Youth Ministry in Modern America: 1930 to the Present (review)

Youth Ministry in Modern America: 1930 to the Present. By Jon Pahl. (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers. 2000. Pp. xvi, 248. $16.95 paperback.)

The Lutheran theologian and church historian Jon Pahl, associate professor of American Religious History at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, is an exemplar among the small-but-growing-number of scholars seriously examining the role of youth culture within twentieth-century American religion. He is the author of a masterful centennial history of the Lutherans' late Walther League, Hopes and Dreams of All: The International Walther League and Lutheran Youth in American Culture, 1893-1993 (Wheat Ridge, 1993). A labor of love published by a Chicago-based Lutheran social ministry, it was deserving of the wider platform which a quality university press could have provided.

Pahl's new book, Youth Ministry in Modern America: 1930 to the Present, grew out of an assignment for a Lilly Endowment-funded project on spiritual formation in modern America. Contrary to the implications of its comprehensive title, however, the book is in no sense a thoroughgoing history of youth ministry in the American church, but rather an extended historical essay infused with generous helpings of theological discussion. Pahl examines the evolution of youth ministry within four streams of American Christianity--mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic, evangelical, and African-American Protestant--by looking at, respectively, the Walther League, the Young Catholic Workers (YCW), Youth for Christ (YFC), and congregational youth ministries within various black Protestant traditions. In Pahl's analysis the story of these traditions' varied approaches to the problems of adolescent identity and the riddle of youth culture reflects a gradual move away from "purity" (defined as attempts to shelter youth from meaningful engagement with cultural problems and certain "adult" roles and behaviors) toward "practice" (defined as churches' engaging teens in active "experiments and risks" with adult roles and responsibilities). Those who accommodated this process--in this telling, YFC and African-American Protestants--prospered and survived. Those who did not, such as the Walther League--which fell prey to haggling over Sixties-style culture and politics--and the YCW--victims of a growing bureaucratization and emphasis on study--shriveled and died.

As it stands, Youth Ministry in Modern America is a volume which would be a beneficial read for academics as well as seminarians, theologians, and pastoral staff who are interested in the direction and nature of contemporary youth ministry. That said, from a scholar's angle, its methodology, and aspects of its historical and cultural analysis are ultimately disappointing. In terms of approach, Pahl's selection of the YCW--a tiny operation as compared to the Catholic Youth Organization--is a puzzling choice, given its unrepresentative reflection of the (much) larger Catholic scene. One would logically expect that Catholic youth ministry would be judged by a more representative expression likened to what Pahl did in his treatment of the Lutherans and evangelicals. Another, different, inconsistency is reflected in Pahl's analysis of youth programs in African-American Protestant congregations. While the other groups are treated with a discerning historical and cultural treatment, Pahl's treatment of a few black churches' youth ministries tends toward an anthropological mix of interviews, field visits, and anecdotes which produce the predictably uncritical reportage of a sympathetic white academic. Even if Pahl's presentation of these thriving, activist African-American churches' approach to their youth is right on target, it is so selective as to offer little compelling evidence of broader historic trends, successes, and failures of the mass of black congregations' dealings with their young people.

Still, Youth Ministry in Modern America is a book that anyone interested in this topic will want to read. Toward the end of the book (p. 149) Pahl notes that he is in the midst of writing a larger, more thorough analysis of the role which America's religious youth played in re-shaping American culture in the twentieth century and...