A familiar story: At an adult faith formation class I was teaching at a church, a woman in her sixties raised her hand. She explained that she’s a pastor’s wife and that she felt devastated by the presidency of Donald Trump and couldn’t find her emotional footing. She was wondering if her long-time dedication to progressive politics contributed to the loss of faith suffered by her two adult daughters. They’re good people, she said, and they’ve done well for themselves. But they don’t believe—and they don’t seem to feel like they’re missing anything. One daughter calls herself an atheist, the other an agnostic. Do I think, she asked me, that her liberal Christian faith is partly to blame for this outcome?
When we listen to the stories of church members, one of the things invisible to polling data but obvious to anyone who has spent any amount of time in church is that the line between the church affiliated and the church disaffiliated is not at all sharply defined.
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