Sarah Pulliam Bailey:

FORT WORTH — A prominent Southern Baptist leader whose comments about spousal abuse set off a firestorm last week said in an interview Friday that he couldn’t “apologize for what I didn’t do wrong.”

Wearing a black cowboy hat as he led graduates down the aisle, Paige Patterson set off laughter at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s commencement when he joked about quarreling Baptists. Patterson’s advice to abused women not to divorce has set off a huge public backlash among evangelicals – but not at the conservative Texas seminary where the 75-year-old is president.

The seminary, which instructs women not to teach men and offers them classes in homemaking, this week fired a PhD seminary student from his $40,000-a-year job for simply tweeting about the Patterson debate, telling him that he was “indiscreet” and that his decision to speak publicly about the dispute “does not exhibit conduct becoming a follower of Jesus” and shows he was not properly deferring to “those placed in authority over you.”

As some wondered this week whether the seminary trustees could remove its president, Patterson appeared to double down on Friday, saying in an interview that “allegations have been given on me all my life” and adding that he was being falsely accused but declining to provide examples. During the ceremony, Patterson sat front and center in a red velvet chair, casually twirling his black glasses before addressing the graduates without directly addressing the controversy.

Patterson’s comments about divorce, which were made in 2000 but weren’t widely circulated until last weekend, caused Southern Baptist leaders to scramble to denounce domestic abuse. The most surprising remarks in the recording came when Patterson tells the story of a woman who came to him about abuse, and how he counseled her to pray for God to intervene. The woman, he said, came to him later with two black eyes. “She said: ‘I hope you’re happy.’ And I said ‘Yes … I’m very happy,’ ” because her husband had heard her prayers and come to church for the first time the next day.

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, numerous powerful men have come under scrutiny over sexist treatment of women. But Patterson, who has long held a special status within the nation’s largest Protestant denomination for his role in a conservative takeover of the convention going back decades, is known for not backing down from positions.

The irony of the Age of Authenticity is that it’s reaction and rejection of mass society and the Age of Conformity/Obligation became itself another kind of conformity: what Andrew Root calls the “conquest of cool” and the quest for cool as the quest for authenticity. The irony? It was established and it flourished through mass marketing. Wow, chapter five of his book Faith Formation in a Secular Age is brilliant.

That’s the big picture, now some fine tuning.

The Beats and other bohemians who came before them had turned “hip” or “cool” into a spirituality. In Allen Ginsberg the refusal to grow up, the quest to remain forever young, had become the doorway into a new spirituality where cool, as the substance of authenticity, was central.

But this spirituality of cool was locked away, kept within the small bohemian enclaves that sought the authenticity of their desires. There was simply no mechanism to multiply the rebellious pursuit of cool.

The culture of conformity and the Age of Duty created a consumerism and captalism based on conformity until the youth turned against that kind of consumerism.

Organization Man attended and supported the church but flattened it into a bureaucratic institution without spirituality. Both turned to naturalism (either of desire or of science and organization) that had little room for divine action.  … Organization Man I was the gray-flannel-suit-wearing, dutiful conformist; he was the father who provided the suburban paradise that his teenage children were revolting against.

Revolt is one thing; numbers another. The numbers were funded by the marketers, and so the Age of Authenticity was wedded to a different kind of consumerism. The Conquest of Cool.

As the counterculture’s youthful prophets began to push back against conformity, calling the mass society a machine for repression, marketers were eager to herald the youthful as genius, providing them the very weapons for a coup d’etat against conformity. … The bohemians (and Freud) may have been the inspiration, but it was the marketers who funded the coup against conformity, formulating authenticity as the new social imaginary.

If slang, dress, and practices labeled cool were the acts that ushered one into the authentic self, then consumption would be the essential partner for those walking the trail of cool, seeking authenticity.

Once the youth began turning to bohemian pursuits of cool, marketers had the opening to turn buying from conformity to competition. Previously, you had to have a new car and a white fridge because it was your duty. But now you needed the coolest sports car and the brightest clothes to express your individuality, to reveal that you were cooler (more hip) than the other conforming squares in your neighborhood.

Personal: in my 60s and 70s the coolest thing was to have a VW and especially a VW van, which I never had. To have a VW (ironically enough, a Hitler based car) was to be cool, and it was to reject mass society and consumerism. Which, if truth be told, was created by the marketers at VW!!!! I did have a VW “bug,” which my colleague roommate called the “Adi-mobile.” I wore Adidas in those days and pronounced it not “a-DEED-us” but “Ah-dee-DAS.”

People buy what makes them feel superior, whether by showing that they are cooler (Nike shoes), better connected (Cuban cigars), better informed (single-malt Scotch), more discerning (Starbucks espresso). morally superior (Body Shop cosmetics), or just plain richer (Louis Vuitton bags).”

Oh man, Andy Root’s telling the story so well: “So marketers became the evangelists of authenticity by making the cool-seeking hippie into the hero…. In a world without divine action, youthfulness was now an eschatological category. … To be full of youth is to be authentic—this is why forty-year-old moms need to wear skinny jeans and why our churches so fear the loss of the millennials.”

From CT, The Exchange, an interview about my Open to the Spirit.

Ed: You say that the secret to experiencing the Christian life is allowing the Holy Spirit to empower us to live as God wants us to live. Why do you think so many Christians today are nervous and hesitant to open themselves up to the Spirit’s work?

Scot: I see three types of hesitancy. First, some lack knowledge or education about the Holy Spirit. Some Christians come of age or are part of a church that goes mum on the Spirit, while others simply haven’t listened carefully enough to hear what the Bible clearly says.

Second, some are afraid of the change that comes from transformation. The Spirit doesn’t indwell in order to remain silent or to remain ineffective; the Spirit indwells us to make us like Christ. Since we are not Christlike we will have to change. The Spirit does that kind of transforming work.

Third, some have heard too many goofy stories about the extreme edges of Spirit claims. I grew up in a world that went mum on the Spirit because there were so many wild and crazy claims by some in our close circles. I understand that.

My church context was completely confident in eternal security so when I was at a church, as a youngster, and a family member told me a specific woman walking forward went forward weekly to get saved again and again, and then my family member said she needed to get baptized with the Spirit… well, I wasn’t so convinced and I learned to be very guarded about the Spirit

Ed: What is the Holy Spirit’s role in helping someone know they have personal salvation?

Scot: I quote Paul in Romans 5: “Hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” This hope of which Paul speaks is not optimism but genuine conviction about the future of our redemption that gives a person a place to stand on firm ground in the present.

This hope is rooted in God’s love for us and God’s love for us is known through the Spirit. Plus, we can refer to the Spirit’s testimony in Romans 8 to conclude this: assurance and confidence about our salvation is a gift the Spirit communicates to us in our inner being.

This confidence fluctuates for many Christians while some are confident their entire walk with Christ. We can gain more assurance by learning to focus on the utter completeness of Christ’s work on our behalf and of the Father’s utter satisfaction with the gift of his Son.

Ed: What role does the Holy Spirit have in making us holy?

Scot: What is holiness? God alone is holy. Holiness is about God’s presence. Holiness involves then for us two things: entering into God’s presence (devotion to God) and exiting from the world’s and sin’s and the flesh’s presence (separation). These three are important: holiness is about God’s presence, our proximity to God and our distance from sin. Holiness is the work of the “Holy” Spirit to indwell us with God’s presence and make us more godlike through God’s transforming presence.

Ed: Do you believe all the spiritual gifts–described in the Bible and experienced by the disciples–are still active today?

Scot: Yes, I do. Here’s why: There is nothing in the New Testament that teaches me that the gifts are only given to some people in the first generation of Christians. I could easily live with the restriction of “apostles” in the classic sense (Peter, Paul, et al) but even here we have Romans 16:7 which indicates there are “missionary” type apostles already in the New Testament era.

Those are still with us. Otherwise, I’m open to all the gifts of the Spirit. It is not ours to determine what God does through the Spirit but it is ours to be available to what God wants to do in our world through us and in us.

Ed: How does our public worship connect with being wide open to the spirit?

Scot: Good question. The Spirit’s role, according to Jesus in John 14-16, is to witness to Christ and to glorify Christ in and through us. Anytime we are genuinely worshiping God as revealed to us as Father, Son and Spirit, the Spirit is present.

If we understand worship to be the sacrifice of our entire selves (Rom. 12:1-2) all day long in whatever we do, and if we understand that kind of sacrifice as surrendering ourselves to Christ, then the Spirit is the one who empowers us to worship as sacrifices to God. All of our following Christ is empowered by the Spirit.

This is no more than a book notice, as I have only read the introduction, conclusion, and dipped — some shallow and some deep — into other chapters.

The book is by Darel E. Paul and it is called From Tolerance to Equality and the subtitle tells the story of the book: How Elites Brought America to Same-Sex Marriage.

Anyone who is writing or studying or deeply interested in the politics of this subject will need to read this book carefully. Every academic and theological library has to purchase this book.

Here are some big ideas. Elites: about 20-25% of American households are elites and they are the managerial and professional classes of the American economy.

Long ago a friend of mine, a well-known evangelical author and professor, a Berkeley guy for much of his life, waxed eloquent on the history of same sex discussions from his experiences near the University of California. I recall his saying that at first it was about tolerance and acceptance but over time stridency in the conversation grew and it soon became about not just tolerance of difference, and tolerance requires for there to be disagreement and capacity to accept alternatives, but a demanded acceptance, equality, and a lack of tolerance for disagreement. I remember his saying, “I was there and I watched this story unfold.” He wasn’t much opining as he was simply describing.

Well, Paul’s book maps this story in detail, with numbers and stories and facts and angles and perspectives. He’s a professor at Williams College, hardly a bastion of the American Right! Some will think this book a conservative story, but I didn’t sense that at all. What I sensed was a guy on the prowl for explaining what happened. The story from tolerance to equality is the story, no mistaking that. This book tells that story.

I also sensed an odd irony, but I would have to read the book through to know if it is an irony: those most opposed, say, by the Bernie Sanders crowd and their strong affirmation of the movement mapped in this book, namely the corporate business world, that is, big money, are the very ones Darel Paul sees as creating the movement from tolerance to equality for same sex persons.

For me the irony was that the book sat on my desk a couple weeks and I was reading the subtitle as “elites bought” not “brought.” There’s something in the book to that.

The author does also expand his story a bit into transgenderism, but it’s largely the story of the connection of elites and same sex attitudes/beliefs moving from tolerance to equality and law.

The questions surrounding Adam and Eve and the Fall in Genesis 2-3 and concerning the role of inspiration in the formation of the Bible are issues that won’t go away any time soon. They are not the only issues at play in discussions of science, Christian faith, and the intellectual coherence, but they are major ones. The post today is a slightly revised version of one of my older posts, but it brings up issues that remain and will remain important for quite awhile yet to come.

As a college student I took a course on theology – one of the requirements of the school I attended. Our primary textbook was volume one of Essentials of Evangelical Theology, by Donald Bloesch. Particularly relevant to the question here are a chapter entitled The Primacy of Scripture and a section in his chapter on Total Depravity dealing with The Story of the Fall. Bloesch takes a rather conservative reformed evangelical stance over all, although probably not conservative enough for some. It is worth considering what he has to say.

In his discussion of the primacy of scripture Bloesch emphasizes the human and divine aspects of scripture and notes that many people have a docetic view of scripture – and that this view is mistaken.

Scripture cannot be rightly understood unless we take into consideration that it has dual authorship. … The Bible is not partly the Word of God and partly the word of man: it is in its entirety the very Word of God and the very word of man. … if we affirm … that the Bible is predominantly a divine book and that the human element is only a mask or outward aspect of the divine, then we have a docetic view of Scripture. Some would even say that the Bible is an exact reproduction of the thoughts of God, but this denies its real humanity as well as its historicity. (p. 52 – page numbers are from the 1978 original I’ve had since taking a theology course in college)

What does this mean to Bloesch?

First – The authority of scripture flows from the authority of God in Jesus Christ.

… we must bear in mind that the ultimate, final authority is not Scripture but the living God himself as we find him in Jesus Christ. … The Bible is authoritative because it points beyond itself to the absolute authority, the living and transcendent Word of God. (p. 62-63)

Bloesch sounds quite a lot like NT Wright here as he describes his view of the authority of scripture in The Last Word: Scripture and the Authority of God and in the enlarged revision Scripture and the Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today. The central claim of Wright’s book is that all authority belongs to God – and thus scripture is authoritative only in the sense that the authority of the triune God is exercised through scripture. In fact, Wright goes so far as to say that scripture itself points — authoritatively, if it does indeed possess authority! — away from itself and to the fact that final and true authority belongs to God, now delegated to Jesus Christ.(p. 24 The Last Word)

And a great line from Wright’s book: When John declares that “in the beginning was the word,” he does not reach a climax with “and the word was written down” but “and the word became flesh.” (p. 23 The Last Word).

Second – inerrancy and infallibility nuanced.

The enlightened biblical Christian will not shrink from asserting that there are culturally conditioned ideas as well as historically conditioned language in the Bible. (p. 64)

We can heartily assent to this statement [the Lausanne Covenant] but with the proviso that the infallible truth of Scripture is not something self-evident. The doctrine or message of Scripture, which alone is infallible and inerrant, is hidden in the historical and cultural witness of the biblical writers. They did not err in what they proclaimed, but this does not mean that they were faultless in their recording of historical data, or in their world view, which is now outdated. … This is why our ultimate criterion is not the Scripture in and of itself but the Word and the Spirit, the Scripture illumined by the Spirit. (p. 65).

The message of God and his interaction with the world is, according to Bloesch, where we find the infallible and inerrant message of scripture. In my opinion, first and foremost we need to know, and be immersed in, the sweep of Scripture and the message of the story. If we are not immersed in the sweep of the story including the hard bits, not just the highlights, we will miss the message.

But the nuancing of the idea of scriptural inerrancy is not a new phenomenon. Luther held that the scriptures do not err – but also said:

When one often reads [in the Bible] that great numbers were slain – for example, eighty thousand – I believe that hardly one thousand were actually killed. What is meant is the whole people. (p. 65 quoting from Luther’s Works vol. 54)

Luther also though that an ingenious, pious and learned man added to Job and that there was failure as well as success in prophetic prediction. Inerrancy did not mean for Luther what it means for many today.

Calvin thought that Jeremiah’s name crept into Mt. 27:9 by mistake and doubted that 2 Peter was actually written by Peter despite its self attestation.

Third – The Fall – mythic and historical.

Genesis contains mythic and legendary elements in common with the ancient near eastern milieu of the original audience. The Fall is not a myth – but the text of Genesis is distinctly mythohistorical. It uses myth to convey truth. To read the text as strictly historical is to misinterpret the Word of God, to force our definition of what God would or would not inspire onto the text.

At this point it is important to establish the correct hermeneutical procedure for understanding the “myth” of the fall. In order to discover what the author really intended we must take into consideration the literary genre of the narrative. In this way the literal sense is not less but more respected. … To affirm that there are mythical and legendary elements in the Scripture is not to detract from its divine inspiration nor from its historical basis but to attest that the Holy Spirit has made use of various kinds of language and imagery to convey divine truth. (p. 104-105).

Bloesch affirms a historical fall but not the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis as exact literal history. Adam and Eve may or may not have existed as a unique initial pair.

It seems, however, that the story of the fall does assume that mankind has a common ancestor or ancestors who forfeited earthly happiness by falling into sin. The story has a dual focus: it points not only to generic man but to primal man. Its message holds true in both cases: man is not created a sinner but becomes a sinner through a tragic misuse of his freedom. (p. 107)

He points to the views of CS Lewis and others as he discusses this (see Lewis in The Problem of Pain for example).

The emergence of man is attributed to divine action – but this does not deny the evidence for evolution, the antiquity of the species, or the connection with prior hominoid species. It simply states that mankind is not the result of blind cosmic evolution. In an endnote he says:

We are open to the view of Karl Rahner that the first authentic hominisation (coming into being of man) happened only once – in a single couple. Yet it would not contradict the Christian faith “to assume several hominisations [pre-Adamites] which quickly perished in the struggle for existence and made no contribution to the one real saving history of mankind…” (p. 117-118)

For Bloesch it is the Fall that is the key truth, not a unique lone pair, Adam and Eve.

Many orthodox Christian scholars including evangelical and reformed scholars and thinkers have long realized that it doesn’t need to be either a unique Adam or throw the Christian story under the bus. Many have wrestled with the issues. What trickles down to the local church and the individual Christian is unfortunately often much more rigid and much less nuanced.

I find no reason for an orthodox evangelical Christian to question the general observations of evolutionary biology, paleontology, paleoethnology, and neuroscience among others. This isn’t “capitulation to evolution” as some Christians suggest. Rather, it is an attempt to grow in faith and knowledge of God. This is certainly true for the many scientists who are Christians and who understand the depth of evidence for an old earth, common descent, and the basic principles of evolution. We deny blind cosmic chance and ontological purposelessness – we need not deny the evidence of our senses and the nature of God’s creation revealed in the creation itself.

What do you think of Bloesch’s view of scripture or of the Fall?

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail [at] att.net.

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

At dinner the other night a friend of mine, Graham Cole, reminded us that in the Anglican tradition we emphasize a learned ministry. That is, theological informed and biblically educated in order to teach and guide according to the gospel.

In fact, in the ordination service in the Anglican tradition (BCP) these words are uttered by the ordaining bishop:

My brother [or sister], the Church is the family of God, the body of
Christ, and the temple of the Holy Spirit. All baptized people
are called to make Christ known as Savior and Lord, and to
share in the renewing of his world. Now you are called to
work as pastor, priest, and teacher, together with your
bishop and fellow presbyters, and to take your share in the
councils of the Church.

As a priest, it will be your task to proclaim by word and deed 
the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to fashion your life in 
accordance with its precepts. You are to love and serve the 
people among whom you work, caring alike for young and 
old, strong and weak, rich and poor. You are to preach, to 
declare God’s forgiveness to penitent sinners, to pronounce 
God’s blessing, to share in the administration of Holy 
Baptism and in the celebration of the mysteries of Christ’s 
Body and Blood, and to perform the other ministrations 
entrusted to you.

In all that you do, you are to nourish Christ’s people from the 
riches of his grace, and strengthen them to glorify God in this 
life and in the life to come.

Notice the focus here: both knowing the gospel/Bible/theology and pastoring the people of one’s parish. Preaching and pastoring, not just preaching and teaching and theologizing and homileticizing (if that’s a word, and it ought not to be) and not just pastoring and shepherding and meeting, but both preaching and pastoring. I’d put it this way: the pastor preaches and the preacher pastors and it is the combination of the two — pastoral preaching and preacherly pastoring that marks the “pastor, priest, and teacher.”

Such a dual role of pastoring and preaching requires education. Education doesn’t mean simply taking classes, listening to lectures, or reading books. It means guidance into the wisdom of the pastoral life by sages in the pastoral life. Future pastors need to be immersed in church life by sitting at the feet of a sage in pastoral wisdom.

David Steinmetz, in his wonderful essay collection, Taking the Long View, has a fascinating essay on the ordained ministry. His essay is worthy of a careful reading but he summarizes the whole in his last paragraph:

To sum up, then, one may say that there are certain elements in the Protestant tradition concerning the teaching office of the church that are still important for our consideration: (i) although the whole people of God shares in the ministry of the church by virtue of baptism, officers in the church are to be regarded as a gift of the Holy Spirit; (2) while baptism is the ordination of all Christians for ministry in the world, ordination is the act of setting aside some Christians for public ministry to the church; (3) the function of the ordained ministry is the public proclamation of the Word of God in its manifold forms to the congregation; (4) the offices of preaching, teaching, and discipline are inseparable from the single office of the ministry of the Word of God; (5) the discharge of the office of a minister is the faithful transmission of the Word that has been entrusted to the church; (6) the minister in transmitting this Word is both a messenger and a witness; (7) responsibility for the faithful transmission of the Word is corporate; and (8) the faithful transmission of the Word of God commits the church to the provision of a learned ministry.

Steinmetz’s focus is slightly out of angle with the BCP’s ordination emphases: there is a lack of pastoral care, of pastoral theology, of spiritual direction in his Reformers’ heavy emphasis on preaching the Word and sacraments (and some discipline).

Pastors who want merely to preach will either find themselves disconnected from their audience (I hesitate to call it a parish or congregation when the pastor thinks of them as his students or audience) or find their way to a very large church where the expectations mostly revolve around the Sunday AM service in which he preaches. The word “pastoring” is not identical to the word “preaching.”

One of the most important, if not cutting edge, elements of D. Bruce Hindmarsh’s excellent new book, (The Spirit of Early Evangelicalism), is that evangelicalism arose alongside and integrated with modernity.

It became a movement, as we sketched in our previous post, because of modernity’s mobility.  Mobility made it a movement. Three marks of a (sociological) movement:

(1) a concerted campaign to spread the movement,

(2) a repertoire of actions, including associations and coalitions and public meetings and rallies and demonstrations and statements to the public media,

and (3) public announcements of legitimacy and worthiness of respect and numbers.

These features contributed to the rise and international (well, Euro-centric) dimension of evangelicalism but there was also something profoundly “new” — or claimed to be “new” — in the movement.

Hindmarsh marshals solid evidence for the claims of newness. Newness does not mean a lack of continuity with the past in the sense of brand new or novel; but it does mean evangelicalism can’t be simply equated with Protestant or Reformation or Lutheran or Reformed or even apostolic.

Edwards calls his famous work the “surprising” work of God; others used “extraordinary.” One clear new theme is the widespread-ness of the movement: what happened in England happened in the USA in diverse places.  Peter Berger says evangelicalism is the most modern religion in the world (60).

Some said what was happening was eschatological in the sense that what was predicted for the end times was now happening.

Something fresh or new or surprising was the sense that salvation was now conceived as present — thus, in the Wesleys who talked about knowing now and experiencing redemption now. Wesley’s famous sermon is called “Salvation By Faith” and then it was called “The Scripture Way of Salvation.” This experience with its interpretation — redemption is now and can be known now — is emphatic and distinctive of evangelicalism. That this was not brand new permitted critics to associate evangelicals with Enthusiasts and Anabaptists and Puritans and Quakers.

Which led to discussions and debates about the marks of genuine spiritual experiences.

Edwards supported the extraordinary work of God in the present. God illumines the heart and mind; there is divine light that is know-able; it can be immediate. Edwards connects this to the Spirit and the internal presence of God. Not so much cognitive as sensible.

Wesleys and Whitefield lit the fires; Edwards clarified it theologically.

This sensible experience is what constituted evangelicalism from the outset.

The age of authenticity (yesterday’s post) is the age of youthfulness. So Andrew Root, in his new splendid book Faith Formation in a Secular Age. How so?

To tell the story of the dawn of the age of authenticity is to show how the flows of our cultural history have moved the majority of us to see the point of life as following not an external authority but the inner search for our own individual meaning and purpose. The age of authenticity asserts that we should be directed by nothing outside us but only by what we find meaningful within us. Youthfulness becomes the late twentieth century’s core strategy for denying external authority (even divine action) to follow the new purpose of “what speaks to me.” Youthfulness promises particular social practices—like sex, drugs, and consumerism—as ways to achieve authenticity.

WW1 and then WW2, the wars that did not end war but become the Cold War, and the USA developing Keynesian economics of consumerism as how the economy is propped up. Our economy boomed as Americans became spenders.

The operative words of our society after WW2  were duty, obligation, and authority.

A draft was in place during World War II, but it is little talked about because it was duty and responsibility, not the draft, that sent men east and west to fight and die. To wait to be asked (in other words, to be obligated) to risk life and limb for country would have been considered outrageous before the age of authenticity. Yet the draft was the core staple of revolt and protest of Vietnam, as the youth burned draft cards and bras. … v’hat ignited the flames of rebellion in the 1960s, as much as matches, was the arrival of authenticity—the idea that your own path, your own desires and wishes, must lead you before any duty or obligation. … Bras went up in flames with draft cards as a way to mutually protest obligation and duty that had no correlation with the authenticity of individual desires. It made sense to protest sexual mores at the same time as war, for both instances the protest was against the authorities that oppose my authenticity.

The men and women of World War II are considered the greatest generation, and their greatness is legitimated by the historical moments they rose to face, but this greatness is also bound simply in our perception. We see these
u i men and women through the prism of the age of authenticity, as the last generation before the age of authenticity dawned. They are great to us because they did something we cannot imagine: they followed duty and obligation over the desires of the self.

The generation gap in the 1960s was between duty/obligation and authenticity; today’s society is made up mostly of a generation of authenticity.

How did this happen? The generation of duty decided their duty, after fulfilling their duty to society, was to have a duty to buy. To move to the suburbs, to buy a house, to get education, to carry on. The age of duty gives way to the age of authenticity, which becomes the age of consumerism.  The duty was to participate in a mass society by sustaining its economy.

The age of authenticity enters the scene through the act of consumer duty. Yet once a generation comes of age in the womb of a consumer society (i.e. the boomers), the cords that precariously connect consumption and duty are cut, and authenticity becomes our new social imaginary.

The 1950s were the last days of duty: “Duty shows itself fervent when there is conformity in action, attitude, and dress; these are the marks that duty is highly operational” (22). This duty operated outside transcendence; it was immanent and natural. WW2 was connected to freedom, and freedom was connected to the gift and revelation of God. The Cold War had a theological connection because it was anti godless atheism, but deeper down it was the protection of consumerism.

The affluence of the post WW2 society choked out duty and opened the door to expressivistic authenticity. The large middle class became the age of authenticity. The youth of the middle class lived in suburbs and played on plush green lawns surrounded by other middle class children who didn’t have to work to grind out a life. Youth became adolescence. The rural population lived with duty; the suburbanites and city folks not so much. Their job was to play. Toys became big business.

Segmentation and advertising were connected. One’s segment in society — youth — became the silo in which one lived and consumed. This segmentation separated adults from children, and each conformed to each.

It was the mass society and its extensive invasion into the middle class (for mostly white people), creating for their children a duty-free space, that turned this ancient concern for the young into a new social imaginary of youthfulness.

HS graduation became the norm for the first time. [This is mostly a description of white culture, folks.] Children went to college not to return to the family farm or business but to explore their own career.

Enter the James Dean rebel against conformity.

The rebel revealed that the middle-class affluence of the mass society was no free ride, that while the young were given space and freedom, a hidden reciprocity was in place—the young take the freedom, becoming teenagers, free from direct duty and obligation to focus on the music, cars, and clothes of their segmentation. But in return, they accept conformity, following the rules and taking the path marked from letter jacket to gray flannel suit and starched plaid dress.

Enter Christian resistance.

The call to conformity of the mass society and the hidden but nascent conditions of an expressive individualism made it a perfect time for conservative Christians to reengage society. And part of the mission of their reengagement was directed toward the segmented group called teenagers. Organizations like Youth for Christ and Young Life turned their attention to the middle-class high school as their new mission field. Young Life, for instance, believed that if it could convince the most successful high school students, the models of conformity—say, the captain of the football team and the homecoming queen—to come to its weekly club, then others would in turn conform and follow. The mass society and its magnetic pull of conformity could draw many, if you could simply get the right magnet to participate.

Segmentation: to the young, by the young, for the young. Youthfulness abounds. Would the church’s youth’s conformity age into adult church conformity.

Participation in youth groups was a choice, a kind of consumerism in a segmented group. Measurement was by way of participation. That is, by conformity to a group. Transcendence is not the focus.

By Todd Dildine, who is a pastor at a small neighborhood church in Uptown, one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Chicago. He is most passionate about helping the church navigate the challenges of post-Christendom. Todd loves playing volleyball and he’s going to get married this summer!

First, read Part 1 prior to Part 2. (Obviously.)

In Parts 2 – 4, I will be applying the Restoration Principle: For restoration to occur, the church must identify and address the forces that are attacking all communities (referred to as the “Anti-Community Forces,” or ACFs).

What qualifies as an “ACF”?

The collapse of the American community and church is a complex matter and has a variety of root causes. In this and the following two posts, I will address the three primary contributors to the downfall of community. I rely not just on my own observations but on the incredibly thorough and highly cited research of Robert Putnam, who has done the heavy lifting in identifying the ACFs most responsible for driving this trend.

But before diving in, it’s important to note that just because something seems destructive doesn’t automatically qualify it as an ACF. Just because kids flock to candy on Halloween doesn’t mean the holiday is responsible for juvenile diabetes. We need to keep our eye on larger systemic shifts.

There are two key aspects to primary Anti-Community Forces:

1. They manifested around the last third of the 20^th century, when data shows that participation in community-based activities began its long and steep decline. So as much as I would like to blame cats for the decaying of American communities, I can’t—Americans domesticated cats long before 1970.
2. They must have a negative effect on community participation. This one should be obvious.

Identify the first ACF

Feel the ACF: Join me in this exercise. Imagine for a moment that all the cars in America and the technology to create them disappeared right now! (For scale: 88% of Americans own and use a car.)

Puff! Gone.

What does life look like for you tomorrow?

How are you getting to work?

How will you get to your favorite bar? Your coffee shop?

How will meet up with your friends?

What method of transportation do you take to see your parents, nieces, nephews, etc?

How will get to church?

How will you get your groceries?

Maybe you’re lucky enough to live near a commuter train for some errands. Otherwise, your bike would come in handy, and walking would be essential. But what if your church is 5-10 miles north, your job 10 miles south, and your friends and family 5, 10, 20+ miles in all directions? I don’t know what you would do, but I’d make efforts to decrease the distances between my spheres of life—for simple convenience, if nothing else.

The First ACF: Sprawl

Which leads me, naturally, to sprawl. Sprawl has become particularly relevant through the mass production and marketing of cars since the 1950s, which has allowed and encouraged human populations to decentralize. In 1945, car dealers sold only 70,000 cars; five years later, dealers saw an exponential growth and sold six million! This phenomenon led to the popularization of the suburbs in the 1960s, for as cars began to be integrated into our daily lives, city planners began creating new ways of organizing life and our city environment. They began expansion projects that allocated large swaths of land for single purposes: parking lots, shopping malls, and residential complexes, each space assigned for a different fragment of our lives.

What we know now is that as we began to shape our environment, our environment returned the favor. It began shaping us.

There are two primary effects of sprawl:

First: Sprawl zaps our time spent with others. The data is clear—there is a negative correlation between time commuting and community participation. In other words, the more you spend traveling to work in your car or train, the less you are involved in the lives of your friends, family, neighborhood, and church.

Second: Sprawl has stolen our concept of “place.” This restructuring of our lives has made it such that we merely inhabit space, with no concept of or regard for place. In fact, our understanding of place has effectively been completely disrupted by this distancing and fragmentation of our regular activities. This fragmentation accelerated exponentially during the growth of suburbanization. Clusters of houses were built that were cut off and separated from other aspects of life, such as work, shopping, and church—the only way to reach them was by car.

The issue with this? The less we care about the place we cultivate, the less we invest in it. The social fabric becomes more and more tenuous. My brother David Jenzen illustrates this phenomenon:

“We work ten miles away with people who live twenty miles beyond that, buy food grown a thousand miles away from grocery clerks who live in a different subdivision, date people from the other side of town, and worship with people who live an hour’s drive from another…we serve soup to the poor folks on the other side of the tracks, but we don’t know the person on the other side of the fence.”

This is the environment we have created for ourselves, and we have unintentionally embraced the consequences. The data is clear: Sprawl has created bad soil for growing closely knit communities.

To recap—sprawl has:

1. Deceived us to believe that we can live far and yet remain close.
2. Decayed our commitment to “place.”

Let me anticipate one push-back.

Q: Suburbanization is dying, and now people are returning to the urban areas.

A: Yes, people are moving back to urban areas. I am one of them. However, we aren’t regaining our concept of place when we re-urbanize. I know this to be true. My friends and church family are scattered throughout this great city of 2.7 million. Maintaining relationships is an uphill battle.

Addressing the Force of Sprawl

Along with the rest of culture, the church has fallen victim to the lie of sprawl, that a car could afford us the freedom to live anywhere and still have rich, flourishing community. The unfortunate truth is that the virus of sprawl inhibits the intimacy of fellowship (koinonia), swapping boundedness and boundedness for convenience and luxury.

I believe the way to address this ACF is simple: Choose to live close to one another. We need to understand that where we live has an impact on our community involvement and be intentional about where we live. I understand that many cannot simply move, but the many of us who can must choose to live near and with and for one another.

Urban, suburban, and rural areas will have different definition of “close.” One discernible principle to operate by: You are “close” to the degree that your kids can walk back and forth from each other’s house, without supervision.

Distance Matters: The Allen Curve

The Allen Curve essentially stipulates that proximity influences community participation. MIT professor Thomas Allen discovered that in the workplace there is a direct correlation between distance and frequency of communication between employees. The closer employees were to one another, the more frequently they collaborated. Conversely, the further employees were from one another, the less frequently they talked.

More recently, MIT is discovering that the Allen Curve is proving to stand true on a larger scale: on campus. The data finds that the closer in proximity researchers are on campus, the more likely they are to collaborate. Distance matters, proximity matters.

Similarly, the closer church members live to one another, the more we will communicate with one another. And the more we can communicate to one another, the more will have the opportunity to practice the 59 “one anothers” of Scripture.

As I interact with the research on sprawl’s damaging effect on community and the church, I’ve come to firmly believe that if Christians lived closer to one another, and chose to focus their life on a particular area, the church would experience a qualitative change necessary for restoration.

Identify ACF: Sprawl

Address ACF: Live closer to one another

Two necessary closing comments:

First. Proximity doesn’t equal community. To illustrate this, consider some studies show as high as 40% of married people report to being lonely*. But could you imagine a married couple who didn’t live in the same house flourishing as a couple? No, it’s not ideal. As the church, we live in the real, but fight for the ideal. Proximity may not equal community, but it’s like good soil: It permits community to flourish, but it doesn’t cause the rain to fall or the sun to shine.

Second: Sprawl has had a strong impact on community disengagement, but the next two ACFs are significantly more influential. We know this because we see similar levels of community disengagement and loneliness even in small towns and rural areas, where the effects of sprawl are not as pervasive,. So, as good investigators, we know that while impactful, sprawl must only be a fraction of the problem. There is more to this mystery to unfold.

Stay tuned for Part 3.

*Lars Tornstam. “Loneliness in marriage,” Journal of Relationships, 9, no. 2 (May, 1992): 197-217

Andrew Root, building on Charles Taylor, calls our era the Age of Authenticity. (Faith Formation in a Secular Age.) In that label is a potent description of what “faith formation” looks like in a “secular age” when authenticity is the major virtue and youthfulness its hero. Root is one of America’s leading lights on youth pastoral ministry but…

Don’t mistake this book as one shaped only for youth pastors and ministry; this is a potent book for pastoral ministry in our world.

It’s required reading.

The age of authenticity, which gets its kickstart in the late 1960s and ties back to Romanticism and Expressivism, is
the age when your personal truth is what matters,
when you are to find yourself,
and when you have to be true to yourself.
It is the age when we toss off oppressive controls.

The age when the self is no longer “porous” but “buffered” so as not to be vulnerable but to be protected.
The age of authenticity is when it is no longer the elites who are authentic selves facing off with tradition but when the populace joins the facing off.
It is the age when the church becomes boring and irrelevant.

Moral Therapeutic Deism, then, is not the problem but the symptom of authenticity and of… youthfulness.

To become relevant is to become attractive to those most authentic: the youth. Thus, to be authentic is to be youthful. Faith formation today then means following the master called youthfulness.

The regular accusation against the church is about sex and money, but … the issue is about authenticity and inauthenticity, about integrity and a lack of integrity, but the terms are about self-expressivism.

In the age of authenticity, of course, sex scandals and money laundering are black eyes, but not because they show that the church serves a false transcendent force or that its leaders have given themselves over to the devil. Rather, it’s because they reveal a deeper problematic for us contemporaries: they expose the church as inauthentic and fake. If they preach one thing and do the opposite, that is inauthentic because it lacks integrity (and also because the things it is doing are evil). But we can at least respect an evil and corrupt corporation for being consistent with its stated purpose. It is who it says it is, and that is honorable. Worse than being evil is being inauthentic.

Authenticity is to pursue what brings you the buzz; to surrender the buzz is to be authentic. Church then must deliver the personal buzz.

In the age of authenticity, to be bored is not simply unfortunate or unpleasant; it is to be oppressed, to be violently cornered and robbed of authenticity. We as individual selves are now responsible for our own spiritual journey, so if something is boring, it is worth abandoning. To be bored is to find our subjective desires minimized, repressed, or, at the very least, unmet. … But the age of authenticity also reminds us that our experience is deeply meaningful, that our embodied, emotive encounter with reality can and should mean something.

What bothered the tradition in the 1960s was sex, drugs and rock. But what were they? Signs of breaking free from inauthenticity.

Sex, drugs, and rock and roll are concrete expressions and practices of authenticity. They are not authenticity itself but are the very activities (tools) used to free the individual from the repressive culture of the nineteenth century and, importantly, its doppelgänger in the 1950s.

Faith formation today then is not disconnected from the move of authenticity at work in our culture, remembering that authenticity is about self-realization. Spiritual formation concerns … notice how often they are individualistic and shaped for each person’s development.

To talk today of faith formation as our objective (which is necessary) is to recognize how squarely our feet rest in the age of authenticity. We talk of faith formation because we breathe the air of authenticity and assume that everyone (young or old) has his or her own individual path to choose.

Youth is where authenticity is found. Why? They are pursuing authenticity by challenging the tradition.

Youthfulness legitimizes (as Thomas Frank will reveal more directly below); there is no better marketing than youthfulness itself. If the youthful like the doohickey or politician, then it is authentic, and authenticity is king of our time.

In college the critique of Christianity seems more authentic because it is more youthful, calling religion repressive, ignorant, and a major buzzkill. Or the lifestyle of hooking up, binge drinking, and having fun is more formative because it is the height of authenticity, because it is what you do when you’re young and is what you wish for when you’re not (as demonstrated by virtually any Seth Rogen movie). The worst thing you can do in the age of authenticity is waste your youth.