The phone-free church thought experiment

A thought experiment from a Mere Orthodoxy piece: what if churches purged phones from public worship instead of just turning off livestreams? The hosts debate whether phones hinder thick community and ordinary conversation. Confessions follow — a TikTok ATM rabbit hole, checking the phone in the car until the clock has not moved a minute — alongside pushback that the phone is a symptom not a cause: busy schedules, lost third places, and pissing away unstructured time are the deeper problems. Teaching-from-a-phone vs. a paper Bible, notification distraction while playing bass, and using phone screenshots for teaching in Africa all get airtime. The discussion swerves into pastoral fragility: hosts now fear a call to repentance could push someone toward self-harm more than they used to.