Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Evangelical
Politics and Religion
Christians Who Don’t Go to Church

Christians Who Don’t Go to Church

Last updated on: September 3, 2026 at 7:52 am by Gene Veith

0 Comments

Christians Who Don’t Go to Church 2026-09-03T07:52:38-04:00 Gene Veith

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

A while back, I wrote a post entitled Quantum Lutherans about two giants in the field of quantum physics who were believing Lutheran Christians; namely, physicist Werner Heisenberg (of the Uncertainty Principle) and mathematician Kurt Gödel (of the Incompleteness Theorems).

Though Gödel called himself a “baptized Lutheran” and believed in a personal God and life after death, he didn’t go to church, reading his Bible every Sunday morning instead. That bothered me, though I learned that this was probably due to his extreme fear of public places, part of his array of mental problems that culminated in his paranoid fear that someone was planning to poison him. He would only eat what his wife prepared, and when she was hospitalized for several weeks, he refused to eat anything and starved to death. That a man hailed as one of the greatest logicians ever, who pushed rationality as far as it would go, nevertheless fell victim to insanity makes for a telling meditation in itself. (Read his Wikipedia entry for all of this. And, as a bonus, read this lucid explanation and application of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems.)

The great Christian poet John Milton also didn’t go to church, for a worse reason. Milton took Puritanism, yea, Protestantism, to an extreme. In the words of one student, “He believed that each individual Christian must be his own church.” That doesn’t take away from the value of Paradise Lost and his other poetry, but this has always bothered me.

And now I’ve learned that Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920), the great Calvinist theologian and statesman who pioneered “world view” criticism and integrating Christianity with all of life, also, at one point in his life, habitually didn’t go to church!

At the Patheos blog Anxious Bench, frequented by Christian historians, Kuyper biographer James Bratt wrote a post entitled The Abraham Kuyper You’ve Never Met. In the course of a discussion of Kuyper’s prolific writings, Bratt cites his favorite genre, the “weekly Bible meditation, written Sunday mornings in lieu of going to church.”

What? “In lieu of going to church”? I dug deeper to confirm that. Certainly, Kuyper, among his many other vocations–at one point he was the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, no less–was a churchman. He battled the liberal state church, started his own Reformed denomination, and served as a pastor. Even later, he surely went to church sometimes. But it appears that for at least part of his life, instead of going to church on Sundays, he stayed at home to write Biblical meditations.

One explanation I came across is that he was so busy with all of his many areas of involvement–as a politician, social activist, journalist, academic, and theologian–that he was just too worn out on Sunday mornings to make it to church. OK, I can relate to that. But I also found a theological reason that made it easier for him to skip church.

One of Kuyper’s major contributions is his teaching that Christianity should impact all of life. In his inaugural address when he founded the Free University of Amsterdam (another of his projects!), he famously said, “There’s not a square inch in the whole domain of human existence over which Christ, who is Lord over all, does not exclaim, ‘Mine!’”

This insight would lead to efforts to develop a distinctly Christian approach to the various dimensions of life, as well as professional organizations of Christian businessmen, Christian artists, Christian scientists, and Christian workers of all types.

Reformed scholar Michael R. Wagenman explains Kuyper’s view of the church (my bolds):

Kuyper understood the church to be both an institution within society and a movement of people (and organizations) within culture. He referred to this as the church being both an institution and an organism. Or, in today’s language, we would say the church is both Christians gathered for worship and sent into the world as witnessing disciples. It is this nuanced understanding of the church that allows Kuyper to unlock not only the church’s worldwide missional potential but also each Christian’s dynamic calling as disciples of Jesus Christ. . . .

Kuyper discerned that the church has a bi-modal way of being in the world. It is both a gathered community within society and a sent influence within culture. As a gathered community (institution), the church could maintain its purity of faith. And as a sent influence (organism), the church could maintain its comprehensive world-engagement. . . .

Kuyper says that the organic and institutional modes of the church work together: as her “womb granted us life, her care nurtures us.” In other words, “The organism is the essence, the institution is the form.” But of these two aspects, it is the organic that has priority because the church is always dependent on divine grace and love for its life. As Kuyper says, “The institution alone never constitutes the church… A Church cannot be manufactured; a polity, no matter how tidy, and a confession, no matter how spotless, are powerless to form a church if the living organism is absent.”

Now Kuyper’s views of the church, as Wagenman explains them, are complex and nuanced, with much to commend them. But for Kuyper, “the organic” [that is, the church of individual Christians out in the world] “has priority because the church is always dependent on divine grace and love for its life.”

That last part about the church always being dependent on divine grace and love for its life is certainly true. But “divine grace” will not be found out in the world, but precisely in the “institution” of the gathered church, where Christians meet together to receive God’s grace through Word and Sacrament! That is where Christians find the love of God and grow in the faith that bears fruit in love for their neighbors out in the world!

It would seem that Kuyper grew so busy and worn out with trying to get Christianity to influence the world that he had little time or energy to attend services at his local congregation. He was in the “organic” church, sitting in his study writing Bible meditations, which has priority over the mere institution, with its tidy polity and spotless confession. But, to turn his quotation around a bit, Christ constitutes his church. Christian cultural influence cannot be manufactured. The organic church is powerless if the living institution is absent.

I’m realizing, though, that under a theology that minimizes the sacraments and the sacramental quality of the Word as the means of grace, going to church really is optional. If you downplay the sacraments, as Kuyper–and Milton–did, why is church all that important? If Christianity is primarily an interior state, a private relationship between an individual and Jesus, why shouldn’t everyone be like Milton, with every Christian being his or her own church?

This mindset, I think, is rampant today. Nearly two-thirds of Americans (62%) say they are Christians, but less than one-third (30%) attend worship regularly. And among the self-identified Christians, only about half of those go to church frequently. The article where I found these statistics also says this:

Although 64% of regular churchgoers view it as an obligation for Christians to join a local church, most (55%) also believe that worshipping privately is a valid replacement for regularly attending religious services.

Our tendency is to assume those non-church going folks who claim to be Christians are just nominal believers. But it may well be that many of them are actual believers who, like Milton and Kuyper, are simply living out their ecclesiology. In fact, I have known some Christians like this. Indeed, they may be more theologically consistent than some church goers in their own traditions.

But in separating themselves from the preached Word and the efficacious sacraments, they are missing out on the energy they need for their life in the world.

Photo: Abraham Kuyper by Unknown photographer – https://josdouma.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/kuyper-75.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43933631

non-sacramental Christianity

Word and Sacraments

Previous Post

September 2, 2026

AI Winters

Next Post

September 4, 2026 Luther vs. Kuyper on Christianity & Culture

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"The American right has discarded its historical roots in American style conservatism (small gov't, fiscal ..."

reg

Monday Miscellany, 10/19/26

"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_R%C3%B6hm In 1930, at Hitler's request, Röhm returned to Germany and was officially appointed chief ..."

reg

Monday Miscellany, 10/19/26

"But, indeed I am serious!"

reg

Monday Miscellany, 10/19/26

"You appear to be as historically illiterate as 1another. The contention that the nazi's were ..."

disqus_1T3AUzBvj

Monday Miscellany, 10/19/26

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category America Apologetics Art baseball Bible Blog Christ Church crime Culture Economics Education Ethics Family Food Football Government History Holidays Holy Week Humor International Islam Language Law Life Issues Literature Media Medicine Movies Music Nature News Personal Philosophy Politics psychology Reformation Religions Sacraments Science sex Social Science Sports technology television terrorism Theology Uncategorized Vocation war

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who was the first son of Adam and Eve?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Levi Abel Cain Irad

Books by This Author Books by Gene Veith

See All Titles »