GOING IT ALONE And Other Conundrums of the Spiritual Life in a New Age

James Ishmael Ford

24 April 2010

A Sermon delivered at the

Annual Meeting of the

Ballou Channing District of the

Unitarian Universalist Association

A couple of years ago I was sitting in my office with a younger colleague. We were talking about church growth and particularly our shared perceived need to attract younger people, roughly in my friend’s age bracket. I was enthusiasing with ideas, positively sparking. I said, perhaps speaking a bit too fast, “Of course the core of the congregation is more than happy with the format we’ve been following for the last couple of hundred years. However,” said I, “I keep thinking of a second service, one earlier than the hallowed ten thirty, a.m., with innovating structures and without all the dead white guy music.” I caught myself. “As good as the dead white guy music is,” I quickly added, in order not to offend Mozart’s shade, a powerful deity in our neighborhood. “Nonetheless,” I went on. “However, for this early service perhaps with a small ensemble conversant in, say, rock n roll.”

There was an awkward silence. My friend cleared his throat. He then said, “Well, James, first, people my age aren’t going to get up for a nine o’clock service. And, second,” and he paused again. He cleared his throat again. Then he said it. “James, rock n roll isn’t our music.”

And there’s the problem. Well, there’s a bunch of problems. If you’ve been paying attention you know our Association’s numbers have been slipping the last couple of years. Not by a lot, but as a religious movement we are so small that that slight dip means in a growing population we’re actually shrinking.

Perhaps you’re worried. I know I am. I love our spiritual tradition. And I’m deeply worried. So, if we care, we need to be careful. We need to avoid cooking up prescriptions for our ills based only upon our unexamined assumptions about what’s going on. Just adding rock n roll without thinking it through isn’t going to do it. We need to start by looking at what is actually going on. We need to draw upon the best research, and to see what social and religious trends are emerging. From that, understanding ourselves and understanding what is going on, we can then address the issues which will determine whether our liberal churches are going to flourish or not.

Today our conversations are going to turn on the research from Lifelong Faith Associates, established to help Christian churches assess and adapt to the situation actually on the ground today. For the most part they do not do original research but rely upon a variety of sociological surveys and analysis and then integrate them into a very interesting set of papers, most important for us “Thirteen Trends and Forces Affecting the Future of Faith Formation in a Changing Church and World” and “Envisioning the Future: Four Scenarios for the Future of Faith Formation in 2020.”

The four scenarios posit directions churches might go depending upon whether we are walking into an era of ever less institutional interest, or more, and whether people are going to be more spiritually hungry, or less. It’s an interesting document, even though it requires the most interpretation for non-Christians.

I personally find the thirteen trends more directly useful, even though they are a bit of a hodgepodge. Some are purely demographic, for instance noting the increasing diversity of our culture, and in particular the growing influence of Hispanic and Latino religiosity along with the growing number of Hispanics as a percentage of our population, along with the pressing fact that the aging Boomer generation will significantly mark the next two decades with their, with our graying.

Other demographic issues including what is called “emerging adulthood,” the pushing of “young adulthood” up to thirty or perhaps beyond, and related to that how we are delaying marrying, sometimes partnering but not marrying at all, having fewer children, but, interestingly, giving more direct attention to those children are all important factors to notice. Another notable, I believe deeply important cultural shift the report identifies is the fact we now live in a digital age, we are immersed in an Internet ecosystem, the complexities of which are still taking shape. All these are important facts on the ground, none to be ignored without consequences, probably dire.

Also very important is the trending in our culture toward no religious affiliation at all. While still a minority position in America, it is growing fast; think Europe. And also, a whole range of privatized spiritual perspectives are emerging, captured in the phrase “spiritual but not religious.”

Also, reflecting the interest of the founder of Lifelong Faith Associates there’s a whole section on trends in religious education. As the living manifestation of our historic salvation by character spirituality, religious education is always close to our hearts, and it is helpful that this study holds up spiritual pedagogy as deeply important. Later Sue Sinnamon will unpack and reflect more deeply on this. And Erik Wikstrom will explore some of how this information can help us as we shape our public worship and particularly our public preaching. But, my task is to lay the ground, to point out some of the trends, the dangers, and to hold up, if briefly, some of the possibilities.

In that regard, perhaps most important of the various analysis found in these documents are the results of research conducted by sociologists Richard Flory and Donald Miller. I find their work the heart of these studies, and what we might most fruitfully attend to. Their principal publication is Finding Faith: The Spiritual Quest of the Post Boomer Generation. And their work is summarized in these studies. In the “Thirteen Trends” we find their observations about the eclectic and synchronistic inclinations of the post-Boomer generation, and, frankly, this generation’s desire for what Flory and Miller call “expressive communalism” should give us as Unitarian Universalists the most cause for hope as we look to the future.

But, to start, frankly, in general, hope is a little hard to find. There is a trending away from organized religion. Whether that is a boon for those of us who are barely organized, time only will tell. But there are more daunting questions, right at the beginning. Flory and Miller posit four stances in reaction to the apparent emerging religious paradigm. The first they call “Innovators.” Here we find that fascinating phenomenon, the emerging church, a dynamic approach, “constantly evolving, or innovating… religious and spiritual beliefs and practices.” The second are the “Appropriators.” Here we see the phenomenon of the mega-churches, looking to what’s happening right now and packaging to the immediate perceived need, and perhaps with the most obvious loss of the original core message. “Resisters” are those who object to the looseness of their peers, are most closely identified with the Boomers, and who call for a “recovery of reason” within their spirituality. And, finally, the “Reclaimers,” those who are returning to the ancient stories and rites, but usually revisioned in smaller, often house church settings, often rejecting the hierarchical parts of the traditions in favor of more intimate forms of relationship.

Now we may want to think of ourselves as part of that first group, the Innovators. If you do, you’re not actually paying attention to what is going on in our churches. We do like that Innovator stance, at least rhetorically. As a tradition we’ve tended to see ourselves at the cutting edge of things. Although my old mentor Dan O’Neal opined we were less the edge and more the bevel, a bit further back from that proverbial cutting edge. But, actually, even that’s not true. It’s been a long time since we were leading much of anything. Rational religion is in fact reactive; it is a response to a general unease in the face of the varieties of spirituality that are actually emerging. The group we are most like institutionally would actually be the Resisters. Among the post Boomers, rational religion is a bit old fashioned, not entirely in touch with what is going on, definitely not cutting edge, not even bevel.

So, what’s the take away from all this? Looking at all the material, my friend and our district growth consultant, Peter Bowden recalls us to those real positives we can find in these studies. He notes, “More people are spiritual not religious, post-boomer faith is more of a UU style meshing and mashing from various sources.  (And the y)ounger generation is wanting more freedom and autonomy within an engaged spirituality.” I think if we hold these things up, and at the same time, hold up our twin insights about the preciousness of the individual and how we, you, I, everything are absolutely interdependent, well, something real and exciting is being presented. Good news for any age and a way consonant with the times.

But we do need to let it be about faith. We do need to be spiritual, even if we’re problematic about the religion. And we need to be unafraid to speak it. We have a faith that can heal hurt and provide an ethical compass. So, wanting to help others find it is something of a moral imperative.

If we engage all this fully with our hearts as much as with our minds, if we remember we are about a spiritual path of healing in this broken world, then, then if we really attend to the work of those who study us and other religious communities, well, I think we can take that information we are being presented with, and we will make the right decisions to serve one another and to help heal this world. Whatever follows this, it will be enough.

Amen.