Why Grunt Works Exists
Not a Church, Not a Rebellion Against Church
People keep asking whether The Chapter House or Grunt Works is a religious organization. I never know how to answer.
Not because I'm dodging the question — but because the question itself reveals how broken our categories have become.
Religion, as I understand it, is not a brand or a clergy-badge or a building. It's a rhythm of belonging and meaning-making. Religion is the accumulation of practices, habits, and shared meaning that help us live well in the world — among neighbors, among enemies, among animals, and on the land.
By that definition, Christianity is a religion. Paganism is a religion. Indigenous lifeways are religions. Even secular stoicism or military culture can function as religion.
Religion isn't inherently a hierarchy — it's how we orient ourselves toward what matters.
Why I Don't Feel Fully at Home in Existing Institutions
I was confirmed in the Episcopal Church in 2013. Before that, I sought the Catholic tradition while attending a Black Jesuit parish in North Carolina.
I'm not anti-church. I'm deeply shaped by the church.
But somewhere between confirmation and now, I started to feel like an unwelcome guest in a house that was supposed to be home.
The more I read Torah and the Prophets, the harder it became to reconcile that awe-inspiring moral world with our modern industrial institutions of faith.
The Hebrew Bible's imagination is agrarian, land-bound, communal, neighbor-responsible, and distributive. It shares this with indigenous lifeways around the world: the recognition that we are accountable not just to other humans, but to the land itself and all who live on it.
Biblical Judges govern by charisma and wisdom, not by throne or inheritance. Worldly power was made to circulate, not calcify.
Over time, centralized monarchy emerges, and — as Samuel warns — it wounds the people. It hoards power. It extracts sons for armies, daughters for service, land for palaces. It takes dignity and agency and consolidates them into a throne.
I fear religion today has repeated that same old pattern: In the name of protecting the power of meaning, we try to hoard it.
A Hope for Decentralized Faithfulness
I do not believe Christianity needs to be burned down.
I believe Christianity — like Israel before monarchy — becomes most itself when power is shared, not hoarded. When the Table matters more than the Throne.
Jesus is not Caesar, and Christ is not a king in the sense you might think.
And yet the later church — perhaps inevitably — struggled to resist imperial patterns. Even the gospel writers, trying to honor "Jesus" within their Roman context, sometimes echoed royal language that sits uneasily with the itinerant teacher who had nowhere to lay his head.
This isn't a rejection — it's a hope: Faith doesn't need to collapse to heal. It needs to decentralize.
Our modern religious life could benefit from remembering we were meant to be caretakers, not managers of a meaning-economy.
So What Is Grunt Works?
Grunt Works is not a new church and not a rebellion against church.
It is a home for people who feel spiritually homeless — veterans, seekers, the devout who feel burned by institutions, and those who want meaning without coercion.
It is a workshop, not a sanctuary. A community hearth, not a pulpit. A place to practice belonging and meaning without claiming monopoly on truth.
We don't tell you what to believe. We don't shame you for belonging elsewhere. We don't hoard sacredness.
If you go to church — wonderful. If you don't — you're welcome. If you're unsure — you can belong here if you want.
This isn't a new religion. It is permission to breathe again.
If You Need a Definition
Grunt Works is a meaning-making community rooted in humility, service, and land-honoring wisdom.
Inspired by:
Hebrew agrarian justice
Early Christian mutuality
Indigenous relational ethics
The hard-won grit of military life that knows hierarchy fails without humility
I'm not building a kingdom. I'm building a commons. A Home Without a Throne
Not a church. Not anti-church.
A place where religion is honored, but not monopolized. A place where meaning grows like a garden — not enforced like a doctrine.
If you've ever wanted a spiritual home but felt out of place in holiness built on hierarchy, prestige, or guilt, then you understand what Grunt Works is.
Welcome. You don't have to sign anything. You don't have to believe the wrong things (or the right things).
Just bring your work gloves, your questions, and your dignity.
We build belonging here — together, not above one another.
And if you're reading this feeling that ache of homelessness I described — you're already here. Welcome!
