Fellow Fairbanks blogger Discontinuous Permafrost writes about the Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship in his latest post, “Organizing unorganized religion,”
While unorganized religion has its benefits, it also has its challenges. I suspect the only thing we might agree upon is that we should have service on Sunday.
It’s veering a bit away from the thrust of the piece (which is about the challenges and opportunities of a non-credal religion), but let me sow the seeds of disagreement over the UU’s one point of consensus (i.e., having service on Sunday).
All congregations from culturally Christian roots — mine included — seem to default to Sundays as their day of meeting. Yet Sunday is the day of the week when people without a car will have the hardest time getting to church (or what you may call it). The Borough buses in Fairbanks run a regular schedule from Monday to Friday, a much-scaled-back schedule on Saturday, and not at all on Sunday.
In addition, many congregations — DP’s and mine included — deliberately locate some distance from any concentration of human population, which means that the chance of many congregants’ walking to church is practically nil.
These two practices, of locating churches outside of any neighborhood and of meeting on transit-free days, has the effect of making church accessible only to those who can afford a car. The care and feeding of private automobiles takes up 15 to 25 percent of our personal income (across all income groups, incidentally), which poses a tremendous burden on the poor.
A requirement of car ownership seems to defy some of the “seven principles” that DP credits to the Unitarian-Universalists, particularly:
- The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
- Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
- Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations; and
- Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
By no means do I wish to single out the UU’s. My own religious body, like theirs, has a strong emphasis on equality, community, and social justice. Like theirs, mine is not accessible by public transit on Sundays. (Theirs, at least, is marginally accessible on the Yellow Line; mine is far away from any public transit.)
By requiring car ownership as the gateway to church participation (or, indeed, any civic participation), don’t we effectively weed out the involvement of the poor, the very people to whom the religious ought to reach out the most? Don’t we block, rather than encourage, their spiritual growth?
Great post.
And you didn’t even have to hit on the environmental impacts of sprawl and car ownership. (See my post about firewood, I’m already feeling guilty about my own car ownership issues.)
In any case, you have me convinced. From now on, UUFF won’t even be able to agree on what day of the week to meet, at least when I’m in on the conversation.
Thanks for reading my blog. I enjoy yours, and whole heartedly support your cause.
A former Slaterville resident, looking forward to moving back down town,
Discontinuous Permafrost
Perhaps churches located beyond walking distance from town should consider renting a hall and holding a limited service for the poor and others who cannot attend a Sunday service. Expenses could be reduced if a number of churches shared the hall and the rent, scheduling services at different times. If some Fairbanks person or business could contribute the hall that would be even better. Or perhaps there is a public building that is not used on Sundays that would be available.
Bravo for a very relevant column. The need for an automobile and the lack of public transportation on Sunday definitely restrict church attendance to people who have cars, especially attendance at churches located out of the city.
Discontinuous Permafrost — may I call you “Disco Perm”? — I don’t *have* to hit on the environmental impact of sprawl and car use, since a million others are already doing that for me. (Don’t tell me that UUFF’s social concerns task force hasn’t been discussing their carbon emissions!) In fact, even if the environmental assault that cars wage were somehow negated, cars’ social impacts would still remain — and perhaps even grow, since peoples’ driving behavior would no longer be restrained by their ecological conscience. I’ll write more on this one another time.
I’m glad to have your readership. You certainly have mine.
Mr. Gibbs: I appreciate the suggestion that churches could take an active role in making their services (or ministry, or what-have-you) more available to the non-driving poor. But what concerns me about your suggestion is the possibility that churches out of town would introduce a tiered system: one service for the rich, one for the poor. If a congregation has enough awareness of inequitable access to consider a second, more accessible service, wouldn’t they also want to avoid establishing a “separate but equal” class of members?
Of course, there are different levels of participation required at different churches: some have a central, authoritative pastor; some have rotating lay leaders; others have no specially designated ministers at all. In the first kind, I imagine, attendance may be more about the *sermon itself*; and, as long as the sermon remains constant, there’s less inequity.
However, a big component of church is not just the ministry, but the company you rub elbows with, the people who are supposed to support and uplift you — or people whom you are supposed to support and uplift. Assuming that between the rich and the poor there are social differences other than income (and that among each class there are social commonalities), the “car service” and the “no car service” could end up with radically different congregations that felt little in common or had little regard for each other.
I like to think that church should cut across class to unite, not divide, rich and poor.
hmm.. interesting connection. One of the several reasons I don’t attend.
However, I have heard of some churches offering a Saturday evening service or even a shuttle/bus or car pool service. Of course they are not all that common and there hasn’t been much attempt to advertise such options.
Paul,
Your post brings to mind the historical role of church as a primary driver of establishing community. I’d venture that living in proximity to one’s church has survived better than living in proximity to one’s place of work. Never the less you raise some interesting points. All the more so since churches, as places defined by intention, have an ability to affect positive change at a neighborhood/community level. But I disagree with your suggestion that churches are deliberately located away from concentrations of people. This may be true of newer churches, but if so it’s for the same reasons that the new large commercial developments are out of town, and that the population of the Fairbanks borough is spreading out generally: land out of town is cheap and land in town isn’t and the automobile makes such arrangements feasible. Thus, it is central to your general discussion. I also want to argue with you on the point of Sundays. It seems to me that a less harried pace is a highly desirable, if not necessary, condition for community building. This makes the weekend an ideal time.
So, can the idea of the neighborhood church serve as a cornerstone to rebuilding walkable neighborhoods and communities? It seems as likely a starting point as any.
Russell, thank you so much for the reminder about the social conditions that encourage sprawl, and shame on me for falling into the trap of thinking that location and land-use decisions are made solely by individuals (or by the property-buying corporate bodies). In fact, the systemic lack of choice, or restrictions on choosing the public good, should be a recurring theme in this blog. You certainly raise questions (whether intentionally or not) about zoning, infrastructure, public subsidy of private good, land speculation, and property taxation — all of which I’ll get to, in time. (Though if you or others want to start discussing them here, please do! I simply don’t have the time to offer more than a post or two and a couple of comments per week.)
I may disagree with your suggestion that a less harried pace is important for community-building. It begs the questions, “Less harried than what?” and “Which community?” A religious community (I’ll call it “church” for short) requires some commonality and orderliness. It achieves this in part by conducting church business (worship, coffee hour, board meetings, et cetera) within the building’s walls, within the private sphere — saying, essentially, “In here, we practice this religion. We may be different from others. If you want to come in, you have to act by our rules.” But *within* the building, church-goers have free association with each other, and even some interaction with those of their fellows they don’t care for. All you have to do to leave the public, more harried, realm is to go in the door.
I think that community-building on any scale requires interactions both intentional and unintentional, as something to build commonality and level people socially. That is, people must be both free to meet the people they want and obliged to meet people they don’t care for. But if the only habitable space is private space — from your driveway to your car to the church parking lot — where you never have to interact with anyone not of your choosing, then the public will never build commonality, and social groups or classes will become more stratified and isolated from one another.