Attraction, not argument

From Michael Brendan Dougherty,  Christians cannot strategize and argue their way into renewed prominence – The Week:

The church grows in two ways. The first is biological, through the growth of church-going families. Philip Longman has written extensively about how the seriously religious have higher birthrates than the secular in almost every country, and under almost every form of government. And further, he maintains that the children of serious believers do tend to remain in belief. We may see those low attendance numbers rising soon. Christians from traditional churches may start to resemble Mormons in the way their family formation patterns change: younger and larger.

The second way the church grows is by attraction, not argument. And so, a number of professional arguers at a magazine of ideas may not be the best source for strategies of recovery. In truth, the heart moves first and then the head follows it. Experience tells us that this is so. No man draws up a list of qualities they know a woman possesses and only then decides to fall in love. Instead they fall in love with a woman, and that action of the soul reveals an endless list of qualities in the beloved that may have previously been veiled.

I had many arguments about religion in college, and none of them ended with the person on the other side saying, “Geez, I guess you’re right. When can I be baptized?” I often felt defeated and dispirited that something like this never happened. And yet, I’ve received emails in years since from some of those same people saying that somehow our interactions put them on a path to convert later. I hadn’t overpowered their intellect, but perhaps I disarmed a stereotype. Often a person just needs to encounter someone “like them” to open themselves up to a transformation of life.

And so, a little distance from identification with conservative politics will likely help the Church. Most people, including most churchmen, have their moral reasoning shaped within an omnipresent politically charged culture-war debate. The 80 percent of Americans who aren’t in church on a given Sunday are very likely to encounter explicitly Christian ideas and voices within a very fractious debate about politics. People who, for whatever reason, don’t like conservative politics will extend that distaste to all serious religion if the identification is too strong.

Just think about it. Very few non-religious people would open themselves to religious transformation if the expected result was that they’d be given the twitchy and aggrieved personality of an ideologue. Why, then, should ideologues represent the Church?

Growing by attraction also means that religious life should emphasize beauty. Before he was pope, Joseph Ratzinger said, “The only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely, the saints the Church has produced and the art which has grown in her womb.” He’s right. I’ve seen beautiful vestments from traditional liturgy stop traffic during processions. An atheist friend recently admitted that Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus almost made him believe in God. It may yet.

And that beauty extends also to the lives Christians cultivate. The saints Ratzinger invokes are not just found at the heads of new religious orders. They can be everywhere. The martyrs of the Middle East are an example that can enliven the Church even in the West. When a principle or movement inspires quixotic-seeming sacrifices, it becomes suddenly alluring. Closer to home, turned into a creative minority, every dinner table in a Christian home can be an imitation of the ancient Hebrew Feast of Booths, where Gentiles gathered in with believers to eat and celebrate.