What happens when an institution vacates a function or a role? Where does that function go? Sometimes it disappears altogether. Sometimes, other institutions pick it up—or a version of it—and carry it forward within their own scope and aims.
We received an interesting email this past week from United Airlines; you may have gotten one, too. United, along with scores of other corporations, has discerned that Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are times of celebration for some—and times of grief, pain, or dislocation for others. In response, they are offering customers options to opt out of communications for one or both of these holidays.
Doing so shows a type of, dare we say it, pastoral sensitivity!
For some people, feelings of pain and grief permeate Mother’s and Father’s Day, anchored in experiences of loss, trauma, estrangement, infertility, and more. At our best, the church holds these feelings liturgically, through preaching and prayers of lament. But too many congregations have adopted a stance of celebratory sentimentalism for both these holidays. Meanwhile, Hallmark, Target, and United have stepped into the empathy gap.
There are other such gaps, and other examples of institutional migration. TED Talks have long established themselves as secular sermons—a speaker, a stage, 18 minutes, a takeaway truth for your life. Book clubs have created small groups where people come together to contemplate the meaning of texts (and pass the wine). Corporate mission statements use church language wrapped in brand identity.
Sociologist Robert Putnam has documented the collapse of civic and religious associations over the past 75 years. Into that vacuum comes:
CrossFit gyms— structured community, shared suffering, ritual (the WOD), even confession-like accountability.
SoulCycle — explicitly described by participants and journalists in quasi-religious terms: candles, music, a charismatic leader, transcendence, collective movement.
Peloton — has built an entire “community” language around exercise.
Co-working spaces — WeWork’s early pitch was literally about “belonging.”
Historically, faith communities have marked life’s thresholds: birth, coming of age, marriage, death. Business has moved into each of those spaces, too (the hyper-monetized wedding-industrial complex, anyone?).
And then there are “Death Cafes.”
Started in London in 2011, Death Cafes now meet all over the world, with more than 11,000 listed in the United States. The groups sign a “social franchise” and follow a format that invites a direct discussion about death. After participants introduce themselves and share what brought them to the group, discussion topics range from mortality to cremation and burial options. Organizers are quick to say that a Death Cafe is not “a grief group, a counseling session, or a place to push religious or other spiritual agendas.” Instead, what you get is “a tangible, factual, honest conversation around death,” as one 33-year-old attendee in San Antonio put it.
Churches do not need be the sole proprietor of life and death functions—but if we let ourselves collapse into easy sentimentality, we lose the chance to be a meaningful culture partner on the complex things that really matter to people.
In the following (appropriately complex) poem, American poet Julia Kasdorf reflects on what she learned from her Mennonite mother about the practice of empathy.
What I Learned From My Mother
I learned from my mother how to love
the living, to have plenty of vases on hand
in case you have to rush to the hospital
with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants
still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars
large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole
grieving household, to cube home-canned pears
and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins
and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.
I learned to attend viewings even if I didn’t know
the deceased, to press the moist hands
of the living, to look in their eyes and offer
sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.
I learned that whatever we say means nothing,
what anyone will remember is that we came.
I learned to believe I had the power to ease
awful pains materially like an angel.
Like a doctor, I learned to create
from another’s suffering my own usefulness, and once
you know how to do this, you can never refuse.
To every house you enter, you must offer
healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,
the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.
What has Kasdorf has learned from her mother? (Why must she offer a chaste touch?)
Why do you think that corporations like United Airlines are displaying care and sensitivity around Mother’s and Father’s Day?
What is your own congregation saying and doing in regard to these holidays? Any thoughts on why?
Are there other examples of institutional migration you could name—i.e., instances where functions long associated with your church are being performed by other groups or organizations? Any thoughts on why?
Is the church losing these functions, or outsourcing them?
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