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Christianity becomes not something to be believed but a faith which we must live,
a vision that stands before us, inviting us to enter."

- Bishop John Spong.

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah

The Church and Babyboomers

Report on Study Leave Reading and Reflection at Westminster College Cambridge,
April - June 2008

Rob Ferguson, St Ninians Presbyterian Church, Riccarton, Christchurch.

Baby boomers left the church in large numbers. When this happened is a matter of debate. Why it happened is a matter of social history. Whether this generation will ever be interested in religion or in belonging to an organisation called church, in whatever form that might take, is a matter of conjecture. My reading project was a way of thinking through some of these issues with the aim of clarifying for myself, and hopefully others, ways in which baby boomers and "church" might be linked productively.

The project matters to me - it's my own generation I'm writing, thinking and reading about. Few of my close friends are church-inclined. Yet I perceive them to have the attributes I expect from Christian and religious people. They have a high sense of morality and justice. They are compassionate. They are attuned to matters of conservation. They are in awe of the world. They can debate sanely and sensibly on matters of God. Yet organised religious exercises are not part of their world. As religion becomes more and more a sidelined activity in New Zealand, and I choose to stay within the church, I have been pondering why I stay, and how what I choose to believe so strongly can relate to what others choose so strongly too - without religion.

My study leave project was undertaken with the advice and help of Rev Bruce Hansen, my supervisor. We settled on a reading and reflecting project rather than on an essay which attempted to tie up loose ends.

I am grateful to St Ninians, to the Christchurch Presbytery, and to Westminster College who all contributed to this project.

Reading:

1: The Death of Christian Britain, Callum G Brown, Routledge 2001

Brown's book is subtitled: Understanding secularisation 1800 - 2000.
"A study of the decline of Christianity in modern Britain. It challenges the generally held view that secularization has been a long and gradual process beginning with the Industrial Revolution, and instead proposes that it has been a catastrophic short-term phenomenon starting with the 1960s." - Christchurch library Catalogue summary

Brown's thesis is compelling - that sociologists of religion have forgotten an important area of research - discourse. The church, Brown writes, has bought into the wrong understandings of decline - using statistics of numbers of members and adherents, he says, has masked the real and important arena of loss - the public discourse of religion. In his acknowledgements he writes:

"Secularisation is happening, yet secularisation theory is wrong. ... Where before I believed that better social science would solve the problem of a theory in error, I now understand that the social science was the problem. I took the theory to be apart from the object of study; I see now it was a part of it." pviii

In his introduction he explains that there is no pleasure in proclaiming the death of Christian Britain.

"Some people will be able to catalogue tremendous losses - of faith, of succour in worship, of social activity in church organisations, of a sense of spirituality. There is the loss of old certainties, that fixed moral core which Britons as a whole used to recognise even when they deviated from it. It was a fixture in our lives, conservative by instinct and little changing in nature, by which individuals knew and trusted others by their respectability in family behaviour and conformity to the Christian Sunday. On the other hand, many people will be able to identify gains from the decentring of rigid moral codes - such as increased sexual freedom and freedom for diverse sexualities, greater gender equality, and a new tolerance of religious and ethnic difference. The change is one in which moral criticism of difference has been replaced by toleration and greater freedom to live our lives the way we choose." p2.

Brown locates this change, not in a gradual process of secularisation, but in a cataclysmic short time which he believes was 1962-3. He writes:

"What is 'ending' in Christian Britain as we start a new millennium is something more elemental than merely the churches failing to attract the people to worship. The 1960's revolution was about how people constructed their lives - their families, their sex lives, their cultural pursuits, and their moral identities of what makes a 'good' or 'bad' person. ... Secularisation is to be located, in part at least, in the changing conditions which allowed previously regarded Christian and social 'sins' to be regarded as acceptable and moral, at least by many, in British society in 2000." p8

The core of Brown's approach is found in his short discussion on why social science has helped religious institutions misunderstand what is happening in the decline of religion. Social Science since the Enlightenment has been reductionist, making its explanations in binary polarities - hence categories of 'churched and unchurched' for example. He finds such reasoning circular, unhelpful, and plain wrong.

"What social science did was give birth to the notion that religion has 'roles' or 'functions' in society. Broadly speaking, virtually all historical and sociological studies of religion and society have envisaged the 'role' of religion in four 'forms': institutional Christianity (the people's adherence to churches and practise of worship and religious rites), intellectual Christianity (the influence of religious ideas in society at large and of religious belief in individuals), functional Christianity (the role of religion in civil society) and diffusive Christianity (the role of outreach religion amongst the people). ... But the argument here is that there is a higher-level 'form' that religion takes. In this book it is called discursive Christianity. ...this fifth, discursive, conception of Christian religiosity is taken here as the prerequisite of all other roles of religion in society. ... For Christianity to have social significance - for it to achieve popular participation, support or even acquiescence - in a democratic society free from state regulation of religious habits, it must have a base of discursivity. Otherwise it is inconceivable. Concomitantly, secularisation - the decay of religiosity in all four traditional forms - is inconceivable without decay in discursive religiosity in which there is a loss of popular acceptance and recirculation of those discourses." p13

His thesis summary is found at the end of the Introduction:

"Chapter 8 focuses on the 1950's and 1960's and the issue of change to Christian discourse. It looks at how British people re-imagined themselves in ways no longer Christian - a 'moral turn' which abruptly undermined virtually all the protocols of moral identity. ... The 1960's viewed itself as the end of secularisation. But by listening to the people themselves, this book suggests it was actually the beginning." p15

In placing the secularisation of society in the early 1960's Brown outlines the process in terms of the way discourse changed. He notes that between 1964-7 the vinyl record in both LP and single formats in large measure displaced the written word as the key method by which young people formed their discursive world. This, allied with the growth in the visual media of TV, reinforced the messages appearing in the music world of the Beatles and the other 1960's explosion of popular music. Brown notes that in women's magazines of the early 60's the discourse changed significantly away from articles on home-making to articles about the new place of women in the work force and as spenders of the family money. Advertisements begin to target women in ways that suggest a freedom not present before.

Brown asserts that this process was short a "sudden and culturally violent event". But the scope of his book is to outline the process rather than to plot the reasons for the success of the new culture among the younger generation in particular. He writes however of the feminisation of piety since the 18th century and the way women are important in the traditional church life as the counterpoise of the 'evil' men - and their consequent role is to be the counterbalance to men! When women's roles are questioned and new roles are suggested in the 1960's, the dam bursts and women find a role which is not religious. He describes the 1950's as a decade of submission to family values and duty where boys are expected to be good, and girls are expected to be nice. Rock and roll is usually depicted as the harbinger of rebellion with images of James Dean, Elvis Presley, Bill Haley and others dressed in leathers and jeans providing the focus of a new, and radically different, discourse.

In the 1960's radical changes emerged in censorship (the D H Lawrence trial over whether Lady Chatterley's lover is pornographic for example); legalisation of abortion; granting of easier divorce; the women's liberation movement; the growth of a distinctive youth culture focussed on music and incorporating a range of cultural pursuits and identities, for example drug culture and various fashion cultures and revolutions in acceptable clothing; the appearance of student rebellion, for example the 1968 student riots in Paris; in NZ anti-war protest movements which led into peace movements.

All of these cumulative changes led to a repudiation of what till then had seemed like self-evident truths - the role of women, the veracity of Christianity, the structure of moral and social authority, scepticism of a science-derived nature of progress, and the disappearance of an agreed reality. Brown does not use the words post-modern, but his lists are not dissimilar to those usually agreed to describe post-modernism. He writes of the ways traditional moral language gets replaced in popular culture with "you", "your", "love" and "happiness". What disappears are discourses on domesticity, separate spheres of life, women's limited career ambitions. (The last replaced perhaps with the mantra "Girls can do anything.") He notes that romance, which reinforced domesticity, is replaced by complex lyrical themes influenced by the anti-war movement, drugs, nihilism, existentialism, nostalgia and eastern mysticism. (All these had been present for generations of course, but the popular culture's mass- media possibility propelled these discourses into the lives of many people at once in ways that were not possible before. Brown does not discuss the role of mass-media in the promulgation of new discourse at any length or depth.)

In highlighting the importance of discourse as essential to Christianity and society, Brown raises for me some underlying questions beyond the scope of his book, such as - does Christianity have any way of finding another discourse in today's world, or does it actually have anything to say? Is Christian discourse limited to Biblical discourse? It raises questions of the Fundamentalism debates - fundamentalism tries to return to the pre-1960s world of Christian discourse where those moral values were normative and posits that the future is found in a return to them. The creationist debate in the USA is an attempt to control the discourse on science and religion.

Implicit in these questions are others about the shape of church and Christianity. I hear folk on talk-back radio who use the term the "philosophy" of Jesus which raises important questions for me about the relationship between church and Christianity and Jesus. Does the church in today's world of multi-discourse have the only ways of introducing both Christianity and Jesus? That has been an assumption in the past, but does it still hold? Brown's book is an excellent reassessment of the process of secularisation that took place in the baby boomers' formative years. I find his insistence on understanding discourse a helpful one. The book does not deal with subsequent questions. Therefore I will need to search for other ways!

2: The Gospel According to the Beatles, Steve Turner, Westminster John Knox Press, 2006

Steve Turner, a journalist, offers an insight into the world created by the Beatles in the early 1960's and a critique of the world from which the phenomenon sprang. He shows the importance of understanding social history as he reflects on these turbulent cultural times. While Callum Brown focussed my thoughts on the essential nature of discourse, the missing piece for me in his book was why the change of discourse apparent after say 1962, had been cemented in so clearly. Steve Turner's book gave some answers to this question.

To understand the 1960's it is necessary to understand what preceded that decade. Brown addressed this in church-sociology terms. Turner gives clues from interviews with the Beatles and others that offer insights on the readiness of a new post-war generation to embrace change with such enthusiasm and wrench a new path so different from its parents' generation.

The Enlightenment opened up a new paradigm for understanding the world and the nature of truth which had become the norm in western societies. Rationalism was supported by traditional Christianity. Rationalism, the idea that everything could be worked out by the human mind and that progress was inevitable and good, had little place for the inexplicable. The result was an over-mechanised, over-organised society characterized by conformity, and where the imagination was generally devalued. The story of the 60's is the overturning of this paradigm, at least in part, and celebrating "the irrational, chance, dreams, hallucinations, and the primitive." p9.

Turner, with help from various quotations, gives his version of the church in the post-war period.

"Traditional religion ... seemed to have made compromises with rationalism. The soullessness and lack of mystery that the young hated about modernity was replicated in the church. The alliance between industry, politics and the military seemed to be blessed rather than challenged by the clergy. This was why those disenchanted with materialism tended to be attracted to the religions of the East that showed more respect for nature, and were less interested in war and the pursuit of wealth."

Turner tells about the church attended for several years by John Lennon in his childhood. The church building had been financed by four local wealthy merchants. It seated five hundred and had significant stained-glass windows. Turner notes that "such philanthropy wasn't unusual at the time because captains of industry accepted that religion encouraged a view of life that prepared employees to be industrious, honest and reliable. Christianity wasn't just good for saving souls, it was good for business." p46

Turner draws a picture of life in post-war England and the USA as depressed, sterile, a society where convention and respectability were paramount, and where narrow expectations of one's lot were the norm. John Lennon spoke of his resentment of "prim and proper Britain". p56 After the war, there was little money, and the rationalistic, mechanised society, in part created by recent experiences of war, gave little hope to a new generation. Christian expression at the time offered little transformative hope to its people, but reinforced the norms of convention. In this Turner agrees with Brown.

Several things came together as Turner writes of this decade to help cement the new generational change. The 1960's was free from both war and depression. It gave rise to what he calls the "first spoiled generation." If conformity was on the top, underlying much of society was the philosophy of existentialism promulgated by writers like Camus and Sartre. In Britain the 'Angry Young Men' writers and dramatists personalised and popularised the view of a "rising mood of dissatisfaction with a lingering Victorianism that stifled ambition, self-expression and unconventional thought." p59 "Look Back in Anger" by John Osborne became a central text for this point of view. Existentialism took God out of the picture. Individual existence was the only true absolute. Behaviour, and the value we put on life are matters of choice. Consequently we are free to act in any way we choose. Thus there became a philosophic challenge to the Christian orthodox way of understanding life that echoed with a rising generation who felt hampered by the conformity of the past.

Yet existentialism too was lacking in optimism. While it challenged the old norm, it offered little transformative hope and no sense of a transcendent vision. For, as Sartre pointed out, the other side of freedom to make personal choices is alienation and alone-ness. In NZ literature Alan Mulgan's book title sums this period up well - "Man alone." As Sartre began to see, if there is no divine anger because one has done away with God, nor is there any divine love. There is no judgementalism, but nor is there mercy. However, existentialism opened the door to a new way of understanding life which did not require God. It also gave rise to a new mantra which became vital to the 60's - Live for the day, live for the moment.

Into this society came the rise of a new form of music - rock and roll. While it was popularised by Elvis Presley, Elvis did little to offer a personal challenge to the way society was. However rock and roll spoke to a disaffected generation wanting to break free of conventional, hopeless life. For John Lennon this music "chimed with all his feelings of resentment toward prim and proper Britain." p 56 "The enemies of rock and roll were coldness, inhibition, and lifeless conformity. Its friends were passion, spontaneity, individuality and imagination." The Beatles music began to emerge in 1962. It spoke not just lyrically, but musically to the generation looking to change. It was bubbly, light, and positive - it spoke of relationships that were not intended to be long-term, but were full of intense emotion and fun. Where prohibitions seemed to be the norm, they sang Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, as positives. They caught the mood, transmitted a way of celebrating it, and began, in Brown's terms, a new discourse through vinyl, not through the church or the written word."

As I noted of Brown's book, this decade was a time when society changed drastically as a result of the post-war stability and growing wealth. It became a time of instant gratification, of hire purchase so we could buy before we had the money to pay for goods. The Pill and disposable products began to show the world that instant and temporary rather than lasting and delayed gratification were not only possible, but had everything to offer. In the USA, this message and the music that accompanied it, gave a new optimism to a country where politicians were shot. Kennedy had represented youth, idealism and hope. Martin Luther King represented a vision of a new world of racial equality. The Cold War with its polarising values, Vietnam and Nuclear bombs formed an ugly backdrop. The Beatles and other groups like them represented the best of what people could hope for and what they longed for - laughter not tears, hope not despair, love not hatred, life not death. Their music offered "a faith of a complete and open possibility that was by its very innocent nature a transcendent vision." p85

In contrast, church was not offering such a sense of transcendent vision in terms that were being understood. In an instant society it proclaimed eternal values and truths as if they were self-evident. George Harrison spoke to Turner about this: "The church spoke in obscurities whereas rock and roll was direct." Rock spoke to the realities of sex, drugs, relationships, clothing and fashion. "Rock and Roll was the sound of a generation slipping free from the restraints of the past. The music rarely articulated what it was against. Its values were primarily communicated through its spirit." p 58

The church in its conformity and reliance on the past "ran the risk of being no more than a society for the promotion of decency." p47 The Christian view was that life should be lived carefully and soberly in the light of an eventual judgement. Christianity encouraged reflection, self-examination, confession and consideration for others. What the 60's created however was a climate where a different point of view prevailed: if there's no judgement because there's no all-seeing God, why be careful?

In large measure, this decade was the time when the church lost its grip on what really mattered to people. It lost the sense of an urgent search for a creative power of transcendence which was being expressed in the optimism of the Beatles, and the church lost the discourse of that generation in large measure.

Turner's book reinforces the lessons of Brown's work - this really was a decade when the world shifted gear. The church, by and large, did not.

3: Baby Boomer Spirituality, Ten Essential Values of a Generation, Craig Kennet Miller, Discipleship Resources, 1992

Miller concentrates his attention on trying to describe the essential spiritual nature of babyboomers rather than on the social milieu, although this book does not ignore that aspect. He writes from an American perspective. His book is somewhat dated now, being written 16 years ago, so many of the issues he writes about have been transformed, resolved, or have become worse!

Miller identifies 10 "essential values" which he divides into three parts: Spiritual Roots, The Search for God, and The Future. He notes that the babyboomers began with the spirit of optimistic rebellion (see The Gospel according to the Beatles), but that they are disillusioned by the time he is writing. The world is patently in a mess. This, he maintains gives rise to the values of his Part One schema: Brokenness, Loneliness, Rootlessness, and Self-seeking. Because of a sense that the optimism of the beginnings of their rebellion is misplaced and has been replaced with pessimism, Miller maintains this generation is self-seeking as a response, looking inward to find meaning and purpose.

"The result of rootlessness is self-seeking. A person shuns the values of the outside world and looks inward to find meaning and purpose. What some have mistakenly labelled as selfishness is instead an inner search for meaning and truth." p44

Miller later describes the instant culture, the necessity to live for the "now", and such movements as the Human Potential Movement as expressions of the escapism rootlessness, brokenness and loneliness evoke as babyboomers look for ways to find meaning in a world that largely feels out of control and which feels like a betrayal of their values. "Now that the revolution was over, the present had to be filled with meaning." p45 The result, as Miller describes it, has been widespread distrust of long-term relationships, which he backs up with the now-familiar statistics on rising divorce rates. These transitory relationships became normalised and so began to happen without guilt. Miller makes an interesting observation about the behaviour of babyboomers in relation to their parents. They began their quest for meaning in opposition to their parents values, growing long hair for effect for example. Miller maintains that in many respects babyboomers have never cut the apron strings.

Miller makes some important observations about babyboomer culture:
Babyboomers are a product of a consumer culture-

"life is validated not by who they are, but by what they have." p50.

Babyboomers live for the present with little sense of either history of future.
Instant gratification is central.
Trivialisation of culture - everything is marketable and saleable.

"In a culture that trivialises historical events, little value is placed on things that last. Whatever emotion is elicited that moves the soul is denigrated by the association of the images with a product or with a need to buy the latest fad. The end result is rampant escapism." p51.

Babyboomers as a result, according to Miller, "have found a slew of ways to flee the realities of life, to negate the changing panorama of the world, to insulate themselves from the ravages of time, to avoid dealing with their own mortality."

Yet Miller also points out that there can be a positive way of looking at his analysis too.

"The narcissism and self-seeking of babyboomers marks not only a peculiar problem, but also a point of spiritual challenge, quest and opportunity. For all of their narcissism, boomers seek what others have sought through other commitments and dreams - a place of meaning and purpose. They seek to be heroes in their own story, and in the world as they see it." p53.

He writes about the Wizard of Oz as a powerful American myth of what he means by rootlessness and the search for individual meaning. For New Zealand, this raises the question of what story offers such a myth. Maybe we have one, maybe we don't. But such a story is an essential tool in a society which has lost meta-narrative as a way of finding national meaning. This is why Anzac Day is assuming that place I think.

I found Miller's analysis of his final six values spoke less to me than his beginning ones. However, what he writes about the institutional church and its response to the questing-for-meaning baby boomer is substantially the same as Brown and Turner (above). Miller writes that the babyboomers search for God is

"to be part of a spiritual adventure that will challenge them, that will cause them to grow, that will throw off the old and bring in the new, that will engage them with the holiness and sanctity of life, that will put them in places where they will encounter the creative forces of the universe, that will lift them up from the grinding boredom of life to let them know they are unique and important, that their life has meaning and purpose. People desire to have a mission, an important goal toward which they are working." p 86

This has the potential for a way of being church that is counter to the way of the past yet to be in continuity with it. Babyboomers are questers. Yet their way of understanding the world is inevitably individualistic giving rise to two related phenomena - the supermarket approach to religion - I will look for what suits me and as long as my needs are met I will stay and then go somewhere else, and the ability of babyboomers to interpret the world in their own favour. The latter issue gives rise to the existential problem that the individual becomes the sole arbiter of moral authority. This has the effect that institutions are distrusted, particularly if they seem to be offering an authority which conflicts with individual perceptions, and those who represent that authority carry mistrust too. The "god-within is my source of truth". p90.

Yet, ultimately this leads back to Miller's first values of brokenness, loneliness, and rootlessness. For there is something awry with this existential approach to life as Turner pointed out. As Harold Kushner writes in his book "Who Needs God?" there is also an existential and psychological need to feel appropriately judged. In rightly overturning the sense of a judgemental God, the babyboomer generation replaced it with a self-condemning isolation where I am my own judge. Ultimately while things are going well, this feels OK, but if they are going awry, pessimism and depression are the result as the universe feels insolvable and malignant to me.

For babyboomers this dark side of their optimistic beginnings is important to note. The notion of improvement and progress is patently a false one - economics has replaced science as the repository of the myth of eternal optimistic progress, yet the 1987 stock market crash and the 2008 debt crisis are proving that false also. Technology, once seen as the saviour of the world is now understood to contain both threat and hope. If science and technology cannot save us, and economics is no longer a saviour, for babyboomers there will need to be a new invention. Because this is a questing generation staving off death by living in the seemingly endless present, another one will almost inevitably come along in due course.

Miller offers some clues about being church in these circumstances I think. He is savage in his criticism of traditional church, but his theology turns towards large mega church models like Willow Creek which in the 1990's were held up as the new model. However post 2000, and almost into the second decade of the 21st century these are tired models which are more about success than about religion. They are consumer-driven models, reflecting a culture of attraction. For babyboomers this offers little long-term hope, as by definition, these will become dated and the generation will move on to the next thing.

For mainline church Miller is useful as a way of describing characteristics of this generation of questers. He draws attention to the dynamic of transformative life also mentioned by Brown and Turner as an essential religious characteristic. Miller writes that "The goal of the church was to get members and converts, not to change lives." p95. He reminds us that the gift of the 1990's is a "new respect for the individual as the foundation of society and the basic unit of change." p88. He writes that it is the
"desire for spiritual experience that permeates the life of babyboomers. Whether it is a New Ager seeking a favourite channeler or the charismatic Christian going to a healing seminar, they both hold to the notion that there is more to this life than meets the eye, that beyond this earth is a spiritual world of which they can avail themselves to find meaning and purpose and more than meaning, a personal experience of salvation."

Miller's language is not mine. But I found his book helpful as a reminder that for today's world where commitment and loyalty to an organisation are not highly valued, the church must deal with the issue of what it means to be a part of the church, and what it means to offer a religious point of view into a questing society without speaking from Victorian sensibilities. We must deal with what we now mean by commitment - is Miller right to say the church used to be a place where respectability and duty prevailed - a sentiment also offered by Brown and Turner. We "joined the church". All three authors stress the need to understand transformative experience rather than correct doctrine as the expression of church. I find that a helpful thought. Church becomes something else unless it becomes the agent of a transformative life and lifestyle which gives appropriate meaning to a questing life.

4: Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the remaking of American Religion, Wade Clark Roof, Princeton University Press, 1999

Using narratives from interviews, Roof surveys the Baby Boomer generation and puts forward some ideas about the way church could respond to the new culture of choice. Although the book is now almost a decade old, Roof's conclusions have a great deal of helpful insights for me.

His final summation chapter is entitled "Whirl is King". His final paragraph is a good starting point for understanding current culture:

"Doubt and unbelief seem as much a part of these stories as affirmation and belief, and these elements hanging together seem workable somehow. Pragmatism as ideology and practice has a strong hold on them, ... Except for dogmatists, Boomers generally accept the view that certainty in any religious or ultimate sense is illusory, beyond human grasp, and therefore truly a leap; ambiguity and paradox seem to be built into life, not just in its organizational and institutional expression but in its deepest ontological sense. Perhaps the religious tensions felt are not so much of those of belief versus unbelief as of wanting to enjoy the material gains, power, and status associated with religious heritage without at the same time losing one's spiritual self. They are ... a generation whose multiple "centres of value" defy simple characterizations of singular loyalties and reduction to any single axis of ideological polarization; for whom tolerance toward diversity in most things is a matter of principle and a starting point for much public debate; and for whom the "politics of meaning" carries some resonance, urging on them an openness to truth-claims but not blindly so or without worries about the power plays that are inevitably involved. ... "Whirl is King," and they know it." p314

Roof develops a schema of 5 subcultures he discerned in the late 1990's in America. He calls these dogmatists, born-again believers, mainstream believers, metaphysical believers and seekers, and secularists. But he notes that "the discourse on spiritual "journeys" and "growth" is now a province not just of theologians and journalists, but of ordinary people in cafes, coffee bars and bookstores across the country." p7
This is a similar, but rather briefer, summation of the situation as Brown describes it - the church has lost its hold on "owning" spiritual discourse in modern society. It is a comment also which reinforces the view that those who maintain a dichotomy between a secular and a religious society have it wrong. Roof believes that the search for identity which would once have been worked out in a religious organisational setting, or a small group setting which was powerful in the 1960's and 1970's, is ow being worked out in a quite different way: "Identity is still a powerful theme, but its mode of expression is different: the energising forces arise out of quests not so much for group identity and social location as for an authentic inner life and personhood." p7

Roof uses the word 'quest' quite deliberately. For him it reflects the radical realignment taking place in the culture of the West. He describes the new dynamics thus: "The emergence of a global world, an influx of new immigrants and cultures, widespread changes in values and beliefs, the immense role of the media and visual imagery in shaping contemporary life, an expanding consumer-oriented culture targeting the self as an arena for marketing, the erosion of many traditional forms of community - all point to major realignments in religion and culture. Meanwhile, discoveries in quantum physics and astronomy lead scientists to back away from Newtonian notions of a deterministic universe and to speak of awe, holism, and even of "an observer-created universe." p8

Some of Roof's phrases ring helpfully for me as I contemplate ways of being church in this culture which he and others articulate clearly. For baby boomers who struggle with any notions of ultimate authority, who have come to distrust institutions and who allow for the possibilities that many truths can co-exist even if they seem at first to be contradictory, church will come with 'baggage' which will inhibit meaningful engagement. Building on the four writers above, it seems to me that the church of today, if it wants to engage the bulge of the population called baby boomers with integrity, will need to address in particular the questing spirit for self-transformation expressed so clearly as central to the baby boomer's lifestyle, and the need of people for an authentic 'inner life' matched with a praxis which arises from espousing values carried by the spiritual point of view. Roof calls this an "authentic, intrinsically satisfying life." He also notes that such a life will "activate our deepest energies and commitments."

5: The Battle for God, Karen Armstrong, Harper Collins, 2000

While this book is not overtly about baby boomers and the quest for a spirituality that is meaningful to them, Armstrong's book, subtitled "Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam", offers a reflection on the importance of holding together what she calls mythos and logos. Her book, A Short History of Myth (2005), is an extended essay on the way mythos and logos work in religion but she summarises her views in The Battle for God:

"We tend to assume that the people of the past were ... like us, but in fact their spiritual lives were rather different. In particular they evolved two ways of thinking, speaking, and acquiring knowledge ...(mythos and logos) ... Both were essential; they were regarded as complementary ways of arriving at truth... Myth was regarded as primary; it was concerned with what was thought to be timeless and constant in our existence. Myth looked back to the origins of life, to the foundations of culture, and to the deepest levels of the human mind. Myth was not concerned with practical matters but with meaning. Unless we find some significance in our lives, we mortal men and women fall very easily into despair. ... the mythos directed their attention to the eternal and the universal. ...
Logos was equally important. Logos was the rational, pragmatic, and scientific thought that enabled women and men to function well in the world. We may have lost the sense of mythos in the West today, but we are very familiar with logos, which is the basis of our society." pxiii-xiv

The book discusses the ways that fundamentalists have turned mythos into logos instead of keeping them entwined but separate. Karen Armstrong is a classic baby boomer. A Catholic nun who left that tradition, her attitude to religion is described:

"Since her writing career took off, Armstrong's communion with God occurs in the library, where she spends up to three years researching her books, which are as densely packed with detail as her conversations. "I get my spirituality in study," she said. "The Jews say it happens, sometimes, studying the Torah."

It seems no one sacred scripture could satisfy her now. "It's inevitable that people turn to more than one religious tradition for inspiration," she said. "It's part of globalization." She recently read from the Buddhist canon of teachings for her next book. "Religion is like a raft," she said, explaining the Buddha's view of it. "Once you get across the river, moor the raft and go on. Don't lug it with you if you don't need it anymore." She knows that mode of travel: Leave one raft behind to pick up the next just ahead."

Copyright ©MARY ROURKE, Los Angeles Times, October 9, 2000

About Karen Armstrong <http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/karmstrong.html>

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A metaphor for the church in 2008?

Reflections

As I read and reflect on these books several words recur:
Quest. Reflexivity. Transformation. Energies. Commitments.

They are key now for me. For behind each of them are assumptions but also the possibility of praxis. There is a tension for the church in attending to the 'quest for inner transformation', which is inevitably an individual pursuit, and the church's insistence on meaningful community as one of its highest values. Some reflection on what are the compelling values found in current society and those found in church would benefit the church. The environmental sensitivity emerging over the past 20 years is not church-led, even though many church folk espouse the value. It is a good example of a theology arising afresh from a current value in society. For the church to maintain a discourse of meaningful truth in today's world there is a need to make connections which may not be initiated by church conversation. This is new for the church which dominated discourse until the 1950's in western culture.

Reflexivity

For baby boomers looking for ways to reconnect with meaningful truth(s), it will be common causes which offer one important way into conversation. The use of "conversation" is for me a vital piece of vocabulary in this arena. Church-speak has been characterised by a one way monologue - often from on high, literally and metaphorically. Baby boomers on the one hand will not easily tolerate utterances that are delivered in one way, non-dialogical fashion, or that assume an authority which is circular - the Bible says it so it must be true. There is a clear understanding that truth is relative and by and large understood to be rational, and therefore to have some weight of observable, debateable data behind it. On the other hand, baby boomers are suspicious of the way truth and scientific rationality have become instruments of destructive power. The suspicion of anything institutional, church or government, is endemic in 21st century life. Baby boomers have discovered that while their life span is significantly longer than generations before them, they have gained time, possessions and wealth, but not necessarily satisfaction. The possibility of "retirement" being almost a third of one's lifespan raises significant existential issues to which rationalism does not have answers. In Armstrong's scheme, logos has made us who we are, but mythos will be needed to carry us forward into a truth that makes deep inner sense.

For the church this is a significant issue because both the liberal and conservative traditions have relied on a rational religious approach. They attempt to espouse a reasoned faith. For the Reformed tradition this has important implications for its insistence on the primacy of the declaration of the Word as sermon. To a generation suspicious of a purely rational approach, some acknowledgment of the importance of the intuitive approach to truth must also be present. It is this which drives the spirituality of "New Ageism". It is this which speaks to baby boomers about a meaningful existence when the rational trappings begin to offer less and less meaning.

This is more than the recovery of story, or biography as theology, although story and narrative are crucial in the recovery of mythos and logos in creative tension. The arts, particularly drama, music and visual are important ways of telling truth which touch the inner intuitive world of people and yet use the technology advances made possible in today's times. But it is significant also that part of this experience is often the coffee afterwards where the performance or the display is relived in conversation. For the church there are clues here. The intuitive approach to truth captures the imagination and taps deep wells with what Jung called the "collective unconscious".

"The collective unconscious is also known as "a reservoir of the experiences of our species." Collective unconscious <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_unconscious>

But so does the collective conversation where ideas flow from one to another after a shared experience. For the church used to a programmatic approach to its life, this raises questions of what I will call "unprograms". The children's talk in many services offered a story which was seldom allowed to stand on its own. There was usually an explanation to make sure we knew what the story really meant. Instead of offering rational experiences which offer explanations, the church can offer experiences which invite people to reflect without trying to extort one particular meaning from the experience that is common to all present. For it is in the explanation (the rational) that story loses its power. If I hear a story, get caught up in its powerful emotions, and then get told what someone else thinks it means, I am left with the alternatives of either agreeing or disagreeing with that person's meaning. For many people this offers a clue about why they have left the church. They have been offered only one approach to meaning - that of clergy. When this meaning is at variance with their understanding and experience they often have no way to express such a variance safely. The church has become, in those terms, a place of declaration rather than exploration. The rational approach which is at the heart of this matter has declared what orthodoxy will mean rather than allowing or offering people the enticement to explore. Reflexivity has been largely absent from our understanding of church practice.

It is vital for the future that reflexivity is encouraged. "Unprograms", the offering of experiences and open-ended spaces of gathering, are an important way in which this can begin to happen. But to do so for a church committed to having a hold on what truth is, and to expressing that truth in a one-way mode raises significant issues of both praxis and theology. It raises issues of the visual elements of worship in a church focussed on word and aural delivery. Whether it is the use of pulpit falls, a minimum, or sanctuary banners or visuals offered through technology such as PowerPoint, the effectiveness will be diminished if offered within a milieu of explanation. It raises issues of authority and from whence it is derived. For the church these are difficult matters to work through. Behind reflexivity are issues of who owns the Gospels, and who has access to their interpretation of meaning. Do they stand on their own as experienced story as a level of mythos, which until the Enlightenment was the prime way the Gospels were experienced by most people.

Quest

We live in an era where once again the balance of culture is shifting past an insistence on rationalism being the only valid way of perceiving truth. Scientists are writing in open-ended terms again. Conclusions are tentative. The emphasis on discovering the smallest particle has yielded more questions than answers for example. Such conclusions become theological very quickly when it turns out that neither scientific endeavour nor technology can provide a satisfactory answer to fundamental questions of existence after all. There is a growing sense of the limits of technology to make the myth of progress come true. Disasters such as the Chinese earthquake in May 2008, only a few days after Tibet is hit by a storm of massive proportions give rise to an existential angst which lies at the heart of all life. The questions revolve around nihilism and a growing sense of mortality. Baby boomers have suffered many of these existential swings. While they attempt to recreate themselves and to ignore the ravages of age, they have become fitter and more interested in exploring the inner life as they recreate their spirit more and more by focussing on life in the outdoors. There is a search, not just for meaning, but for thrill. But the down after the up is also the reality felt by this generation for whom many things have not turned out with the optimism with which they began the 1960's. So there is a turbulence of extremes, and a quest to find a place of stability from which to make sense of one's life.

This questing spirit often finds extreme ways of expressing itself, but as the realisation grows that the cultural myths of economic growth and goodwill for all break down, as science and technology shows its darker side, so the quest becomes more urgent for many. The growth in globalisation and global accessibility may be slowing as our reliance on fuels increases. The quest may well have to take new forms which involve less travel and more information gathering from the internet. The global economy may not be such a factor in the future as we cannot afford to access goods from afar. Yet the quest will continue to affect people's inner lives.

For the church it will be important to find ways of resourcing this inner quest which may be found in spiritual disciplines again. There is a long Christian tradition of contemplation, meditation, experiences such as walking the labyrinth, or walking the forest, alone or together. There are disciplines of a prayerful life. There is little new here, but much has been forgotten in the Reformed tradition about ways of inculcating Christian practice. In our bid to become rational we have often ignored the intuitive quiet disciplines. My experience however is that these are exactly what people are looking for.

The challenge for the church is to go beyond a Sunday experience of shared worship as its primary model of how to be church, and to equip itself with people who know about the value and truths of Christian practice. We have concentrated so much attention on what Christianity might mean that we have neglected somewhat the questions of how to do and be Christian. In the Sunday Times Style Magazine of May 18 2008, there is a column entitled Going Up, Going Down. Going Up is:

"Silence. Not much around these days. Consequently it's the most aspirational thing we can think of." (p 5)

Such comments tell us something! There is a quest for resourcing the inner life. But the church is not seen to be able to do it because we have, for so long, been associated only with rationality in faith and with passive congregational practices.

Commitments

As the baby boomer generation left the institutional church there arose a language within the church which rationalised this movement away from the church roll as "believers but not belongers."

"Thus, the question is not so much why half of Canadians have abandoned the church -- as the drop from 70 percent weekly attendance to 20 percent weekly attendance seemed to suggest -- but why this half of the Canadian population now attends church only sporadically.

It could be argued that the decline in attendance indicates a decline in Christian commitment. It could also be asked why the institutional church has failed to retain the loyalty of so many Canadians who claim to believe what the church believes. ...The decline in weekly attendance may also partly represent a change in Canadian culture and society. More people work on Sundays now, for instance.
"Canada is a nation of believers but not belongers," said Grenville. "It is not just churches that are losing members."
The State of the Canadian Church <http://www.canadianchristianity.com/nationalupdates/071206state.html>

The wry note as this quotation ends is a reminder that church is just another organisation to which people have ceased to be committed. Church is the same as Rotary or Model Railway Club in terms of commitment pattern. This tells us something important which challenges the core of the way we understand church organisation. Church and maybe religion no longer expresses a core value to which people commit more than to other values such as leisure. The phrase "supermarket religion" has been coined to express the pluralistic marketplace in which there is a choice of religions, and whether or not to associate with a religion. Rev George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury addressed a conference on this topic in 2001:

"You may have noticed that I have already used the words 'health' or 'healthy' a number of times. I do so deliberately because it seems to me that whereas we may not be able to agree on the truth of a faith, 'health' is a concept which provides a useful focus for my reflections. Within today's 'spiritual supermarket' what are the marks of healthy - and unhealthy - religion?"

Healthy Religion <http://www.cesnur.org/2001/london2001/carey.htm>

In a culture which values tolerance and relativity this is no surprise. But what I find interesting is that the church has spent little time working through some of the implications of this. We continue to collect belonging statistics in the same old way - adherents and members. We continue a parochial system relying for its existence on membership assumptions of the past - that people join, stay and pay their way. However, in a transitory society these assumptions seldom hold. Yet the church is caught. On the one hand it requires a sense of communal organisation in order to provide both a place and a community for others to be able to come and go from, yet it is unable to sustain those things using inherited patterns of belonging.

What we know is that people seldom commit for long times to anything. A key question for anyone is whether the organisation to which I am allied at the moment "meets my needs for ..." It may seem an individualistic and selfish criteria, but in a busy life the quest is what matters, and a sense of this being attended to in a way that leads somewhere is vital to a sense of commitment. Add to this the current understanding that a person does not expect to draw water from only one well of wisdom, but each becomes comparative in the quest. For church which demands ultimate commitment by being the only arbiter of spiritual truth for each person, the current comparative climate and the transitory nature of belonging raises critical questions. What does community mean under these circumstances? There is the question of financial stability - will the paid clergy model of church survive much longer? (My own answer is no.) Such basic questions are difficult to face - worse because those who must face them most earn their living from an old model.

The temptation is to either build bigger models of the past - mega churches do this. Or to abandon church altogether in favour of small independent "interest groups." Perhaps they represent the two ends of the piece of string. What lies in the middle is worth exploring. Whichever model comes to the fore, it will have to take into account new understandings of commitment.

Energies

Perhaps this is reflected in the above short discussion. Energy could be called passion for the purposes of reflecting on church with baby boomers. Passionate lives are what are being sought for. Meaningful lives are passionate, and passion is attractive to others. To be part of something long enough to form any sort of meaningful relationship requires passion. Questing on its own without passion rapidly becomes duty. And baby boomers abandoned duty many years ago. Church will be healthy if it feeds positive values, if it gives a cause beyond myself that makes sense, and if it feeds my sense of self-worth and purpose. Energy will reflect those things. Without such energy, belonging even by remotest associative terms will be fleeting. For church which has placed duty as a high value for years, this is difficult to reclaim. One of my observations about older church people is that often they are there for others rather than to dig deep into themselves and find their own re-creative energies. Churches often begin a search for their "ministry: by looking at community needs. For me this is the wrong way round and leads to dutiful service, which is usually effective in delivering help, but not in creating a life of energy and passion.

I contend that the recovery of passion comes about when we are working on self-discovery and looking to rediscover what "turns us on" to use a very 1960's phrase. For it is in that turning-on that we come closest to understanding and then acting out of our passions and energies. For baby boomers, duty is a low priority. Duty is about boredom, another word that is disliked by baby boomers. It is not that this generation does not care for the needs of others or the world, but my contention is that unless we are energised, church will not reach any potential to be health-full or helpful. This relates for me back to the discussion on reflexivity, and forward to the next brief discussion on Transformation.

Transformation

In each of the books surveyed above, the transformative process is seen as central to the search of baby boomers. All people need to feel their life has some sort of purpose. Most people want their life to count in a schema that is bigger than themselves. But they also want to have experienced transformation, not just to have read about it as an altruistic head trip. This in part is why some find Pentecostal worship helpful to them - a sense of getting lost in the transcendent God. For others, this is not the way that works for them. For the Reformed tradition which relies on words, the transformation of people will always be an interesting journey because it inevitably contains a great deal of intuitive truth and not just rational truth. This is a tradition which struggles with valuing intuition and experience.

The goal of Jesus' life was transformative. It seems self-evident, but in practice the way of life espoused in church life is often experienced as the opposite - duty, rosters, solemnity. In Japan I encounter the laughing Buddha. It makes me reflect often on why we present a Jesus to the world of grinding solemnity and agony and then suggest folk commit themselves to that picture. It makes little sense to me to focus so much on the atonement story, almost to the exclusion of the rest of Jesus' life and the Gospel records of the focus of his transformative theology of healing and wholeness, the "kingdom of God", and a religion that is light.

Baby boomers are looking for the transformative experience which will help them focus on a life beyond themselves. Truth will be known by a combination of intuition and reason. For church, this is an issue that cannot be programmed. It will happen around spaces where people gather which evoke safety and awe. It will happen when folk share an experience such as walking in the bush, or going to a concert together.

Transformative experiences will seldom be individualistic in their nature, but will drive folk to be with others. The church struggles with open-ended experiences. There are always issues of power and control at stake for an institution. Yet it is in such ways that the baby boomers will discover transformative life. Risk-taking is not something church is renowned for either. But my experience shows me that when we offer the space and the encouragement to let that space and gathering create its own life transformation happens.

An example from St Ninians

A men's gathering - happens haphazardly in timing, about every 6 weeks. No programme is offered. We have food - BBQ in summer, pizza in winter. Bring your own cold drinks, beer and wine are welcome. About 20 men are now coming, not all of them from the church. They sit, stand, talk and listen to each other in small groups. One night, one of the men asked for time to tell a story of how he found some children with no toys. He thought that was not the way life should be. He offered his workshop and some wood. Others joined him. Now they make blocks for pre-school children and give them away. Here is a transformative experience that comes from a passion and a set of values yet is focussed outwards by drawing on inner resources of compassion and a skill set that creates the blocks. This would not have happened if we believed we had to offer a traditional programme in the time we met.

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Notes and Quotations

What follows are some quotes and reflections from a variety of books I've been reading recently. They offer some other insight into the spirituality that lies behind my own journey into transformative pluralism. They are here without commentary, and in a random order. Some are direct quotations, others are diary entries. Diary entries are dated.

1.

I was Christened in the United Church when I was a child, as a very young bride to be I was somewhat pushed into becoming Lutheran by my mother in law before I could marry her son, and am now (several years later) declining to state that I am of any formal denomination of church as I have come around into thinking that there is so much more to God/the Universe/Great Spirit than what any one church can tell you, so therefore I just decide to say I am spiritual. I do not mean to offend anyone that belongs to any particular church or religious organization, that is your choice and your free will to choose it, as it is mine... and that being said, if you do not wish to be Catholic anymore, then don't -find your peace with God your own way. See what makes sense to you. If there is something else that interests you, try it and see if you like it. If it is just talking to the wind, enjoying rain splashing on your face or smelling a gorgeous flower and taking in the beautiful scenery around you under a big tree or on a boat on the lake...I believe it is a form of communing with God. You don't "HAVE" to be in a church to have a relationship with God!
Think of the things that you are thankful for-the car you drive or the bus you take everyday, the clothes you wear, the roof over your head, the friends or family that you care about, the food you love, etc-these are the everyday things that we should all be thankful for and that's all we need to do is just think them and say 'thankyou'- God hears you or knows what you are thinking and you might be surprised how your life may turn around with a little positive attitude towards things!

Beliefnet <http://community.beliefnet.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8835>
accessed 23 January 2008

2.

The idea of mixing and matching beliefs appeals to me: I like the openness and fluidity of it. But I wanted to see it in actual practice. That desire led me to Daniel Meeter, 51, the pastor of the Old First Reformed Church of Brooklyn, a Protestant church founded in 1654. He gave me an example of religious mixing: last year he held a memorial service for Martin Luther King Jr. led by himself, a president of a mosque, a Catholic priest, a black Protestant minister, and a rabbi. His church, he says, is "rooted and nonjudgmental. We don't go around saying bad things about other people. We're one of the churches that accepts gays." I asked him if he would perform a gay marriage ceremony. "Nobody's asked yet," he answered, "but I might."
40 percent of Americans over 45 say the most satisfying religious or spiritual act is helping others.
For so many of us, that's the catch. How can you be religious without standing in judgment of others? How can you find religion without being told what to believe or condemning people who think differently from you? I am looking for a faith that is free from that pressure. One that respects freedom of thought but can still grant me a feeling of safety and, in capital letters, PEACE OF MIND. I realize this is a tall order. The problem—or maybe the solution—is that I probably won't be able to find everything I'm looking for in one place.
Rabbi Kula's words came to me as I ran: community and meaning are what bind people to any spiritual group. "A sense of belonging and a sense of connection to something bigger than yourself, that's the transcendence, the 'meaning' piece," he said. "It works hand in hand with 'community.' It's hard to have meaning without some social structure."
As I get older, I want to realize some sense of connection to something bigger than me. The question of whether I've made a difference looms large. Many of the people I talked to expressed the same thought and referred to the old Peggy Lee song "Is That All There Is?" How we travel to answer that question and whom we choose as our traveling companions are part of the journey. But what I've come to understand is that asking the question is where it begins.
Betsy Carter
Faith, Hope, and Clarity <http://www.aarpmagazine.org/lifestyle/Articles/a2004-10-26-mag-spirituality.html/page=2>
accessed 23 January 2008

3.

2 May 07
It is easier to outline the questions and "problems" of modern religious and spiritual life than it is to outline any suggestions of ways forward for an organisation like the church.
Does this mean that church is doomed?
Today as I talked to another minister I heard myself say that the major task for ministers today is not exhortation, but to teach folks to think - to use the tools such as habits of mind, to reflect on life and its current complications and find a sense of moral imperative (who used that phrase first?)

4.

Two useful books to read.

Harvey Cox - ethics - When Jesus came to Harvard.

Nigel Leaves - The Problem of God

5.

Tad Williams:
"Briony felt as though she had been slapped. "You call The Book of the Trigon lies?"
Lisiya flapped her hand dismissively. "Not purposeful lies, at least not most of them. And there is much truth in it too, I suppose, but melted out of recognisable shape like something buried too long in the ground."
Shadowplay, p335-6

6.

"Nevare, I don't know how to tell you what to believe. On the Sixday I worship the good god, same as you. But every time I saddled my horse for the last thirty years, I've made the "keepfast" sign over my cinch. I've seen a wind-wizard and I've seen gunpowder send a bullet on its way. I don't really understand how either one worked. I guess what I believe in is whatever works best for me at that time. I think most men are like that."
Robin Hobb, Forest Mage p186

7.

"Strike a steel against flint, and the first time a spark jumps, it seems like magic. But when the spark jumps every time, we add it to the list of things we can force the world to do. It became our science, our technology. ... But magic, I thought slowly, magic only worked when it suited magic to work."
Robin Hobb, Renegade's Magic, p296
(Cf Jesus and the spirit blows as the wind.)

8.

"Eventually the antisupernaturalism of mainline Protestantism left many people cold and sent them searching for a more transcendent God."
Diana Butler Bass, Christianity for the Rest of Us p107

"... people want to be part of healing the universe." Ibid, P108

"this is a church full of difference but not a lot of division." Ibid, P146

"Perhaps not surprisingly, given Goleta's history, Steve bases his understanding of "polyculture of the Spirit" in farming. In a very real way, people's souls are the soil of God's spirit, the congregation a kind of ecosystem of faith. Drawing from scientist Wes Jackson, Steve says that "polycultures are ecological systems that include many species of plant and animal life within a particular region. They have evolved slowly over a period of time." Polycultural systems can withstand "many swings and changes in climate and many kinds of pests and disease." In such an environment, "various life-forms depend on each other, drawing from each other in many intricate ways.." Steve argues that monocultures, such as those fostered by industrial farming, yield large harvests but lack the "wisdom and subtle integrity" of polycultural complexity."
Ibid, P146-7

"Jesus never issued a demand for uniformity. Rather, he beckoned people to follow with a promise of healing, transformation, and love." Ibid, P149

9.

Elizabeth Osmers Gordon in the Press (Christchurch) 24 November 07:
Article entitled "Altering our world view":
"A friend who is an Anglican clergyman turned 70 this year. In the birthday speeches, his son said he always remembered a poster in his father's study which read, "God is a verb".
That poster raises an interesting language question. Would we think of God differently if God were a verb? Does our language influence the way we see things?"
Altering our world view <http://www.stuff.co.nz/thepress/4286243a13135.html>

10.

29th November 07:
A woman "Pauline" phoned me wanting to be anonymous but to ask some of her deep questions. She had been bothered and troubled by something she read which told her she should update her faith. The article, which she wouldn't identify in case I worked out where she was from, suggested to her that her "old ways" of thinking were not just out of date, but wrong. That troubled her. She identified two things which helped me place her dilemma. She is in her mid 70's, and she no longer attends church. She grew up in a time when diverse ideas about God, and beliefs in Jesus were not so apparent in church life. People like Geering bother her because he holds views that differ from hers so widely that she cannot hold herself in the same Christian church as she sees it. To be fair to Pauline, she did not hold forth about Geering, but used his thinking as an example of what she is struggling with. The "today" world of relativism is hard for Pauline to cope with. She is struggling with the deep understandings of her life-upbringing that there is only one position to take on most things. Therefore if we encounter another position we have a dilemma of choice because it implies that one of us is right and the other wrong. The idea that both can be right or both wrong does not occur to the Paulines of this world. Her underlying question was the one of ultimate authority - she needs to know she is OK. But to which authority does she defer these days. This is confusing to her as it feels like she needs to give away her beliefs because in today's scales they are weighed and found wanting. She wondered whether this was one reason why old people have stopped going to church these days.

11.

22 November 07
At the Petersgate Board Meeting, three of us owned up to travels for extended periods in 2008. The similarities are interesting: we are in our age range 55-65. Children left home now. Career change. Time for the OE we did not have when we were our children's age. Time to rethink life's direction. Long held dreams able to come true because of financial position.

12.

30 November 07
Relativism is often seen as "anything goes". But what if it's relational, diverse holding to the place we have come to and the conversation is about the place, but just as importantly, the journey. As Pauline (above) acknowledged in our conversation, she is a person of her upbringing. The opportunity of today's world is the increased horizons for meaningful search and discovery that now exist through being part of a global and www community. Such diverse horizons may frighten some, and excite others. I get excited by them.
I have a Japanese son-in-law. A few years ago we took him to Shanty Town on the West Coast. In the village is a church. I went in ahead of Masahiro and did not know he was behind me. I walked slowly up the aisle towards the altar of this old Anglican church. I was startled to hear three claps, coming from behind me, measured with impeccable timing, regular gaps between them. It was Masahiro, doing what he would normally do as he approached a Shinto shrine in Japan. Three claps to wake the God, to let whichever God is present at the shrine know you are there.
Similarly, one Sunday in the St Albans Parish, an old Japanese woman came to church. She sat through the whole service, and afterwards told me she had just moved into a house 4 doors away. "I am a Buddhist" she said. "Do you mind if I worship with your people?" I had no objection. The next Sunday, she approached me to tell me she had been in touch with her priest in Osaka who was very happy for her to worship in a Christian space. Later again she said to me, "I like the sacred space you have here. But do you know how strange it is to find people worshipping and doing the same thing at the same time?"

13.

"Follow me, Vicar, from Drudgery to Red Zone": Column published in Sunday Star Times December 9 2007. By Jeremy Clarkson.

"I sometimes wonder what I've done already for the last time. ... It always fills me with great sadness and a resolve that I must never, ever, allow myself to be bored. Life is too short, and my time left too precious.
This is why I shall not be going to church any more. I've never been a fan of the baby Jesus, but now, as the summer of middle age begins to fade and small walls become too big, I can no longer tolerate the interminable hymns and the dreary psalms and the saccharine lectures on peace and imperialism and recycling from beardy in the pulpit.
In the past I could sit on my hands and bite my tongue and count the seconds, knowing that soon I'd be released into the fresh air. But today I just don't have the time to waste and I'm filled with a sometimes uncontrollable urge to throttle the vicar, goose the organist and make a break for freedom through the vestry." ... "Me? Well, since I believe you should live life and not spend half of it in church, preparing for death, I'd take the Mazda, warts beeps and all, every time."

14.

By Ecumenical News International
10 Dec 2007
Rupert Murdoch's global media organization News Corporation has announced it has acquired Beliefnet, said to be the largest faith and spirituality information site on the World Wide Web, for an undisclosed sum - writes Cheryl Heckler.
"Beliefnet has garnered respect for its commitment to quality, editorial strength and unbiased approach to faith and spirituality from a broad range of consumers, religious and political leaders, journalists and advertisers," said Dan Fawcett, president of Fox Digital Media, part of News Corporation, in a 4 December 2007 statement announcing the acquisition.
He said Fox wants to "leverage these characteristics across a broader media canvas" and "enhance an already terrific product in a rapidly growing market".
Beliefnet will become part of Fox Digital Media, in a move that further expands News Corporation's Internet holdings.
"Rarely has religion been more prominent in the media than today, and News Corp's interest in Beliefnet, thought to be a good advertising revenue generator, indicates how seriously this is all being taken," wrote Ruth Gledhill, religion correspondent for the News Corporation-owned Times of London, on her online blog Articles of faith <http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/>
Founded in 1999, Beliefnet claims 3 million users each month. Its aim is to "help people find and walk a spiritual path that instils comfort, hope, clarity, strength and happiness for people who are exploring their own faith or curious about other spiritual traditions".
More than 82 million Americans and 64 percent of all Internet users search the Web for faith-related information, according to The Pew Internet Project.
Rupert Murdoch buys into online religion <http://ekklesia.co.uk/node/6446>

15.

Website launched to compare Qu'ran and Bible
By staff writers 7 Dec 2007

In a move believed to be the first of its kind, Dutch broadcasting companies Radio Netherlands Worldwide and IKON in Hilversum yesterday launched the integral texts of the Bible and the Qu'ran alongside each other on one website.
The site appears in Dutch, English and Arabic at the same time.
The objective of the site is to build a bridge between Muslims and Christians.
The website makes it possible for anyone to access the two books anonymously.
A universal search function makes it possible to search the texts using any word and to compare them. The site shows the frequency of the word in each of the books and also displays all relevant parts of the text.
The results are surprising. A word such as 'virgin' for example appears 16 times in the Bible compared to twice in the Qu'ran.
To help visitors in their search through the voluminous books, the site contains a selection of eighteen similar stories, in both the Qu'ran and the Bible.
Website launched to compare Qu'ran and Bible <http://ekklesia.co.uk/node/6440>

16.

Our ongoing phone survey of Internet users suggests there is a healthy audience for religious and spiritual material online. Some 21% of Internet users, between 19 million and 20 million people, have looked for religious or spiritual information online. This makes the search for religious material a more popular feature on the Internet than the performance of online banking (which has been done by 18% of Internet users), participation in online auctions (which has been done by 15% of Internet users), and the use of online dating services (which has been done by 9% of Internet users). More than two million American Internet users are seeking religious or spiritual material on any given day.
<http://www.pewinternet.org/~/media/Files/Reports/2000/PIP_Religion_Report.pdf.pdf>

17.

Nearly two-thirds of online Americans use the Internet for faith-related reasons. The 64% of Internet users who perform spiritual and religious activities online represent nearly 82 million Americans. Among the most popular and important spiritually-related online activities measured in a new national survey: 38% of the nation's 128 million Internet users have sent and received email with spiritual content; 35% have sent or received online greeting cards related to religious holidays; 32% have gone online to read news accounts of religious events and affairs; 21% have sought information about how to celebrate religious holidays; 17% have looked for information about where they could attend religious services; 7% have made or responded to online prayer requests; and 7% have made donations to religious organizations or charities.

The survey provides clear evidence that the majority of the online faithful are there for personal spiritual reasons, including seeking outside their own traditions, but they are also deeply grounded in those traditions, and this Internet activity supplements their ties to traditional institutions, rather than moving them away from church. Higher percentages of the online faithful report online activities related to personal spirituality and religiosity than activities more related to involvement in traditional religious functions or organizations. This is interesting because many analysts have assumed that the Internet would make it more likely for people to leave churches in favor of more flexible online options for religious or spiritual activity. Faith-related activity online is a supplement to, rather than a substitute for offline religious life. The survey found that two-thirds of those who attend religious services weekly use the Internet for personal religious or spiritual purposes. They are more likely to be women, white, middle aged, college educated, and relatively well-to-do. In addition, they are somewhat more active as Internet users than the rest of the Internet population.
Faith Online <http://pewinternet.org/PPF/r/126/report_display.asp>

18.

" 'The family of Sevenwaters is an ancient one, one of the oldest in this land,' said Father Brien. ... The coming of such as I, and our faith, may have changed things on the surface. But underneath, here and there, the magic runs as deep and as strong as in the days when the Fair Folk came out of the west. The threads of many beliefs can run side by side; from time to time they tangle, and mesh into a stronger rope.' "
Daughter of the Forest, Juliette Marillier, p 88.

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Different World Different Church

A "New Theology" study series based on the study booklet by Rev Dr Alan Webster.
Joint Upper Riccarton Methodist, and St Ninians Presbyterian Churches.
May/June 2007

To Read Dr Webster's text, follow the link to the Sea of Faith Website, thus:

An Alternative Vision Strategy <http://sof.wellington.net.nz/altvis.htm>

Photos from top: Don Cupitt, Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, Robert Funk, Richard Holloway, and Karen Armstrong

1. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR SESSION ONE
   "Does the Church need a new vision?" (p. 8):

   1. Are new images of God pressing upon us (p. 8). Is there one world or a good/bad split?
   2. Is the ancient belief in God as a separate being, outside of the world, useful to modern people? (p.8). Does this God run everything?
   3. Would a concept of one whole spiritual world be more valid than the traditional subservience to a supernatural power? (p. 9).
   4. What difference does it make to think of only one source of life? (p.11).
   5. Is a new vision needed to keep up with new knowledge? What is 'spirituality' for the modern concept of the 'integrated' life - world? (p. 11-12).

2. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR SESSION TWO
   'What are the Radical Theologians Saying?' (i) p. 13-22

   1. What does Cupitt mean by 'Secular Kingdom of God?' Are there better terms?
   2. Does it help our thinking about 'Easter' to speak as Borg does of the pre Easter and the post Easter experience of Jesus? What do you feel about Borg's 6 points about God (p. 14-16).
   3. What is the challenges of Crossan's view (p. 18-19) of the core of Jesus' impact being about 'The Kingdom of God' vs 'The Kingdom of Rome'
   4. What new meaning of the place of Jesus do we get from Funk? (p. 20-21).
   5. What is the core of Christianity according to Karen Armstrong? (p. 21-22).

3. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR SESSION THREE
   'What are the Radical Theologians Saying?' (ii) p. 23-30

   Search for Holloway's deep insights.
   1. How does he argue that Christianity consists entirely in the practice of compassion? There are 4 key parts of this argument. Why not just faith? (p. 23).
   2. How does he argue that 'doing theology' is about being effectively, actively compassionate? (p. 22-24).
   3. How do Bible understanding, orthopraxis, practical action, forgiveness and a theology of life mesh together? (p. 25)
   4. What is the key argument in Spong that Christianity must reform or die? See prayer (p.26), the new ecclesia (p.27), end of supernaturalism (p. 27,28), Spong's new ecclesia (p. 27), the Christian myth (p.29), Full humanity in Jesus (p.29).

4. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR SESSION FOUR
   Shared Vision of the Radicals' Five Vision Directions; and
   'What would a mission of the historical Jesus look like?'

   
   
   

   We put the concepts of the radical theologians together to make up a shared vision. If the summary of the seven 'contributors' and my integration of them is valid the resulting shared vision can be expected to demand a radical reform of Christianity as we know it. It attempts to be intellectually honest.
   1. Must Christianity be radical? (p.31).
   2. Are the creative understandings in p. 31-33 a credible picture of the new thinking needed?
   * Specifically are the ideas on p. 33 (God, Ethical Kingdom, the human illness, the God ecology, authority, literalism, God in everything).
   * And the further concepts: holistic spirituality, salvation as world making, Jesus in a different role in a this worldly drama, a new ecclesia that expresses the domain of God)
   All together a convincing picture of a life faith?
   3. Does the historical Jesus (p. 41-46) convey a mission that is transformative and liberating indeed a real promise of the risen life?
   

For further articles by Richard Holloway, see

Articles by Richard Holloway <http://homepages.which.net/~radical.faith/holloway/index.htm>

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