Church shopping and cultural polarization
CNN.com has a blog post today exploring "How Church Shopping is Polarizing the Country". Written by law professors Naomi Cahn (George Washington University) and June Carbone (University of Missouri Kansas City) who have recently co-authored a book on cultural polarization, the particular focus on church shopping intrigued me. Heck, I was church shopping not all that long ago. I'm helping cause cultural polarization? I must know more.
Fascinating (and saddening) are their definitions of the two polarized camps: traditionalists, who "...believe in an eternal and transcendent authority that tells us what is good, what is true, how we should live, and who we are", and modernists, who "...would redefine historic faiths according to the prevailing assumptions of contemporary life". Modernists, they note, "...have become less likely to attend church at all."
In previous generations, they say, both modernists and traditionalists tended to attend the same churches, typically right in their community. Today, though, the ability to church-shop has the traditionalists seeking out churches that affirm their "personal values", and has modernists staying home.
The authors lament the decline of the mainline Protestant denominations that in previous generations housed both camps, and complain that today's evangelical churches (full of like-minded traditionalists) are self-reinforcing in belief, and that evangelicalism's close ties to the Republican Party serve to marginalize those who might be in agreement politically but not religiously (or vice versa). In the end, they say, traditionalists group together and talk only to themselves, and modernists leave church altogether, resulting in an increasingly polarized society.
There are certainly places where I disagree with the authors' views on the topic. I think that Protestants seeking churches where their beliefs are shared and reinforced is a good thing. And drawing rosy pictures of a post-WWII generation where everyone attended the same community church regardless of what they believed only serves to hide the fact that those weak, any-belief-is-OK churches in large part helped cause the modernist/traditionalist divide we see today, by valuing the form-over-substance mindset that was eventually cynically discarded by Generation X.
However, within the microcosm that is the evangelical church, there are good lessons to be learned here. We need to be vigilant to ensure that we limit our "distinctives" to the fundamental Gospel truths. As soon as our teaching, or even our church culture, becomes, even by way of unspoken assumptions, 'the gospel plus conservative politics' or 'the gospel plus homeschooling' or 'the gospel plus pre-millennial dispensationalism', etc., we will alienate those who either desperately need to hear the Gospel or who could be vibrant, participating members of our local body.
The good news that Jesus Christ is Lord of all is polarizing. We should not be surprised when law professors find it so. But there is still a lesson for us here: let the Gospel be polarizing, not the cultural things we are so apt to add on to it.
Links for 2010-05-24
Things I've linked recently:
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A well-written response (by a college freshman!) responding to Ken Ham on the topic of evolution. The student gets to what, I'm increasingly led to believe, is the heart of the evolution/creation battle: the evangelical culture war.
The student's initial article and Mr. Ham's response are linked near the top of this article. An interesting read.
Links for 2010-05-14
Things I've linked recently:
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Really good stuff from Douglas Wilson. An excerpt:
"Picture a particularly "pious" little child who was impossible to give gifts to, because he would always unwrap it, abandon it immediately, and run up to his parent and say, "But what really counts is my relationship with you!" A selfish child playing with a toy ungratefully is forgetting the giver. This pious form of selfishness is refusing to let the giver even be a giver.
We should not assume that in the resurrection, when we have finally learned how to look along that beam, in pure worship, that our bodies will then be superfluous. God will not have given us eternal and everlasting bodies because we finally got to such a point of spiritual maturity that we are able to ignore them. In the resurrection, we will have learned something we currently struggle with, which is how to live integrated lives. If God is the one in whom we live and move and have our being, it should not be necessary, in order to glorify God, to drop everything. We shouldn't have to keep these things in separate compartments."
Links for 2010-05-08
Things I've linked recently:
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Kinnon, in a review of a Kevin DeYoung piece, provides some excellent stuff, including this conclusion:
"I am convinced that the healthy church going forward will be a church that disciples. Not discipleship in a classroom setting, but discipleship that see us living out our lives in deep relationship with others. As we are discipled and disciple, we will naturally and infectiously teach others to disciple. And I need to stress that that discipleship will need to include effective catechesis as we finally recognize how the present church is functionally illiterate when it comes to church history and a basic understanding of scripture. Discipleship will also include those "baptized" and those with no understanding of their need of baptism, yet."
So, I just invented a new word.
Fidgetoid, n. an object with which one fidgets.
A Google search reveals no substantive results, so I'm gonna call this a new one.
It came up after this Tweet from Geof:
I'm a fidgeter at a desk. I fidget. My current object of fidgeting is a UAH Hockey puck that Coach Cole gave me. Indestructible.
Geof F. Morris
gfmorris
My reply:
@gfmorris A hockey puck is a good fidgetoid. Can cause some damage if you get mad and throw it, though. 
Chris Hubbs
cjhubbs
There you have it: language evolution in progress. I can only hope that my language hero, the late William Safire, would be proud.
Well, we joined.
After taking quite a bit of time to make our decision, Becky and I yesterday became members of Stonebridge Church (EFCA). For a while we were wondering if enough members would show up to form a quorum so we (and 14 others) could be voted into membership, but eventually enough trickled in to make it official.
It feels good to have made the decision and committed to a body of believers. We are very thankful that God has led us to this fine group of folks as we continue through life's journey.
Links for 2010-04-27 through 2010-04-28
These are my links for 2010-04-27 through 2010-04-28:
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Now this is very cool.
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cjh_comment
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Some good NTW stuff here.
Links for 2010-03-29 through 2010-04-21
These are my links for 2010-03-29 through 2010-04-21:
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Great story.
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"Rather than being my church’s messiah or your manager, I see myself as its docent- a tour guide in a museum or art gallery. Clergy showcase to the world the architecture and artistry of the Christian faith. We are tour guides, leading people from one gallery to another, shifting their attention from one work of God to the next. At times, we offer language to describe the unutterable: magnificence, awe, anguish. We are wordsmiths for life’s most muted moments.
Sometimes that moment demands explanation, and like a docent we offer information. We love when someone looks at a familiar passage of scripture in a fresh way, or unpacks some mystery of God in their life that transforms. Those are galleries that buzz with energy.
But other rooms we visit demand nothing but silence. We pause, speechless, when confronted by the mysteries of our liturgy: the breaking of bread, the lifting of a cup, the pouring of water. And there are times when our silence emerges from the ache and anguish of souls: the graveside of a loved one, a doctor’s diagnosis, or a future swirling with shadows. Our job in these moments may not be to speak but to stand. To let people know they are not alone in this gallery, and that someone has been there before."
Great stuff.
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"Rather than being my church’s messiah or your manager, I see myself as its docent- a tour guide in a museum or art gallery. Clergy showcase to the world the architecture and artistry of the Christian faith. We are tour guides, leading people from one gallery to another, shifting their attention from one work of God to the next. At times, we offer language to describe the unutterable: magnificence, awe, anguish. We are wordsmiths for life’s most muted moments.
Sometimes that moment demands explanation, and like a docent we offer information. We love when someone looks at a familiar passage of scripture in a fresh way, or unpacks some mystery of God in their life that transforms. Those are galleries that buzz with energy.
But other rooms we visit demand nothing but silence. We pause, speechless, when confronted by the mysteries of our liturgy: the breaking of bread, the lifting of a cup, the pouring of water. And there are times when our silence emerges from the ache and anguish of souls: the graveside of a loved one, a doctor’s diagnosis, or a future swirling with shadows. Our job in these moments may not be to speak but to stand. To let people know they are not alone in this gallery, and that someone has been there before."
Great stuff.
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Well put, Dan.
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Well put, Dan.
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Love it!
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A good resource.
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Ain't it the truth, folks?
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Gotta take a chance on winning the giveaway copy.
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Excellent stuff.
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Fascinating and thoughtful stuff.
