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The Church Must Change

by Barbara Wendland

The church needs to change. That didn’t become apparent to me until midlife. Since then, however, it has steadily kept becoming more and more apparent.

If God is trying to get the church to change, it shouldn’t surprise us. Often in the Bible and Christian history we find God urgently trying to get God's followers to make needed changes. Still, it's hard to imagine that God might actually want us to change. When we're active in the church we tend to assume that we're doing God's will. But surprisingly, throughout history the people who have most adamantly refused to make the changes God wanted have been the most religious people. They've been people like us.

In the days of the Old Testament prophets, the priests and worshippers at the temple and its local shrines refused to heed God's messages. Through prophets God kept saying that acts of love and justice like caring for the poor were what God wanted, instead of merely following traditional religious rituals and rules. But even though God begged people to change, most of them refused.

The New Testament portrays the Pharisees as the culprits. Their status and comfort depended on their seeing themselves as righteous. Instead of listening to what God was currently saying to them through Jesus, they kept following instructions that God had given to other people many centuries earlier. They also distorted those instructions and added a lot of rules of their own.

I’m afraid we’re doing something similar in our churches now.

The Crone of Temple, Texas

“The Crone of Temple, Texas,” is a podcast featuring Barbara Wendland, an 88 year old woman who helped pioneer progressive Christianity, calling the church to examine its outdated practices and beliefs. The church needs to change. That didn’t become apparent to Barbara until midlife. Since then, however, it has steadily kept becoming more and more apparent to her. If God is trying to get the church to change, it shouldn’t surprise us. Throughout history, however, the people who have most adamantly refused to make the changes God wanted have been the most religious people.

The Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice located at Vanderbilt University Divinity School focuses on issues of justice that arise at the intersection of religion, economics, and ecology. Founded in 2019 by Dr. Joerg Rieger and supported by a generous gift from Barbara Wendland, the mission of the program is to develop resources and opportunities for students, scholars, clergy, and activists to envision and create a more just and sustainable world for all.

For more information, please visit www.religionandjustice.org or listen to Barbara's podcast episode with Dr. Joerg Reiger found here.

About the Author

Barbara Wendland

Barbara is neither church employee nor a clergy spouse, so she is free to say openly what they usually are not.

Purchase a Copy of Barbara’s Latest Book Below

Promote Compassion, Justice, Nonviolence, and Peace

Barbara's most recent book is Misfits: The Church's Hidden Strength (St. Johann Press, 2010). In it, she reports what she hears constantly from Connections readers about feeling like misfits with regard to the church.