Quit Church author wields a sharp pen

CHRIS MEEHAN
Faith & Spirituality Editor
Kalamazoo Gazette, MARCH 9, 2002

'Quit Church' author wields a sharp pen

Martin Zender was struck by a life-transforming revelation as he sat in church listening to a sermon. Born and raised Catholic, Zender suddenly realized that the Jesus he knew personally was not the same guy being talked about by the priest from the pulpit.

Only 18 at the time, Zender leaned over to his mother, told her that he was leaving and walked into blinding sunlight and a rushing new freedom.

That was 24 years ago, and he hasn't been back.

"I left church because I eventually couldn't stand sitting there when I knew God was outside having a good time with the weather,'' Zender writes in a startlingly honest and provocative new book.

Just published by Starke & Hartmann of Canton, Ohio, "How to Quit Church Without Quitting God'' is a fresh take on and pretty solid bashing of the sins and failures of the institutional church.

By church, Zender doesn't just mean the Catholic church of his childhood and adolescence. He's pretty much including each and every faith, from the Baptists to the Pentecostals, who worship God in a formal way inside walls.

Zender clearly doesn't like how religion is being practiced in Christian congregations across America.

Here, for example, is his take on a nameless, Protestant mega-church:

"I think the church used to be a blimp hangar. The church had its own band, its own printing press and its own sun, I think. Planets revolved around that church.''

I was first drawn to his book by the zany cover which shows a young, smiling Zender leaping over the drawing of a frightened-looking nun.

But then his snappy, in-your-face writing grabbed me. In fact, I'd only read a chapter or two when I decided I had to talk to this man who so forcefully tackles hypocrisy that masquerades as religion.

"Religion strictly imposes laws on people that God didn't design,'' he said to me in a phone interview from his home in northern Indiana (he won't give the town, for fear of angry readers showing up on his doorstep).

"Christianity has become its own institution,'' Zender added. "But Jesus Christ is not a member of a Christian religion.''

Zender has been making a living since 1993 by writing and publishing a newsletter, This Here Thing.

He characterizes the newsletter as a "mold-bashing collection of scholarly articles and satirical cartoons, written for thinking people disillusioned with denominational religion and contradictory doctrines.''

Basing his frequently irreverent remarks on his intense study of the Bible, Zender has addressed such subjects as death, sex, evil, sin, hell and the devil.

Here is a quote (from his first and only book so far) on Satan:

"Satan shaves regularly. He wears a suit and tie and drives a nice car. He's very enthusiastic about his job. . . . But as soon as you lend him your trust, he upends everything by reducing God's accomplishment to an offer and his grace to a threat.''

In other words, the devil can come clothed in ministers' robes.

For Zender, it is sinful to ask people to request from God what they already have been given -- salvation. A frequent speaker at conferences and even churches, he says he is trying "to jump-start a spiritual revolution that already exists among religious malcontents.''

Now comes the punch line, at least from this reader's perspective.

Zender does a great job stating his case and in backing it up with quote after quote of scripture.

But the author carries a heavy club, which he uses again and again to drive home the same point: There are problems galore with the institutional church.

To be sure, this is a man for whom personal faith is paramount.

But his book suffers from too much of a good thing. Martin Zender seems at times a little too glib and gleeful in the ways in which he blasts the church.

And yet, that said, it's hard to resist writing such as this:

"Christ has arrived. He is alive and sparkling with the stars and comets. So why perform old, shadowy rituals? . . . Why be enslaved to Sabbaths and other holy days when the spinner of planets occupies our midst and has unveiled new levels of grace?''

Or this:

"People in church are very busy. They are busy fighting the world, fighting themselves and fighting God. But no one in their right mind wants to fight the world, fight themselves or fight God. . . . All normal people want to do is sit down and be quiet for a while.''

Reading Zender makes you laugh, gets you mad and starts you to thinking. He did all that to me.

But there's something else. I'm pondering the fact that if everyone followed Zender's advice and quit church, I might be out of a job.

For more information on Zender or his book look on the Internet at www.starkehartmann.com

Chris Meehan can be reached at 388-8412 or cmeehan@kalamazoogazette.com