The Church Bubble

As a 45-year-old, I have lived through a number of bubbles, one of which I was not aware of because I was 9 years old at the time. The first bubble I lived through was the Savings and Loan crises, which was really just another real estate bubble that later established the Appraisal Foundation, a private nonprofit that determines the value of housing. In my 20s, I experienced both the dotcom bubble and the housing bubble, which was great for someone who just spent money obtaining a professional certificate about to start a masters. One bubble that I just began to notice with the rise of Christian nationalism is the church bubble, which used to be confined to rural communities but rose with conservatism. Now, it has been made clear that a bunch of churches popped up when Christianity was “trending,” but now that Christian nationalism has taken over, people are backing away from the corruption and manipulation which seem to be required.

For years, I was a staunch church attendee, even encouraging my family of origin to go to church when we had not originally been attending. The more I learned about Black history, the more interested I was in the church as a social organization based on all the activism that took place. Later, I discovered that the people at my first church were responsible for recognizing Juneteenth in the City of Austin, so in the past, they had been activists. When I started going, it seemed more like a place where Black people were social climbing, and my family stood out like a sore thumb since I was from West Austin, instead of East Austin, where Black people were originally segregated. Choir was fun, because I enjoyed singing. The Girls in Action missionary group was interesting because I met an elder who talked about sibling dynamics, which I desperately needed at the time. However, my spirituality gradually became more self contained because I disliked social climbing with a passion as I aged, and seemed to be the point of church, rather than the activism I learned about from Black history in college.

As a college student and a young adult, I saw that there were more missionary efforts without actual outreach, and I became a lot less interested in church. People seemed intent on “guiding” others to Christianity, but not really doing anything to help their situations. There were churches full of rich people who refused to help people get jobs or proper housing, and there were “outreach” programs that seemed to be more about photo ops than real engagement. Soon, I would find myself completely disinterested in any church community because they were more about looking good than practicing Christianity. What made me feel more at peace was that I was not alone.

The “best” part of imperial collapse is that everything is revealed, from the seemingly innocent to the most vile, and churches have been revealed to be mostly social clubs with very little exception. People have remained in their situations for decades, but going to church has done very little, and more rich people have stayed in the mindset of prosperity gospel than actual mutual aid. Thanks to the simultaneous rise of Christian nationalism and the unveiling of disgusting individuals, people now see most churches in the United States as the shams they are, refusing to make excuses for the lack of community development or the sanitization of evil. If true Christianity survives, the charlatans will release their wealth and more people will stabilize, but as a realist, I have a hard time seeing that happen in the near future.