Not The Religious Type

Thanks!

I'm grateful for each of you who gave your feedback on the blog in the last post.  Thanks for taking the time to do that!

Here's what I take away.  Yes, it can be daunting to dive into this conversation.  But I shouldn't undervalue the "lurkers" in each post.  And so long as we keep markers available for newcomers--they all exist on the tabs at the top of the blog, but perhaps we could consolidate them under a "get started here" tab--perhaps I shouldn't worry about this unduly. 

And thanks for your comments on my LGBT comment.  It was on my mind because it had come up multiple times in the last couple of weeks.  (And let me emphasize that I by no means meant to say that Christianity Today was runnning a story on this.  Rather a freelance writer tells me he's pushing a story on this to them enough that, he says, some editor there gave him follow-up questions for me.  But this could easily turn out never to be heard from again.)  But perhaps one just soldiers on and sees what happens. 

I agree about multiple voices and I'm very grateful for all our guest posts, not least the recent ones.  Please keep them coming!  Bill's comment about how valuable it can be for the poster to comment on each comment that comes in is something I've just seen modeled by Peter...and I despair of ever being able to actually do it.  But I'll certainly marvel at how well it works in Peter's hands. 

Now that Irene is over, I'll revisit my hopes that you all--on the Eastern Seaboard--did well.  It was a strange one, wasn't it, East Coasters?  On the one hand, New York City-ites and most Bostonians derided it as largely a non-event.  And yet it trashed places well north and west of us--parts of upstate New York and Vermont got hit very hard with flooding.  We cancelled our church services on Sunday, which I recriminated about when that time came and things weren't that bad .  But then I ventured outside and saw downed trees around my neighborhood and the power out a half block away and pretty much nobody still on the streets and our subway shut down.  And it struck me that maybe I should just enjoy my day off.

To reiterate: Keep the posts coming!

Any Feedback?

I hope your late summer's going well!  And that--for those of you, like me, on the Eastern seaboard--you made it through the hurricane with minimal damage, inconvenience or, God forbid, injury.  (I'm writing this before Sunday, so I have no updates on my end.)

We're pondering next steps in our collective conversation here and I'd love any feedback you all have.  I've been informally collecting some feedback on how we've done.  Here are two perspectives that come my way most often.

• This blog is a great place for a unique conversation--but, that said, it's primarily serving a few dedicated "insiders" to this centered-set, Stage-4, Blue Ocean stuff.  It works less well as a place for intrigued outsiders to dip their toe in the water.
  
  
• I hear all the time that what the Blue Ocean conversation is most-known for is its' comments on LGBT issues.  I pretty much always hear this from people talking with conservative churchgoers who are alarmed by Blue Ocean's "liberal" take (in quotes because I don't feel well-understood by that characterization) on this.  (One writer is aggressively trying to peddle an essay to Christianity Today on this subject.)  So I find myself torn.  Should we not care what outsiders who have no interest in the larger conversation here get upset about?  Or is there some way to have different levels of this conversation? 

So we've pondered things like trying to restart the blog in perhaps a broader-based way...without quite knowing what that would look like.  We've wondered if blogging is an especially-helpful communication vehicle at all at this stage of our life together.  We've drawn a blank pondering how, on the few occasions we do talk about LGBT concerns (which seems hard to avoid when talking about faith and culture) to make it helpful for those who are served by these discussions--without making those discussions a gate that anyone who wants to join in here has to walk through up front.

So welcome to what I and a few others have been thinking about.  Do you have any thoughts?

Faith Beyond Social Marginalization/ Steve Hamilton

This past week at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting, research was presented claiming that church attendance is dropping dramatically among Americans without a college degree.  This trend and the research overall has puzzled some sociologists and popular secularists who tend to believe that the more educated a person is the less religious they will be.  In fact, University of Nebraska-Lincoln sociologist Philip Schwadel found that this isn't true at all, "It all falls down to what you consider to be religious.  If it's simply attending religious services, then no, highly educated people are not less religious; in fact, they're more religious."  Was that another East Coast earthquake or did something just move unexpectedly?
 
W. Bradford Wilcox, a professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, who was lead researcher on the project, reported that 37% of moderately educated whites - those with high school degrees but who lack degrees from four-year colleges - attend religious services at least monthly, down from 50% in the 1970s.  Interestingly enough, the study focuses on white Americans because church attendance among Black and Hispanic populations are less divided by education and income.  Yes, income and education seem to matter vis-a-vis church attendance, but equally interesting is that the study theorizes that lower church attendance among the less educated may stem from a disconnect between them and modern church values.  The researchers claim that religious institutions tend to promote traditional middle-class, suburban family values like education, marriage and parenthood, while less educated whites are less likely to get or stay married and may feel ostracized by their religious peers.  “This development reinforces the social marginalization of less educated Americans who are also increasingly disconnected from the institutions of marriage and work,” said Andrew Cherlin, co-author of the study and a professor of sociology and public policy at the Johns Hopkins University.

So, I'm wondering what hits you about this new research?  What does this community think about the social marginalization of the less educated and the religiosity of the educated?  There have been sporadic conversations here about diversity - mostly along racial or ethnic lines, but two areas where diversity seems to be missing from this conversation - in my opinion - are education and income, i.e. are the poor with us in our churches?  What about those with less education?  As we've mentioned previously, we probably have some diversity in terms of Stage theory and what stage people are inhabiting in our churches (although maybe not), because I think that Stage 4 churches make room for people at multiple stages to belong.  Beyond just diversity, what do we think is going on here with this trend?  And how would a centered-set revival move us beyond this social marginalization?

Of Men and Metanarratives (Part 2)/ Peter Eavis

Come up with an alternative.

That sums up many of the responses to my Tuesday column. In it, I argued that Michele Bachmann winning the GOP nomination could prompt the media to highlight the toxicity some of us see working within hard-edged evangelicalism. Revealing this unpleasant stuff in a high profile political race could even speed up a possible societal shift away from a style of faith some of us see as sectarian, belligerent and judgmental, I claimed.

In the comments section, Caleb asked an excellent question:

“Should Bachmann-style US Christianity be exposed and destroyed, do we yet have the gears, resources, and integrity to replace it? What is our "theological metanarrative"? Can it sustain a critique of the downsides of secular culture in the same way that it can critique, say "Stage 2" Bachmannism?”

And Caleb helpfully provided a definition of “theological metanarrative.”’ It is a worldview that claims to be “in sync with the big story about the reality of God in the world.” Caleb says conservative evangelicals at least have that.  Not having some sort of narrative, Caleb posits, could reduce politics and economics to a “crass pragmatic market calculus” that aims only for size and strength.

My first pushback: I am not sure conservative evangelicals’ set of beliefs amounts to a meta-narrative. They certainly have an agenda, and one they are keen to push. But its often narrow nature seems to prevent it from being “meta.” Here’s an example. Caleb recommended Michael Lindsay’s Faith in the Halls of Power. I downloaded the book and read about something truly striking that occurred at the very outset of the conservative evangelical push into power. In 1980, President Carter, himself a devout evangelical, held a White House conference on the family. He refused to exclude homosexuals, enraging many of the other evangelicals, who went on to become powerful in Washington. My point here is not whether Carter was right or wrong. Instead, what’s telling is that from the very start one group of evangelicals “won” the political battle – and then succeeded in telling everyone that their style of faith was authentic. I was left asking: Whatever happened to the Carter-style evangelicals? How did this strain get left out of the power equation so early, and then have very little sway in the proceeding 20 years?  Were there just so few of them? Or did politics seem the wrong way to go to them, and so they decided instead to go and do great stuff in their churches? Or were they actively kept out of politics, because the conservative ones simply had more power and fight? In other words, was the right-wing meta-narrative actually a mask for a plain old power grab?

(March 26, 1977 gathering of gay and lesbian community leaders at Carter White House)

The Pros and Cons of the "You Matter" Message/ Vince Brackett

I’m fascinated by generational difference.  There’s one particular difference I’ve been noticing more and more lately and I wonder if it plays an unnoticed yet significant role in a lot of the spiritual conversations we hope to champion here on the blog.  The best way I can describe this difference is by observing reactions to the message: “you matter.”

Most younger adults I know (roughly under-40, like me) have a generally positive response to this message.  They hear it as an empowerment in an otherwise self-esteem destroying culture.  I’ve spoken to countless 20 or 30-somethings that have found profound emotional and spiritual healing through embracing the idea that they, as individuals, matter to God.  They’d dealt with years of hurt because of parents that (not necessarily maliciously) didn’t provide all the affirmation and love they needed as children, or they’d been steeped in self-hatred because they were bombarded as children by things that they weren’t, from successful older siblings to perfect-looking models in advertisements.

However, adults over-40 (again, roughly) seem to have a generally negative response to this message.  They hear it as the evil seed of our entitled, over-individualized culture in which everyone thinks he/she is the most important person in the world. An article I read sometime back coming from this perspective called it the “self in a castle” worldview and proposed that it’s a major obstacle to today’s generation having good, lasting experiences of faith in Jesus.  People hide behind the thick castle walls of their individualized self and, thus, any spiritual experience becomes characterized by individualism and removed from the lifeline of community.

Should we, gulp, actually want Michele Bachmann to win the Republican presidential nomination?/ Peter Eavis

Rightly and wrongly, many people view faith through the prism of politics. If the average Blue State urban dweller thinks anything about, say, evangelicalism, it’s often because he or she has read about the faith of someone like Bachmann.  That makes things very inconvenient for people – many of us, I’m sure -- hoping to show that the Christian faith doesn’t have to come with a certain set of GOP priorities.

So why might Bachmann winning the GOP ticket ultimately help us? A proper examination of her past and her beliefs could speed up the societal shift away from the assumptions that have bolstered a certain type of hard-edged, culture-hating evangelicalism. In particular, her candidacy would bring on the sort of media scrutiny that would lay bare the toxic influence that this sort of evangelicalism has had on American faith. That in turn could encourage churches to move away from that oppositional stance and possibly promote a more open way of connecting with God. The best example of such media digging is the New Yorker’s recent profile of Bachmann. It lists the beliefs of some of her intellectual influencers, including a certain Francis Schaeffer, whose reputation is still strong in mainstream evangelical circles. It didn’t take the New Yorker too much work to discover that one of Schaeffer’s films includes a scene where,

“a mysterious man in a fake mustache drives around in a white van and furtively pours chemicals into a city’s water supply, while Schaeffer speculates about the possibility that the U.S. government is controlling its citizens by means of psychotropic drugs.”

After a revelation like that, don’t be surprised if the secular friend you invited to church runs straight out when he sees all the Schaeffer books in your church bookstore.

But reactions like that would be a good thing for the church. For decades there’s been unhealthy symbiotic relationship between secular conservative ideas and conservative religious ideas. For instance, a regular misogynist can go to church and find a theological justification for his misogyny, deepening it still further. In this scenario, the church gets members and the members feel they have a higher calling.  That relationship has driven a lot of church growth and spawned many political careers. Thankfully, though, as society has become more tolerant, younger generations are avoiding the harsher churches. But that trend needs to speed up. So, the better Bachmann does, the more the media crawls over her past, and more people will turn away from culture-hating faith.

The obvious downside to my theory? Bachmann wins the GOP nomination AND the presidency itself.

Can We Skip the Middleman?

One of the more-intriguing themes at the recent Blue Ocean Summit was the thought that the sort of spirituality we talk about here might, in some ways, boil down to "Can we just skip the middleman?" 

So Tanya Luhrmann, a Stanford anthropologist, talked about her astounding multi-year study of people who talk to God in hopes that God will talk back to them.  (I asked her before her talk: has anyone in human history done an anthropological study like this one, of the actual dynamics of what happens when people try to "relate" to God?  She hemmed and hawed for a moment and then said, "No.")  But after hearing her utterly provocative talk on what she learned, one implication we talked about was: is there a case to be made that we just bring this relational dynamic with God to anyone we meet who might like it?  Or do we need to take an intermediate step where we briefly change terms?  Do we need to tell our non-churchgoing friends, "Wow, your life can change if you learn to interact with this invisible but seemingly-very-real God and I'd love to teach you how to do it.  But first I'd like to offer you historical proofs that Jesus is the Son of God and, who are we kidding?, God himself.  And then I'd like you to sign off on that and pray a prayer to that effect.  And then we can get down to business about this change-your-life-by-interacting-with-God stuff."  Maybe, we hazarded, we can just jump to that last part and see what happens?

And then we enjoyed a really provocative "culture panel" with the following people: Jill Lamar (editor-in-chief of Henry Holt publishers), Peter Eavis (recent Wall Street Journal banking columnist), Brian Odom (Northwestern faculty in physics) and Gary Stratton (recent head of Act 1, perhaps the largest gathering-point/training institution for Christians in Hollywood).  And we asked the question: is this sort of faith relevant primarily to people who go to churches?  Or is it directly relevant to the financial and publishing and Hollywood and academic worlds?  That gave us about an hour of things to talk about together.  But most-assuredly the upshot was, yes, take this to the larger world and get moving as quickly as you can pull this off.

Now what "this" is, of course, takes some conversation.  (As we have endlessly tossed around on this blog.)  And whatever "this" is, it was agreed it wasn't an over/against thing: "I have something you need."  It was fundamentally collaborative.

But what do you think?  Can we offer whatever it is we have to offer to anyone, directly?  Or is a conversion of some sort required first?

How I Spent My (Blue Ocean) Summer Vacation

A brief update on the recently-concluded Blue Ocean Summit.

It was great to see many of you, if not to talk enough with most of you.  This year's summit took on a bit of a big-picture theme, with Tanya Luhrmann painting a picture of an experiential connection with God presenting a unique opportunity in a secularizing world, followed by our culture panel taking a pass at how centered-set faith makes a unique offer in many spheres of the wider world (Hollywood, publishing, academia, finance). 

My conversations (and there were plenty of them--bedtime well-past midnight throughout the time) were filled with hope about all this, combined with challenges at seeing this play itself out in our settings.  I chatted on my front porch this morning with local pastors who came to their first summit and said, "We've pretty much only been talking about this stuff since the summit."  On the spot were two invitations to take this on the road to other gatherings, one within my denomination, one outside of it.

An intriguing capper came just after the summit finished, on Wednesday night.  Tanya joined about thirty folks in a nearby pub for another of our summer "Meaning in a Pub" gatherings, composed of about a third churchgoers and two-thirds folks from either other religious traditions or no religion.  She shared quite candidly about her really astounding tour of religious communities as an anthropologist--surely no one in history has lived even a similar life to hers--before turning things back to the tables for processing.  Later that night, over a glass of wine with Grace and me, she shook her head and said something like, "You folks really are remarkable.  Believing Christians who truly live out centered set.  I don't think I've seen that in quite the same way before."

So just a few words on a time I'm still very much chewing on.  We may well have more to say soon...or we'll ponder it in our heart.  Thanks so much to those of you who made it here, usually at the cost of real sacrifice.  I can't wait to see where things go next.

Do We Have a "Masculinity Compensation Disorder?"

Note from Dave: Today is the first day of the Blue Ocean Summit!  I'll keep you posted on what we learn.  For your blog pleasure, I give you this article from the Huffington Post on a topic we've been chatting about over the last couple of weeks.  Greg Carey, a professor at Lancaster Theological Seminary, makes a case on the subject that I'm not sure I've heard, at least put exactly this way.  Your thoughts?

Tennessee Baptist pastor Joe Nelms recently offered the opening prayer before NASCAR's Federated Auto Parts 300, thanking God for "my smoking hot wife." Nelms' clever allusion to "Talledega Nights" notwithstanding, this inappropriate use of public prayer is symptomatic of a larger disorder among evangelicals -- masculinity compensation disorder. The movement needs aggressive treatment.

Nelms' prayer hardly stands alone. Just a few years ago, the Rev. Ed Young, pastor of Houston's 53,000 member Second Baptist Church and former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, challenged the married couples in his congregation to have sex with each other every night for a week. Pastor Young vowed that he and his wife would lead by example. Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has admonished young adults concerning the sin of delaying marriage. Mark Driscoll, pastor of Seattle's Mars Hill Church, imagines Jesus with "callused hands and big biceps." John Piper, pastor of Minneapolis' Bethlehem Baptist Church and a prominent advocate for wives' submission to their husbands, maintains that truly masculine Christian men better suit a society with "a wartime mindset." And we all know about Bishop Eddie Long and the Rev. Ted Haggard, vocal anti-gay activists and national evangelical leaders, who have faced charges of soliciting sex with other men.