How Profound are Regional Differences?

Many thoughts from each of your provocative comments this past week. 

I find myself impressed by the seriousness with which many of you consider things like the stages.  I think I take them a bit more lightly than some of you who really work them.  My view falls along the "It's only a model.  Like all models, it can only be pushed so far before it collapses.  But, if it's helpful, fantastic" lines.  And it's helped me a ton, so it seems like it's done its job on my end.  But the distinctions of whether hardcore atheists are actually stage 2 can give me a bit of a headache.  I suppose they are if they grew up atheist (as, say, Richard Dawkins) and are therefore not rebelling against anything but are just reinforcing their family orthodoxy.  Others have very much rebelled against a one-time faith (say our blog-mate of a year or so ago, John Loftus) and so would seem to me to be in stage 3.  And the average snarky nineteen year old may well be in this stage as well.  So it seems to me that the big question is whether we keep moving or we harden in any given stage.  But, yes, point taken that hardcore atheism is its own sort of fundamentalism--as we not infrequently see with atheist debaters.  Bart Ehrmann, for instance, was a committed fundamentalist Christian who crashed and then became a committed fundamentalist atheist.  Is this stage 3 or just, as Richard Rohr would say, a refusal to undergo transformation?  All to say, fair enough in terms of all your comments.  They just may be a bit too smart for me on occasion, as I find myself wondering what I gain by resolving some of the questions you pose.

I also found myself wondering about regional differences this week.  Bill S. thoughtfully commented a few posts back that centered-set faith had given him his marching orders for the kind of church he wanted to build.  But now, having built that church, he does find not infrequently that he needs to explicitly define boundaries.  On the one hand, amen indeed.  I run our 101 class as a one-session, 3 1/2 hour class, and a good chunk of that is spent discussing who we are and what we're like.  All of that could well be seen as definitive boundary setting. 

But it struck me as I read Bill's comment that, apart from that, I feel very little need for overt boundary setting.  And I wondered if that might be because of living in New England, specifically ministering in Cambridge.  It's so liberal and Stage 3 as a culture here (again, this by no means applies individual by individual) that it, unless I'm missing it, rarely comes up.  But I wondered if some cultures in the midwest--perhaps Bill's--skew more towards Stage 2.  And if, in cultures like that, however centered-set we shoot to be, we're going to find ourselves having to make some things explicit in a fairly regular rhythm.  So I wondered if my very different experience than Bill's (if it's actually as different as I was reading it) is a regional difference.

What's your best guess?

Comments

[Jeff]

I think the regional thing is a really big deal. As we've worked through the Seek course over and over, it seems clear to me that secular Cambridge-ians are much more hostile to faith than many secular Minnesotans. Mind you, the Minnesotans are angry at whatever church they are rejecting. But they are nice about it. They even mouth shat they often know to be the right answers. The trouble is actually drawing out what they really feel (if they themselves are even in touch with it).

[Vinceation]

Yeah, regional differences are definitely major. In my observation of Chicagoland (I could be totally wrong but...), it's not that people are less secular or Stage 3 than in Cambridge, it's that the ratio of those secular, Stage 3 people is dwarfed a bit more here by comfortably Stage 2 folks. I find Chicagoland as not so much "make it or break it" secular as I hear Greater Boston described. There is enough Stage 2 ground to stand on here and not be considered a total idiot or outcast. Yet, again, I think the secular, Stage 3 people in this region are otherwise pretty similar to those in Cambridge; they're just not the majority.
This has made it really hard for me to build momentum for an exclusively centered-set approach to church. There is much more pushback because the need is not so "make it or break it". Churches can do quite well setting boundaries and the bad reputation that can build among secular, Stage 3 folks is not the loudest voice they hear (as is true in Cambridge) so it fades into the background.

[bsergott]

I really appreciate your comments, Dave. I think we have similar situations, in that we have civic community cultures that are heavily influenced by conservative, institutional Catholicism. That is why, according to Barna, the people in Boston and in Green Bay are the least likely to share their faith. In that sense, Catholics have a tendency to shy away from evangelism and tend to see faith as a private matter of the heart. I can say this with some confidence, having grown up in the Catholic faith.

But, in Cambridge, it seems that you have more of a transient population, spurred by the numerous college campuses in your area. That always breeds more free thinking, stage 3 faith. As you know, college campuses are hothouses for stage 3 experimentation. We ain't all that smart in Green Bay, and the campuses here are all outside the city proper. We don't feel that influence. The "townies" that come are all coming out of the Catholic or Lutheran tradition. They have a desire for liturgical expressions of faith. Having those touchstones or consistent markers help them to feel a sense of security. We do weekly Eucharist, for example, using a great deal of the Didache consistently. That serves as a consistent marker for people looking for something simple to click with. That makes them more open to experience Jesus and all of his destabilizing teaching.

All that being said, there is actually very little that I make explicit. But, I can hear the warning flags that Amy and others have put forward. From time to time we need to do a gut check on our centered-set approach. Periodically we need to soberly assess whether we are putting up some kind of boundary, and, if so, either remove it or make sure it is explicit and easily permeable. I think if the perception of a boundary is there, then for that person, the boundary is very much there. It becomes more difficult to pass through a boundary when that boundary is ambiguous and unidentified. We want to keep a wide open front door for people to access this type of faith and make it their own.

[PB]

Yes, yes, and yes! Part of what I've flapped my gums about over and over on this blog is just that: regional differences are HUGE. Here in Twin Falls, ID, the dominant adult subcultures are mostly: cowboys, bikers, agriculture, and outdoor sports. So, so different from the intellectual, artistic, financial, and medical subcultures back east. Generalizations, sure, but there are very noticeable differences between, say, Twin Falls and Cambridge.

I think it's interesting in the sense that my church's style/ethos would be really, really tough to pull off in Cambridge, and the Boston Vineyard's style/ethos would be really, really tough to pull off here.

We also (this is a guess) have a lot more congregants who want answers, certainty to their questions about life. We also tend to attract people whose lives are a bit chaotic. We don't attract many GLBT people; our church would offend many of them. But things are also growing and changing here. In 2000, population estimates were around 34,000. In 2006, estimates were 40,000. There's now a small arts community here, and with the local college attendance around 8,000 (!), there's a lot of that college "energy" in town. Of the people who attend churches, around 40% attend LDS churches.

Will be interesting how this change plays out in communities of faith.

[Brent]

Your w --> s mistroke is pretty funny.

I'm with you on Minnesotans. All the ones I know are like this weird hybrid of Hippies and Lutherans. You can argue with them if you want, but they'll probably just say 'that's a good point' and invite you out for a beer and pie.

[Brent]

Am I the only southeastern representative here? Does that maybe meaning something? To put things in 'stage terms,' things in the South are very strongly, sometimes very explicitly, stage 2, and the notions of stage 2 vs stage 4 faith is, I think, very helpful. What isn't so helpful is stage 3, the one that is maybe most helpful up in Cambridge. Most of the Christians I know who are striving for stage 4 faith are doing so from a stage 2 background, often running into lots of well-intentioned none-the-less rule-based stage 2 barriers along the way. It is much rarer to see a Christian go from that stage 2 upbringing to a rebellious stage 3, though of course that happens as well.

[PB]

Yes, having grown up in Houston I'm with you about the southern Stage 2-ness (although, we should also probably distinguish between "south" and "deep south"!). But I think I've had the opposite experience a bit. The junior high & high school I attended was a conservative, private Christian school. I knew soooo many kids who knew the "right things" to say and do to stay on the teachers' good side -- and many others who genuinely tried to be the rule-keepers -- but then after graduation (esp. in college) crash binged on sex, beer, and all kinds of drugs. My experience has been that oftentimes Stage 2 crashes hard into Stage 3... or maybe Stage 1 or something. Almost like all that repressed curiosity came to the surface in a geyser of debauchery.

I like the questions this raises about the interaction of people of different backgrounds, and the part that children's & youth ministries could play in this development.

[Vinceation]

"Almost like all that repressed curiosity came to the surface in a geyser of debauchery."... fantastic sentence, Peter!

[Trish Ryan]

Brent and PB's comments make me think of the Dixie Chicks--raised in the south, deep in church culture. If you listen to their most recent album, they're stage 3 poster girls, rebelling hard against the rules & hypocrisy. I love their honesty and think they'd be excited about the possibility that faith could look different than what they've seen. But I wonder if they'd even consider it because it's so much more challenging in the south to separate Jesus from culture?

In contrast, most folks in the northeast I know who have been/are stage 3 aren't rebelling against such specifics as the Chicks rail against in songs like "Lubbock or Leave It." (Check out the lyrics...they make me want to apologize personally on behalf of Jesus).

[Geoff]

These comments put me in mind of what I think may be a great difficulty for people trying to move beyond stage 2 in a strong stage 2 world--they may sense that even opening the door to questions can lead to losing a community that is very important to their lives. Maybe more important, ultimately, than faith itself. If our nature is to BE in relationship to others, asking questions can be fundamentally threatening.

[steven hamilton]

i think geoff's comments about community are significant, and it makes me wonder if i'm in a unique area because of washington dc...we get such a blend of people from all over the place (nationally and internationally) and what i witness to is that this "being away from your 'home' culture" is freeing to most people, especilly in terms of beginning a great conversation about almost anything with most everyone and they engage and i haven't had much push-back in terms of "this is threatening to my communal-identity".

so i'll join with everyone else and say that region and geography seems to play a fairly significant role in how strong or loose someone is holding to their stage-ness, so to speak...

[Geoff]

That's interesting Steven. And it harkens to the archetype story of the spiritual "hero" who leaves home to grow. In the Buddhist tradition, this leaving home is explicit. The Buddha was on a wandering, seeking path for quite some time--taking in the very rich spiritual world of his time. In the Christian tradition, we of course have the baptism and "40 days" in the wilderness, but more affecting, we have the scene where Jesus' family comes looking for him while he is in a house crowded round with people. They're afraid that he's lost his mind (suggesting that he has left home, they have not heard from him, and they are alarmed by the alteration they're hearing about). When told that is family is outside, Jesus points to those around him and says "this is my family".

[Crispin]

In my area of the country, New Orleans area, it is definitely a more stage 2. The area in which I pastor is in a transitional zone between the Bible belt and the rosary belt. Most folks down here have had experience with religion but for a good many it is just cultural. A lot of people do the obligatory services of Christmas and Easter because it's just what you do but there is no sense of real vibrant life-changing faith. I think a whole lot of people have given up on church down here but it hasn't turned into a hostile stage 3 rebellion so much as indifference. I do see much more of the stage 3 attitudes with folks in their twenties and early thirties but it seems much more prevalent in that area.

[DJ Sybear]

I'm a little confused.

It would seem that the proposed idea here is that some regions of the U.S. might be more stage 3—Cambridge, urban centers, etc.—and others might be more stage 2—the Midwest, the South, and so on. And it would seem that the prevailing response is that, yes, the cultural tendency "where I am" is stage 2ish.

Might I suggest that some of these opinion responses are merely anecdotal? I mean, it's all well and good: these are your towns and communities, and farbeit from me to say that I know better about the place in which you live and observe and go about daily life.

But what if you're a tad biased? What if you hang around with church people most of the time, and those church people have only ever known stage 2? What if the outsiders you run into play along as though they're stage 2 because they think that's what will be expected of them if they join a church—your church? What if the people you talk to smile and nod to stage 2 culture because they'd rather not cause a fuss?

All that to say, I can imagine that perhaps we are inclined to dismiss or overlook the stage 3ness of the culture around us, wherever we are.

[Otto]

Where I grew up, Venezuela, on the one hand it's probably quite stage 2. On the other hand, religion is much more a part of the culture, and people don't take it quite as seriously as here. It's not so much as it is here (at least in the Northeast)... where to me it feels like "you're in our you're out". There you're in... because it's not even a question. You are whatever you grew up in, and that's that. There's not so much rebellion from religion because it's not considered as seriously.

[Gemdoug1]

Hi DJ,

My name is Doug, and I'm inclined to agree with you about both the anecdotal nature of these responses, and the inherent biases accompanying each of them. Since this is my first posting, here -- and, in fact, is being made on the same night I've discovered this site -- it probably makes sense to mention that, like Amy, I'm Jewish, and not what many would consider an "insider" in the usual sense. But by the same token, I think it's also only fair to add that among the many proverbial hats I wear, one is that of a freelance drummer, and in that capacity, I've easily spent as many days grooving along in support of fundamentalist gospel choirs in the NY, Boston and S.F. Bay areas as I have, davening in the shuls of various sects of my own faith, in those same geographical areas.

The insights I can offer on the variable (or does "flexible" sound more PC?) natures of religious positioning and belief stem from the unusually schizoid nature of my own religious upbringing: my dad's side of the family was pretty sure that one High Holiday began with an "R", and the other ended with one, and both concluded with a good meal and some catching up, while mom's side of the family was so Orthodox that I was Bar Mitzvah'd on the generations-old family Torah, which had been hand-carried to the USA from eastern Europe. Each camp had it's own rationale for dismissing the other's claim to being "Jewish enough", which set my feet upon what this group might call a Stage 4 path by the time I was eight or ten.

And similarly, when I began comparing religions -- attending various services and more or less immersing myself in their various processes and practices, for a few weeks or months at a time -- sometime in my mid teens, I found that the perceived degree of rectitude claimed (and/or assumed) by the various Catholic, Protestant, interdenominational (fundamentalist) Christian and Buddhist sects I'd "dipped a toe into" exactly mirrored those of the various Humanist, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist and Orthodox synagogues I'd known, before. In each, there were large factions of Stage 1's and 2's, intermingled with 3's and, to a lesser extent, 4's.

In the Reform and Humanist synagogues, the 4's tended to be the rabbis and those elderly members who'd lived more artistically-centered lives; in the Zen and Shinto Buddhist schools and monastery, it was usually only the youngest and oldest teachers who fell into that category, and in the devoutly Baptist, Apostolic and Pentecostal churches, it tended to be only those at the highest levels of the various hierarchies who viewed life and its relationship with The Almighty through those lenses., while those directly beneath them tended to cling stoically to "The House's" prevailing dogma, with the kind of unerring steadfastness I usually associate with fear, more than hope. (On more than one occasion, I found myself wondering what they thought would happen to them, if the day ever came that they dared to peek around the corner at another potential perspective!)

As such, DJ, while I think your comment about being "a tad biased" rings more than a little bit true, I can't help but wonder whether the "Stage 3ness of the culture around us, wherever we are" is actually ever truly Stage 3 at all, or rather, incrementally bolder tendrils of Stage 4, disguised as various intermixtures of themselves and Stage 2, as a means of "tasting" more expansive horizons without first taking our feet off the proverbial dock.

After all, if the environment surrounding said people is perceived as potentially hostile to apostates, how else could Spirit evolve?

[Adam]

Wow. Great example Trish. Lyrics at:
http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/dixie-chicks/lubbock-or-leave-it-17154.html

[Gemdoug1]

P.S.: As 20/20 as hindsight often is (and as unfocused as ideas can be, in the middle of the night), I'd like to clarify a few of the comments I'd posted, last night. In essence, it's been my observation that people are people, and can usually be counted on to behave in more or less the same way(s), regardless of the particular physical, philosophical or theological "wrapping paper" in which they come.

In other words, whether the topic of discussion & devotion is Christianity or Judaism or Buddhism or baseball, I think you'll find that those same "Stage-ist" rules apply, pretty much across the board.

(And I apologize, DJ: in my last 2 paragraphs, I had originally intended to agree with & support your third one, but I'm guessing that the combination of too few hours of sleep and the then-forthcoming bout of gastroenteritis combined to lead me in an entirely different direction, altogether! Again... "Sorry!")

[Gemdoug1]

I'm really surprised, Otto! While it makes sense that Venezuela's homogeneity of religious observance would take the pressure off, to some extent, I had always assumed that, given the ubiquitousness of The Church in so many South American villages and cities, the 'seriousness factor' would've been pretty extreme, and that there'd be a whole lot more pressure on teens to either conform or resist (depending upon who was applying that pressure).

[Ben Catlin]

Brent, you just explain my increased love of both Pie and Beer since moving here, as well as the associated weight gain. I feel enlightened, and have a profound need to start an argument with someone to see if they will buy me a beer.