Another West Hartford kid goes to church March 28, 2008
Posted by Zack in Connecticut | write a commentA little while ago, I got an email from a guy I went to high school with in West Hartford, CT, named Matt Casper. He told me that, though an atheist, he had just been paid to go to church all over the country as part of a project by evangelical author and instigator Jim Henderson. In the book, Jim uses Matt to make a whole bunch of points about all different kinds of churches. The underlying point seems to be: traditional and non-traditional churches alike are doing little that’s likely to suck in a non-believer like Matt. Here’s an interview with my old high school classmate about his experience:
RIJ: As someone outside of the church, how did you end up getting involved in this book?
MC: It’s all in the intro to the book. I worked for a few months at a Christian marketing company. I had just moved to San Diego (2002) and needed a job w/benefits as I had a wife and a baby girl. The first thing I found was a job as Copywriter for Outreach Marketing (take a look at what they do: www.outreach.com). My job, primarily, was writing postcards that would get people to go to church. My personal favorite was one where I had to renounce evolution… “Sure, monkeys are cute. But are they family? Come to church X and hear the whole story…” shit like that.
While at Outreach, I made a few friends with the less rabid, one of whom is featured prominently in the book, Jason Evans. He’s an excellent drummer, and I had a band in need of a drummer, and so on. So we became friends. Jason later introduced me to Jim Henderson who was in San Diego looking for “lost people” to interview in front of a room full of evangelical pastors (you can read about that stuff here). I gladly signed up and had a great time.
About a year later, Jim got briefly famous after buying a guy’s soul on ebay (Hemant Mehta; you can read his and Jim’s story here). Jim and Hemant were offered a book deal, but Hemant passed; wanted to his own thing. Jim held auditions for another atheist to write a book with him, invited me to take part, and ta-da!
RIJ: In the book, you were very polite to Jim and all the Christians you met. But, as someone who doesn’t believe in the Bible as history, did you ever want to stand up and blurt out, “You people are crazy—you believe in 2000 year old fairy tales!” ?
MC: Yes, I did. But yelling at people doesn’t change anything. Think of all the Christians who try to “win” people over by telling them they’re going to hell… totally ineffective. So I thought about what it was I wanted to accomplish in a new light. Basically, I realized that I don’t care if people believe in gods of any kind so long as they are constructive in how they live their lives. When that belief drives them to love others, help the poor, etc. (much like Jesus actually asked them to do), then how could anyone be against it? It’s when that belief drives them to spew homophobic vitriol or fly planes into buildings that I have a problem. Think about it: if everyone in America who says they follow Jesus actually did what he asked, we would have no poverty, no homeless, no healthcare crisis, no income disparity. The question I liked asking them over and over was “Do you think Jesus was a capitalist?”
RIJ: Were you moved by seeing the communities in the churches you visited? Growing up in West Hartford, I never encountered community like what I see in these churches. (Maybe your experience was different?) I don’t mean just the gathering for worship, but all the small groups, the youth groups, Bible studies, and other ways that people really become part of each other’s lives.
MC: Yes and no. The “community” at some churches seemed to disappear with the first note of the recessional, if it was ever there at all. I think “community” goes out the window when you have 2,000 (Saddleback), 7,000 (Willow Creek), or 16,000 (Lakewood) people under the same roof. What you’re seeing then is simply mass mentality, no different than a World Cup game, a rock concert, or the Nuremberg rallies. It’s when these mobs would break into smaller groups that the community focus would kick in. And the smaller the church, the larger the sense of community. I attended a house church where the sense of community was so incredible, even a non-believer could feel it. And these house church people were/are committed to working together to make the world a better place and held each other accountable.
It’s a simple fact of human nature: the more people there are, the less individual accountability there is. And the message of Jesus is ALL about individual accountability. The biggest problem facing the entire world may be people saying, “Hey, that’s not my problem.” Johne Donne put it best: ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. Basically, the big churches let people feel like they were doing something to make the world a better place, when they weren’t really participating at all.
In West Hartford, no, I never saw anything like what I saw at the biggest and smallest churches in America, but WH is a WASP town and WASP’s belief systems are not openly discussed. After all, that would be rude. And we mustn’t be rude! 
RIJ: Since the publication of the book, have you spoken in churches at all? And what’s been the response to you as an outsider who still has not become a believer?
MC: Yes, I have. And it’s been a blast. Most people really want to hear what I have to say. I get stopped in the lobby or in the elevator at such events by people thanking me for helping them become better Christians. Far out. It’s like thanking Christopher Reeve for helping you become a better swimmer. I think there is growing dis-satisfaction with the “belief comes first” churches, and more young believers appear to be getting more out of life by putting deeds before words, which is always a good idea… provided said deeds are constructive and not destructive. Granted, “constructive” and “destructive” are subjective terms, but less subjective than “right” and “wrong” or “good” and “evil.”
RIJ: THANKS MATT!
Tags: jim henderson, matt casper
