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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 11/12/2003 4:36 AM (GMT -6) |   | Revival of the Fittest
Are evangelicals really dumbing down American religion?
By Amy Sullivan
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I was a Jesus geek before being a Jesus geek was cool. In the Midwestern Baptist church where I grew up, we had quite a personal conception of the Lord and Savior. On Christmas, in addition to celebrating with more traditional desserts and carols, we baked a birthday cake and sang a rollicking tune called "Happy Birthday, Baby Jesus." Mrs. Crain, my Sunday School teacher, talked about getting "Jesus bumps" instead of goose bumps. And during the "praise and petitions" part of the worship service that preceded prayers, it was not unusual for someone to offer thanks to Jesus for the recovery of a purse left in a dressing room at J.C. Penney's. Catholics may have a saint for lost causes, but we had a deity for lost pocketbooks.
The Transformation of American Religion
by Alan Wolfe
Free Press, $26.00
In the days before VeggieTales, we read Christian versions of Archie comic books, in which Betty, Veronica, and the whole gang traveled the world proselytizing. We sang praise songs displayed on overhead projectors, flocked to Amy Grant concerts, and (Lord help us) performed rap songs with puppets, using the baptistery as a stage in order to recruit kids for youth groups. We listened to countless sermons that boiled down to essentially the same point: We were doomed unless we asked Jesus to save us. In his latest book on the nature of American faith, The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Live Our Faith, sociologist Alan Wolfe calls this kind of evangelicalism "tacky." He also says it's the future of American religion, a "religion [that] has been so transformed that we have reached the end of religion as we know it."
The cause of this transformation, according to Wolfe, is the competitive need to appeal to "switchers," those who change religious traditions and whom he compares to free-agent athletes looking for the best deal the market can offer. As Wolfe undoubtedly knows, but does not point out, competition among churches is not new. Protestant churches have angled for ways to attract parishioners ever since towns offered more than one denominational option--Max Weber described this American phenomenon at the turn of the 20th century. In addition, the rise of church potlucks in the 1950s was partly an attempt to woo potential suburban congregants by offering the best tater-tot casserole or ambrosia salad or themed "Luau Night" in town. While this trend is not new, Wolfe hones in on the fact that it has been accelerating in recent decades.
Today's religious communities face competition not only from other denominations, but also from other religious faiths and from the siren call of secular society. While a 1955 Gallup Poll found that only 4 percent of Americans had switched from the religion of their childhood, by the mid-1980s, that number had risen to over 30 percent. Even that figure does not reflect those who, while not switching religious traditions, fall away from the faith in which they were raised. It is efforts to attract these "unchurched" --or, more accurately, the religio-phobic--that have been behind the broad transformation of American religion Wolfe describes.
Americans are savvy consumers, and they behave no different when it comes to religion. Since its founding, America has always offered more religious choices to its citizens than most other countries. But the general pattern of consumerism in this society has led to an exponential growth in those choices. Americans are shoppers, they want to make their own decisions, they are increasingly comfortable with other people making different choices without passing judgment, they are more demanding that institutions cater to their needs, and they want lots of options. They don't want one kind of blue jeans; they want boot-cut, low-rise, reverse-fit, classic-cut, stretch-fit, flare, slim, cuffed, cropped, sandblasted, rinsed, or faded. Or maybe they want corduroys instead. So it's not surprising that Americans have demanded more variety in the area of religion, and that they are more comfortable switching between traditions with different offerings.
The market leader in this appeal to religious consumers has been the evangelical community. Wolfe identifies two social developments--preference for personalized faith (which has led to the Protestantization of most religions) and distrust of leadership and institutions--that have driven most of the changes in modern American religion. Evangelical churches, many of which combine Jesus-as-a-buddy theology with daycare, food courts, and concert seating, have responded most directly to those trends. Other religious traditions, in turn, have had to steadily conform to the evangelical model in order to compete for members.
Wolfe outlines the growing challenge to religious communities this way: "Attempting to attract or to keep congregations whose members have been so strongly influenced by a common American culture, all of America's religions face the same imperative: Personalize or die." Put that way, it sounds rather dire. But he's right. Many Americans are looking for user-friendly faith, a cuddly God, and comfort-fit worship options. A Presbyterian church in Memphis uses PowerPoint presentations to highlight the main points of each sermon, just in case congregants doze off for a moment in the extra-cushy pews that are all the rage now, or are otherwise distracted from closely following the message. A reform synagogue in the Bay Area offers a "synaplex" experience--"different Friday night services for different tastes, just as the nearby movie theaters offer many smaller screens instead of one large one." My old evangelist Archie comic books have been replaced by David and Jonathan adventure comics and Bobblehead versions of Moses, Samson, and Noah.
The anti-institutional bent of many Americans that is reflected by declining trust in business and political institutions has also influenced the structure of religious communities, new and old. When a Jewish havurah (the equivalent of home-fellowship worship) needed to find a new rabbi, members insisted that the ad emphasize they were seeking a "teacher and resource person," not a religious leader. Some megachurches don't display religious symbols like a cross for fear of driving away those who dislike signs of religious authority. And a small but growing trend can be found in the home-churching movement, similar to home-schooling in that both attract conservative Christians who feel alienated from public life and distrust public institutions. Unlike the Puritans in England who gathered for worship in their homes because they feared persecution if they worshipped publicly, today's home churchers choose to limit their fellowship circle to their family because they disapprove of the corruption they believe is inherent in church communities. In assessing the impact of these transformations in religious communities, Wolfe fears that we are witnessing a watering-down of religion that provides feel-good answers without requiring sacrifices of adherents. He quotes religious historian Randall Balmer, who asks, "Jesus will save your soul and your marriage, make you happy, heal your body, and even make you rich. Who wouldn't look twice at that offer?" By bending over backwards to cater to the needs of religious "consumers," Wolfe argues that religion has become no different from any other part of society. "Television, publishing, political campaigning, education, self-help advice--all increasingly tell Americans what they already want to hear," he notes. "Religion, it would seem, should now be added to that list." Well. For anyone who cares about the future of American religion, that is a fairly depressing judgment.
Wolfe correctly describes an important phenomenon that is taking place primarily in evangelical circles. To some extent, it also holds true for some Catholic and Jewish communities, although he has to stretch a bit to fit those examples--such as Catholics who make waves by meeting in small groups for Bible study--into the larger description of the "new" American religion. And if Wolfe characterized it this way, as a phenomenon strongest in evangelical circles that becomes less distinct in traditions further removed, his analysis would be precise.
He misses an important part of the picture, however, when he makes sweeping statements about the impact and scope of the trend, such as: "Religious believers increasingly live in suburbs, send their children to four-year liberal-arts colleges, work in professional capacities, enjoy contemporary music, shop in malls, raise confused and uncertain children, and relate primarily to other people with whom they share common interests." As written, this sentence is absurd--the vast majority of Americans have always been "religious believers" and did not just recently move out to the suburbs or begin listening to contemporary music. If by "religious believers," however, Wolfe means "conservative evangelicals," then he is correct. The flaw in his analysis is that he takes on-target observations about evangelicals and expands them into universal assertions about all religious Americans.
Moreover, although the American religious scene has indeed become a marketplace, user-friendly religion is not the only option on the shelves. Wolfe skips over a smaller, though crucial, countertrend--a movement toward orthodoxy that has paralleled, and is in some cases a backlash to, the rise of the religion-lite communities chronicled in the book. Most churchgoers are familiar with this phenomenon. Indeed, among my close friends are half a dozen former Baptists who became Episcopalians, a number of friends whose less-observant families are perplexed by their adherence to Orthodox Judaism, and several Catholics who seek out high-church services, often even attending Latin masses. Much has been written about this trend, including the 2002 book The New Faithful: Why Young Adults are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy, by journalist Colleen Carroll. And I can personally attest to the small but significant migration of evangelical Christians to orthodox Christianity.
Because although I grew up in a Baptist church where there was no need to worry about questions (I was shushed when I asked the pastor where all of the people came from if Adam and Eve only had sons) and where worship came in a fun, easy-to-swallow package, I left that tradition to make my home in that mustiest, most endangered of denominations, the Episcopal church. If flashy, PowerPoint-enabled, blue-jean religious services are all the rage, why would anyone join a liturgical tradition characterized by rituals, sacraments, and vestments? Wolfe would probably proclaim that my friends and I are outliers. But I think there is another reason he doesn't mention this countertrend. Wolfe is too honest to omit an example just because it doesn't fit his pattern. More likely, it's that he suffers from an ailment common to sociologists of religion since Emile Durkheim turned his anthropological eye on tribes and rituals--a heavy reliance on functionalist theories. In other words, researchers attempt to identify what function religion plays in people's lives. Are parishioners looking to create a sense of community to replace the family structure? Does religion provide an ethical mooring in these morally uncertain times? Are Bible studies and youth groups serving essentially the same purpose as bowling leagues and the Girl Scouts? These types of questions drive much of the study of religious communities, particularly for those scholars who come from non-religious backgrounds, as Wolfe notes in his book that he does.
That is unfortunate, because religious folks can be decidedly illogical. After all, they believe in things like reincarnation and the transubstantiation of body and blood into bread and wine (or Welch's grape juice, if you're Baptist). I left the Baptist church not because the music and food weren't up to snuff or because it failed to provide a sense of community. In fact, I have yet to find a church that meets those criteria as well as the church of my childhood. I left because I ultimately found the tradition theologically unsatisfying. Evangelicals place such unswerving emphasis on converting the "unsaved" that life, once I was saved, was pretty anticlimactic. The one-note "come to Jesus" sermons that brought me to the altar failed to provide any guidance for how to live as a Christian in a morally and ethically complex world. Most Sundays, I sat in the pews with an "I gave my soul to Jesus and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" feeling.
Orthodox traditions offer more applicable lessons for the religious life--the peerless sermons of Harvard Memorial Church's Rev. Peter Gomes are my standard for practical religious instruction--but they often require sacrifices that are at odds with self-interest. Being a religious individual in this modern world is a more complicated and challenging task than perhaps ever before. And it is exactly this kind of behavior that can't be understood by relying on traditional sociological explanations.
Years before George W. Bush gave a shout-out to Jesus in a presidential debate and officially brought evangelicalism into the mainstream, I was on the cutting-edge of American faith. Although I didn't realize it at the time, my Baptist church offered what the people are looking for: a personal God, informal worship, practical prayers, and pop-culture tie-ins. Those characteristics have shaped much of modern American religion, and Wolfe's observations about this wide-ranging development are spot-on. But it is going too far to claim that, "In every aspect of the religious life, American faith has met American culture--and American culture has triumphed." American faith has more varieties than Baskin Robbins has flavors; some have met the onslaught of culture by co-opting certain aspects, others have capitulated, and still more have firmly retained their sacred separateness. And the American faithful defy generalizations as well. I may look for all the world like an Episcopalian now, but I can still perform a puppet version of the Parable of the Prodigal Son that would knock your socks off.
Amy Sullivan is a doctoral student in sociology at Princeton University and the author of Political Aims, www.politicalaims.com.
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Alan Rhoda
Registered Member
Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 680
| Posted 11/12/2003 6:00 AM (GMT -6) | | Good article, DLW. Sullivan provides a good balance to Wolfe's message, but I think Wolfe is mostly on the money. There's been a growing trend in American evangelicalism over the past couple decades variously known as the "church growth" or the "seeker-sensitive" movement. This trend disturbs me because it self-consciously positions Christianity as consumer-oriented, which almost invariably means toning down the inherent offense of the gospel in order not to drive away "seekers". In my experience, churches that set out to be "seeker sensitive" almost always become "seeker centered". The church service becomes primarily a vehicle of evangelism, with a message aimed at being "relevant" to seekers. As a consequence, the message has to be dumbed down because, after all, we can't expect seekers to be interested in serious theology and we don't want to offend them with a hard-hitting call to repentance. And since little of substance is served in the church service, we try to make up for this by getting everyone into "small groups" and "house churches" where, allegedly, real spiritual growth is to take place, even though much of the time the leaders are ill-trained theologically (because they haven't gotten any serious instruction at church).
Having spent several years of my life in such churches, I am convinced that this is not the way the church should be oriented. Jesus was clear that our goal is to make disciples, not merely converts. The church fulfills its mission when it strives primarily to make disciples, to educate, exhort, and encourage Christians (not seekers) to increasingly live out and embrace their faith both intellectually and practically. Evangelism, reaching out to spiritual seekers, is primarily the job of Christian disciples as they go about their lives in the world, and should not be the primary goal of the pastor during Sunday sermon.
Alan | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 11/12/2003 7:13 AM (GMT -6) | | I agree the consumerism metaphor will have long-run stultifying effects on Christianity.
I also like your last point on evangelism...
I would also add that our collective witness as a group also matters. If all we do is vote based on our self-interest or support the political strategies of the past on abortion then this will affect our ability to witness to others in the long-run.
This is my most recent letter I wrote to Prism...
I hope and pray that a miracle happens and that Christian and non-Christian leadership emerges so as to organize a detente in the cultural wars with the hope of reducing the level acrimony in our nat'l gov't the cultural wars has caused. If more Christians could conceptually separate their beliefs about right personal conduct and the political strategies pursued wrt establishing right laws for our gov'ts and try to love our political enemies in this regard then it will be possible for them to act with more political autonomy on a wider range of political issues. The autonomy of Church and State is important since how we collectively use our political capital is an important collective form of witness to the world. The perception/identification of much of the world of "evangelical" christianity with president George W. Bush and all the policies associated with his administration may have set up barriers to the spread of the Gospel. The task of trying to capture the gov't completely on any given issue requires far too much compromise and implicit support of several other issues.
We need to be more judicious in seeking moderate reforms on a wide range of issues, in the spirit of the former Christian/Social Gospelist, John R. Commons, who influenced legislation that included civil-service reform, factory legislation, workmen's compensation, unemployment insurance, interest-rate control, rural credit schemes, inheritance taxation, property-assessment laws, immigration policy and industrial relations and whose students influenced Rooselvelt's New Deal programme of economic measures to lift the US out of the Great Depression.
One issue that may be worthy of more attention would be to express political solidarity with US muslims in the upcoming election so as to ensure they will have a greater voice in the US middle-east operations. This will then signal to muslims world-wide the message that democracy can work for them and that the separation of mosque and state implies the need for their autonomy, not their segregation.
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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scott_jorgenson
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2002
Total Posts : 271
| Posted 11/12/2003 11:18 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by Alan Rhoda
Good article, DLW. Sullivan provides a good balance to Wolfe's message, but I think Wolfe is mostly on the money...
lots of good stuff snipped
"A men" - with a qualification. What I find at my church (and having visited others I think this is pretty common) is that most teaching is focused, not only on evangelism, but on encouragement and practical life-application. At least in my experience, its a step too far to say that the evangelical church today is only about evangelism. For example, I think there's a good deal of teaching (bad or good) on right living for a Christian: servanthood, repentance, personal relationship with God, that sort of thing (and very important stuff it is, too).
But what's resoundingly true is that anything intellectual or controversial is absolutely avoided (especially things that are intellectual and controversial). Theology, Bible, doctrine, tradition, biblical history and culture and language - there is a massive dearth of teaching on this - particularly teaching of method (why and how we come to believe the things we do in those subject areas) as opposed to mere conclusion (what we believe in those subject areas).
Consequently there are vast numbers of Christians who haven't got a clue, for example, how to read and understand the Bible, and thus don't have a clue how to learn from it and apply it (and making matters worse, they don't even know that they don't know). I know - I was one of them. I figured I could open to any section of the Bible and always just read it like I'd read a modern newspaper and it would all make sense. Well, for many parts of the Bible, it doesn't. I spent about 8 years in a small group in which I consequently learned virtually nothing and grew hardly at all, because everyone else knew nothing about real Bible study either. Only in the last few years, as I've been exposed on my own to biblical scholarship, in turn developing a knowledge of culture, language and method, have previous mysteries begun to make some sense.
I think this situation is largely due, as Wolfe seems to say, to the conjunction of two factors: (a) the broader tendencies against intellectualism and toward entertainment in American culture, and (b) the fact that church attendees are no longer a captive audience. American capitalism, wealth and leisure time has meant a boom in entertainment and ease-of-life/quality-of-life - we expect that life is supposed to be easy in general. And since church attendance is no longer socially required to be considered a good-standing member of society; is no longer the one of very few opportunities to meet friends and mates; etc - the result is that no-one attends who doesn't want to be there. And if life is supposed to be as easy as possible, who wants to attend a church where the learning is real learning, ie, often not easy?
Generalizations, of course.
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Blood Washed Heretic
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2003
Total Posts : 167
| Posted 11/13/2003 4:51 AM (GMT -6) | | My college roommate (and best man) has joined the Episcopal Church. He was never a very staunch evangelical to begin with, so I think he saw some of the problems with the movement a little clearer. The above article could easily have been written by him.
That being said, I'm certainly not ready to give up on the movement, basically because the theological foundations are solid, if somewhat ignored these days. Evangelicalism, particularly the American flavor, which is what's being critiqued here, DOES need a facelift, and not just for PR purposes, either.
The watered-down Gospel will eventually kill the movement from the core, as the consumer mentality eats at it from the outside. The leadership culture developing within our churches is a good thing, but these leaders must be better equipped in matters of theology and Scripture knowledge, as DLW said. Also, the emerging generation of leaders MUST divide method from message once and for all. The "seeker-sensitive" trend has blurred that line of distinction so much that it's hard to believe them when they say, "Methods change, but the Message never does."
That is certainly a good principle, but what I see in a lot of seeker-driven churches is that methods are actually influencing the messages being shared. When "life application" is nothing but pop psychology backed up with verses taken badly out of context, something's wrong. On the other hand, I don't see much evidence of the Message (Christ's Gospel) actually influencing our methods much.
So, I think the evangelical movement will survive, as long as method and message are kept distinct from each other, and as long as the American church is willing to learn from the rest of the world, instead of vice versa. It could be a painful process, but as we OVers are learning, any kind of change is likely to be resisted by the establishment. Hegel's dialectic sounds so sterile in theory, but in reality, "You've gotta break some eggs if you wanna make an omelet."
In essentials, unity; In matters of opinion, liberty; In all things, love. | | Back to Top | | |
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