Finding Faith: The Spiritual Quest of the Post-Boomer Generation

Preface

vii Preface This book began life several years ago in a conversation we had about a potential follow-up project to our GenX Religion book, based on our observations of many young Christians we knew who were giving up on the relatively sterile, rationalist Protestant worship they were experiencing in their churches. In this, we saw them making what to us was a fairly radical switch from, say, a Presbyterian church or a Baptist church to a Catholic, Episcopal, or Orthodox church for, among other reasons , the full-bodied experience of a worship service in one of these traditions. The radical thing to us was that they could make that switch given the different conceptions of theology, including such strange—at least to Protestants—practices as venerating the saints, praying to Mary, or kissing the garments of the priest. When we started asking questions of these young adults, we found that they were much more interested in what we have come to call the “embodied spirituality” inherent in these traditions, where, as one person told us, participating in the different elements of the liturgy is like “being in the orchestra instead of watching a performance.” We initially conceived of the project as “the recovery of ritual ,” where we saw the central piece of what we were trying to figure out being the attraction of the embodied and ritualistic aspects of these traditions. However, as we started visiting different churches and interviewing different Post-Boomers, we quickly discovered that there was much more going on than just a “recovery of ritual” in ancient Christian traditions. There was Prelims.qxd 11/13/07 8:44 AM Page vii also the invention, importation, and adaptation of ritualistic elements into churches that had never included such elements in their worship services before, and a new emphasis on living out, or embodying, their faith commitments back into the larger community and not being content to simply stay within their religious communities pursuing an individualistic spiritual quest. As well, we found a backlash movement that has organized to counter these different types of developments within Christianity, which in itself let us know that we were really on to something, in that if a reactionary movement of sorts—a term that one of their number proudly uses to describe their efforts— had already organized against what we were barely becoming aware of, there must be something significant developing. We now believe that we are witnessing another potential revolution in how Christians worship and associate with each other. While the masses are still lining up to enter mega churches that are distinguished by boring architecture, casually dressed clergy, and pop Christian music, the “Post-Boomer” generation—those young people ranging in age from their twenties to their forties—is having second thoughts. Increasingly, they want a worship space that is aesthetically rich, participative, and relatively intimate—a place where one can actually experience community rather than be entertained. A lot has happened in the last decade since commentators such as Donald Miller (1997) started noticing a new style of Christianity being birthed in the United States. Now almost everyone has access to the Internet, no one younger than thirty buys a camera that uses film, and music is stored on tiny wafers that hold thousands of songs. But another thing occurred. This generation grew up with parents who were seldom home. These kids had to raise themselves, and often in chaotic circumstances. Today they don’t want to be stimulated so much as loved. Living without structure is pretty empty after a while, which is prompting at least a few members of this generation to experiment with a Preface viii Prelims.qxd 11/13/07 8:44 AM Page viii new take on God, the appropriation of tradition, and beliefs that are preceded by practice—yes ritual—which, of course, their parents thought was only for premodern cultural illiterates. This postmodern generation is not coming to religion by way of rational proofs and argumentation. They are spiritual beings who are seeking aesthetically rich experiential forms to give definition to their lives. This book is actually the last installment of several different pieces of this project that we have made public. Of course, we have followed the traditional academic path in some of what we have done by making conference presentations and publishing articles or chapters based on our findings. But less traditionally, at least for sociologists...