In my home country, Australia, we participate in an annual event called National Sorry Day. National Sorry Day, or the National Day of Healing, has been held in Australia on the 26 May since 1998 to remember and commemorate the mistreatment of the country’s Indigenous peoples as part of an ongoing reconciliation process between the Indigenous peoples and the settler population.
During the 20th century, Australian government policies caused children to be separated from their families, to assimilate them into white Australian culture. This resulted in what became known as the “Stolen Generations,” with the effects of these traumatic removals being felt by succeeding generations even to this very day.
You can’t make up for hundreds of years of oppression with one day of apology. But, it’s a start. It is an acknowledgment of the atrocities of the past. It is an admission of wrong-doing. It is a humble acceptance of responsibility from the government for enacting policies and practices that promoted oppression, human rights violations, and abuse of all kinds for many years.
If the government, for all its failings, can bring itself to apologize, then why can’t the Church? After all, the Christian Church calls itself the bastion of mercy, reconciliation, and forgiveness.
The Church needs to have a day of apology — every year — for as long as it takes.
Why do we need to apologize?
I have been writing articles that critique and deconstruct organized religion for several years now. During that time, I have received hundreds of heart-breaking stories from many individuals who have been hurt by the church — literally hundreds.
A common thread runs through many of these stories. Most of these people, at one time, participated in the life of the Church but have since given up on organized religion, if not faith in God altogether. I am one among many. Maybe you are as well.
Based on past studies of those who avoid Christian churches, one of the driving forces behind such behavior is the painful experiences endured within the local church context. In fact, one Barna study among former church attendees shows that nearly four out of every ten non-churchgoing Americans (37%) said they avoid churches because of negative past experiences in churches or with church people.
Try to get your head around that.
For every ten people who avoid Church, four do so because they have been hurt by the behaviors and attitudes propagated by the Church. Why would anyone trust themselves to an institution where the odds of being hurt are so astronomically high?
For the almost 40% of people who have left the Church because they have been hurt, we need to apologize… again and again and again. The Church should have an annual Day of Apology. Why not today?
What do we need to apologize for?
If I were to list everything that the Church ought to apologize for, this could end up being a very long article indeed. So, I will skip over the obvious offenses here — sexual abuse, slavery, inquisitions, colonialism, sexism, racism, the mistreatment of minorities, and a general failure to act upon injustice. Much has been written about these topics, and, to be fair, official and unofficial apologies have been offered by the Church for many of these things. Keep them coming, I say!
I want to focus on the smaller things that churches do that cause someone’s faith to die a death by a thousand cuts. If I were to write an apology on behalf of the Church, it might look something like this:
Sorry for making you feel miserable
Sorry for telling you, your whole life, that you are a depraved and wicked sinner — that even your very best is nothing more than filthy rags to God. We made God seem like an arm-folding, eye-rolling, head-shaking, fist-waving, disapproving megalomaniac, who is impossible to please and constantly unimpressed with you. We made it seem like God, with a heaving sigh, begrudgingly came and died for your sins, and you ought to feel guilty about making him die in the first place.
Sorry for using guilt and manipulation
Sorry for using the threat of Hell and punishment to win you to faith. Sorry for the gimmicks, the sales pitches, and the empty promises we made to try to get you to sign on the dotted line of salvation by praying a one-time prayer to receive Christ. Sorry for using fear, guilt, and shame as tactics to win converts. Sorry for not trusting in the goodness and love of God to speak for itself.
Sorry for promising so much and delivering so little
Sorry for promising that if you followed Christ, you would live a victorious life — free from strife, trouble, disease, and poverty. Sorry for promising that success and prosperity were an automatic side-effect of Christian belief — even though most Christians in the world are poor. Sorry for painting an unrealistically rosy picture of the future. Sorry for not preparing you for the challenges that life will throw at you and equipping you with a robust faith that could stand up to the existential questions that will confront you.
Sorry for the gossip and slander
Sorry for fostering a culture of gossip and slander. Sorry for talking to others about your personal life under the guise of pastoral care. Sorry for asking you if you have any “prayer requests,” when all we were really after was some juicy tidbit about your life that we could spread around to make our own colorless existence slightly more interesting for a few days.
Sorry for misusing the Bible
Sorry for using Biblical texts to support our own ideas and prejudices — generally against anything or anyone that we perceived as a threat to our well-ordered universe. Sorry for using the Bible to bash gays, suppress women, silence children, and elevate white, heterosexual men above others in the Church. Sorry for taking text after text out of context and using them to control, manipulate and exploit.
Sorry for heaping religious obligation on you
Sorry for loading up your week with religious activities and making you feel like a bad Christian if you didn’t attend. Sorry for having a go at you for spending Saturday with your family instead of attending the church working bee. Sorry for hyper-scheduling your life with prayer meetings, potluck suppers, and Bible studies and largely neglecting God’s command to take observe a Sabbath and have a rest.
Sorry for not engaging with common human suffering
Sorry for possessing and maintaining a simplistic and damaging theology of suffering. We are no better than the friends of Job, who told him that his time of pain and suffering was ostensibly his own fault. Sorry for not admitting that following Christ — the suffering servant — would also result in suffering. Sorry for making Church a place where you check your pain out at the door, put on a fake smile, and pretend that you are living a blessed life.
Sorry for brushing off your doubts and questions
Sorry for dismissing your very reasonable questions and doubts with glib catchphrases and Christian cliches. Sorry for making it out like you were a bad Christian if you wondered why a loving God could permit suffering in the world. Sorry for calling you a backslider when you started to wonder if everything in the Bible ought not to be taken literally. Sorry for refusing to engage with the hard questions of life and simply telling you to “have more faith.”
Sorry for showing favoritism
Sorry for giving more time, attention, and care to those who put the most money in the offering plate on a Sunday. Sorry for showing favoritism to those high-capacity people who could do a lot to benefit the Church while ignoring the very people who need the Church the most — the broken, the hurting, and the poor.
Sorry for chasing your money
Sorry for the weekly guilt trip, where we pressured you to give more money. Sorry for insinuating that your financial gifts will somehow unlock the blessing of God over your life — as if God could somehow be bought off in such a way. Sorry for misusing the funds given to the Church in good faith by using the majority of your money to fund the church machine — bigger buildings and higher salaries.
Sorry for demonizing everything
Sorry for blaming everything on demons. Sorry for saying that demons cause depression. Sorry for saying that demons cause gender dysphoria. Sorry for saying that drinking alcohol, dancing, listening to rock music, and generally enjoying life is “of the devil.” Sorry for saying that demons cause illness. Sorry for saying that demons cause homosexuality. And, above all, sorry for not admitting that demons cause the Church’s abuse of power and control!
Sorry for misusing power to maintain the status quo
Sorry for allowing our Church to be run by patriarchal families who fight to preserve their power at all costs. Sorry for quashing all the dissenting voices when legitimate questions were asked about church leadership and structure. Sorry making the Church into a largely political organization where people posture and maneuver to gain positions and titles. And, while we are on the subject of politics, sorry for getting into bed with the conservative side of government and expecting our adherents to do the same, regardless of how morally corrupt its leaders might be and whether or not the progressive side of politics might have policies that more closely align with the heart of God.
Sorry for looking down on your wife and women in general
Sorry for judging your wife as a bad mother because she is a free-thinking, independent woman with career aspirations rather than a stay-at-home housemaid. Sorry for the way we dismissed her gifts and talents simply because she is a woman. Sorry for assuming that an incompetent man would be better in leadership simply by virtue of the fact that he is a man.
Sorry for our lack of accountability
Sorry for being a law unto ourselves — justifying our terrible decisions by assuming that we have the blessing of God. Sorry for enacting policies and procedures that, frankly, would be unacceptable in a secular environment, treating our volunteers and staff as expendable objects to achieve a particular end. Sorry for treating the prophets among us, who call us out for unjust practices, in the same way as they were treated in the Old Testament — by ignoring them, dismissing them, and assassinating their character.
Sorry for not being there for you
Sorry for not being there for you. We acknowledge that we talk as though we are a spiritual family forged with the unbreakable bond of the Spirit, but when your day of trouble came, we were not there for you. In fact, when you stopped coming to Church and paying your tithe, we stopped caring. We acted like you were no longer our responsibility. We are sorry.
It’s Personal
As I wrote all these apologies down, I felt a connection to my own pain. The most significant hurt that I have experienced in my life has been brought to me by the so-called people of God.
How ironic. And how sad.
I am part of the 40% who left the Church because of the wounds that were inflicted there. Maybe you are as well.
Why not today?
The thing is, if the Church ever came to me and offered an apology like the one above, I would extend my forgiveness without hesitation. I don’t have unrealistic expectations of the Church. I don’t expect the Church to be perfect. After all, it is full of people.
But I do expect the Church to be humble by accepting when it has wronged people, admitting to their faults, and asking for forgiveness. In fact, we ought to make a day of it — every year — for as long as it takes. The Church should have a day of apology. Why not today?
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This post was previously published on Backyard Church.
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