The Perfect Is the Enemy of the Good

(The following excerpt is from the new book The Vanishing Church: How the Hollowing Out of Moderate Congregations Is Hurting Democracy, Faith, and Us by Ryan P. Burge, Professor of Practice at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. Copyright © 2026 by Ryan P. Burge. Used by permission of Brazos Press.)

In 2023, The Washington Post’s Perry Bacon Jr. wrote an essay about his religious background for his regular column. Bacon had been raised in the Black church tradition, where his father was an assistant pastor for a small congregation in Louisville, Ky. Bacon wrote about how his congregation took up a collection before he went to college and presented him with a few hundred dollars to help him pay for books and tuition. In his twenties and thirties, Bacon bounced around the world of nondenominational Protestantism, remaining active but doubting some of the core tenets of Christianity. Then he began fading away from his church. The cause wasn’t one specific thing, just a growing discontent with various aspects of Christianity (including its link to Republican politics). The pandemic gave Bacon an easy excuse not to attend at all.

We want everything to be “just so,” and in pursuit of that we miss out on something that is much better.

For Bacon, what makes it even more difficult to return is that he now has a young, inquisitive daughter. He writes, “I don’t want to take her to a place that has a specific view of the world as well as answers to the big questions and then have to explain to Charlotte that some people agree with all of the church’s ideas, Dad agrees with only some and many other people don’t agree with any.”[1] Bacon fully recognizes the many social and ethical benefits of being part of a church, but he just can’t get himself (or his daughter) to make it back to a house of worship. It’s a refrain that I hear when I talk to people about why they left the church: They got tired of gritting their teeth and shaking their heads during parts of the sermon or Bible study. Bacon’s op­ed was widely praised by readers for its honesty, receiving nearly six thousand comments on the newspaper’s website.

A few days after Bacon’s essay was published, Ross Douthat, a New York Times columnist, wrote a thoughtful response entitled “Where Should Agnostics Go on Sundays?” His main argument is that we all should become comfortable with the idea that we may experience some discomfort attending church regularly. Douthat believes that being confronted with ideas that we disagree with should not be a reason to avoid going to Sunday worship; it should be the thing that draws us to attend. Douthat writes, “Obviously, you don’t want to lay too much ambiguity on a three­year­old. But if you’re going to raise your kids with some metaphysical ambiguity, no matter what, then ‘We go to a church that believes X because we think church has a lot to offer you, even though Dad only believes in some of X’ seems like an entirely honest thing to tell children.”[2] In other words, parents can use those instances as teachable moments regarding the value of being exposed to ideas that we sometimes disagree with.

For reasons that are hard to articulate and even harder to measure, it seems like a growing number of Americans have become obsessed with the idea of authenticity. For years, it was a buzzword in some Christian circles: “We want to create an authentic community of Christ followers.” People often use that word in nonreligious contexts too. They conceptualize the goal of their lives as “being authentic” to their “true selves.” One consequence is that people say they can’t work for a company unless they align completely with its operating principles. Or they can’t date someone who doesn’t align with them on a whole list of core values. It seems like it’s become a virtue to not compromise on these types of things.

The upshot of this endless quest for authenticity is that lots of people feel like they can’t join a church because either they don’t fully believe in all the core theology of the congregation or they disagree with the church’s policy on issues related to gender or sexual orientation. In other words, unless they can find a local congregation that checks every single box of their core values, joining would be inauthentic. The assumption that nonchurchgoers seem to have is that all committed church members completely agree with the leadership and theology of their houses of worship.

The pursuit of the ideal church is an exercise in futility. I think for some it serves as an excuse to not become involved in a local church community. Others just don’t want to feel uncomfortable when the pastor talks about gender roles or a biblical sexual ethic.

When I was working on my dissertation, I agonized over every punctuation mark and each citation. I wanted to make sure that the correct words were italicized and that everything was formatted just the right way. Fidgeting with all these details became somewhat of an obsession for me. As progress on my dissertation stalled, one of the professors on my committee pulled me into his office and told me something life-changing: “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” It’s a saying that has been traced back to Voltaire but appears in numerous forms in literary history, and it speaks to a problem that we often face. We want everything to be “just so,” and in pursuit of that we miss out on something that is much better. In my case, I was missing out on the joy of earning my doctoral degree because I was more interested in finding every typographical error.

The right style of music, the appropriate amount of Scripture reading, or the ideal sermon length is certainly worth considering when selecting a new spiritual home. As is the church’s view of the Bible, the role women play in congregational leadership, and who is eligible to receive Communion. But if you are looking for a church that checks every single box on your church wish list, you will always be searching. And as I’ve made clear in the previous chapters, you shouldn’t seek out a church where everyone votes for the same candidates and shares a similar worldview. Agreeing with the sermon most of the time is a reasonable expectation for a place to put down roots.

Exposing ourselves to differences from both the pulpit and the pews is essential for the future of American religion and American democracy. It’s also good for one’s own well­being. Finding points of agreement while also being willing to talk through areas of difference allows us to strengthen our intellectual muscle. It expands our worldview and extends our empathy for those who are different from us. On these measures, many congregations more than fit the bill. Stop seeking the perfect church for you and just pick one that’s “good enough.” Your presence there will make it better.

Ryan P. Burge joined the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University last year. A former American Baptist pastor in rural Illinois, Burge has a Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University and has taught also at Eastern Illinois University. He writes the data-based column Graphs About Religion on Substack.