In Defense of Church Hopping: Prologue

In church circles and friend groups that I am a part of “church hopping” is usually thought of as something not unlike heresy. It is easy to put this claim to the test. If you feel daring try uttering these words at your next church meeting, say, “I am a church hopper”. Now maybe you mean by that something that is light hearted, half serious, or generally positive in your mind, as if you had just musingly decided to call yourself Peter Cottontail instead of Peter Rabbit; but I think you will be surprised to discover that what you have innocently spoken in the light has been heard maliciously in the dark as: “I am the menace, Gollum, and I intend to kill Frodo and steal the ring”.

One of the reasons why I want to write a defense of “church hopping” is because the phrase is quite powerful! Uttering those words, “I am a church hopper” sets you unwittingly down a path to a certain valley of unholy transfiguration where the false prophet and the beast await you to be magnificently revealed with them as a great agent of darkness. A soft voice testifies from the deep, “You are my heretic in whom I am well pleased.” A crazed raven that has been dipped in tar flies suddenly and violently onto you. "I did not ask for this!" you erupt, "can't we talk about this?!" Defiantly you attempt to shake the tar and feathers off with as much violence as you perceived was used against you during your aforementioned transformation but it is too little too late. There has been a sign in the mind's of many. Your descent into darkness is complete, Darth Church Hopper. No longer will you be seen as that city on a hill that cannot be hidden; you will be seen as that city on a low plain, that Sodom and Gomorrah destined for a fiery judgment and already presently reconciled off the map. The spell is done. Now let Christendom forget your name, and like Judas Iscariot, may you be childless. Now let the ancient shrines testify against you just as they testify against that foolish man who "charged into 'hell' with a squirt gun". And so it is that calling oneself a "church hopper" is one of the fail-safe ways to become marginalized in church groups and settings (at least in my experience I have seen this to be the case). 

I am interested in demonstrating what I believe, that this bias against "church hopping" is unnaturally great. My opinion and my conviction is that this bias is based for the most part on misconceptions rooted in myth. I will attempt to show that it is not “church hopping” that is the unholy and sacrilegious enemy of Christendom but rather it is the overly great bias against “church hopping” that good Christians hold that we should be wary of. I'm going to try to draw from a few different things in order to show this including personal experience, historical examples, cultural understandings, theological arguments, and real pirates :).  I have decided to write this in installations in order to shine light on this topic from a few different angles. Hopefully this will make it more readable! Thanks friends!

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