sculpture: "Device to Root Out Evil" is by Dennis Oppenheim
I grew up, like most Americans my age, in a world where we join a faith tradition through our families, and stay with it throughout our lives. That church world is being turned on it's head.
A trend that began when I was in my late 20s is accelerating - we're now seeing a surprising number of people switch their affiliations.
Catholics who leave their faith say they drifted away from the church because it did not meet their spiritual needs or they stopped believing in its teachings, according to a new study, while Protestants often tend to cite circumstantial factors, a move, a marriage, or a problem with a particular minister or congregation.
Altogether, Americans are switching in and out of churches at unprecedented rates, with about half of Americans today saying that they have changed their religious affiliation at some point during their lives, according to a study released yesterday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
"Americans change religious affiliation early and often and for varying reasons," said John C. Green, a political science professor at the University of Akron who oversaw the study.
My daughters - 21 & 12 - are growing up in a very different world. Historically, the percentage of Americans who said they had no religious affiliation (pollsters refer to this group as the "nones") has been very small -- hovering between 5 percent and 10 percent. Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam , who wrote the seminal book Bowling Alone, says the percentage of "nones" has now skyrocketed to between 30 percent and 40 percent among younger Americans. The research will be included in a forthcoming book, called "American Grace: How Religion Is Reshaping Our Civic and Political Lives."
My daughters will keep loking for places where where meaning can be made. American culture will live through a ton of speculation and analysis of what's next - my generation & older will scurry around trying to figure out how to "fix" this, what strategies can be put in place, how to make church relevant or cool or fun or edgy.
My own two cents is captured in this Tweet from earlier this week at a geek conference:
@zeldman: Risk-averse organizations produce crap. -- @jmspool #aea09
Risk, as in
the ‘Uncertainty of Outcome’, either from pursuing a future positive opportunity, or an existing negative threat in trying to achieve a current objective.
Crap, as in, well - crap.
The swarm that is the Baby Boom & my generation after it - we have managed to drive so much of the risk out of following Jesus. We have codify mysterious things, we have tried to make sense of things that do not make sense, we have worried about accuracy and missed the human & Godly truth of life. We have taken the faith of our mothers & fathers and plowed it headfirst into the ground.
In the name of growth & numbers, we have made the church...well...crap. As Christian Scripture says "You will always reap what you sow." Rather than sowing seeds with meticulous care, making a hole in the ground for each little seed, we have broadcast crap of churchianity, allowing them to land where they will.
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