I naively assumed that Baptist and Protestant churches, in their essence, are all about freedom from religious authority. After all, the founder of Protestantism, Martin Luther, challenged rigid religious authority embodied by the Pope.
The very kind of despotic authority exemplified by the Catholic Church, which requires formal ritual honoring and public submission.
But today I discovered that my local Baptists church likely suffers from the same symptoms of undemocratic religious rule, albeit carefully concealed by the superficial display of religious equality.
Maybe some won’t even perceive clear church hierarchy as a problem per se. But I always dreamed of democratic way of communication and self-organization within a church.
In my local church, as I found out, you can’t even simply create a WhatsApp group to discuss daily problems of congregation without an explicit permission of so-called “church leaders”.
Basically it’s a group of people (besides pastor) which the “core” of congregation votes for.
Being in church for 2 years I’ve never yet participated in the voting process, so can’t say anything about it. And usually I wouldn’t have a problem with group of active churchgoers being named “church leaders”, if they wouldn’t limit admins of WhatsApp group to these people.
To me it seems strange that if I want to participate in self-organization of members of the church to discuss religion-unrelated everyday problems I have to be part of officially elected “church leaders”.
When I confronted the “church leaders” themselves with this questions, they told me that I
“should pray so that God helps me to get elected to the church leaders group, people who are obviously gifted by God“.
So, in other words, there is some “God-chosen authority” in the church, besides even the pastor. These “church leaders” are people without special religious education and come from all areas of life. Mostly students of local university pursuing STEM and other degrees.
I’m just baffled by the audacity these people posses to be so confident that the God himself has chosen them for the service.
Even if they truly believe in God, don’t they also have some doubt as to whether what they do is correct. Isn’t a degree of skepticism a useful instrument to keep yourself from being blinded by own arrogance and illusion of success?
In any case, I’m thankful for this eye-opening experience as it shows me that religion, while being precious and valuable can also very easily be misused for personal gain. E.g. by
legitimating personal opinion through the authority of the Bible
therefore shielding themselves from valid criticism they would receive in a non-religious environment.
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