Not long ago one of my students described herself as a \u201cfree range Christian,\u201d alluding to the diverse and varied character of her denominational past.\u00a0 The phrase captures in a fresh way a reality that has been true of the American spiritual landscape for quite some time.<\/p>\n
Robert Bellah described it in Habits of the Heart <\/em>in 1985.\u00a0 Robert Wuthnow in a book called After Heaven<\/em>, written in 1998. <\/em> And you see it on display all around us: Church\u2019s that downplay their denominational connections or deny that they have a creed.\u00a0\u00a0 People who describe themselves as spiritual but not religious, by which they often mean, \u201cI do God, but I don\u2019t do church.\u201d\u00a0 And you see it in the triage theology of rather more typical churchgoers who go to denominational churches, but whose personal theology bears no resemblance to the traditions that their denominations represent.<\/p>\n The phenomenon can be traced to a variety of factors.\u00a0 Some of it has to do with the churches \u2014 disenchantment with church\u2019s that aren\u2019t real, that are preoccupied with their own desperate search for survival, that don\u2019t offer a persuasive reason for attending them, and that don\u2019t teach their members much about their understanding of the Christian faith.<\/p>\n But the preference for free range Christianity can also have to do with a flight from spiritual accountability \u2014 the desire to craft a spiritual life that isn\u2019t shaped by obligations to community, creed, calling \u2014 or anything else, in fact, that requires people to do what they don\u2019t want to do.<\/p>\n In defense of free-range Christianity people will often argue that it comes closer to the \u201creal deal\u201d \u2014 a return to a time when people \u201cjust worshiped God,\u201d \u201cjust read their Bibles,\u201d or \u201cjust loved Jesus.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s just one problem with this argument: The moment we begin to talk about how to worship, what to make of what we read in the Bible, or describe what it means to love Jesus, then we are already in the business of articulating a creed.\u00a0 And even if it is your personal creed (which is likely to have the limitations of one person\u2019s thought and experience) you are doing what traditions and denominations once tried to do.\u00a0 The difference in today\u2019s world is that we are coming closer to a world of personalized creeds than ever before.<\/p>\n Creeds and traditions are not meant to straight-jacket people.\u00a0 They are meant to help cultivate and deepen our grasp of the Christian pilgrimage by drawing on the wisdom, reflection, and experience of generations.\u00a0 It gives spirituality traction in our lives, a vocabulary that helps us discuss our experience of God with one another, and communicate it to another generation.<\/p>\n A free range Christian may be free, but he or she is also alone with a creed and community of one.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Not long ago one of my students described herself as a \u201cfree range Christian,\u201d alluding to the diverse and varied character of her denominational past.\u00a0 The phrase captures in a fresh way a reality that has been true of the American spiritual landscape for quite some time. Robert Bellah described it in Habits of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":240,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spiritual-perspectives"],"yoast_head":"\n