Why “Church” is a Four Letter Word // The Problem with Church Is..., Part 1

<p class="p1">When we hear the word “church” – well, so often we load it with a whole lot of baggage – our ideas, perceptions, experiences. “Church” – it’s almost become a four–letter word. But my hunch is – it wasn’t meant to be so.</p> <p> </p> <h4 class="p1"><span class="s1" style="color: #ff9900;">Church – A Four Letter Word</span></h4> <p class="p1">I’ve often thought – if I were a marketing consultant, and I won a tender to run a marketing campaign to give the term “church” a positive position in the contemporary mindset – the secular psyche if I can use those words – I wonder whether I would actually want the job.</p> <p class="p1">I mean – this word “church” has almost become a four letter word in society today. Scandal after scandal. So many people see large parts of the church as being anachronistic – outdated, irrelevant. The vestiges of old style religion appear to be alive and well.</p> <p class="p1">For me – the greatest indictment of church in my living memory has been the whole issue of child sexual abuse. It seems to spread across so many of the denominations – and so I just don’t want to single any of them out. Only it’s not so much an issue – but a string, countless thousands of cases of the most appalling abuse of position and trust that is imaginable.</p> <p class="p1">People who claim to be God’s emissaries sexually abusing children – and not just children, but adults too. And then, if that isn’t terrible enough – the cover–ups by major denominations.</p> <p class="p1">I was reading a government report into this issue in one major denomination, in one particular country and the report concluded that the senior levels of this church denomination had – and I quote – “obsessively and systematically covered up” the widespread sexual abuse of children by its clergy for decades.</p> <p class="p1">And this has happened over and over and over again. You Google church sexual abuse on the Internet, and aside from the fact that you get over 4 million hits – 4 million – you discover church essays, posit