Welcome back to part 2 of our series on neurodivergence and the American evangelical complex. In order to understand why neurodivergence and many leaders in modern churches seem to be at odds with each other, I’d like to use Doctor Nijay Gupta’s book, Strange Religion, which I just finished today, and it is so good. Compare ancient Roman religious practices to early Roman Christianity so that we can give what I’m gonna refer to in this series as a deaf definition of performance churches.
The Roman religious system was one of ritual performance, a tiered classes with a focus on expanding and maintaining Rome’s greatness. Doctor Gupta describes it as benefiting from what the gods could offer, while at the same time of voiding an offense against them. Priests weren’t chosen for their piety or their care of the individual worshippers and their families, but by how well connected they were and how well they could perform the rituals. Men competed over these roles and held a lot of political power and were very well connected and very wealthy. The title of priest offered public praise, open doors, social favors and a lot of power and influence. Priests were the mediators between the gods and the people and the entire higher society was based on a tiered system of human value with slaves and the poor being at the bottom. Then average families, then politicians and priests, then emperors, and then the gods. The Romans believed that careful adherence to this system was crucial to maintaining Rome’s greatness. The nature of sacrifice in order to please the gods, in addition to the power and the corruption of the priest, created this pay for play religion where those who had the most to offer the system also got the most from it. So then Christianity comes on the scene. And how is it different?
By contrast, the Christian religious system dismantle the performance based structure by first of all, having no gathering place and allowing connection for god to happen anytime and anywhere. Believers were gathered together, church leaders and overseers were whomever opened up their home to allow believers to gather together. And we’re encouraged by the apostles to act as humble servants in their leadership instead of seeking power and glory for themselves.
Christians had this radical new social structure that said everyone is equal. Now suddenly, even the wealthiest and the slave among them had the same value. The pay for play approach no longer applied because Jesus’s sacrifice made the final payment for everybody sin once and for all, giving all believers access to god all the time whenever they wanted to with Jesus himself as the mediator and priest.
The gatherings of believers were messy enough. Authentic with the language of family being used to describe their sense of community and those who were considered vulnerable populations being cared for by one another and being given good seats at the table. Now, this threatened the prominent religion of the culture because it went against their system and their system was very important to them and had to be maintained at all cost.
Are we noticing some similarities yet, many of the features of ancient Roman religion that Christ followers dismantled have now been remantled back into a performance based, pay for play religious system. And we see it all the time. Pastors and church leaders seeking growth and notoriety and fame control or trying to keep up with their other pastor friends have created the system where only those in a certain place within the tier structure have a place at the table. Why is this system not compatible with neurodivergence? Because neurotypical standards of behaving and thinking and ability are required to pull off the production that is the performance based church. Additionally, performance based churches are designed for one way communication leaders to people. So if you’re at a play where everything is carefully scripted and planned in order to create this experience.
There is no moment for the audience to contribute or ask questions, especially a question that could challenge the performance statistic. People ask a lot of questions, a lot of hard questions, cuz we often see things in layers that other people don’t. Our inhibited filter allows us to ask things that other people don’t have the courage to ask. And we don’t mince words, which can make people feel uncomfortable. We’re often told in response to this to be less combative, less annoying, less unsubmissive, unless curious.
Performance churches also depend on a hive mentality. In order for the hive to operate smoothly, there must not be any dissonance or divergence. Neurodivergence can be cogs in the wheel of the machine that makes the whole performance possible. When leaders want everything to run perfectly in order to create this experience for people. The neurodivergent mind can sometimes be a threat to that experience, and what happens is it reduces neurodivergence. People value and contribution inside the church too. But since seats and tide dollars, the Sunday morning experience can also be a sensory disaster. Faster for newer, divergent people.
The crowded gathering spaces, the concert atmosphere, loud music, and most of all, the push to engage in small talker touching is sometimes enough to just keep neurodivergent people home at the end of this series, we’re gonna talk about what churches can do to help reduce the overstimulation of the Sunday morning experience, making the services accessible to all people. In Part 3, we’re gonna be talking about attitudes towards narrative, urgent people, and common misconceptions. And once the series is finished, I’m gonna be posting an entire scripted version of the whole series, including a lot of great resources at the link in my bio. So like and follow for part 3, which will be posted this weekend.