Screwtape is irritated: the patient has stuck faithfully to one parish church, and Wormwood hasn’t even bothered to report why. If he can’t be cured of churchgoing entirely, Screwtape says, the next best move is to turn him into a shopper — sending him around the neighborhood sampling churches until he becomes what Screwtape calls a taster, a connoisseur, of congregations.
The logic is precise. A parish built on geography, not shared taste, forces together people of different classes and temperaments — exactly the kind of unity God wants and hell doesn’t. A congregation chosen because it “suits” someone, on the other hand, slowly turns into a club, and clubs turn into factions. Worse, church-shopping trains a person to become a critic sitting in judgment of every sermon and service, when what God actually wants — Screwtape practically spits the word — is a pupil: someone humble enough to simply receive whatever nourishment is offered, without constantly appraising it. That receptive, uncritical posture, Screwtape admits, is exactly the condition in which an ordinary, unremarkable sermon can suddenly land with real spiritual force. So: keep the man shopping.
Screwtape then surveys the two nearby churches like a connoisseur himself. One has a vicar who’s spent so long softening the faith for his supposedly skeptical congregation that he’s now more doubtful than they are — and who, in trying to spare everyone “difficulty,” has quietly shrunk his whole preaching rotation down to the same fifteen favorite psalms and twenty favorite readings, safely insulating his flock from anything in Scripture they haven’t already heard. The other has a fiery, contradictory preacher who swings between wildly different political and theological positions from week to week — connected, Screwtape notes, not by any real conviction but by pure hatred of complacency, a compulsive need to shock. His one fatal flaw, from hell’s perspective: he actually, sincerely believes what he preaches.
But the two churches share hell’s real favorite feature: they’re both party churches, tribal rather than theological. Screwtape doesn’t want doctrinal passion — he wants petty factional heat over things like whether to say “mass” or “holy communion,” over candles and vestments and posture, none of which either side could actually define with precision. The old Christian instinct — that the person without scruples should defer to the person with scruples over unessential things — has been quietly erased, so that instead of “low” church and “high” church accommodating each other’s consciences out of charity, they simply resent each other over decoration.
Notice again what’s doing the damage: not heresy, not disbelief. A preference. A style. A candle.
Where This Shows Up Now
It’s church-hopping until you find a congregation that perfectly matches your preferences, rather than committing to imperfect people in one place. It’s the reflexive critic’s posture many people bring into a sermon or a Bible study — evaluating rather than actually receiving. It’s tribal heat over style, worship format, or minor tradition standing in for real theological conviction, and sometimes actively working against basic charity between believers.
For Discussion
- Have you ever left or avoided a church, group, or community over something closer to taste than conviction?
- Screwtape contrasts a “critic” posture with a “pupil” posture toward preaching and teaching. Which one do you usually bring?
- Is there a minor, non-doctrinal difference — style, tradition, preference — currently creating more tension in your own faith community than it probably deserves?
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