Saints and Sinners: Americans stress going to church
A judge in Kentucky is offering repeat drug and alcohol offenders the choice of going to church or going to jail. According to an Associated Press dispatch, the judge believes the church could have a salutary effect on the drug and alcohol offenders and do what rehab or jail can’t do.
T.R. Reid, in his book, “The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy” (Penguin, 2004), asks, “Does it make any difference in our daily lives whether we do or do not believe in God or go to church?”
“Yes, Americans put up huge billboards reading “Love thy neighbor,” Reid observes, “but they murder and rape their neighbors at rates that would shock any European nation.”
Reid adds, “Norwegians don’t go to church much but they give away 10 times as much per capita as Americans do in aid to poor countries. Indeed, every west European government devotes a considerably higher share of its budget to foreign aid than the U.S. does.”
In Britain, France, Germany, Holland and Belgium, fewer than 10 percent of the population attend church as often as once a month. Only 12 percent of Britons describe themselves as “active” members of the Anglican Church. In Amsterdam, the church hierarchy is converting its cathedrals into luxury apartments to pay its bills.
In his book, Reid notes that beneath the towering steeple of 700-year-old St. Jacob’s Church in Stockholm, Sweden he counted 29 people at a Sunday service in a structure that would comfortably seat 900. At morning prayer the day he was at Canterbury Cathedral in England, mother of the worldwide Anglican faith, the church “hosted a total of 13 worshipers.”
“Christian Europe” is hardly Christian any more, notes Reid. “Up to 95 percent of Americans say they believe in God. In most of Europe that figure is closer to 50 percent.”
But are things better in the United States? We might think that a Christian nation such as America would be a beacon of civility in a pagan world. But the new Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Columbus (Ohio), in a speech to a prayer breakfast in May, lamented the growing coarseness of life in this country.
“Our culture has become self-centered and even mean,” observed Bishop Frederick Campbell. He said he longed for a return of the day “when you could be traveling down the freeway and the driver of the car passing you would wave at you with all five fingers.”
If Europe’s populations with their low rate of churchgoing put us to shame with their higher moral standard how important is churchgoing in our culture?
Well, the news is not all bad.
Going to church every week can add six years to your life expectancy. Going to church regularly can also help you stay healthier while you are still alive, some studies show. Nonchurchgoers who were hospitalized had average yearly hospital stays of 25 days compared to only 11 days for churchgoers.
But perhaps best of all, going to church may keep you from going to hell. That, at any rate, was the view of a Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor in Lansing, Mich.
Of course just thinking about spending an eternity in hell can be pretty persuasive by itself.
(George Plagenz is an ordained minister and veteran newsman based in Columbus, Ohio.)