FAITH HEALERS
Religion is declining across rural America, but a small church movement is finding a new purpose: Solving the nation’s opioid crisis
‘THERE is a problem underlying our drug epidemic,” says Travis Lowe. “It’s an epidemic of despair.” Lowe, whois the pastor of Crossroads Church in Bluefield, W.Va., says that when he talks to kids in his community, “They’ve never even thought about what they want to be when they grow up.”
Last week the Centers for Disease Control announced that drug deaths in the United States are rising at a faster rate than ever and communities like Lowe’s are at the center of it. In 2015, West Virginia had the highest rate of deaths from opioid overdoses.
The despair has come in part from the economic crisis. Of the county next door to Lowe’s, Reason magazine recently noted, “Ninety percent of kids are . . . below the poverty threshold for free and reduced-price lunches, 47 percent do not live with their biological parents, often because of incarceration and drug addiction, and 77 percent live in households in which no one has a job.”
And there seems to be little in the way of spiritual solace either. Despite the stereotype that folks in rural areas of Ohio and West Virginia “cling to their guns and their religion,” churches have experienced a real decline in rural America. Partly, it’s simply a numbers game — people are leaving these areas in large numbers.
But it’s also the result of other factors — the stigma against not going to church is no longer there. The family structure is not there to support the church — and vice versa. Our educated elites have mocked the church and traditional morality for half a century, but it is those same elites who are more likely to attend church and to get married before having children than their poorer, rural, less-educated peers.
In her recent piece in The New Yorker, “The Addicts Next Door,” about the opioid crisis in West Virginia, Margaret Talbot only mentions church once — as a place where residents can learn how to administer Narcan, the drug used to revive people who have overdosed.
Shockingly, more than one person tells Talbot they would just as soon see these addicts be denied treatment anyway. Not only do churches seem absent from discussions about foster care or the shortage of rehab facilities or supporting victims and their families, but they seem to be silent in the face of a “widespread attitude of ‘Leave ’em lie, let ’em die.’ ”
Fortunately, that is not the whole story. Lowe, who took over as pastor four years ago, after a career in the banking industry, has worked with business leaders to revive some economic development in the community. “If we can turn businesses around, people can get jobs. Since financial struggles are the number one cause of divorce, that will help couples stay together. And kids are more likely to stay off drugs if families remain together.”
Lowe and his congregants are help- ing local businesses to adapt to the modern economy. “People around here have always been makers. We just want to give them this century’s tools.” They are working with MIT to teach kids about engineering software and trying to find new markets for things they can produce in local factories. His church has helped to organize a kind of “Teen Shark Tank” to encourage entrepreneurship. They have a local farm that’s helping to teach kids how to do organic farming — so they learn a skill and also “take food home to feed their brothers and sisters.” Businessmen who previously thought their only contribution to church was what they dropped in the plate each week now see the important role they can play in rebuilding the community.
Robbie Gaines arrived there about a year ago to start a new church. A branch of Highland Fellowship, which has about a half-dozen other locations in Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee, Gaines tells me that people “feel they lack purpose and hope, but we believe in a God who restores hope.” In the past year, Gaines and his wife have managed to get about 150 regular attendees to Highland. In addition to helping provide a local halfway house with beds, the church has partnered with local children’s service agencies to provide duffel bags and supplies to children sent to foster care.
Steve Branch, the pastor of Destiny Outreach Ministries, has been running “Celebrate Recovery” groups — a program launched by Saddleback Church in California to help people with all different sorts of addiction problems. He runs basketball and cheerleading camps for kids to keep them as occupied as possible. “Alot of guys and gals start using in middle school,” he says.
Branch observes that “a lot of Christians are embarrassed by this problem. Parents say, ‘I’ve blown it.’ ” But these pastors are encouraging folks to talk openly about addiction and their struggles to help others to cope. Even the act of helping start up a new church can bring purpose to people’s lives. Gaines points to the congregation’s drummer who has himself struggled with addiction. “The scars from that have become his testimony.”
These newer smaller churches are not going to solve the drug crisis any time soon, but they are starting to fill the gaps left by older larger religious institutions that have become tired and diminished in recent years. Lowe, who grew up in Appalachia, says: “I feel like most of the theology of our area had become escape theology. Churches gave you hope that you would die one day and you hoped it was soon.” Lowe and his colleagues, though, are different. As he says: “We want to get kids to dream.”
A lot of Christians are embarrassed by this problem. Parents say, ‘I’ve blown it.’ W.Va. pastor Travis Lowe