A Tender Turning Point

Last Sunday, my congregation voted overwhelmingly to disaffiliate from the Christian Reformed Church. We had already gone through a long process of discernment to get to this point, so there was little tension in the room. We knew what was going to happen. We were ready.

I did not feel sad about casting my vote. I felt ready, even eager: let’s do this. The truth is, I have already done my grieving, probably two years of it, off and on. Also, I realize this was only my church’s first vote; there is another confirmation vote to come, as required by church polity.

Even so, when I got home, I felt the need to do something meaningful to mark this moment of goodbye to the denomination of my heritage. So I went to the basement and found this book, gathering dust between high school yearbooks.

This is the commemorative hundredth-anniversary book for Alpine Avenue Christian Reformed Church, the church in which I grew up. The anniversary occurred in 1981 when I was not quite sixteen years old, and I admit I’ve lugged this book around all my life but not actually read through it—until last Sunday.      

So many dear faces and familiar names! I loved my church. I loved worship, I loved catechism (seriously), I loved my pastor, the gentle and scholarly Rev. Bergsma. I loved my parents’ wide group of church friends, stalwart people who took such attentive care of each other and knew how to have fun, too.

I remember entirely with gratitude this place that formed me in my youthful faith. They were good people, it was a healthy church, and I am grateful for the teaching and example of this dear community. I am grateful for the people who put this book together, too. Not an easy task back when everything had to be typed on typewriters and composited at a printer’s and… ugh, I hate to think of how much archive-searching, photo-finding, subcommittee assigning, and cat-herding went into this book. Folks who did this: I salute you.

Reading through the book yielded some entertaining and at times ominous discoveries. The pages telling the history of the congregation, for example, tell the standard, though wildly reductive story of church history I absorbed as a kid. First there was Jesus, then Acts, then Constantine. And then there was a long and dreadful time of corruption and darkness (the Middle Ages), until finally: the light! Wycliffe, Luther, Calvin, and then… us! The faithful Dutch folk who fled their country for religious freedom.

Pages and pages of materials honor the congregation’s own history. Records and photos of that dreadful fire in 1914, short reflections on a parade of beloved pastors, photos of stern-looking consistories in black suits and handle-bar mustaches, a championship baseball team from 1922, snippets from old bulletins, photos of missionaries supported, and some fussy business about repairing a problematic church bell. The last fifty pages record the entire membership roll in 1981, indexed to genealogies going back to founding members. Not even kidding. If you ever find yourself in need of a vast selection of Dutch names, I have an idea where to look.

Among the more revealing sections occurs early in the book. A half dozen older saints were asked to write reflections on “the Spiritual Health of Alpine.” One gentleman took pains to establish that “a complete disdain for things of the world” was vital to spiritual health. One lady looked back in fondness to the days of large families, close-knit neighborhoods, extensive church activities all week, and (it seems) the limitations of poverty. She worried about growing affluence, sensing that money leads directly to worldliness. She especially called out people “absorbing pagan ways by condoning adultery, abortion, drunkenness, homosexuality, and kindred sins.” She makes it sound as if Alpine Ave was on the verge of becoming a hotbed of debauchery or something. I assure you, this was hardly the case.

Another of the spiritual-health-temperature-takers attempted to offer a more one-hand-other-hand view. He noted how CRC folk seemed to be less legalistic and parochial, more ecumenical, better students of the Bible than in the past. He observed that young people seemed to have a more sincere and genuine faith. (Throughout the book, older folk frequently share recollections of naughty boys getting scolded in the old days for various highjinks.) On the other hand, this person opined that families were falling apart, largely due to the liberties afforded by prosperity and, of course, that nefarious invention: TV.

Overall, the folks writing these reflections worried about maintaining the practices that they felt kept the church healthy and strong: Sabbath observance, the evening service, Bible studies, catechetical preaching, extensive volunteer work for the church. They express considerable dismay for lax church attendance, the distractions of the world such as sports and vacations, and that dreaded “boob tube.”

All this to say, as in every generation, older folks in 1981 worried about the “slide” of the next generation. Worry about sliding and a concomitant tendency toward legalism have always characterized the CRC, but happily I did not labor much under legalism’s yoke in my youth. However, these concerned elders were quite right that affluence had created major cultural changes and that wealth and American life afforded temptations not much available to previous generations. My own parents were extremely faithful people, but they were also fully on board with upward mobility and modern luxuries, TV included. They were genuinely pious, but they also wanted nice things.

Meanwhile, back in 1981, the CRC had not yet fallen much under the influence of a broader White American evangelicalism that has now altered it forever. But the signs were there: changes were afoot. I noticed a bulletin snippet from 1979 advertising the “Walk Through the Bible” program at Alpine (written by Bruce Wilkerson of Jabez fame) as well as a session on James Dobson’s latest parenting book. Not so many years later, Jim Bratt lamented the results of a survey that showed the CRC’s number one theological authority as Charles Colson and their number one ethical guide as James Dobson. As Jim wryly noted, “A felon and an Arminian.” (I refer you to Jim’s salient three-part series on CRC history, published on this blog.)

After many years of gaining wider perspectives, I am keenly aware of the deep limitations of that safe, intricately interwoven, insular world. I remember hardly any fuss about Vietnam, or racial justice, or peace-making. We lived in our own White, recent-immigrant, comfortably middle-class bubble. We didn’t even worry all that much about people in our own neighborhood, slowly succumbing to urban decay. “Helping others” was about supporting other congregants through life’s trials and about deploying missionaries, both of which this church did admirably.

I look back in wonder at how I managed to reap all the best and most wonderful things about the CRC and mostly evade the worst wounds that have come to so many others from it. Most importantly to me, I inherited that precious combination of deep faith and intellectual curiosity, a kind of generous faith-seeking-understanding that still characterizes Calvin University and lives on in the life of many congregations and people, whether they are still connected or not to the CRC.

So here we are today, facing the most significant schism in this little denomination’s schismatic history. It’s a tender time. I remember my CRC youth with gratitude and joy, but I can’t go back, and I don’t want to. Things change, and I’m glad.

I grew up in strong community, and I’m deeply grateful that I live in strong community now, too. I am not leaving alone, but with my current congregation and a number of other congregations. We are a remnant, and I pray we will somehow carry forward, by grace, the very best of our inheritance in new and better forms.