In 1949, comedian and actor Groucho Marx sent a telegram to terminate his membership at the Friars Club of Beverly Hills, unintentionally birthing one of the most famous quotes in comic history:
“Please accept my resignation. I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member.”
Typical of Groucho, the joke is structured perfectly and although it stabs at the Friars Club, it stabs even more at himself, and that self-deprecating tint keeps the joke from being outrightly offensive.
I was pondering this when it suddenly occurred to me how I have been wrestling with a variation of Groucho’s problem. Groucho was forlorn about being company to an exclusive club that included people only like him; and I have been feeling forlorn about no longer being in a community that contains people unlike me. To borrow Groucho’s structure (but, unfortunately, not the humor):
I want to belong to a club that is willing to accept people unlike me as a member.
Another remix, to get my point across:
I want to belong to a club that accepts people I don’t like.
When I explain this to people, they stare at me like they would a masochist showing off his toy collection. I know very well that this is counterintuitive, but it is one of the few hills I am willing to die on.
I was born and raised in Church. I was nurtured in a congregational setting and sustained by the friendships formed there. No matter your personal sentiments about faith, religion, or God, I hope you are willing to concede, at minimum, this simple understanding about what makes a church unique:
A church is unique precisely because I cannot control who gets to be a part of it.
Assuming that an individual is willing to, if not endorse, then at least be non-resistant to whatever doctrine is being espoused, then they are able to partake in the life of the community. In return, the community partakes in the life of the individual. Sports teams, social clubs, and jobs afford a degree of exposure to personalities that people might not volunteer to encounter, yet this is a far cry from the convivial obligations found in the midst of an earnest church fellowship. No other club asks that you care for your neighbor in the same way that you care for your own brother, sister, or your own body. This is even more outrageous when the neighbor is a stranger who has nothing in common with you besides a similar creed and who, outside of an ecclesiastical setting, is someone you would find irritating, dislikable, or outright crazy.
And while there are deep friendships outside of church that, over time, form networks of living concern, these friendships are almost always self-selected. They are chosen and curated, which is part of their charm and romantic merit. We all need friendships with people who we are confident like us for us, and are here because they feel a unique attraction to our strange peculiarities. I make it a point to meet new people, greet strangers on the street, and try to rope them into friendship, but the function of self-selection is still operable here too.
And don’t think me above the impulses I am describing. Despite my efforts to draw a circle large enough to fit people that stretch me, I still find myself getting choosey. “Will xyz get along with so-and-so?” I might ask myself. And even if I pull the ripcord and mix friend groups, I realize that someone else is almost always doing the same thing for me when I arrive somewhere. “Will Brad jive with these people?” they probably asked before inviting me.
I wonder how often I really meet anyone without there being some level of design behind it.
Yet, as anyone who has participated seriously in the project of religion will tell you, there are particular kinds of challenges you come across only in liturgical settings. You can attract a crowd that is unlike anywhere else— and that would likely be kicked out anywhere else. Nonetheless, in church, their attendance is a feature, not a bug. Scratch that— it’s not a feature, it’s an objective.
“Everyone is welcome.”
The people are the point.
Many of these thoughts were jostled loose yesterday when reading Freddie deBoer’s latest essay, Sorry To Bother You, in which he discusses the posturing and “playacting” of acceptance he has experienced from so-called progressives as a bipolar man. His firsthand account and secondhand examples of phony tolerance were, well, angering to me. It made me miss the days, and the place, that loving people was just the baseline. The place where everyone had a seat at the table and I was given ample opportunity to rub elbows with people— like me —that feel bastardized by the other clubs.
And to be sure, not everyone in Church feels this way— a concept that took me embarrassingly long to learn. I don’t go to church anymore and I have no plans to. But God is my witness, when it comes to this… whatever this is… I really was about it.
And I still am about it.
But now I’m looking for people to be about it with me.
Long live everything,
Bradley
About the Author:
Bradley Andrews is a hopeful rabble-rouser on a mission to inspire the world. Stay in touch with what he’s doing by subscribing to a weekly digest of his activity through micro.blog. This will send you writing, photos, and other curiosities that you are guaranteed to love.
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