“The primary effect of Sunday worship is insertion into community. At least in my socio-economic class, persons are increasingly alone, eating at the microwave, commuting by oneself, watching one’s favorite programs alone on one of the household TVs. I hear that bowling as a hobby continues strong, but that membership in bowling clubs is down. However, religion is not about bowling alone. A trinitarian faith implies that you can’t get God by yourself, and the Trinity isn’t a divine monad. Whether you want it or not, God’s Spirit brings along with it the rest of the world: the circle of believers, the saints glorious and disgusting, “everyone according to their needs” in the intercessions. I am not always glad to be thrown in with these others—that pastor, those parishioners, the sick and the poor whom we pray for. Probably if I made up my own religion, I’d invent an easier one with less commitment to others and more walks in the park. The Sunday ritual reinserts me regularly into the often troublesome commitment to God in the others.”
–Gail Ramshaw, Under the Tree of Life: The Religion of a Feminist Christian, p. 92-93
