'Tis the Lonely Season

'Tis the lonely season!  Lonely people, those who lack social structures, feel their loneliness during the holiday season more than ever.  This is a time marked by merry making with friends and loved ones.  It also is a season that falls, ironically, during the darkest, and often dreariest, times of the year, which for the those already feeling lonely only elevates the feeling.

A paper recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology ("Alone in the crowd: The structure and spread of loneliness in a large social network," James Fowler, Nicholas Christakis, John Cacioppio, 97:6) suggests that loneliness is contagious; lonely people tend to spread their loneliness around.  Lonely people are "downers," pulling us down with them.  While the study states the need for "interventions" into the lives of the lonely, it did not suggest what these interventions might be.

Well, one of those "interventions" could be the church or synagogue.  Yet, not too long ago there was another paper written (for which I have misplaced the source) that suggested that the worship hour in our churches and synagogues is one of the loneliest hours in the weekly cycle, at least for those who attend a worship service. You may disagree, but for many it is the case.  Not being overly social in the first place, the lonely tend to get overlooked by the "faithful" who are busy greeting their friends and socializing with each other.  Often, all the lonely receives is a half-hearted "Welcome" from the official greeter. Even in my own life, and I am a gregarious person, I have attended worship at one place for several Sundays in a row, never to be acknowledged by anyone other than the Greeter, not even the minister!

Without analyzing in depth why this is the case, I will suggest that the exclusion has to do a lot with membership, agendas, and "creedal pushes."  For example, the word "inclusive" is often a code word "that homosexuals are welcome," yet the same "inclusive" church is not a welcoming one.   Membership, whether we want to admit it or not, is in practice, exclusiveness.  Once a member one gains certain privileges not available to non-members.  In a real sense, membership is structured socialization in which one is accepted only because of what they bring, e.g., finances, skills, creedal adherence, a feather in the cap of the pastor. Demanding an adherence to a specifc creed means that those who do not adhere, or who for some other reason do not wish to join, are suspect in the eyes of the accepted.  Let's face it, lonely people often choose not to join (even if they do subscribe to the accepted creed), sometimes because they feel inadequate, and often out of fear.

I am going to propose something radical: a church without membership, creedal adherence, or the passing of the offering plate or pledging.  There are, of course, churches that do not ask their members to agree a certain creed.  There are also churches where the offering plate is simply placed at the back of the church. But how many churches are there that have no membership roles, ask not not for pledges, do not pass the offering plate, and are fully inclusive to all?  What I am suggesting is that we who claim to be people of faith give our attention and time to building open communities of faith rather than organized churches with agendas, sound finances, and "pure belief."

This week we will hear from our pulpits words of goodwill and peace to humankind (Luke 2).  Even if your church isn't going to change, still, can we hope that some of us who claim to be people of faith will actually begin to intervene, in sincerity, in the lives of the lonely?