We’ve been in DC now for over two weeks, and in that time have visited two different churches. Last week we went to a nearby ELCA congregation. It seemed like a nice place – the service was pretty straightforward Lutheran, if a bit low church (very little liturgical singing/chanting, e.g.). The folks we met were friendly, the sermon was decent, etc. Yesterday we attended a small historic Episcopal parish that was also quite low church (is this a DC thing?) and as far as I could tell, quite liberal (not that there’s anything wrong with that!). I’m not sure we really “clicked” with either one, though we’ll probably go back to the Lutheran church again. I think we’re also going to visit St Paul’s on K Street, which is a well-regarded Anglo-Catholic parish in the Episcopal Church.

Having moved several times in the last few years, it’s always daunting to try to find a new church home. Summer in particular seems like a tough time, because most churches don’t seem to be in full swing in terms of programs and ministries, a lot of people are on vacation, etc., making it somewhat more difficult to get a feel for the life of the congregation.

But beyond this you face the problem of “church shopping” – you try and identify a list of desiderata and then find the church that best approximates what you’re looking for. I have only a few “deal-breakers”: that there be communion offered every week, that the sermons not be out-and-out heretical (e.g. denying the resurrection), and that it not be too overt or heavy-handed about pushing a political agenda, whether of the Left or the Right. Second tier considerations include things like liturgy, the diversity of the congregation (age, race, class), the size of the congregation, the programs and ministries, etc. And, one of the more important, but also more intangible, considerations is the general “vibe” you get from the people.

Obviously this raises the specter of a consumerist approach to finding a church. In the olden days you went to whatever church was geographically closest to you. And even after the advent of Protestantism most people probably attended the local church of whatever denomination they identified with. But in our age of greater mobility and diminished denominational loyalty these can no longer be taken for granted. Other things being equal I’d like to attend a church in our neighborhood, but I’m not prepared to rule out going somewhere farther away. And while I still have a loyalty to Lutheranism I could just as easily see us attending an Episcopal parish (as we did for the past year in Boston). So, church-shopping becomes somewhat inevitable.

Interestingly, there’s a bit of a tension in contemporary Christian approaches to this. On the one hand, most Christians have welcomed, or at least accepted, the demise of the “Christendom” model that simply assumed that everyone with a particular geographic boundary was a member of the local church. Our alleged postmodern condition has highlighted the importance of a more intentional approach to church membership and discipleship. On the other hand, there is also a strong backlash against the consumerist model of choosing a church, rooted partly in a criticism of the encroachment of market forces into the religious sphere and a wariness of a certain idea of liberal individualism that valorizes the autonomous chooser. The new fashion in a lot of theology emphasizes the importance of being rooted in community and the “tradition-constituted” nature of our capicity for reasoning and choosing. How this avoids falling back into the discredited Christendom model of the organic church isn’t entirely clear to me.

Anyway, my sense remains that there’s something a little troubling about shopping around for a church that seems to fit my preconceived needs or desires. Maybe the right course of action is simply to attach oneself to one’s local congregation. On the other hand, why should geographic proximity be elevated to the highest importance? It may be that any ranking of criteria inevitable involves individual preference and personal judgment, so best just to get on with it and muddle through the best you can.