Does the Couple that Goes to Church Together Stay Together?

by Nicole Symmonds, Urban Faith Contributing Writer | May 30, 2014 | Feature, Headline News |

Recently I read a post entitled, “Why I’m Not Attending Church with My Girlfriend.” In it writer Jozen Cummings discusses his relationship with his girlfriend, a devout Catholic who attends church regularly, while he, a former Catholic who is now a Baptist, has sporadic attendance. Gina invites him to church often but Jozen declines citing that although church is important to him and his faith in God is deeper than any “religious practice,” there are many things that have kept him away. From a periodic lack of desire to attend church to what seems like a residual ecclesial exhaustion from his Catholic altar boy days, Jozen articulates why he stays away more often than not. Undergirding his argument is what he describes as the personal nature of faith and church attendance. He begins his story by talking about how both he and his girlfriend view faith as a personal matter and concludes it with church being a personal matter as well. Of this he says,

Church is not a time for couples to be together so much as it’s a time for all of us to be with God. That’s my time for Him. I truly believe that, and yet, I haven’t been giving Him much of it. I also realize, writing about this may contradict some of what I said about taking my faith personally. But I wanted to share because I know people who look at faith and church-going as a high value in a partner. I believe Gina and I feel the same, but I also believe we might not ever attend church together and we don’t have to. As long as I go do my thing and she goes to do hers, I think we’ll be all right, at brunch, together.

My concern about Jozen’s situation—and maybe that of anyone who doesn’t consider church attendance with their significant other important—is that it isn’t a sustainable model for being in intimate relationship with another person. Intimate/Intimacy is the key word here. Whether casually dating or charting more serious territory that is leading to engagement or marriage, church attendance as a couple can unearth much about a person that you wouldn’t get if you just met up for brunch with them.

Sharing Vulnerability

To attend church with your significant other is to let them into your most personal and vulnerable space and you theirs. The church is a city of refuge from a chaotic world and thus it is the space where many can let their hair down, let the tears flow, be silent, or be slain in the spirit. Now this could be a reason not to attend church with your significant other because you may not want them to see your “ugly cry,” or maybe you don’t want them to know you sing quite off key, but these possibilities of vulnerability can open a relationship up. Does this mean that if your significant other doesn’t sing along or barely sways during praise and worship that your relationship is doomed for failure? Not necessarily. But it is something to take note of if you are more prone to charismatic expressions in worship. Or maybe you like to debrief about the sermon after church but your significant other has very little to say and seems like he or she didn’t even pay attention. This doesn’t mean they are going to hell in a hand basket. It does give you something to reflect on if church is an important part of your life. And if he or she doesn’t attend church at all are you comfortable with upholding the spiritual mantle in the relationship and, if so, how long? Throughout my time in church I’ve seen far too many wives attending church alone, managing their rambunctious children alone, taking their relationship to the altar alone, only to return home to a husband who is sitting on the couch or hitting the links. One cannot the spiritual mantle alone. Two can carry it better.

Sharing with the Community

When you attend church with your significant other you are also exposing your relationship to a community that should have your best interest in mind—“should” being the operative word. A friend directed me toward Hebrews 10:24-25 which says, “And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day approaching.(NRSV)” Many know this scripture as, “Do not forsake the fellowship of the saints…” This is important on an individual level as well as on a communal level. It is the fellowship with other believers that strengthens and sharpens us—iron sharpens iron—and the hope is that a couple’s fellowship among other believers will strengthen them, collectively, for the journey ahead. That is the hope, but as you can imagine there are some saints who are too nosy for their own good and others whom are just scandalous, therefore, protecting your relationship is important even when you are in church. If you’ve been attending a church for long enough, you know whom your allies are and whom are those you keep at arm’s length. Everyone will have something to say about your relationship—in and outside of the church—but you should be clear on who the wise counselors are in your church that can or may help you discern the direction of your relationship.

Sharing a Sacred Space

In his book, “Works of Love” Soren Kierkegaard said,

“Worldly wisdom thinks that love is a relationship between (hu)man and (hu)man. Christianity teaches that love is a relationship between: man-God-man, that is, God is the middle term…if God and the relationship to God have been left out, then, Christianly understood, this has not been love but a mutual and enchanting illusion of love.”

God as the middle term in a relationship is a mediator between both parties, and part of that mediation should take place in church, well before a couple decides to go to the chapel to get married. Gathering in church together can enhance a couple’s spiritual devotion toward God and each other because it binds them to a place, a space—if you will—in time. Attending church with your significant other Sunday after Sunday gives you a neutral place where the two of you can meet and leave all of your cares behind. It is the place where you are supposed to be able to find some semblance of peace. But it is also the place where the two of you can receive the preached word of God and the Eucharist. This is of particular significance because the first binds you two together in a common understanding of the Gospel and the second binds you together as people in the body of Christ and restores you.

Going back to the story that inspired this article, Jozen and his girlfriend seem to exist in two different spiritual spaces. She is a devout Catholic attending mass every week, receiving the word and the Eucharist, while he wavers between receiving the word and not. Right off the bat we know that there are theological differences that can separate them in significant ways and make them less compatible than they think they are, but that’s not anything they will discover if they both insist on maintaining separate spiritual lives. And this is the clencher.

I hesitate to use the phrase “equally yolked” but it is deeply implicated in this discussion. The vitality of a relationship where one of the people has a strong commitment to God and ecclesial life is enhanced when both share in that commitment. For a couple that desires to stay together and go the distance, going to church together might make all the difference. Sure a couple may pray or read the Bible and/or inspirational books together outside of church, but there is very little to replace entering the sanctuary together, worshipping and fellowshipping with the body together, hearing the word together and taking communion together. In the best case scenario, when you attend church with your significant other you are increasing the possibility for intimacy. Your attending to corporate worship together can reinforce your personal worship and relationship with God because it is in the gathering together that we are encouraged and reminded of the importance of our personal relationship. Church attendance is not mandatory but it does bind us to God and each other in explicit ways that our ordinary day-to-day activities don’t bind us.

But what do you think?

• Do couples have to attend church together?
• Do you think that there is ever a time when it is too soon to go to church with a significant other?
• Do you think church attendance with a partner helps or harms relationships?
• Can a relationship between two believers be sustained if they go to separate churches or if one of them goes and the other does? (Keep in mind that this doesn’t include circumstances where people can’t attend church together because of work, ministerial calling, etc.)
• If you asked your significant other to attend church with you and they kept declining, would it be a dealbreaker?
• Can faith be a personal matter when two people have entered a committed relationship?
• Like the couple that prays together, does the couple that goes to church together stay together? Are you part of a couple who went together while you were dating and you’re now married to that person? Share your story.

Donald Sterling and the Missing Nigerian Girls: Distraction in the Midst of Danger?

by Nicole Symmonds, Urban Faith Contributing Writer | Apr 29, 2014 | Feature, Headline News | 2 comments

Last Friday TMZ Sports released an excerpt of an audio recording between LA Cippers owner Donald Sterling and his girlfriend V. Stiviano. In the recording he derided her for posting pictures of herself with black people such as Magic Johnson and Matt Kemp on Instagram and issued the quote heard around the world, “Don’t bring black people to my games.” Since then the excerpt has turned into full audio and many deep-pocketed former-NBA players have set their sights on taking the Clippers out of Sterling’s hands. But as the days go by, we are still talking about this as if putting livelihood in danger is more important than lives in danger.

On the other side of the world 234 Nigerian schoolgirls are still missing and their lives are in actual, immediate danger. Terrorist group Boko Haram is holding them and no one knows when or if they might be returned–although there is some speculation that the girls  release is within reach. But that’s not our concern, we’ve been trying to figure out what Sterling said and how to punish him. Nevermind Sterling’s history of practices that have directly impacted the lives of minorities just getting by, we are concerned about how one man worth billions of dollars is affecting other men worth millions of dollars. If this is not a first world problem, I don’t know what is. Bomani Jones hit the nail on the head during his recent talk on the Dan LeBatard show. He spoke about his close friend Leonore Draper, an anti-violence activist in Chicago who was killed in a driveby shooting on Friday, April 25. Draper was doing her part to make Chicago’s inner city streets safe, streets wounded by housing discrimination not unlike the cases of housing discrimination filed against Draper back in 2003 and 2006. A city whose streets cry out with the blood of black people because they are being disenfranchised by the more powerful and wealthy. Of this Jones said,

“You’re going to talk to me about what’s going on with Donald Sterling and his mistress? Are you kidding me? That stuff [Sterling’s previous housing discrimination lawsuits] was real, that stuff matters, that stuff literally kills people. Everybody and their mom is so charged up about Donald Sterling…so I’m going to go to a funeral next week for somebody who took somebody else’s bullet because that city’s become a war zone and the people that have money and the people who could possibly do something to fix it ignore it and go to their homes in the South suburbs that for the last 70 years people tried their damndest to get black people out of but I’m supposed to get charged up because Donald Sterling said his rich friends don’t want his black mistress to be around black people. People need to get their heads out their clavens and realize that this here is fun to talk about but this is nothing, the real stuff that happened was that.”

His last sentence describes perfectly what we need to do. We need to get our heads out of our clavens–whatever clavens are–and re-prioritize and recognize what is important. We let a weekend go by more revved up to talk about Sterling and his antics than we were to talk about Draper and the 234 missing schoolgirls. If I wasn’t sure about the importance of sports to American culture I am sure about it now–despite people saying, “This is bigger than basketball.” We have just about turned ourselves blue with discussion about what we can’t change–one old white man’s racist proclivities and money hungriness–but we haven’t turned ourselves blue worried about lives lost and the lost from Chicago to Nigeria. Take the Clippers away from Donald Sterling and sell it to Magic Johnson and while it will be a victory it will only put a small dent in the end to systemic and institutionalized racism in sports and beyond. Up to now Sterling hasn’t as much as tried to defend himself or apologize to those who were hurt by his words but here we are giving him all the free press  while there are other significant issues at hand.

Leonore Draper is our issue. 234 Nigerian schoolgirls are our issue. Chicago’s Endia Martin, a 14-year-old shot last night by another 14-year-old girl over an argument about a boy is our issue. This is obviously not a comprehensive list of issues and young black men are our issue alongside these black women, but truth be told we sometimes err in our judgment of paying attention to black female bodies. We know how to pay attention when we are talking about them in regards to sexual exploitation and objectification but take that out of the equation and sometimes we are met by radio silence. At a time like this we must remember our responsibility toward not only the young black men who voluntarily pick up a ball to play sports, but also the responsibility we have toward young black girls and women who are involuntarily abused, exploited, abducted and murdered. Ours must be a culture of balance that privileges no one thing over the other.

Yes, Sterling’s most recent comments have an implication on how he views the humanity of black people and it is important to discuss the implications of his “plantation mentality” because he really did have the livelihood of dozens of black men in his hands. But we must also balance our concern. We ought not appear to be more concerned about a man and a basketball team than we are about when and how 234 schoolgirls will be rescued. Or appear to be more concerned about that then about the lives daily in danger in Chicago. There is something called “Entertaining ourselves to death” and this weekend’s debacle exposes the inherent danger in doing so. We–I include myself–gravitate toward this story because we are a society that loves our leisure activities and we also have grown to love celebrity and public figure gossip. We’ve become a community of quidnuncs ready to be in everyone’s business. We have also built up voracious appetites for the sensational. A story such as Sterling’s, threatens our entertainment and the livelihood of some–something my UrbanFaith colleague John Richards mentioned. It fulfills our desire for gossip and it satiates our appetite for sensationalism. It’s driving traffic to websites, boosting ratings on cable news channels–not to mention taking over the news cycle, and giving people something to talk about at the water cooler and on their blogs. But we can’t ever let these stories become our focus in the midst of danger to another marginalized group.

It’s hard not to make it seem like I am dismissing the importance of the Sterling debacle, but what I am trying to express is how we must not become inordinately obsessed with it to the compromise of other issues. So now that Sterling is permanently banned, fined, and will be forced to sell the Clippers let’s put this behind us and focus on something else. Let’s focus on #bringbackourgirls,  Chicago, Florida, Georgia’s new gun law and how it might affect black people, and the list goes on. Let’s not be distracted in the midst of danger again.

Boko Haram and Mainstream American Media Negligence

by Nicole Symmonds, Urban Faith Contributing Writer | Apr 25, 2014 | Feature, Headline News |

For the last few months all eyes have been on the Ukraine with American mainstream media’s endless flurry of headline news updates about the protests, the violence, the major players and what’s at stake for the country. President Obama and Vice President Biden have been vocal, the general public has exercised their concern, and I have seen my fair share of “Pray for the Ukraine” on social media. But there is another crisis happening, one that has wrought violence, has its own major players, and has a lot at stake for both the US and the region. This crisis has not received as prominent coverage as the crisis in Ukraine and the underlying question is why. But first, what is this crisis?

Boko Haram.

Boko Haram, which translates to “Western education is sin,” is a terrorist group that is trying to impose strict enforcement of Sharia law in Nigeria. The group allegedly has ties to al Qaeda and sources say that its presence in the country predate the al Qaeda era. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation with 170 million inhabitants and is also its biggest economy, but for the past five years they have lived under the enlarging thumb of Boko Haram. The group was founded in 2002 by cleric Mohammed Yusuf who wanted a pure Islamic state in Nigeria. Police killed him seven years later. It is now lead by the elusive Abubakar Shekau who came out of hiding for long enough to make a video admitting to last week’s bus station bombing, the deadliest attack ever in Nigeria. Shekau has also been at the forefront of attacks waged on churches which has resulted in Christian leaders urging dialogue with the group. And though it is an Islamist terrorist group they have also attacked other Muslims. Recently, the group set their sights on destroying the Nigerian government and, as of last week, Boko Haram was behind the abduction of nearly 200 schoolgirls. Dozens have escaped but the fate of the missing girls is still to be determined.

Boko Haram and Shekau have wreaked havoc in Nigeria for five years and yet coverage of this doesn’t receive breaking or headlines news status on American cable networks. You can find stories about the crisis on major news sites—buried underneath features–but few, if any, are doing hour-long specials or conspicuous updates on site. What makes the lack of featured coverage all the more interesting is the bilateral relationship between the United States and Nigeria. Prior to the nullification of Nigeria’s presidential election in 1992, the US was Nigeria’s greatest trading partner and its most important diplomatic partner. It went through a period of strained relations and sanctions, which were alleviated by the arrival of General Abdulsalami Abubakar, President of Nigeria from June 1998 to May 1999. In regards to the current terms of bilateral relations, the US has programs in place geared toward securing the well being of Nigerians and ensuring that their democratic institutions are strengthened and secure. Furthermore, the US is invested in Nigeria as a capital enterprise because it is the largest foreign investor in Nigeria with direct investment concentrated in the petroleum/mining and wholesale trade sectors. This is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Nigeria-US relations but it shows that the US has as much vested interest in protecting Nigeria as it does in protecting and promoting Ukraine. Yet, by the way media covers the crisis in Ukraine versus the crisis in Nigeria, we wouldn’t know that any such relationship or responsibility existed.

It isn’t clear why American media doesn’t prominently cover the stories of the Nigeria crisis, why the kidnapping of 200 schoolgirls doesn’t interrupt our regularly schedule programming, or why the nation’s deadliest disaster didn’t force all of us, regardless of color or creed, to slow down. We can speculate on these things and claim that Nigeria doesn’t get coverage because black bodies don’t matter nearly as much as white bodies. Or maybe it is the argument that black people are violent by nature so why state the obvious. Or maybe the issue is that it isn’t a black and white issue because Boko Haram is attacking both Christians and Muslims, men and women, and children. But we can all agree that this is news that should matter not just to those of us who are descendants and part of the African diaspora but to those of us who believe in the common humanity of all people.

In the world of so-called “fair and balanced journalism” there should be a way to level the playing field to ensure that stories such as the Nigerian crisis have coverage on par with the Ukrainian crisis. Both stories involve a nation in turmoil, citizens in danger, violence and destruction that are ravaging the land, and crumbling government infrastructures just to name a few. Indeed we here at UrbanFaith consider it our responsibility to cover the news of the diaspora but we also recognize the common humanity that we share with those outside of it. It is our hope that more media outlets will recognize the common humanity of people from the Ukraine to Nigeria and beyond and that both can share the space of breaking and headline news. That news of the abduction of 200 schoolgirls will be as important as news of protest. Until then, we will certainly try our best to keep our readers up to date about the situation in Nigeria and we ask that you would hold the country in your prayers alongside the Ukraine.