leaving as an act of faith

the second Sunday of advent

'Therefore, our leaving wouldn’t be an act of cowardice or abandonment. It wouldn’t be because we were excommunicated or exiled. It would be a supreme act of faith, a step towards love and forgiveness.’ - Greta, Women Talking

Sometimes it feels that everyone I know is in the process of leaving the Church. People who have attended or taken services every Sunday for the majority of their lives are deciding that they can no longer be part of it. The ‘it’ I refer to here is the Church as institution. And for a long time now the Church has been an institution in free fall, struggling to make ends meet, and frequently the source of hurt and pain and abuse. On paper I suppose I count myself among them, even though I’ve never had a formal moment of departure. After covid we left our church in north London, moved to Somerset, and struggled to find anywhere that made sense to us. I guess some people would call it quiet quitting.

Since the baby was born I’ve not had much time for reading, so we’ve been watching films instead. Last week we watched Women Talking, a film based on the novel by the Canadian author Miriam Toews. It tells the story of a group of women from an orthodox christian colony in North America, who have recently discovered that the men in their colony are the ones responsible for decades of mysterious and sexually violent attacks upon women and girls. Drugging and raping them. The violence is not isolated to a handful of men, but appears widespread, implicating the husbands and sons of the women who gather in the roof of a hay barn to discuss what to do next.

The colony has given the women two options. To stay and forgive the men who have attacked them or to not forgive the men and leave - a transgressive act which some women believe would send them to hell. The women think that there is also a third option, to stay and fight to reform the misogynistic culture of their colony so that their daughters will not have to grow up in fear of men.

After much debate, the women decide that they will leave. More remarkably, they conclude that by leaving they aren’t betraying their faith, but enacting it. Whilst the act of staying might appear the ‘right’ thing to do according to scripture, the women realise that by staying they would risk becoming violent towards the men, and therefore committing far more grievous sins. ‘Leaving will give us give us the more far-seeing perspective we need to forgive’ suggests Greta, it ‘is how we demonstrate our faith. We are leaving because our faith is stronger than the rules. Bigger than our life.’

If you are in the process of leaving an institution which you have loved, you are not abandoning your faith. It is possible that the act of leaving, of stepping out into unknown waters, is sometimes the only thing you can do to stay true to yourself and your faith in god. There are no awards for martyrdom, for staying out of guilt or fear. For letting the institution crush you. As the women who gathered round in the hayloft conclude, the important thing is to be led not by a sense of obligation, but by a sense of love.

During advent, we find numerous ways to tell the story of a young couple who must leave everything and everyone they have known, setting out on a journey with an unknown destination. In the version of the story we tell, the young couple leave their lives behind, not out of a sense of fear, but of faith and love for their unborn child.

May you be led by love and not fear this advent.

Thank you for reading. To read the first post in this advent series, click below: