Traveling in Place

How Millennials Could Influence American Christianity

While few of us noticed, a significant cultural shift took place in the last decade among young adults in the U.S. They appear to be the first American generation since Henry Ford’s Model T not to be in love with cars. The average age for attaining a drivers’ license keeps increasing, and a growing number of young adults opt to live in cities large enough to provide good public transportation, making cars unnecessary. Even where bus lines leave something to be desired, walking, skating, and biking are becoming the preferred modes of inner-city commuting for those under the age of 30.

This is not good news for the automobile industry, which is having a heck of a time figuring out how to market to young people. But the change in attitude towards cars is part of a larger paradigm shift. A major study at Northwestern University in Chicago that was recently reported on Youthradio.org and National Public Radio has concluded that so-called “millennials” (the generation born between 1982 and 2004) have pretty much ditched the value of “ownership” in favor of “experience.” Jill Hennessy of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern says that while most millennials want to own a car, it’s not as high on their list as a smartphone, and many of them will ask, “Do I really need one?” rather than regard having wheels as a right of passage. “They are much more likely to find value in experiences than they are to find value in things,” Hennessy says.

This shift is partly driven by the economy. Millennials have come of age during the Great Recession. Jobs are scarce for recent college graduates, and all indications are that, aggregately, these young people will be the first generation since the Depression not to do as well economically as their parents. So they have been forced to think more carefully than past generations about big-ticket purchases.

I suspect, though, that something more important is at work. Instead of buying clothes or nice furniture (let alone a house), millennials are more likely to spend their money on eating out, going to movies, attending concerts, or traveling with their friends. “Experiences” usually involve other people, even if it’s just hanging out at somebody’s apartment. This is consistent with a wider spiritual trend that cultural observers have been tracking for some time. The “Spiritual But Not Religious” category of Americans is overwhelmingly young. Generally speaking, they rank relationships above beliefs; spiritual experience above moral codes. For this reason, they are abandoning all types of churches, which they regard as too focused on the latter and too little concerned about the former.

A Word About God

Lately, I’ve been hearing the word “theology” used outside of church and academia. It’s been cropping up in the news media. When I first heard it, I was intrigued. But as I listened more closely, I realized that this old word from early Christianity has been emptied of much of its original meaning and has become shorthand for “deeply held belief” or “uncompromising ideology.” Thus, a reporter might talk about how defunding Obamacare has become “theology” in the Republican Party, or how certain social issues have risen to the level of “theology” for younger voters.

Since theology has fallen so far out of popular usage that it can now be redefined without giving offense to hardly anyone, I’d like to clarify its true meaning.  The word springs from the first chapter of the Gospel of John, which tells us that the “word” (logos) was with God (theos), and was God, and became flesh and lived among us.

In the second century, Justin Martyr sought to communicate Christianity to the Greek-speaking world by using the term logos, which for the Greeks referred to the source of all wisdom and reason.  Justin’s basic message, quoting John 1, was this: that which you seek to attain through your philosophies – your pursuit of the logos – has been made flesh in Christ. Then, in the third century, Origen wrote On First Principles, the first attempt to sum up Christian belief. The field of theology was born.

Other religions might offer their “theologies,” but the field of theology springs from the Christian tradition. Theology (theo-logos) is literally a “word about God.”  It is the effort through the centuries to speak in a coherent, meaningful way about God. For Christians, it is an effort to speak meaningfully about how God has been revealed to us through Jesus Christ, the word made flesh.

Over time, theology became an abstract subject considered too intellectual for most people to engage, suitable only for universities, seminaries, and divinity schools, but not for local churches. This is unfortunate. Speaking in a coherent way about God should not be something we wait for seminary professors to do. 1 Peter 3:15 tells us we should always be ready to give a testimony of our faith. In other words, we need to give thought to what we believe so we can express our faith to others. That’s theology.

What do you believe about God? If you’re not sure, consider how you pray. How do you imagine God when you are praying? What adjectives would you use to describe God?  What stories would you tell from your own life experience as illustrations of how you understand God?

These are not unimportant questions. How you understand God directly affects how you understand other people, the world, and yourself. Your theology, whether it is haphazard, fuzzy, or well-conceived, is the source of your most deeply-held beliefs. For that reason alone, theology cannot be the sole purview of religious academia. Nothing is more basic to a life of faith, more personal, or more critical for how we relate to the world than our experiences of God. When you take the time to consider those experiences and how scripture, church, nature, music, personal relationships, or anything else has shaped your understanding of God, you’re engaging in theology.

So – what’s your word about God?

Copyright 2013 by J. Mark Lawson

Violence Begets More Violence

In Egypt, today is being haled as the “day of rage.” Backers of deposed President Mohamed Morsi are retaliating en masse for the military’s violent crackdown of their protests yesterday, when nearly 600 people were killed and another 4,000 wounded as soldiers opened fire on sit-ins in Cairo. But for Egyptian Christians, the “day of rage” was yesterday, when churches, Christian schools, bookstores and homes were burned all across the country. Local television is attributing these attacks to pro-Morsi supporters.

One voice of reason in the midst of Egypt’s conflagration comes from Mohammed ElBaradei, who resigned as interim Vice President in protest of the military’s crackdown.  Saying did not want to be responsible for a single drop of blood, he warned that “violence only breeds more violence...The only ones who benefit from today’s events are the terrorists and the anarchists and the extremists.”

The truth of ElBaradei’s words is particularly well illustrated by the violence against Christians. These innocent bystanders in the clashes between pro- and anti-Morsi factions have become scapegoats. They are the victims of blind rage that has now exceeded the bounds of any logic, any coherent strategy. They suffer violence for its own sake.

Observers around the world are making all sorts of armchair judgments about Egypt’s youth, its military, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Much less attention is being given to Egypt’s Christians, who stand alone as the only faction unwilling to return violence for violence. Even now, they exercise tremendous restraint. Above all else, they advocate for peace, as they have consistently throughout Egypt’s rocky transition since the deposition of dictator Hosni Mubarek. In fact, Christians throughout the Middle East are known for their dogged commitment to peace. They stand in the breach between hostile factions in Israel, Syria, and other hotspots. For their refusal to commit violence, even in self-defense, they are often the subjects of contempt. Why don’t they fight back? The Christian answer is very simple. “Violence only breeds more violence.” They didn’t get this idea from Mohammed ElBaradei. They learned it from the New Testament. They serve the Prince of Peace who refused to take up a sword even to save his own life.

The earliest followers of Jesus experienced numerous outbreaks of popular and state-sponsored persecution over a period of roughly 250 years. They never retaliated. In fact, one reason they were persecuted by the Roman Empire was because they refused to take up arms for any reason. And yet, when Rome crumbled under its own weight, unable to fight off the Germanic hordes invading from the north, the only institution left standing to rebuild civilization was the church.

In the modern age, the Christian commitment to peace in the form of non-violent protest helped to topple European dictatorships, dismantle South African Apartheid, and end slavery and racial segregation in the United States. Today, in countries around the world where Christians constitute a religious minority, they are perhaps best known as advocates for and practitioners of peace – as people who refuse to add to the world’s violence, no matter what the cost.

It makes you wonder. What are we Christians best known for here in the United States?

Copyright 2013 by J. Mark Lawson

Equal but Subservient?

As I was driving home from Connecticut last week, I hit the “seek” button on the car radio. There wasn’t much to listen to in that rural part of the state. The digital frequency numbers cycled rapidly before stopping on a Christian station that was broadcasting a recording of a Sunday morning sermon. The voice of the preacher sounded familiar. It didn’t take long for me to identify him from my Southern Baptist days. He was pastor of a prominent church in a major Southern city for 33 years, and then was named pastor emeritus. Under his masterful leadership, the church grew and grew and grew until it became one of America’s first “megachurches.” Its sprawling campus features a hulking sanctuary with a tall steeple and is prominently visible from the major east-west artery passing through the suburbs east of the city.

This preacher is one of those highly gifted speakers with a low resonant voice that booms even when he’s whispering. He never yells. He’s not a “fire-and-brimstone” preacher. He makes the most of the microphone to amplify his voice so that he can speak in soothing mellifluous tones as if he were sitting on a couch having a personal conversation with every member of his congregation.

His identity is not important. It’s what I heard him say and how he said it that kept me from hitting the “seek” button again.

He was quoting Galatians 3:28: “In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.” He went on to speak elegantly about how all of us are equal in the eyes of God. This was intriguing to me, because back in the 1980’s, he had been a bulldog in the fight to keep women out of pastoral ministry and in subservient roles at home. Had he mellowed – even changed his mind – in his old age? I listened with interest to see where he was headed.

Showing the Way

Last week I was up in the mountains with my son Nathaniel. This week, I was at sea level on the New England coast with my son Alex, who spends his summers working at “Mystic Seaport,” the living maritime museum in Connecticut. We visited lighthouses in Connecticut and Rhode Island and meandered along beautiful shoreline. 

My favorite spot was Watch Hill, located south of Westerly, Rhode Island. The Watch Hill lighthouse sits on a point that juts out between two beaches – one facing east into the Atlantic, the other on the long, curling Napatree peninsula that reaches toward Block Island and the tip of Long Island. The coastal terrain alternates between huge rocks and sand. All of it is beautiful.

Not surprisingly, Watch Hill has developed into a very exclusive resort community. The neighborhoods nearest the shoreline are filled with mansions. There are no chain hotels, only top-dollar inns and condominiums. All street parking is limited to two hours, and a flashing sign near the entrance to the village announces that parking rules are STRICTLY ENFORCED. Signs everywhere warn tourists not to trespass on private property. In fact, if you didn’t know better, you would think that only residents and hotel guests had any access to the lighthouse or the beaches.

Fortunately, Alex and I did know better.