Married only?

I'm still writing a column for the church newsletter in Mansfield. Here's the latest. Wonder if they will ask me to stop after this one.

A question came up recently on a Christian forum board: Are churches biased against single people? That should translate into "is this church biased against single people?"

Don't answer too quickly. About 37 people responded to the question—and some of the responses were very heated (and bitter). The consensus: older mainline churches (Methodist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian) tend to be accepting toward single people, while newer, more informal churches are not.

This is a place for a definition. When I say "single people," I mean people who could reasonably be expected to be married, but aren't. A 14-year-old boy isn't single yet, but a 55-year-old widow is.

Anyhow, those two classes of churches show two differences.

For one thing, the older churches have more variety in marital status. Older people sometimes lose their spouses to death, and it's not as common for mainline churches to ostracize divorced people, so the result is a fair number of unpartnered adults who will probably stay that way. In contrast, the renewal churches don't have many widows, widowers, or divorced people (they usually just leave). Marriage is the inevitable destination for young people. You'd hear someone saying, "Isn't John Doe married yet?" There's not much room for the idea that John Doe doesn't intend to get married or that John Doe, unmarried, is a stable, complete person.

Another difference you see is that people go to the two different kinds of churches for two different kinds of reasons. For generations, the conservative churches have asked the question, "Are YOU saved?" We have seminars on repairing YOUR marriage, fixing up YOUR finances, and even controlling YOUR weight. Members of the older churches don't tend to be so focused on their own needs. It's the mainline churches that support such organizations as Habitat for Humanity, World Vision, and Alcoholics Anonymous, whether or not anyone in their church is homeless, hungry, or addicted.

It's this intense focus on MY needs, MY marriage, MY family, and even MY enjoyment of worship that leads people to build walls around their families and exclude the concerns of anyone whose name isn't on MY Income Tax form 1040.

That's what makes a church unfriendly toward single people: becoming a group of married people so intensely focused on preserving their own families that they can't see beyond the front door.

So where does Jesus fit into all this? Was his basic message "Join up so you can enjoy the benefits of a stable, Christian culture?" Did he encourage us to withdraw and socialize only with our own kind?

WWJD? (What Would Jesus Drive?) An SUV on the way to soccer practice, ignoring the lonely single person who has nobody to eat lunch with after church?