Category: DOC Thoughts
Decline . . .
I understand the concern. Declining participants in a corporate or consumer driven model smells like fatigue, out of date, need to upgrade, or flat out failure. Many Disciples of Christ congregations are a shadow of their numerical highs when Discipledom was expanding between 1972 and 1985. Context and culture matter, but in crisis mode those questions rarely are asked. Martin Marty offers some good thoughts from a Sightings email. If you are not on his email list, I suggest if for weekly reading.
MainlineDecline, Decline-Talk, and Decline-ism
by Martin E. Marty | Monday | July 22 2013Published in late 1959, my first book, The New Shape of American Religion, cited several mainstream commentators and spotted numerous trends to suggest that the then-much-noticed “revival of interest” in religion had crested in 1958. It’s bad manners for authors to cite their own writings, but… Religious institutions, e.g., in suburbia, were prospering, but the culture, ethos, and spirit of religion in America were changing. We did not speak of ‘Mainline Decline” in part because the “mainline” in America’s then-majority religion, “Protestantism,” did not yet have a name. But decline soon began, in “the Sixties,” observers observe.
I mention this after having reflected on “Mainline Decline” in a recent Christian Century blog-post. Today, one could speak of a virtual link between the two words, as in “Mainlinedecline.” Readers of Sightings can test this trend by using their search engines to confirm how headlines routinely refer to decline.
I played the game of typing “decline” alongside other entities. Thus: “declining Catholic” linked with “number of” “worshippers,” “priests,” “nuns,” “seminarians,” and “parishes.” “Declining Jewish” linked with “number of members” reveal statistics that make ‘Mainline’ or ‘Protestant’ or ‘Christian’ appear comparatively healthy.
We are only getting started: type “decline” and link it even to “Fundamentalist,” “Evangelical.” “African-American” or “Black,” “Suburban” or “Megachurch” or—be startled!—“Brazilian Catholicism.” We find “decline-talk” associated with almost every “institutional” (at least nominally) population cohort. Currently, “Latter-day Saints” or “Mormon” plus kinds of “Pentecostalism” are the only exceptions.
Why point out decline among the religions when Sightings’ role is to spot and explore religion in outstanding events? What goes on here with “decline?” A fad? Maybe “decline” is not occurring. This claim is hard to support. Maybe headline writers are concentrating on the wrong aspects of religion. Maybe they are exhibiting the old “be-the-first-kid-on-your-block” syndrome, seeking to be a jump ahead, to get a scoop. Maybe enemies of religious institutions of all sorts are enjoying mass Schadenfreude, enjoying the misfortunes of others. Whatever else is going on, noticing this phenomenon should be liberating: we are henceforth allowed to yawn when one more headline-writer tries to play catch-up.
I’ve been on this beat since the above-noticed year of 1958, and thus have been chronicling the ups and/or downs in religious participation and institutional life. Like others, I’ve seen good reason to prefix certain terms with “post-“ as in “post-Protestant,” “post-Christian” (not “post-religious,” however). The writers and doers that I respect ask what succeeds and replaces something like “the Mainline.”
Notice: millions of citizens are not “bowling alone,” (Robert Putnam’s appropriate analogy in his book, Bowling Alone), or being “spiritual” on their own, in splendid entrepreneurial isolation.
We observe them instead in tens of thousands of parishes and temples where, in difficult places and against cultural odds, old faithful and new faithful people pray, give for, and through, “institutional religion,” serve their God, serve others, and, yes, are interesting. They all notice that the needs they serve are not declining in numbers or weight, and they draw inspiration for that service from the resources of their particular faiths.
References:
Marty, Martin. “Rough Treatment.” The Christian Century, July 17, 2013. http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2013-07/rough-treatment.
Dickerson, John. “The Decline of Evangelical America,” The New York Times Sunday Review (The Opinion Pages), Dec. 15, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/opinion/sunday/the-decline-of-evangelical-america.html?pagewanted=all.
Wiener, Julie. “Study: Shul Affiliation Rising, but Jewish Population Declining,” The Jewish Federations of North America, Feb. 27, 2013. http://www.jewishfederations.org/page.aspx?id=29185.
Sullivan, Amy. “Pope Benedict and the Decline of American Catholicism,” National Journal, Feb. 11, 2013. Updated May 30, 2013. http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/pope-benedict-and-the-decline-of-american-catholicism-20130211.
Ram, Alessandra. “In Changing Neighborhoods, Black Churches Face an Identity Crisis.” The Atlantic, Oct. 12, 2012. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/10/in-changing-neighborhoods-black-churches-face-an-identity-crisis/263305/.
An Informative Balance as Our General Assembly Nears
First, a hat tip, to my friend Brandon for highlighting this piece by David Brooks in The New York Times. I like reading Brooks, but I’ve fallen out of my reading pattern this summer. Brooks calls this column, “The Secular Society,” a “book report” as he writes about Charles Taylor’s, A Secular Age. No doubt that there are some within my expression of Christian witness, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) that feel threatened by “secularism.” I am not one of them. I am old enough to remember “blue laws” that disallowed certain items to be bought at the grocery store on Sunday and I can remember when most stores were closed on Sunday. I can remember that little league was a week day summer activity and extra curricular sports in school stayed away from weekend practice. That was before soccer, youth sports traveling teams, and a generation of parents that use sports to keep their kids “out of trouble” or use sports as way to the economic easy life through their kids. Yes, that was an oversimplified judgement. My apologies. You may be wondering what does Brook’s column have to do with my practice of Christianity or my expression of Christian witness?
Orthodox believers now live with a different tension: how to combine the masterpieces of humanism with the central mysteries of their own faiths. This pluralism can produce fragmentations and shallow options, and Taylor can eviscerate them, but, over all, this secular age beats the conformity and stultification of the age of fundamentalism, and it allows for magnificent spiritual achievement.(1)
As my denomination gathers in Orlando at the end of this week our family of faith continues to try to make sense of how we will share table with each other as our own orthodox believers fight “secularism” and what some might call “theological impurity.” The liberals continue to wonder why our denomination is “blending in” to the Christian religious landscape of America rather than claim our historicity as “questioners,” our founders spirit of education, and an ecumenism that does not seek the lowest common denominator of faith. I think we are a denomination trying to figure out, some might say “discern,” what hospitality means at the table in the 21st century, and “who” or what constituency group gets to define what a Disciples identity of hospitality will mean in our culture. When you think through the ecumenical or Christian Unity movements I think one could argue that in our culture these have been a success. In our American context, a church is a church. Some meet in buildings and some store fronts. Some have traditional hymns and some have either professional bands or garage bands playing. Some have symbols that indicate something mysterious and important happens in that space and others look like concert venues or coffee bars. Some have seminary trained preachers or ministers and some are suspicious of persons with degrees from accredited institutions of higher education. Who speaks for generic Christianity in our culture? Is it people like Rick Warren, Pat Robertson, Creflo Dollar, Cardinal Dolen, or Brian McLaren? Is it institutions like ORU, Liberty, or Regent? Often, these persons or institutions are the face of Christianity in America and they represent an orthodox to fundamentalists perspective that is consumed as “normal” Christianity. It is a “rich” time to be a believer or a practitioner. I am much more concerned with one’s practice than their beliefs about Jesus, and for me, that is what hospitality is based in and upon.
The Secular Society
David Brooks | The New York Times | July 8, 2013Taylor’s investigation begins with this question: “Why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say 1500, in our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy but even inescapable?” That is, how did we move from the all encompassing sacred cosmos, to our current world in which faith is a choice, in which some people believe, others don’t and a lot are in the middle?
This story is usually told as a subtraction story. Science came into the picture, exposed the world for the way it really is and people started shedding the illusions of faith. Religious spirit gave way to scientific fact.
Taylor rejects this story. He sees secularization as, by and large, a mottled accomplishment, for both science and faith.
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Note
1. David Brooks, “The Secular Society,” The New York Times, July 8, 2013. (accessed July 9, 2013: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/opinion/brooks-the-secular-society.html?ref=opinion&_r=1&)