Category Archives: Uncategorized

Losing My Religion: Generation Ex-Christian

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Drew Dyck is the author of Generation X-Christian. He was interviewed a month ago on Patheos. I skimmed it and marked it for later reading and finally got around to looking at it again. His analysis is on target:

There are three things that make this generation different. First, young adults today are dropping religion at a greater rate than young adults of yesteryear, “five to six times the historic rate,” according to sociologists David Putnam and Robert Campbell. Second, young adulthood is not what it used to be—it’s much longer. Marriage, career, children—the primary sociological forces that drive adults back to religious commitment—are now delayed until the late 20s, even into the 30s. Returning to the fold after a two- or three-year hiatus is one thing. Coming back after more than a decade is considerably more unlikely. Third, there’s been a shift in the culture. Past generations may have rebelled for a season, but they still inhabited a predominantly Judeo-Christian culture. For those reared in pluralistic, post-Christian America, the cultural gravity that has pulled previous generations back to the faith has weakened. So I’m not banking on an automatic return. I think it’s a scandal that these young adults are adrift spiritually and missing from our churches.

Nicole Havelka says much the same. The idea that young people will return to regular church-going when they get married and have children is probably a relic of an early generation when such things did happen, even among baby-boomers. We now live in a post-Christian culture in many respects, and churches cannot have the power to attract young people who were never members or participants in the first place.

Havelka writes:

We should acknowledge that young adults are not going to return to church (or visit for the first time) without some effort on the part of our local churches. We can offer substantive programs to help young families and single adults form their new adult faith. We can reach out to college students. We can be sensitive to the needs of our communities and tailor our ministries to meet those needs.

 

Encounters with homelessness

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Working at Grace Church means that homelessness is always at the forefront of my consciousness and my ministry. When I arrive in the morning, whenever I leave, during the day or at the end of the day, I encounter homeless people lingering on the streets around the church. It’s fairly easy to pass them by with a nod or a “Good Morning” but it’s just as likely that we will engage in a conversation or that I will be asked for help.

I was asked this week about whether that constant presence and the repeated requests for assistance have made me more callous to the reality of the need I encounter each day. I don’t know. I have heard many stories of distress and hardship and I often jokingly say, “and some of what I’ve heard is true.” We do put up barriers to the depth of the pain and suffering, and as individuals and as agencies, we also set limits to what we can do. Survival requires such measures.

Still, an encounter or a series of encounters can be profoundly unsettling. The desire to help can overwhelm and the reality that whatever we can do–a meal–will not solve the problems.

In the past few days, I’ve read two powerful essays written by people who work with homeless people. Amy Scheer shares her experience working in a women’s shelter, dealing with the needs of women and the necessity of rules to maintain order. How can she offer what little food they have to a pregnant woman without causing conflict with the other women who might be as hungry as she?

James Lang reflects in America on his experience volunteering through his parish with the Interfaith Hospitality Network:

To me, homelessness would mean one more faceless man asking for change on a street corner were it not for those nights I spent (not) sleeping in the parish center; it would mean an article on page four of the daily newspaper; it would mean a pleasant argument about politics with my friends, sitting at a party over drinks and appetizers. As a result of those nights, however, homelessness now means a 5-year-old girl with a ponytail and missing front teeth, knocking on my door at 6:30 a.m. and pulling a fairy wand out of a box of toys someone had donated. Because of those nights, homelessness has a face; homelessness has entered my life.

 

The Gathering at Assisi

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Francis X. Clooney, SJ on the meeting. Austin Ivereigh wrote a series of posts on the inter-religious gathering at America’s In all Things blog.

Benedict’s speech is here. As Clooney writes, Benedict is insistent that in spite of the use of religious language and motivation to support and rationalize violence, especially terrorism, religion is a force for peace. Benedict said,

The fact that, in the case we are considering here, religion really does motivate violence should be profoundly disturbing to us as religious persons. In a way that is more subtle but no less cruel, we also see religion as the cause of violence when force is used by the defenders of one religion against others.

These are important words given the tendency by adherents of many religions, Christians, Muslims, Jews, among them, to deny their religion’s complicity in violence.

Perhaps most interesting was the inclusion in this third Assisi meeting of nonbelievers, agnostics. Benedict said of their presence:

In addition to the two phenomena of religion and anti-religion, a further basic orientation is found in the growing world of agnosticism: people to whom the gift of faith has not been given, but who are nevertheless on the lookout for truth, searching for God. Such people do not simply assert: “There is no God”. They suffer from his absence and yet are inwardly making their way towards him, inasmuch as they seek truth and goodness. They are “pilgrims of truth, pilgrims of peace”. They ask questions of both sides. They take away from militant atheists the false certainty by which these claim to know that there is no God and they invite them to leave polemics aside and to become seekers who do not give up hope in the existence of truth and in the possibility and necessity of living by it. But they also challenge the followers of religions not to consider God as their own property, as if he belonged to them, in such a way that they feel vindicated in using force against others. These people are seeking the truth, they are seeking the true God, whose image is frequently concealed in the religions because of the ways in which they are often practised. Their inability to find God is partly the responsibility of believers with a limited or even falsified image of God. So all their struggling and questioning is in part an appeal to believers to purify their faith, so that God, the true God, becomes accessible.

Clooney raises several questions about the meeting. First, he is critical that the group did not pray together in any way. As he writes:

as spiritual seekers will also insist, the path cannot be traveled if praying-together be entirely ruled out (as seems to have been the case in Assisi 2011). Our crises are spiritual as well as intellectual, and even on intellectual grounds, deeper truths can sometimes be glimpsed only through spiritual windows, when they are open. How we can best pray together across religious borders – differently with different believers, one might guess – is open to study and discernment, but the answer is not “pray by yourself.” It is not enough to take the train together (from Rome to Assisi) or to give or listen to speeches in the same place. Pray together we must.

Vatican Issues Major Document on Global Financial Reform

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America Magazine Vatican Issues Major Document on Global Financial Reform.

A Vatican document called for the gradual creation of a “world political authority” with broad powers to regulate financial markets and rein in the “inequalities and distortions of capitalist development.” The document said the current global financial crisis has revealed “selfishness, collective greed and the hoarding of goods on a great scale.” A supranational authority, it said, is needed to place the common good at the center of international economic activity.

The full document is here.

The latest on St. Francis House

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It has been a month since the Common Council approved the development proposal for the St. Francis House property at 1001 University Ave. The deadline for appealing the council’s decision ran out today.

After taking a little time to catch our breath (and for me to catch up on my sleep—I doubt I had been up that late two consecutive nights since my 20s) the developers have begun moving quickly to begin demolition and site preparation. They hope to begin work on January 1. What that means for the Board of St. Francis House and campus ministry at the University of Wisconsin is that we have a lot of work to do, from vacating the premises to planning for ministry during the year and half of construction.

The students who had contracted to live in the house during the 2011-2012 academic year were provided alternative accommodations in a rental property, but there are offices and furnishings to move, among many other things. The board also had to consider what the ministry would look like during the interim.  At our meeting in early October, we decided to move forward in seeking to hire a full-time chaplain who would begin work at the first of the year and would shepherd the community and the development through this period. Having a chaplain on staff now will also provide an opportunity for careful thought and planning about the future of the ministry.

After consultation with the wardens and vestry, Grace Church will offer space to the part-time administrative assistant and the full-time chaplain beginning in the New Year. We currently have a vacant office in the office suite and other under-utilized space that could be adapted for the administrator. This is an exciting opportunity for us to build relationships with the Episcopal Campus Ministry and to explore ways in which we might reach out more effectively to the students who live in our immediate neighborhood, many of whom attend our services. While the precise shape of the St. Francis House ministry at Grace will await the arrival of a new chaplain, it is likely that it will look very much like it does now: a weekly Sunday evening service with a meal of some sort, and other offerings during the week, the latter probably on campus.

These plans are tentative and may undergo considerable change in the coming months as a new chaplain shapes the ministry in keeping with his/her vision of the future. I hope you will join me in welcoming St. Francis House to Grace in the New Year and participate in the conversations about the future of its ministry and our cooperative efforts to reach out to students and young adults in Madison.

Meanwhile, other development proposals in Madison continue to be controversial. The Edgewater returned to the news this week with a lengthy article exploring the process leading up to that development’s approval.

Witness to history: The ordination of Scott Anderson

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And a little bit of a participant, too.

Scott Anderson’s ordination took place on a glorious fall day in Madison. It’s warm and sunny, and the leaves are reaching the peak of fall color. On the street corner opposite Covenant Presbyterian Church, a small group of protestors led by people from Westboro Baptist Church, held their signs denouncing the ordination of LGBT people. Opposite them stood a larger group protesting the protestors. There were TV news trucks on the street as well.

Inside, there was joy, thanksgiving, and celebration. There was also acknowledgement that this event was not being celebrated by all Christians, or all Presbyterians, that there is division, and hurt.

As I sat there, I thought of all of those, including Scott, who have struggled over the last decades, people whose callings were denied; clergy who were forced to live a lie, and many who still do. I thought of the gay clergy I’ve known, those who have been able to serve openly and those who have not. I thought of all of those who have struggled in the ordination process with their sexuality and were not able to answer God’s call.

Perhaps the most poignant moment came when Scott received back the stole that had been given him by his first congregation, made by Hmong members of that congregation. It was a stole he sent to the “Shower of Stoles” project, a spontaneous effort begun when one Presbyterian minister was forced to give up her ordination. The stoles represent LGBT clergy or lay persons who have not been able to live out their call in the church. Now there are more than 1100 stoles in the project, but Scott’s is the first to return to its first owner. It’s a remarkable story. Scott is a remarkable man, full of love, grace, and humility.

At the moment of ordination, all clergy and elders were invited to come forward for the laying on of hands. It was a powerful moment. Sharing in the gift of the Holy Spirit, sharing in this historic ordination, the hands that reached out to touch the shoulders of the person in front of us, were also reaching out to heal a broken world, and a broken church. As we stood and prayed, I caught a glimpse of the congregation. It seemed like almost all of the pews were empty. Clergy from all over the country, from many denominations, participated in this laying on of hands.

As  I sat, I wondered when I would be sitting in a parish of the Episcopal Diocese of Milwaukee, participating in the ordination of a LGBT person to the diaconate or priesthood. I pray for that day.

The ordination of Scott Anderson

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On Saturday, October 8, Scott Anderson will be ordained to the ministry by the John Knox Presbytery of the PCUSA at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Madison, WI. I will be attending. So, too, apparently, will protestors from Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church. Here’s the article.

It’s already something of a media circus but I’ve been in touch with Scott and with the interim pastor of Covenant and they seem to be handling everything with grace. Keep them in your prayers.

A profile of Scott from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

I will post my reflections on Saturday.

Forgiveness in Action

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October 2 was the fifth anniversary of the shocking killings at an Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster County, PA. It wasn’t only the violence that shocked the community and the nation; it was also the immediate response to the shooter’s family by the Amish community. Five years later, those acts of forgiveness continue to inspire.

Here’s a story about the mother of the shooter, who now visits a paralyzed survivor on a weekly basis.

An article from a Mennonite publication on a recent conference that looked back on the event and sought to draw some larger lessons. Don Kraybill, sociologist called the way in which the Amish drew together to help the Roberts family “a moral barnraising.”

It’s a remarkable story, made more remarkable by the almost immediate response by the Amish community to the tragedy. Within hours, Amish neighbors were in the homes of Roberts’ parents, offering them prayers, consolation, and love. The human propensity is to lash out violently when such violence is done; and often the desire for revenge persists indefinitely. But here, healing has taken place; new relationships have been forged, and new hope as well.

There may be few better examples in our culture of people putting the words of Jesus into action.