When the church starts locking people out, I start getting twitchy. And I was definitely twitching, that recent July morning in Dublin.
I had noticed it in various ways through the ten wonderful days I had spent in Ireland. I had learned, during my travels, some of the history of religious conflict there. There are deep, beautiful faith roots, but also a long history of adherents of one faith claiming power over those who dare to believe differently. Excluding them. Restricting their rights.
(I have no illusions, by the way, that this history is unique to Ireland. That’s just where I happened to be. I could be telling this story from nearly anywhere.)
Then I glimpsed that very history, that exclusionary impulse, perfectly illustrated, as I stood on a sidewalk outside of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. Its lush gardens included perfectly manicured lawns and a fanfare of flowers. Lovely, holy statuary. Fountains that sparkled and sang, a profusion of freshness.
And every bit of it–including the grand cathedral itself–was locked behind tall iron bars, excluding nearly all comers, well into that gentle Sunday morning.
I stood there thinking, this. This is what the church looks like, to a lot of people. They stand on the other side of a wall, kept out. It might be their unkempt clothing, or their addiction, or their criminal record. Maybe it’s their sexual orientation, and the “official statements” the church makes about compatibility with Christian teaching. It might be any number of things: race, politics, tattoos, an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, the fact that they’re not from this insular community, and countless other factors.
We who stand inside that fence: we see beauty! We’re proud of what we’ve built, and we’ve worked hard to keep it orderly. We feel at home with the people we’ve let in, and we worry that things would change if we let the doors swing more freely. We are glad to be in on the truth of the message we proclaim, and we trust that God will honor our efforts to be worthy of it. We’ll do everything in our power to protect all of this. We don’t want it to change.
I use that term “we” advisedly. Most of the time I’m aware that I get to be inside that fence, at least in my own tradition where the full range of church roles is open to women. We don’t always realize, when we’re inside, that there even is a fence, and people standing on the other side. But, oh, there is. I think we (however we understand our place in or out of that term) are meant to pay attention to it.
(I’m not talking here about churches that lock their doors at night, and for safety reasons even during the day. I believe in good boundaries. We don’t need to let people camp out in our hallways, unsupervised. I do wonder how we can be locked and open-hearted at the same time; that’s worth another post on another day!)
Sometimes we’ll say, there’s no wall. We’re sure that our church is welcoming and open. “We’re not like those other churches,” we might say. “All are welcome here.” But if people outside perceive that there’s a wall, we’d best take that perception seriously. Walls come from any number of prior experiences in peoples’ lives. Even if we didn’t create the walls, we have a role in removing them.
If there is beauty in the church at all, it’s a beauty that’s meant to be shared. I want to lead a church that shares its beauty and message with openness and abandon. If we don’t, then folks who stand on the other side of the fence will pretty soon see: there’s no beauty there; it’s an illusion. The church intent on protecting itself will soon have nothing left to save.
So whaddaya say? Shall we tear down some fences?
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