There are plenty of criticisms offered against today's American youth and young adults. And despite the fact that I turn 40 in a few weeks, I still consider myself among them: a kindred spirit of cultural orphans, still sifting through the detritus of an evaporating American Dream to figure out who we might be without it.
Alisa Harris' memoir, "Raised Right: How I Untangled My Faith from Politics," reflects on the apparent cultural, spiritual and economic desert time in which we find ourselves. We have witnessed the carnage of a financial system that was intended to perpetually buoy a nation, but whose "invisible hand" has instead crushed the dreams of millions. We've watched as the two-headed political serpent attacks itself until it is impotent. We've seen religious figures scandalize their institutions empty, as a generation walks away in search of something more relevant to their daily struggle.
One of the few common threads among us is our shared embrace of iconoclasm. While labeled as rebelliousness for the sake of itself by some, it's more a symptom of a culture whose intense self-awareness has yielded either jingoistic narcissism or resigned nihilism. And both sides are convinced the other is both void of heart and intent on their destruction.
Why do we shrug off labels? Each seems weighed down by its own repugnant sense of self-righteousness. Why do we step away from our parents' religious and political convictions? Because both have failed us, intent on self-sustenance before serving any greater purpose to better the human condition. Instead, we pick and choose from our daily experience as we find identities and causes that fit, not satisfied to permanently ally ourselves with any particular group, lest we get fooled once again into placing our trust in something that doesn't merit it.
Two quotes from Harris' book stood out to me as definitive of the postmodern Christian American. Both suggest a custom-tailored identity that older generations label as opportunistic, but which younger ones understand as our only option for survival. She describes her college friend as "cool in the 'Evangelical ex-homeschooler who quotes the Aneid in Latin while drinking whiskey and smoking a pipe' type of way." Such a combination of attributes betrays both a longing for grounding, while also seeking liberation from old expectations.
A second description of a friend from New York City points at why so many today struggle to find any group or label they consider palatable. Harris calls her friend "a fiscal Republican, a social Democrat, a pro-lifer who didn't believe in banning abortion, and a Christian who didn't think Jesus cared so much whether people were gay."
It's reasonable to see why those within the established systems claim we stand for nothing. On the contrary, the friction lies in the disconnect between what we do stand for and what the systems that have so long taken power for granted say we should believe.
It's no surprise we've walked away from traditional institutions in droves; we feel we owe them precisely what they've given us.
The redemption of such cultural ambiguity is that assumptions and stereotypes fall short more often than they apply, causing us to have to take people more at face value, discerning what they believe through face-to-face discourse. We crave more intimate, direct connection with one another because, in doing so, we hope to find out more about who we are as well.
It is here, as Harris points out, that real change takes place: where two or more are gathered. The talking points and ready-made labels fall short, giving way to a deeper concern for the humanity at the center of each life. The effect on her was that she "determined not to let dogma swallow up my personality and poison my sense of charity. I promised myself that I would remember that people are more important than clinging to beliefs."
Call it cynical, iconoclastic or even destructive to the fabric of society, but placing humanity above ideals seems the only hope we have for living out Christ's call to love one another as ourselves. In so much as politics and religion both have failed to yield the result they had promised, it's now up to us to plant new seeds, together, one at a time.
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A religion has a creed, a set of principles and 'rules', rites, codes. They are immutable. These seemingly innocuous, little details are the very reasons why people created schisms.
Thank you for your response. I can't help but note the usual dichotomy and juxtaposition of two philosophies in your comments.
The church can only be Biblical. It is like asking the Basketball League to allow the players to use beach balls because they are more pleasing and not as hard. It wouldn't be basketball anymore. The Bible has rules that you cannot change.
Second, Jesus was first and foremost Jewish; he obeyed the laws of Moses, etc. You cannot just take the very humanistic philosophy of Jesus and pluck it out of the overall context of the religion. Religion with its strict rules will not allow it.
So the only thing you can do is create a schism and leave to make up your own.
The REAL reason is that it's all CRAP.......sorry church people someone has to tell you the truth...you won't find the truth in a church.
Why not just appreciate the processes of math, time, circumstances and laws of physics?
Then they turned the altar around, threw away the Latin, brought in the guitars, and the priests started to spout off their political views and proclamations about moral issues that had for long been the domain of the individual's conscience. Now the church has so few followers that it is boarded up and being turned into a Target store.
Younger people (I'm 58 now) are leaving because since so many nuns left the teaching orders after centuries of being treated like indentured servants, it has grown more and more difficult to indoctrinate/brainwash young Catholics--especially young Catholic women. I have met several former Catholic women who told me that pretty much a girl had two choices when they were young: the religious life as a nun, or the "kinder, kuche, kirche" life of a Catholic housewife. I remember that era quite clearly and they are right.
People, especially young people are far less tractable than when I was growing up. They no longer follow a life path that others feel they should follow: religious life or married life producing more Catholic babies. They no longer feel they have to be Catholic (or any other religion) just because "someone says so". They want real answers and real reasons and if they aren't forthcoming, they feel free to go elsewhere to find them. This began when I was in my twenties and has increased over the years.
Young people are growing up with infinitely more access to information and knowledge than I had when young. They can see, especially now that the pedophilia scandal has finally broken, that the Emperor has no clothes. For centuries the Catholic Church could keep the sexual abuse of children under wraps. That has changed--victims are speaking out and suing the Church for its negligence and the media are finally following up. This can't be kept under the rug any longer. The Church has made its own eventual demise certain because it has not and under this Pope definitely, will not evolve. What goes for nature goes for the Church: evolve or go extinct. For many young people, the whole thing is a lie and a charade and they want no part of it.
This is not the 15th Century in Europe and the Inquisition cannot force people to stay in the Church under pain of torture and death (bet Benedict hated that when he was head of what is left of the old Holy Office). People will take only so much and then they will vote with their feet.
Thank you also for bringing up Paul. It is the eternal tragedy that when the Church became legal under Constantine, it chose the rigid authoritarian Christianity of Paul instead of the more fluid Christianity of others. The Church would, I think, have been a far different, far less woman and gay hating church if it had.
I hope you continue to live and experience the dynamics of life as they unfold.
Sure, you may make the choices that seem right to you. Now, however, you cannot say that you were not told or did not know better.
"if you were *my* age, you'd know better"