By

Tony Ends

My earliest memories of church were not of conflict.

They weren’t even of a church building, but rather of a barn.

My pastor father was part of one memory. He was outside the barn, though, in a field, learning about kindness and generosity from a parishioner.

I barely remember the parishioner, except that he was a farmer. He was obviously doing better than we were in an economic recession during the 1950s. Dad was doing field work for him in exchange for food, which he could not provide a wife and three children on a young pastor’s income.

As for me in that barn in that memory, I was innocent of conflict. I would swing on a rope down into the hay mow, revel in the bleating of sheep, the laughter of farm children, the wonderful aroma of clover and hay.

There were, of course, conflicts going on in my father’s little church. From the earliest Abrahamic accounts – the sacred stories of Muslims, Jews and Christians – and down through the history of mankind, religious institutions everywhere have been almost constantly embroiled in conflicts.

Battles and schisms, disputes and debates. Despite universal goals of eternal goodness, peace and joy, people of faith have rarely been able to shed the failings that make us human, engage us in negative energy, erupt in conflicts - anywhere, at any time - for very long. 

Conflict was not part of my vocabulary at ages three, four and five. I was completely unaware that my father was struggling to decide whether to pay the church electric light bill or buy groceries for his children. I didn’t realize he was secretly driving about the countryside as a bill collector for Montgomery Ward. It was years later that I learned his church board had refused to let him openly take a second job, holding him to a calling they believed required complete devotion and faith.

At the time my father finally quit his pastorate and took a job in a factory, my memories of churched moved out of the barn and into smooth wooden pews. There I’d sit, leaning against the warmth and security of my father’s arm, listening to the sermons of other pastors, droning on wonderfully like large window fans, lulling me deeply to sleep.

What was father thinking during those years? Did he feel beaten, remorseful, a failure? What was it like to shirk a vocation for the security of shift work in a chemical plant, where he worked faithfully for 25 years, provided education into college for four children, and died so young of cancer?

I never heard him speak a word of anger about those previous conflicts, never heard any sour grapes or bitterness. His voice in song rose in a lovely tenor, his laughter rang deep and infectious, his head bowed in silent prayer.

As I grew older and started to listen, to think and question, to contemplate and speak, I became increasingly aware of conflict in church and society. I asked hard questions. I sought truthful answers. I challenged shallow responses.

- How is it that some of the most generous, honest and courageous people I’ve met profess no faith at all?

- How can my own people of faith, fat from material wealth, pray for the souls of starving people whose toils and suffering daily make possible our outrageous, consumptive lifestyles?

- How can we argue endlessly amongst ourselves about issues of gender and sexuality, while all that is dear and vital in life – fragile, vulnerable life – becomes threatened to the point of extinction by the loss of any sense of stewardship, by economic greed and exploitation?

- How can battles rage on and on between those who defend “the right to life” and those who defend “the right to choose,” all the while both sides live in ways that are doing violence to every other form of life - soil, seed, plant, animal and yes, even human?

For much of my adult life I’ve tried simply to live what I believe. I’ve tried to focus on standards and values, tried to hold myself to them. I’ve tried to respond to need, if necessary, with sacrifice. I wanted a space around me free of conflict and turmoil. But over and over, I found that vacuum was an illusion.

With great effort a Viet Nam veteran surgeon and I established a scholarship fund for students from other lands through a church. We discovered years later that a new pastor in that wealthy beach community was seeing that his son, his son’s best friend and his son’s girlfriend – not the needy – accessed the funds for their schooling.

Another church I attended in another state soundly refused to help me provide airfare from Africa for a brilliant young man who wished to attend university in the U.S. His extended family’s entire annual income was $220. The church in that wealthy retirement community was in the midst of a $1 million campaign to pave a parking lot and build a Sunday school.

Yet another church I attended, the largest in its diocese, first asked me to edit its newsletter, then censored my attempts to openly discuss the priorities of its annual hunger walk. Proceeds from the event were being directed away from global hunger issues and towards pet projects, in one of the wealthiest communities in the state. Forty thousand people a day – most of them children – were starving, even suffering unto death from want, at that time around the world. No one locally could recall even one person dying of hunger in our county.

How do we resolve such conflicts within ourselves and in our churches? How do we truly live, as one coherent body, what we believe, what know with common sense must be true?

A number of denominations are experiencing extreme shortages of priests and pastors. A leader in one faith recently told me he was meeting with his bishop in an attempt to fill 30 vacancies in their judicatory. Some churches in towns near my rural home have been seeking clergy for years. Yet the only hope for resolutions to contentious issues big and small – in and out of church – is essentially leadership. We desperately need leaders to engage people with compelling answers and positive energy. As a people, we know that we must address many ecological, social and political issues, if we are to save all of created life from ruin.

Complex reasons are holding a generation back from devoting itself to religious vocations. A collective sense of resignation about all of public life is one of them; we feel helpless, alone, ineffectual. Daily bombardment of advertising that focuses on wealth and material possessions is another. Then there’s transience, the loss of identity with place - home, neighborhood, ethnic groups and churches. And then the defeating, demoralizing examples of conflicts never resolved.

Once abundant resources that have made possible our gluttonous and exploitative ways of living are dwindling fast. Global population is rising at an alarming rate. To heal our world and mend our ways, we need healers and menders. We cannot heap the need for instruction, example and leadership on lay ministers. They’re already taking on far more than they should in their daily lives.

Solutions to critical problems we face as a people will only come with the help of strong leadership. We must openly recognize the vital necessity for great numbers of new clergy, to teach ethics, motivate ethical action, encourage ethical investment and model ethical living. Too many conflicts have run off too many good people from church leadership positions. These are the very people needed to help us face challenges in our culture and our world.

A half-century has come and gone since a parishioner reached out to my young pastor father, in my father’s time of need. In the memory of their lives and examples can be found answers for all of us. Conflicts are resolved with compassion, interaction, openness and faithfulness. By our individual and collective leadership, we hold the key.

Tony Ends is lay director of the Churches’ Center for Land and People, a nonprofit ecumenical organization. People of Lutheran, Catholic, Episcopal, United Methodist, United Church of Christ, Presbyterian, Quaker and Unitarian faiths, and five religious orders, support the Center’s work in Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin. For 17 years the Center’s mission has been economic justice, earth stewardship, community and spirituality, as they relate to farming, farmers, and the food they produce.