No Place For Me: Letters to the Church in America

By John W. Fountain

Once, Sunday mornings meant something special to me. But I now face them with dread, with a bittersweet sorrow that tugs at my heart and a headache-inducing tension that makes me reach for the Advil, writes John W. Fountain, award-winning journalist and grandson of a Pentecostal pastor. Yet I now feel disconnected. I am disconnected. Not necessarily from God, but from the church.

What Happened?

In No Place for Me: Letters to the Church, Fountain writes about faith and his personal journey through the age-old institution called the Christian church. He writes about growing up as a boy in his grandparent's storefront church on Chicago s West Side. About a church he came to love. A church he grew to hate. He writes about his eventual decision to stop attending church and his agony over having to explain to his little daughter why.

This book was spurred by a 2005 essay Fountain penned in the Washington Post titled, No Place for Me.

No Place For Me: Letters to the Church in America is more than the narrative of one man's religious journey. It is reflective of the quandary facing thousands of men and women who love God but no longer can bring themselves to go to church on Sundays. Instead they file into coffee shops, bowling alleys or baseball stadiums, or else lose themselves in a haze of myriad other activities. In fact, the Pew Research Center cites evidence of an exodus from institutional Christian churches by the millions.

Fountain's original essay and also his later writings as a weekly columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times have drawn thousands of stirring letters from readers: men and women, people of all races and from all walks of life even some of them pastors. Some supportive of Fountain's assertions, others angered by them.

No Place for Me allows readers to eavesdrop on Fountain's conversations with other believers, far too many of them broken by their church experience. These conversations and Fountain's own spiritual narrative form the tapestry of revelation for a disconnected and disillusioned son of the church who ultimately discovers the place for him. He finds it along a winding road that leads him full circle, not back to church per se, but back to the Cross.

A must read written from the heart of one of its sons who openly declares: I still love God. But I've lost faith in the church. No Place for Me: Letters to the Church calls upon us all to wrestle with and find the true meaning of church. To review and ultimately to renew our faith. A message of hope. A moving collection of contemporary letters to the Church.

Publisher - WestSide Press Publishing, Chicago

• Language: English
• Publisher: John W. Fountain
• Release date: Dec 23, 2017
• ISBN: 9780981485843

John W. Fountain

A native son of Chicago, John W. Fountain is an award-winning columnist, journalist, professor and author of the memoir, True Vine: A Young Black Man’s Journey of Faith, Hope and Clarity (Public Affairs, 2003) and Dear Dad: Reflections on Fatherhood (WestSide Press, 2011). His essay, “The God Who Embraced Me” appears in National Public Radio’s book, This I Believe (Henry Holt Books, 2006), as part of the nationally acclaimed series initially started by Edward R. Morrow. Fountain is a professor of journalism at Roosevelt University and a weekly freelance columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. In 2015, 2014 and 2011, Fountain received the Peter Lisagor Award for Exemplary Journalism for columns published in the Sun-Times. Fountain won the Lisagor Award in the category of news column or commentary among daily newspapers with a circulation of 250,000 or more from the Chicago Headline Club—the largest local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists in the country. In 2014, Fountain was awarded best column by the Illinois Press Association. His most recent book, “Son of the Times: Life, Laughter, Love and Coffee” was published in 2017. In a journalism career that has spanned more than 25 years, Fountain has been a reporter at some of the top newspapers in this country. From 2000 to 2003, he was a national correspondent for The New York Times. Based in Chicago, Fountain covered a 12-state region. He also has been a staff writer at the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Sun-Times, Modesto Bee, Pioneer Press Newspapers in suburban Chicago and the Champaign News-Gazette.

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Prologue

There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church.

—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail

I am a sinner. I stand with one foot in each world, one called sin, the other called grace. I stand in the midst of sins I have committed today and yesterday and those I will inevitably commit tomorrow. Whatever my sins—and they are many—none of them are greater than His grace that by the blood of His Son Jesus Christ can make me—us—in the words of a Gospel hymn, whiter than snow. I stand because of Jesus our Lord and Savior, the Christ—He who remembers when others forget, but also He who forgets when others remember. I stand. And yet, without Him, I can do nothing.

I stand here, somewhere on the timeline of Christianity—more than 2,000 years after the Day of Pentecost, 18 centuries after Roman Emperor Constantine the Great placed his thumbprint on Christianity, and many years after the Great Awakenings. I stand somewhere in the afterglow of the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, California, which gave birth to modern Pentecostalism in America. I stand. Between the cries of ancestral slaves in the cotton fields of southern plantations, between my great-great grandfather’s pastoral prayers in Pulaski, Illinois, where he—Burton Roy—migrated from Atlanta, Georgia, after the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation released him from the bonds of slavery he inherited from birth. I stand.

I stand on the prayers of my grandmother and grandfather, Florence Geneva and George Albert Hagler, who, in 1943 made their way, like ultimately millions of southern blacks during the Great Migration to Freedom Land up north—in their case, Chicago. I stand as testament to the prayers and faith of the prayer warriors, those gray-haired church mothers with whom, on Tuesday and Friday mornings at one storefront church or another, I petitioned God for my soul, health and future. I stand as proof that God hears even the cries of a ghetto boy.

Shaped in iniquity, even in my mother’s womb, I am the son of an alcoholic father, predestined, at least having a predisposition to dysfunction, death and damnation. And I am certain that it is because of the grace of God that I have not been consumed and have found. instead of my father’s tragic fate, a life filled with more blessings than the curse, pain and sufferings of sin. I am as certain that the church, the institution, the building, the place where I have gathered more times than I can count since I was a child had a critical hand in the faith that pulled me through poverty, hardship, and away from the very gates of hell, toward life.

If I close my eyes, I can tunnel back through time, through the years of Sunday worship service and Sunday School, of singing in the choir at one storefront church or another, or my roles in countless Easter and Christmas plays since I was knee-high. If I close my eyes, I see me standing in the front of the sanctuary as a teenage junior deacon, or plucking my lead guitar on the front pew during worship service. Or I see me as a young adult, standing in my one and only suit—dark blue and shiny from wear and tear—near the offering collection plate at the wooden table in front of the church as a full-fledged deacon. Or I stand preaching from the pulpit as a minister of the Gospel, Grandmother shouting, Amens and the saints egging me on to preach the Word. I see me, walking with my bible outside on weekdays, up and down the 1600 block of South Komensky Avenue, where I grew up and later lived as a young man with my wife and three children on the West Side of Chicago. It was the same block where my grandfather owned two apartment buildings, where nearly all of our family lived at one time or another. Toting my bible, I would knock on my neighbors’ doors, telling them about Jesus, asking parents if they would allow their children to attend Sunday School at my church. The church van will swing down the block about 9:15 or so on Sunday morning, I would say, adding that at church the kids would be in for treats and games. …On to the next door.

If I close my eyes, I see a different man than I am today: Younger, fervent, more idealistic. I see me, standing to testify of the goodness of God and of my steadfast faith in Him, despite not having money to pay my electric or gas bill and having them consequently disconnected more times than I care to remember. I see me—determined to stand, despite my inability to find a job after months and months of unemployment. I see me as a young man, walking to church with my family on Sunday evenings, up Pulaski Road to Roosevelt Road, then east to True Vine Church of God In Christ, my grandfather’s storefront church at 3915 W. Roosevelt Road. I can still see True Vine’s neon-lit marquee with the red letters, Jesus Saves in a white globe, lighting the way. And inside those doors, if I close my eyes, I can hear the organ revving, cries of Yes Lord, the exaltations of the saints: Amen’s and Hallelujahs. And I can feel the Spirit. It rises from my belly, seems to spread like electricity across the congregation that rises to its feet, praising and worshipping on one accord. I see Grandmother, standing across from the church mothers, dressed in all white, her face aglow with a light not of this world and Grandpa sitting in his suit and clergy collar at attention in the pulpit, between the other ministers as it appears that the worship service has now come under God’s divine control. And I stand in the midst—inept, incomplete and insignificant in my own strength, ability and lowly status in life. Completely oblivious to my failings, shortcomings and insufficiencies in the glory of this moment in which God has become the focal point of our hearts, souls, minds and strength. And in the awesomeness of His power, we, the church—a body of believers—exists as one, with one purpose, one Lord, one faith, one hope. One.

And yet, when I open my eyes now, I stand mostly alone these days—at least apart from the church I once knew. I arrived at this state unintentionally, though it has since become clear to me that it was far from happenstance and that my collective experiences in the church—my tears and my joys, my hurts and my triumphs, my acceptance and rejection and far too many disappointments in the church—have their part in my bittersweet exodus. It wasn’t something I planned necessarily, nothing I had ever quite imagined would ever happen to me, especially after years of going to church, having been raised a PGK—a pastor’s grandkid—and with Pentecostal pedigree running red hot through my veins. But I was church hurt. Church angry. Church wounded. By pastors, by so-called brothers and also sisters. By a lifetime of backbiting, browbeating. By countless slights, over-the-pulpit berating and pastoral oppression. By that deep hurt that I have seen sting so many within the House of God at the hands of the brethren or the sisters, and which seems among the deepest of all life’s hurts and betrayals.

Slowly, I began slipping away—first, a Sunday here and there. I stopped attending bible study. Sunday School. Eventually, Sundays became days to sleep in or mornings to sit and sip a cup of coffee at a local café. Either was preferable to the weekly hemorrhaging in the pew that Sundays at church had become, listening to Buffalo fish-sermons, prosperity preaching, political spiels from visiting election candidates, or hype-‘em-up whooping and hollering, half-sung homilies that had about the same effect as a sugar sandwich on white bread. I say Buffalo fish-sermons because the tasty, flaky white fish is filled with so many bones that the sifting for the bones that can kill you make the meat for me not even worth the while, and, in fact, safer to avoid altogether. I had also come to believe that the church prefers the majority of its men to be spineless, speechless and sack-less—at least with regard to criticizing the pastor or the church or the status quo within it. I had come to believe that for some, attending church has become the Sunday ritual for proving how much better or holier they are than us. But I digress.

By the time I stopped attending church on a regular basis in 2005—aside from the visit to one church or another on some Sunday when mostly a feeling of guilt mixed with a longing for the cultural ritual of worship I had known since a child—I was sick of church, literally. Toward the end, I would get a migraine on Sunday that lasted for about a week then returned once Sunday had rolled around again. At my worst, I felt like I needed a good shot of rum or whiskey to go to church. I felt like I was dying in church, hemorrhaging in the pew, my mind drifting in and out of consciousness and my soul longing for rescue from the agony of enduring another church service. For service neither fed me nor filled me, but only slowly sucked the life away from me with dogma, with irrelevant or inept sermons and the recital of canned church-isms that drew a near robotic call and response from the congregation.

By the time of my departure from the Sunday ritual, it was clear to me that attending church served little practical purpose for my life. That my money, along with my silent, unchallenging attendance was what a pastor really wanted from me, along with mine and my wife’s and children’s bodies occupying spots in the pews each week. I felt like a piece of meat. I felt used. Overlooked. Diminished. Insignificant. And I felt marginalized in a world where, even at small churches, there is no role for men who are not preachers, pastors, deacons or in the choir—and no room for bucking the status quo, even when the status quo goes contrary to the Word of God, or the pastor or the church have gone south of the Gospel. I felt like the focus—of time, tithes and talents, of our collective energies—were too often misguided and leadership shortsighted. In my mind, the focus was too often on raising money rather than on saving souls. On meetings and conventions and anniversary celebrations. On Men’s Days and Women’s Days. On teas and banquets. On buying new choir robes. On spending more time and energy deciding the important stuff, like what would be the designated color theme for the clothes everyone was to wear for the pastor’s anniversary celebration—and little to no time on helping the poor and needy or on evangelism. On being the church rather than on having church. I was convinced that Jesus himself, scraggly bearded and not adorned with the scent of Dolce & Gabbana, or a designer suit and gators, would not be welcomed into the pews of our churches, let alone the pulpit.

There were other things fueling my angst, though it would take me years to unravel that thread. By the time I wrote the essay that eventually ran in the Washington Post, whatever it was, it gnawed at me, vexing my soul. Whatever it was, it would take time to uncover—time to look in the mirror, time to forgive, time to sift through my hurt, time to remember what was most critical to my faith, time to write. When I sat down to write the essay, later titled, No Place for Me, I had no intentions of publishing it. It was for me an exercise to try and exorcise my torment over my disconnection from the church—a search for answers. In fact, by then, my wife had asked me many times why I no longer wanted to attend church. And whenever I answered, there was a mini-volcanic eruption mixed with anger but mostly hurt that arose within me, but that to neither her satisfaction nor mine explained why it had really come to this. What was clear was that buried deep within the core of me was a truth I needed to reach—for my good, if not also perhaps for the good of others.

Now, after years of soul searching, and writing on this subject, I have some answers and also reflections to share, even if this part of my journey remains incomplete. What I have found, at least what I have made, is my peace. Peace with where I am. Peace with the forces and decisions that have brought me here. Peace about what was lost and what may in time be regained. Peace about the necessity of the journey for all of our lives. Peace enough to move forward. To see the mistakes of even good men and also my own. Peace to forgive them and also myself.

Peace and also wisdom. The wisdom to know that the human soul is worth far more than even a lifetime of church-hurts.

Wisdom and also faith. Faith enough to believe that if God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, His plan to redeem me to Himself does not end or begin with an institution but with the living organism that seeks not a temple of brick and mortar in which to dwell but deep within the hearts of men.

I have no illusions. Not everyone will agree with what I say in the pages that follow. Perhaps not anymore than readers do when I write my weekly newspaper column, which sometimes stirs their wrath. But as with my column, I can promise that I will be open in the pages that follow, honest and forthright. I can promise that what I write—often wrapped in narrative storytelling—comes straight from the heart, from the depths of my experience and also from the hope of enlightening, enriching and making even some small difference.

That is my hope here, especially for those who find themselves now drowning in a sea, somewhere between the shores of the institutional church and the church that is the Christ-centered living organism by which we are all connected—regardless of denomination, church attendance, or any socioeconomic, geographic or cultural boundaries. Jesus Christ himself is our hope. Not the church we may or may not attend. Not a pastor. Not another prophet. But Christ and Christ alone.

That much I have learned in this journey and feel compelled to share up front. It is a truth that I also share in narrative detail in the pages that follow in this my faith journey—a spiritual memoir. It is one that for me began as a little boy with my introduction to the concept of God, well beyond the walls of the church, at my bedside while saying my prayers with my little sister and our mother. This one truth alone rescued me from the brink of losing my faith completely and turning my back on God. And it has restored the sobriety of my faith that allows me now to see so clearly in hindsight the hand of God, even in my darkest days.

I write having had the experience of not being free to express within the church—without fear of retribution, ostracism, excommunication and over-the-pulpit backlash—my thoughts about the church, my sense of the church’s loss of direction, focus and mission and its fateful slide down the slope of materialism, narcissism and prosperity. I write having sometimes sat mute in church meetings and services, unwilling to risk the possible repercussions of speaking contrary to the status quo, of being labeled a rabble-rouser, malcontent, or an unmitigated instrument of the devil. I write having sometimes spoken my mind only to be told that I think too much, and having been properly scolded, shunned or given the silent side-eye by the brethren, among them those of great exegetical and hermeneutical ilk with master’s and doctoral degrees in divinity. I now write—not as theologian or scholar, not as clergy or even as adversary of the faith, but as a son of the faith whose eternal hope still rests solely upon Jesus Christ—the author and finisher of our faith. I pray that much will be evident in these pages, even as you the reader witness me stumble, rise and fall and manage to get back to my feet again.

And if anyone is blessed by what I have written here—helped in some way—or should find somewhere in these pages for themselves clarity in their faith, restoration for their journey, or a reconnection or lifeline to the Lamb of God, then to God be glory. He is worthy. And His church shall prevail. On Him I stand. And upon this truth, my faith has always stood—at every step of the way, even if I now find in the institutional church in America, no place for me.

PART 1

Genesis

John W. Fountain’s grandparents and cousins circa 1970s. (John appears in back row, third from the left.)

CHAPTER 1

No Place For Me

Washington Post — Sunday, July 17, 2005

Sunday morning arrived, like so many before, with a mix of sunlight and chirping birds outside my bedroom window and a warm greeting from my tiny son, lying beside my wife and me. My wife rose quickly, announcing her plan to jump in the shower and get ready for Sunday school at the Baptist church, not far from our house in suburban Chicago, that she and our two children attend.

As for me, in what has become my ritual nowadays, I turned over and pulled the covers up around my head. Soon I overheard my 9-year-old daughter's familiar question: Mommy, is Daddy going to church with us?

No-o-o-o, my wife replied. After months of my failure to accompany them, she has abandoned the excuse that Daddy has a lot of work to do.

Sunday mornings used to mean something special to me. But I now face them with dread, with a bittersweet sorrow that tugs at my heart and a headache-inducing tension that makes me reach for the Advil. I am torn between my desire to play hooky from church and my Pentecostal indoctrination that Sunday is the Lord's day, a day of worship when real men are supposed to lead their families into the house of God.

Once, that's what I did. I am the grandson of a pastor and am myself a licensed minister. I love God and I love the church. I know church-speak and feel as comfortable shouting hallelujahs and amens and lifting my hands in the sanctuary as I do putting on my socks. I have danced in the spirit, spoken in tongues, and proclaimed Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior. I once arrived faithfully at the door of every prayer meeting and went to nearly every bible study and month-long revival. I attended umpteen services, even the midnight musicals and my church's annual national meetings, like the one held two weeks ago in Kansas City.

Yet I now feel disconnected. I am disconnected. Not necessarily from God, but from the church.

What happened? Probably the same thing that has happened to thousands, if not tens of thousands, of African American men who now file into coffee shops or bowling alleys or baseball stadiums on Sundays instead of heading to church, or who lose themselves in the haze of mowing the lawn or waxing their cars. Somewhere along the way, for us, for me, the church—the collective of black churches of the Christian faith, regardless of denomination—lost its meaning, its relevance. It seems to have no discernible message for what ails the 21st-century black male soul.

While there are still many black men who do go to church, any pastor will admit that there are far more who don’t. Jawanza Kunjufu, a Chicago educator and author of Adam! Where are You?: Why Most Black Men Don't Go to Church, contends that 75 percent of the black church is female. The church's finger seems farthest from the pulse of those black men who seem to be most lost and drifting in a destructive sea of fatalism and pathology, with no immediate sign of the shore or of search and rescue crews.

Without the church, most of those men are doomed. But it seems clear to me that the church does not—will not—seek us black men out, or perhaps even mourn our disappearance from the pews.

Instead, it seems to have turned inward. It seems to exist for the perpetuation of itself—for the erecting of grandiose temples of brick and mortar and for the care of pastors and the salaried administrative staff. Not long ago, a preacher friend confided: The black church is in a struggle for its collective soul—to find itself in an age when it is consumed by the God of materialism.

This preoccupation with the material world is pervasive, and has bred a culture that has left a trail of blood and tears in black neighborhoods across the country with little collective outcry from the church. Still, it's one thing for the world to be ensnared by the trappings of materialism—but the church?

I am incensed by Mercedes-buying preachers who live in suburban meadows far from the inner-city ghettos they pastor, where they bid parishioners to sacrifice in the name of God. I am angered by the preacher I know, and his wife and co-pastor, who exacted a per diem and drove luxury vehicles, their modest salaries boosted by tithes and offerings from poor folks in a struggling congregation of families, a number of them headed by single women. This at a time when the church didn't own a single chair and was renting a building to hold worship services.

I wonder why, despite billions of dollars taken from collection plates—much of it from the poor—in my own denomination, I see few homes for the elderly, few recreation centers, little to no church-financed housing development and few viable church-operated businesses that might employ members or generate some tangible measure of return on years of investment. I scratch my head at the multimillion-dollar edifice a local church recently erected and wonder if that is the most responsible stewardship for a church in a community filled with poor families.

I have come to see the countless annual meetings and church assemblies, camouflaged as worship services, as little more than fundraisers and quasi-fashion shows with a dose of spirituality. I am disheartened by the territorialism of churches, vying for control and membership, as a deacon at a Baptist church said to me recently, in much the same way as gangs, rather than seeing themselves as communal partners in a vineyard with one Lord and a single purpose.

But even in an age of preacher as celebrity, it is not the evolution of a Bling-Bling Gospel that most disheartens me. It is the loss of the church's heart and soul: the mission to seek and to save lost souls through the power of the Gospel and a risen savior. As the homicide toll in black neighborhoods has swelled, I've wondered why churches or pastors have seldom taken a stand or ventured beyond the doors of their sanctuaries to bring healing and hope to the community—whether to stem the tide of violence and drugs, or to help cure poverty and homelessness or any number of issues that envelop ailing black communities.

Once, after a service at my grandfather's church in a small western suburb of Chicago, I mentioned to a visiting pastor that there was a drug and gang war going on in his community. I don't know nothing 'bout that, he responded. I wondered why not. How could he not know about something that affected a community in which he was a shepherd?

When I returned to Chicago nearly five years ago, after living in Northern Virginia, where I worked as a reporter at The Post, I was eager to assist in