that can emerge from listening to those who have left what sociologists call “high-demand” or “high-control” religious groups. These reflections will likely be most of interest to those who have experienced a similar life trajectory and to those who empathize and seek to understand why so many Americans are leaving Christianity and, often, any religious affiliation, behind.
America’s social fabric contains an often unrecognized Christian supremacism that intersects with white and male privilege. To be sure, many Christians of color, particularly those who espouse womanism, queer, or liberationist theology, and/or who attend churches known for their commitment to the cause of civil rights and social justice, will be afforded little in the way of Christian privilege. The nuances here are important. But even so, America’s pundit class is highly resistant to hearing from former conservative Christians on what’s wrong with the religion we left behind.
Why are they so resistant? Because those stories have power—power that threatens the status quo. And they won’t be able to silence us forever. One person discussing their abuse in a Christian school might be easily ignored, but when the #ExposeChristianSchools hashtag is tweeted 200,000 times over a couple of days? That sort of thing gets covered by Associated Press and New York Times, despite the 4Chan to FOX pipeline and the right-wing trolls and media machine raging in an attempt to cow more respectable media into silence.
For members of any group whose stories are often sidelined and/or co-opted to push distorted narratives concocted by others for their own purposes, having the ability to reclaim those stories is meaningful and empowering. When it comes to people who have left authoritarian, abusive forms of Christianity behind—evident in the rapid surge in America’s non-religious population since the 1990s—more often than not, major media outlets and the elite blogosphere still cover the story as a problem to be solved. Sociologists and religious leaders and prominent writers are allowed to speak, to clutch their pearls and lament and, in general, to treat America’s religious unaffiliated as a problem to be talked about, rather than as people to be talked to. That needs to change. And if we work hard enough, together, we can change it. Yes we can.
Chrissy Stroop