Searching for Sacred Home (Part 1)

Spiritual Labels in a World of Linguistic Madness

Dear Reader,

I was recently sitting at a doctor’s appointment with my wife. We’d never met the doctor before, and at one point during the appointment, he asked us what we did for a living. After my wife gave him a very acceptable answer to his kind question, it was my turn.

I gulped, took a deep breath, and proceeded to tell him, “I’m a pastor at a local church.”

Other pastors reading this will know that when someone asks you this question, and you answer them honestly, there is truly no telling where the conversation is going next, and you either love that fact or hate it. Personally, I tend to fall in the latter category, and so I try to avoid these situations at all costs.

Doc said, “Oh, how many people are at your church?”

I said, “Uh, maybe two-hundred-and-fifty. We don’t really keep count.”

Doc said, “Oh.”

And then he asked me something my nerdy, church history, spent-too-long-in-seminary brain couldn’t give an easy answer to. He asked, “So are you like Protestant or non-denominational or what?”

I squinted my eyes and tilted my head, caught off guard by the question. It didn’t compute with my theological brain. “A non-denominational church IS a Protestant church,” I thought to myself. “What are you even asking me?” Thankfully, I did not share this internal monologue out loud, but I did proceed to rattle off something that was probably way too technical, not at all thought out, extremely reactionary, and likely made the whole situation worse. I said,

“We are an independent, non-denominational church that has roots in the American Restoration movement, which gave birth to the Christian Church, the Church of Christ, and the Disciples of Christ denominations.”

All in one breath.

Cue the awkwardness.

I wanted to say, “I’m just a Christian,” but that seemed too vague, and didn’t really answer his question.

I could have said, “We’re just a non-denominational church.” But I didn’t want to give him the impression that we were just a bunch of Christian free-floaters, untethered from any sort of legitimate tradition.

I should have just said, “Our church loves King Jesus and we are trying to obey and follow him in every aspect of our lives.”

But you and I both know that’s really not what the doc was asking. None of those answers would likely have given him what he was looking for. The doc was simply trying to size me up, to tuck me into his mental framework of religion in America—particularly in the south—all triggered by the moment I mentioned “church” and “pastor” in my initial answer to his question about what I did for a living.

In other words, he wanted to make sense of my religious identity, to put me on a team, associate me with a group of people, a particular doctrine, or a certain set of beliefs. He wanted to fill in the gaps of who I was as a person by squaring me up with pre-conceived assumptions about what it means to be a “pastor” of a “church,” whether that be a Protestant, Methodist, Baptist, non-denominational, evangelical, or however one would answer that question.

I suspect that my all-in-one-breath self-identification as an “independent, non-denominational church that has roots in the American Restoration movement, which gave birth to the Christian Church, the Church of Christ, and the Disciples of Christ denominations,” was NOT what he bargained for in asking that benign, and quite frankly, nice, question. After all, he was just trying to get to know me.

Now, before I go any further, let me be clear. I know this is partly a preacher’s story, meant to punctuate a point. And the point is this: I often wrestle with disclosing my religious identity (or any identity for that matter) in a world where language is too easily weaponized, reducing people to stereotypes and slotting them into ideological camps.

Call me a millennial or whatever you want, I simply do not want to be boxed into an identity, a label, or a stereotype. I value authenticity, and I want my authenticity to come through. This is very neoliberal of me. I recognize that. More on that in another post?

So yes, this is a bit of a preacher’s story. I accept that the doctor was simply making small talk with my wife and me while carrying out the professional duties for which we were there to see him in the first place. He probably had no intention of probing the nuances of my religious self-identification. His words could easily be chalked up to good bedside manner, and we could have left it at that.

But—and this is a bit but—I ask you, for just a moment, to let this story linger and see what it stirs within you.

How do you identify religiously? What’s your spiritual label? What do you say when someone asks you what type of Christian you are? Or what type of church you attend, or pastor?

In this series, I am interested in helping folks find their sacred home, for we are sacred creatures in need of a dwelling place. I want to explore what shapes our spiritual identity. Ask what it means to be a Christian? Explore what our religious identities tell us about how we understand ourselves, our world, or those around us?

I want to do this by writing some about my own story, to tell of how I have come to be where I am, in hopes of helping you get to where you are going. I want to explore our collective stories, which are, in my estimation, stories about humans searching for a sacred home. I don’t necessarily know where this series will lead, or if it will be coherent to you, my readers, but I do covet your feedback. Genuinely. I have some ideas for a few posts, but maybe my community could lead me to greater clarity for what to explore or say in this series. Your comments are welcome.

Today’s post is roughly about the limits of language. Language is not a static thing. It is a world-creating property. Words, especially religious ones, are slippery things. They carry centuries of history, cultural baggage, and evolving meaning, and yet they also hold the power to connect us, to place us in a story bigger than ourselves. I am convinced that language can be both a powerful force for good or a destructive force for ill in the world, but it is rarely neutral. We must tend to the dynamics of language if we are to begin searching for a sacred home. This “tending to language” looks like asking how language is used, exploring what words mean, and thinking about how we make meaning together.

As a little thought-experiment.

What comes to mind for you when you think about the word Protestant?

Is it helpful?

Is it vague?

Too broad?

Meaningless?

Maybe you get a mental picture of a young German Catholic Priest with a hammer in hand, nailing his 95 theses to an old church door, and think to yourself... well, that’s not me. Perhaps you think in either/or categories, assuming that ‘Protestant’ simply means the opposite of ‘Catholic,’ the word itself functioning as an antonym. Or maybe something else comes to mind for you.

Whatever it is, it seems to me that most Christians who are in fact Protestants don’t self-identify that way. It’s just not a term that is used much anymore. Where I live in the South, people are much more inclined to claim denominational fidelity rather than paint themselves in broad Protestant strokes. It is more meaningful (and perhaps safer?) to use denominational titles when naming their religious self-identification. For example, people might claim they are a Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, or Pentecostal—but rarely a Protestant. Others who come from more independent, autonomous, or “free churches” more often use terms like evangelical, non-denominational, Christian, or disciple of Jesus to describe their religious identity, but Protestant rarely makes the cut.

I’m not knocking this practice. There are good reasons to use these other titles in our day-to-day conversations. For one, denominational titles and these other labels can provide more nuance, context, and clarity for those trying to understand who we are. On the negative side, these titles and labels are rife with stereotypes that could potentially lead to misunderstanding and othering.

Alas, this is the nature of language in general, and so we should take this fact as a word of caution that leads to a formative practice for our lives. Always ask people what they mean by the labels they use to identify themselves.

This is not just true for religious conversations, but for all manner of conversations. In a world where discourse has become extremely antagonistic, divisive, and, for lack of a better term, ideological, curiosity and active listening go a long way. Asking what people mean by the words they use communicates that you value that person, that you see them, and that you want to know them and understand them. What a gift to be valued, seen, known, and understood in a world of sound bites and stereotypes. Words have power, but the meaning we give to words might be different than our neighbor’s understanding, so let us ask.

Stay curious.

Lean in.

I digress.

I’ve been following Ryan Burge for a couple of years now. He studies religion in America, and his findings are fascinating. If his work has taught me anything, it’s that measuring religion in America is hard, and much of that is due, in part, to how people self-identify religiously. Sometimes his work goes over my head a little bit because I am not a statistician or a data junkie, but I often find his research trails illuminating.

Some of his research has suggested that a growing number of Americans just don’t know what basic religious words mean anymore. He actually has data showing that young people don’t know what the word Protestant means, which complicates how one measures religion in America and could significantly impact how religious data is interpreted.

This suggestion is confirmed in a recent series on his Substack, where he investigates the Four Types of Nones. Some of you may be familiar with the Nones and Dones categories. They have become mainstream in dialogues and books about religion in America, church growth movements, and evangelism.

However, this new research nuances the Nones a bit more to provide a fuller picture of these non-religion-affiliated persons. There is an emerging category called the NiNos (Nones in Name Only) which, according to Burge, “have an openness to spirituality and religion that far surpasses the other three types.” He suggests that most of the NiNos are actually just Protestants, but that they don’t know what that means.

In other words, the NiNos are not a group to be converted, but to be educated.

Honestly, I can’t blame anyone for not knowing what ‘Protestant’ means. If it weren’t for my vocation in ministry and years of theological study, I probably wouldn’t either—and I’d likely avoid the term in everyday conversation because it seems too broad and unhelpful for the particularities of religious self-identification. It’s a confusing word, a religious word, and therefore a slippery word.

The doctor’s question may have been casual, but it revealed something to me: our cultural vocabulary for religion is shrinking, and with it, our capacity to understand ourselves and one another. If most people no longer know what Protestant means, then what else have we lost in translation? What other Christianese words, like faith, grace, church, or salvation, are sliding into vagueness or distortion?

This is not a small matter. Language frames reality, and when we lose our words, we lose our ability to tell our story. That’s why I think it still matters to claim a religious self-identity even if it feels awkward or outdated. In my next post, I’ll wrestle with the word Protestant, why this word, messy as it is, might still be worth keeping. I’ll do this while reflecting on a forthcoming book by a former professor of mine, Beth Felker Jones, called “Why I am Protestant,” equal parts book review and personal reflection. Oh, and by the way, you can preorder the book now!