The incomparable Homebrewed theologian Tripp Fuller, tweeted this this little back and forth earlier in the week and for some reason I havent been able to completely shake it off. It's from Andrew Tatum, whom I confess I don't know. This is his post...
Earlier this week, Respected Philosophy professor (and one of my favorite authors), James K.A. Smith blogged the following:
It seems like every other day I'm told another reason why young people are leaving the church: because Christians fight too much, or because Christians are too political or anti-gay or don't care about social justice. Millennials, we're told, are leaving the church because the church won't bless their cohabitation or provide them with contraception for pre-marital sex. They're leaving because they don't care about fights over creation/evolution or abortion or worship style or what have you. In sum, it seems we're regularly informed that if the church doesn't change, young people are going to leave.
And what exactly are we supposed to do with these claims? I think the upshot is pretty clear. Indeed, am I the only one who feels like they're a sort of bargaining chip--a kind of emotional blackmail meant to get the church to relax its commitments in order to make the church more acceptable?
Could we entertain the possibility that millennials might be wrong?
I would agree entirely that millennials are, in fact, wrong on many issues. But I would argue that the reasons listed by Smith above are by no means the most prominent of reasons why young people are leaving the church. It isn't that the church simply needs to "get with the times" or accommodate moral ambiguity. The fact is that young many young people are leaving church because they have come looking for "church" and have found many things -- but authentic church is not among them.
What I mean is that young people are leaving because they have been in attendance at church services, Sunday schools, and other church events and instead of finding a community of spiritual depth and Christ-like love that truly cares about its community, they have found too many people over-concerned with gimmickry, social status, self-interest, and self-preservation. Instead of finding a community of authentic worship of God and sacrificial love for neighbor, they have found a community of fear, anxiety, and tepid pseudo-spirituality.
I believe millenials are searching for authenticity and community and that the church today has, indeed, lost its way. But the problem is not just that the church has refused to accommodate millennials' moral shortcomings by "relaxing its commitments to make church more acceptable" -- it's that the millennials have come looking for a community passionately following Christ in all areas of life and - far too often - we (i.e. Christians) haven't given them what they're searching for. I am not surprised that millennials are leaving church because as I survey the landscape of American Christianity today I don't see that it has much to recommend itself to the next generation -- or any generation, for that matter.
In order to regain the trust of future generations, the church needs to regain its own spiritual vitality, but this will not come through gimmicks, ad campaigns, moral laxity, or any of the other "desperate measures" currently being pursued to stave off the church's decline. If there is to be any hope that the church will regain the next generation, what is really needed is steadfast obedience to Christ's call to sacrificial love and a commitment to be "good news" to our communities born out in concrete acts of service and radical hospitality. We need to be less committed to the "institution" -- our buildings, bulletins, budgets, and social status -- and more committed to Christ and the pursuit of the koinonia that Christ lived, died, and rose again to create.
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I don't particulalry like to wade into these conversations, but sometimes it seems there are such glaringly obvious things to address. For instance, Smith speaks of millenials perhaps emotionally blackmailing the church to change its commitments. I think blackmail implies an on-going threat i.e. "something will happen if you don't do such and such," this doesn't seem to be the case here--rather, people are simply walking away and in effect saying "keep your commitments" I dont want them--thats very different from blackmail. I think this is what churches often miss, they think they are more important than they are--people don't want to debate these issues, they aren't interested in them. So by all means, keep your 'commitments'--which in this particular case seem to be little more than particular theological and culturally contextual reads anyway, but for many people they aren't sticking around to listen.
In saying that, I am not necessarily agreeing with the 'millenials.' In fact, another point I'd like to make here is the danger of generational theory--which is rooted in marketing and advertising--generations may exhibit certain trends in terms of views and behaviours--but the reality is more complex than that and should not be trusted--we speak way too much in these broad and unreliable terms--and to be honest, the claims made of millenials about the church are not exclusive to them--I hear those comments on multi-generational levels. Yes, younger people are less inclined to favour institutional forms of anything, and to challenge certain views or positions related to cultural issues, but that is a dynamic that has long been at work in western cultures, and for some millenials christianity may work fine, so to write off or speak broadly of any 'generation' is silly--we have to get away from this if there is to be any cogent and worthwhile conversation--it's not just young people who find difficulty with aspects of Christianity.
But back to the millenials (whoever they are)--so are they right? Yes and No. I applaud the search for 'authenticity and community'-but they are far from the first crowd to want that--can it be found in church? Sometimes, but we have to get over generalizations about all this. I also think it is a littler naive to dismiss church experiences as inauthentic or lacking communal aspects--it can just be particular forms and expressions of both those things and they may or may not work for people--but they can't just be written off on the basis of some generalized and idealized sense of what authenticity and community mean--those words have many interpretations and iterations, What is needed here is an expansion of the moral imagination on both sides. Times are changing, that much is sure. Different values, ideas and views are re-shaping the world. The church holds onto to history as it's determinant way too much--history cannot be ignored, but the future isn't embraced or necessarily engaged by a commitment to the past as if the past had it all together--the shifting sands of church views on creation, sexuality, marriage, worship etc, should be guide enough for any of us to realize the need to recognize temporality in what we hold all too tightly sometimes. I'm a bit tired of people linking their present state to the 'historic' faith--they tend to become guardians of a certain history and proponents of a sort pseudo-orthodoxy rather than a radical one.
In fact, I'm a bit tired of most of the debates around religion. It's filled my life for the past thirty years and I am getting very close to be done with it all. I could walk away from 'the church' (again, what the fuck does that mean when we speak in such generalizations?!--there is no 'the church' it's just like politicians who speak of the 'american people'--it's a fiction, and not a very helpful one anymore) just as some millenials do, over exactly the same issues, and more. Actually, thats probably not true, I wouldn't leave over these issues or the postitions certain people hold about them, it's bigger than that for me---I just think that church has become about little more than niche iterations of certain interpretations of what christian faith means and most of them don't strike me as particularly interesting anymore--that certain people think this or that or adopt this or that form of expression? who cares? I don't anymore.
So why did I respnd to this little back and forth then? Well, in between my feelings and my actions exists a little disconnect that I am actively working on and this stuff falls into that space for right now.
Please find some references which provide The Complete Divine alternative to the confusions and the completely appropriate rejection of all forms of Christianity by the millenials, and the naivety of the kind of old time spiritually empty/dead Christianity that you promote.
http://global.adidam.org/truth-book/true-spiritual-practice-3.html
How to live Right Life
http://www.adidam.org/teaching/aletheon/truth-life.aspx
http://www.adidam.org/teaching/gnosticon/universal-scientism.aspx
The Signs of the Times
http://beezone.com/news.html
http://sacredcamelgardens.com/wordpress/realiy-humanity
COMPLETELY SHOCKING
http://beezone.com/AdiDa/Aletheon/ontranscendingtheinsubordinatemind.html
Posted by: John | 29 May 2012 at 03:17 AM