Beyond religion

I found myself driving through Plains, Georgia on February 16—President’s Day. So I decided to stop at the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site, which is actually a converted grade school. Turned out I missed the former president and first lady—who spoke and signed books there—by less than two hours.

Even though I didn’t get to meet the town’s famous son, I did enjoy a documentary about his life. I was struck by the observation of a long-time neighbor. “Jimmy Carter,” the man reflected, “ is not a ‘religious’ person—but a person of faith. He lives what he believes.”

If I’ve been surprised by anything in the South, it’s the force with which that distinction—between “religion” and “faith”—has been voiced.

A few weeks earlier, my friend, Stephen and I were chatting with the couple seated next to us in the bar at Michael’s Restaurant in Key West, Florida. I don’t recall what prompted it, but at one point Stephen asked Kelly and Vern if they were religious.

“No, not really,” Kelly replied nonchalantly. “We love everyone and don’t judge anyone. We’re not religious.”

Don’t get me wrong. The sheer number of churches in the region attests to the fact that people aren’t completely abandoning the pews (as has already occurred in Europe and is increasingly being documented by studies of religious practice here). But I’ve stumbled across a number of people who, despite deep spiritual convictions, are distancing themselves from the traditions in which they were raised. The leave-taking crosses denominational lines. And while the reasons are varied, the ones I’ve heard most often fall into the broad categories of politics and relevance.

Joe grew up Catholic in Montgomery, Alabama. A series of family medical crisis increased his sensitivity to the plight of “people in tough circumstances,” and decreased his need for “absolutes.” “But I didn’t leave the church,” he mused. “The church left me.”

Jay, a former Presbyterian minister, gradually tired of the bickering he couldn’t seem to avoid as a pastor. At the same time, he began to find Christianity limiting, especially as it painted the human relationship with God.

When attempting to fathom God, Jay asks three questions: “First comes the ‘What’? Then comes the ‘So what’? But the really important part is the ‘Now what’?”

“Most churches,” in his estimation, “generally address the first question and sometimes the second. But they do a poor job with the third.”

“What do we do with our experience and understanding of God?” Jay challenged. “How do we apply it to our lives?”

I found an interesting answer in the person of Buddy Moody, a cattle rancher in Poplarville, Mississippi who shares Jay’s aversion to church politics.

“A lot of people have had bad experiences with religion,” Buddy volunteered when we met in late February. “They gotta heal up from that.” Then he proceeded to describe the formation of a faith community on his family farm—a community that transcends the institutional constraints he and others can no longer abide.

I come from a traditional Baptist upbringing. But I had friends who didn’t feel welcome in the church. So, I’d just meet up with ‘em. At one point, I decided to start a Bible study in my barn. We’d meet on Sunday nights. We never said we was gonna have church. We just kept meetin’. And more and more people kept coming. That’s been 10 years now… We call it the ‘Barn Church.’ ANYBODY is welcome—and they all know it. We don’t have a checklist—that they gotta get everything right. There’s a wide range of people who come. We have senators and folks in rehab. There are no committees, there’s no order of service, no offering. But some incredible worship happens.

“Worship”—which includes both food and fellowship—takes place in the family’s open-air barn on Sunday mornings and evenings, and at a livestock auction building in a nearby town on Wednesday evenings. It includes music, personal “testimony” (life experiences shared by participants), and spontaneous preaching by a young cattle rancher named Jeff.

I had a chance to see “The Barn Church” in action—on a Tuesday. And while, at one point, I noticed a few people gathered in prayer, what I witnessed over the course of several hours was some incredible service. Emergency food (which is distributed at least once a week) was being handed out by volunteers to dozens of families—because, as Buddy put it, “People need to eat—and not just on Thanksgiving and Christmas!” Donated furniture and appliances stored in another part of the barn go out as quickly as they come in. Buddy’s phone rang about every 15 minutes—alternating almost miraculously between callers needing help and others wishing to lend a hand. And prisoners in the area receive regular visits, as well as weekly postcards that are signed by everyone at the Sunday meetings. Whenever people are having a hard time, Buddy explained,

We just take up a collection and get what’s needed to those in need. Because of some of the things we’ve experienced, we have a real appreciation for the struggles of others. There’s nothin’ special about us. A huge part of what we do is just lovin’ on people—love ‘em and not enable ‘em.

Buddy introduced me to Jeff—the Barn Church preacher—describing him as “a man of God who knows the Word.” Jeff, too, is disappointed by the failure of institutional religion to address the pressing needs of people—and to encourage the direct experience of God. “The further God throwed me from traditional, mundane religion, the better,” he laughed. Then he added seriously, “One of the greatest disconnects in the church is from the front side of the microphone to the back side of the pews.”

Buddy’s wife, Robin, captured the spirit of Barn Church members. “We’re not religious,” she observed thoughtfully, “but we have a relationship with Jesus that makes all the difference in the world. It’s all about relationship.” Then she added an affectionate tribute to Buddy’s role in her spiritual journey.

“At one point,” she said, referring to earlier days in their nearly 40-year marriage, “I was just playin’ by the rulebook. Buddy was livin’ it.”

That sweet, simple acknowledgment underscores a question that can be fairly asked of any faith or spiritual practice: Is it evident through the lives of those who profess it?

If anything can be said of Buddy Moody, it’s that he lives his faith. And if there’s anything to be concluded about the Barn Church—which was born inadvertently on land farmed by the Moody family for three generations—it’s that something beyond religion is emerging in America. Like most cultural phenomena, it’s taking shape quietly, organically, and in a wide variety of forms.

Why? Because people are searching for spiritual paths that start with an understanding of God as love and invite seekers to experience their own divine nature—paths that transcend judgment, condemnation, narrow-mindedness, and mean-spiritedness. And because, as Robin Moody put it, people thrive on relationship—the meaningful connection with others and with something bigger than themselves.

Obviously, this kind of relationship can also occur within church settings—though it requires, as Pope Francis has so eloquently pointed out, a considerable shift in institutional focus away from dogma and toward the kind of direct human engagement I witnessed in Poplarville. “The church,” Francis remarked in a 2013 interview,

has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules…. The thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds, heal the wounds… And you have to start from the ground up.

I imagine that’s the place where Buddy and Robin Moody, Joe, Jay, and Jeff would stand in solidarity with Pope Francis. When it comes to warming the hearts of the faithful, you have to heal the wounds first. And it’s best to start from the ground up.

“We are not just here together to keep each other company,” writes Jeff Brown in his book, Love it Forward. “We are here together to show each other God.”

I must say, it’s been quite a show down here.

(San Antonio, TX)

PS. If you’re ever in the vicinity of Poplarville, Mississippi, and want to visit the Barn Church, I would encourage you to stay—as I did—in one of the three cozy cabins on Buddy’s ranch. Check it out at www.swallowforklake.com