{"id":44076,"date":"2019-09-11T06:00:38","date_gmt":"2019-09-11T10:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=44076"},"modified":"2019-09-10T12:50:06","modified_gmt":"2019-09-10T16:50:06","slug":"rejection-of-all-affiliation-all-authority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2019\/09\/rejection-of-all-affiliation-all-authority\/","title":{"rendered":"Rejection of All Affiliation, All Authority"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As we keep hearing, Millennials don\u2019t affiliate with a church as much as other generations did and tend to be skeptical of religious authorities.\u00a0 Then again, it turns out that Millennials don\u2019t affiliate much with ANY groups or organizations.\u00a0 And they are skeptical of ALL authorities.<\/p>\n

But it isn\u2019t just the Millennials, though they get all the attention.\u00a0 The same refusal to affiliate with groups and rejection of authority\u2013manifesting itself in dropping out of the church, as well as many other symptoms\u2013characterizes the white, older, non-college educated working class.\u00a0 Only more so!<\/p>\n

So says The Atlantic Magazine<\/em> in an article by Derek Thompson entitled\u00a0Elite Failure Has Brought Americans to the Edge of an Existential Crisis,<\/a> with this summary deck: \u201cThe nuclear family, God, and national pride are a holy trinity of the American identity. What would happen if a generation gave up on all three?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
Thompson writes,<\/div>\n
\n

Millennials and Gen Z are not only unlikely to call themselves Protestants and patriots, but also less likely\u00a0to call themselves Democrats or Republicans<\/a>. They seem most comfortable with unaffiliation, even anti-affiliation. They are less likely than preceding generations\u00a0to identify as \u201cenvironmentalists,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0less likely\u00a0to be loyal to specific brands<\/a>, and less likely\u00a0to trust authorities<\/a>,\u00a0or companies, or institutions<\/a>.\u00a0Less than one-third<\/a>\u00a0of them say they have \u201ca lot of confidence\u201d in unions, or Silicon Valley, or the federal government, or the news, or the justice system. And don\u2019t even get them started\u00a0on the banks<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

What I especially appreciate in this article is that Thompson goes on to show that these same attitudes associated with the Millennials are even more common among the white male working class!<\/p>\n

Drawing on a scholarly study entitled The Tenuous Attachments of Working-Class Men,<\/a>\u00a0Thompson underscores the point I have long been making on this blog<\/a>:<\/p>\n

First, these low-income working-class men are turning away from organized religion even faster than Millennials and Gen Z. Since the 1970s, church attendance among white men without a college degree has fallen even more than among white college graduates, according to the paper. They remain deeply spiritual without being traditionally devout, avoiding church and preferring instead to browse the internet and libraries for makeshift pieces of a religious self. \u201cThey [are] attempting to renegotiate their relationship with religion by picking and choosing elements of various religious traditions they found appealing,\u201d the authors write.<\/p>\n

Second, their detachment from religion flows from a feeling that elites have lost their credibility. \u201cMistrust of religious leaders was often cited as a reason for eschewing a childhood faith,\u201d the authors write, and \u201csome viewed clergy as little more than scam artists.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Pastors and scholars in the fields of \u201cchurch leadership\u201d and evangelism, note this well:\u00a0 A major reason<\/em> why many working-class men, who would otherwise seem to be open to Christianity, is that they distrust religious leaders.\u00a0 (How might religious leaders win back this trust?)<\/p>\n

Apparently, what we are seeing is the desire not to be categorized.\u00a0 <\/em>Thus the plea, \u201cDon\u2019t label me.\u201d\u00a0 For example, this helps explain what we are now seeing in the sexual identity and gender controversies.\u00a0 There are men and there are women.\u00a0 There are men who now identify as women and women who now identify as men.\u00a0 But there are also those who refuse to identify with either sex, who claim a \u201cnon-binary gender<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 This may not be so much an odd psychological condition as an expression of radical individualism that refuses all labels.<\/p>\n

Appreciate too the ironies.\u00a0 Working class, non-degreed white males are Donald Trump\u2019s base, while the college-educated Millennials are the base of the Trump Resistance.\u00a0 The two sides vilify each other.\u00a0 Yet note how much they have in common!<\/p>\n

Both sides hate the government, have given up on the nuclear family, pursue extra-marital sex, take recreational drugs, and have stopped going to church.<\/p>\n

Thompson, the author of the Atlantic<\/em> article,\u00a0 correctly shows the \u201cexistential\u201d consequences of a society, when its members reject affiliation and refuse to recognize authorities (such as the authority of the government, the law, the family, etc.).\u00a0 Not being a part of a church or religion, he acknowledges, exerts a toll on a person\u2019s sense of meaning.\u00a0 He cites the problems among both Millennials and the working class of loneliness, despair, drug addiction, and suicide.<\/p>\n

The article will warm the heart of conservative readers until it suggests that what we are seeing in these two demographics is the herald of something new.\u00a0 The traditions of \u201cfamily, God, and national pride\u201d have failed us!\u00a0 The breakdown of the allegiance to marriage, religion, and patriotism may be traumatic, but it may be the prelude to the construction of new social institutions that will be better.\u00a0 Thompson concludes,\u00a0\u201cThis stage of history may be recalled as a purgatory, a holding station between two eras: one of ostensibly strong, and quietly vulnerable, traditions that ultimately failed us, and something else, between the unmaking and the remaking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Have the traditions failed us?\u00a0 Or have we failed the traditions?<\/p>\n

Can you have identity without labels?\u00a0 Can you have thought or even language without categories?\u00a0 Is this repudiation of labels and categories a herald of something better, as the author concludes, or an example of individual, culture, and intellectual breakdown?<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
Illustration:\u00a0 From the cover of\u00a0Don\u2019t Label Me:\u00a0 An Incredible Conversation for Divided Times\u00a0<\/a><\/em><\/div>\n
by Irshad Manji.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we keep hearing, Millennials don\u2019t affiliate with a church as much as other generations did and tend to be skeptical of religious authorities.\u00a0 Then again, it turns out that Millennials don\u2019t affiliate much with ANY groups or organizations.\u00a0 And they are skeptical of ALL authorities. But it isn\u2019t just the Millennials, though they get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":44109,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12,36,37,39,42],"tags":[8685,241,3750,2276,3638],"class_list":["post-44076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church","category-culture","category-politics","category-psychology","category-religions","category-social-science","tag-affiliation","tag-authority","tag-millennials","tag-unchurched","tag-working-class"],"yoast_head":"\nRejection of All Affiliation, All Authority<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Millennials are not only refusing to affiliate with churches. They resist affiliation with ANY groups and resist ALL authorities. 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