image from tr1307
In scientific terms, locusts are the swarming phase of short-horned grasshoppers of the family Acrididae. Research at Cambridge University has identified swarming behavior as a response to overcrowding. Triggered by increased tactile stimulation of the hind legs, transformation of the locust to the swarming variety is merely induced by several contacts per minute over a four hour period. It is estimated that the largest swarms have covered hundreds of square miles and consisted of many billions of locusts.
In the Bible, a swarm of locusts comprised the eighth plague in the story of the plagues of Egypt. Proverbs 30:27 tells us that 'the locusts have no king, yet they go forth all of them by bands', including them as one of the four little wise things. In the Book of Revelation, locusts with scorpion tails and human faces are to torment unbelievers for five months when the fifth trumpet sounds. One Old Testament book, Joel, is written in the context of a recent locust plague. Interestingly, the locusts are described in four different ways - "swarming locusts, cutting locusts, hopping locusts and destroying locusts."
Generationally, the Baby Boomers (of which I must affiliate by my birth year *1963*) can easily be seen as something akin to a swarm of locusts. The baby boom demographic was created largely by the return of millions of breeding-age men from the war, and their reproduction was bunched up into shorter numbers of years than would have been without the war. At the height of the baby boom, the average family was something like 3.9 kids, and that's in an era with lousy birth control and no legal abortion option.
While this generation has done many great things (most rendered in plastic, silicon or modified foodstuff), it really looks like we are a generation in the West that is facing the equivalent of a countryside ravaged by locusts - "swarming locusts, cutting locusts, hopping locusts and destroying locusts.". From the crisis in resource consumption to the mis-use of the environment to the mortgaging of the future to fund immediate gratification with our SUVs, our Blackberries, our Botox and our McMansions - well it sure seems like this ginormous co-hort of people travel great distances, rapidly stripping fields and greatly damaging all that we encounter.
It's truly sad to see what we Baby Boomers have done to bend the church to fit our needs. The list of sins is almost too long to go thru - the very idea of church shopping, happy-clappy praise music, megachurches, a la carte theology, a "personal relationship with my Savior" mindset, categories and binaries to avoid engaging in the complexity of faith & practice. We Baby Boomers have plundered the fields, flying from one place to another to another, like me with a remore control, a big screen TV and 500 channels.
The King of Crunchy Con - Rod Dreher - has a great post Goodbye Boomers, hello Moralistic Therapeutic Deism that links off of Brian McLaren's review in The Christian Century of Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow's "After the Baby Boomers" that add Dreher's POV to the looming aftermath of this locus swarm, what Dreher calls the Post-boomer Christians. Dreher points out that
the single most important way 20-and-30something Christians are shaping the future church is "by staying away."
This despite the reality that Wuthnow's data shows that the age demographic most likely to talk about religion with their friends are people in their twenties. These people are concerned about religion and spirituality, but perceive no need to formalize their religious impulses in churches -- at least not until they have children.
Dreher challenges his own assumptions in 2 ways:
Evangelicals are no longer growing at the expense of mainline Protestantism. In fact, data show that more Evangelical converts these days are coming from Catholicism than a generation ago.
A majority of Post-boomer Christians -- 56 percent -- lean towards liberal Christianity. Only 38 percent call themselves conservative-leaning. But does that mean that tomorrow's Christianity will be more liberal? By no means: more than half of religious conservatives attend church weekly, while only 14 percent of religious liberals do. It doesn't take a genius to figure out which demographic is more likely to pass on faith to their children. Then again, perhaps they will pass along a kind of faith -- hello, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism -- just not a faith that would be recognizable by any meaningful historical standard.
It will be tempting for Boomers like me to keep the focus on us as we age - Senior Ministries anyone ? - but I have so much hope when I spend time with Post-boomer Christians, with folks who are re-forming the church by "by staying away".
In the late 1870s, swarms of locust decimated field across the Southwest. Every type of solution was tried, from science to superstition. Finally, after more than 80% of farmers were deemed destitute, a wetter climatic cycle brought about a decrease in locust invasions. The locust depradations were expected to rebound in the next drought cycle, but much to the surprise of entomologists, the species disappeared completely. The Rocky Mountain locust - the Baby Boomer of its time - is now considered to be extinct.
I suspect we are about to live through a moment like the 1870s with Western instutions. Churches are due for a fallow period, though we seem already to be distracting ourselves with promises of quick fixes and instant programs. The hope I feel from Post-boomer Christians seems to me to be that elusive rain, a climate change. A Boomer like me can hope - and try to stop swarming.
Here's a book I'll be eager to read: Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow's "After the Baby Boomers," analyzing a number of studies creating, in the aggregate, a spiritual profile of post-boomer American Christians. Brian McLaren's review in The Christian Century cites a number of startling (to me, anyway) findings, among them:
+ Post-boomer Christians (PBCs) -- which is to say, young adult Christians -- are falling away from formal religious practice, but not because, or not mostly because, of advancing secularization. It has more to do with changes in family life -- in particular, marrying later and having fewer children -- and mobility. Result: "fewer young adults contributing to the activities of local congregations or receiving support from these congregations." McLaren concludes, from Wuthnow's data, that the single most important way 20-and-30something Christians are shaping the future church is "by staying away."
+ McLaren: "Since the early 1970s retention rates for both mainline and evangelical Protestants have fallen, so that as a proportion of the U.S. population neither group—contrary to popular opinion—has been growing, and this is especially true among younger adults."
+ McLaren again: "The only groups receiving some consolation from the statistics are Catholics, Jews and black Protestants, whose percentages of young adult affiliates 'have remained remarkably stable.'"
+ Evangelicals are no longer growing at the expense of mainline Protestantism. In fact, data show that more Evangelical converts these days are coming from Catholicism than a generation ago.
+ Wuthnow: "The most notable of all these figures is the large increase in the proportion of younger adults who are nonaffiliated. That proportion has risen in the space of a generation from one person in eleven to one person in five."
+ And yet, Wuthnow says the data show that the age demographic most likely to talk about religion with their friends are people in their twenties. These people are concerned about religion and spirituality, but perceive no need to formalize their religious impulses in churches -- at least not until they have children.
+ PBCs are not being educated out of orthodox Christianity. College-educated PBCs are more likely to be religiously orthodox than those PBCs without a college education. That makes sense, if you think about it. If you have come through college with your religious beliefs intact, chances are you are more aware of why orthodoxy matters, and are therefore more committed to it. (That's my conclusion, not Wuthnow's).
+ Contrary to what Your Working Boy would have expected, a majority of PBCs -- 56 percent -- lean towards liberal Christianity. Only 38 percent call themselves conservative-leaning. But does that mean that tomorrow's Christianity will be more liberal? By no means: more than half of religious conservatives attend church weekly, while only 14 percent of religious liberals do. It doesn't take a genius to figure out which demographic is more likely to pass on faith to their children. Then again, perhaps they will pass along a kind of faith -- hello, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism -- just not a faith that would be recognizable by any meaningful historical standard.
+ McLaren:
What should churches start doing, given Wuthnow's findings? My answer would be that they should redistribute energy. When we think of all the time and energy that churches invest in children, youth and their parents, and when we think of the high level of clout exercised by senior church members, it's clear that young adults are being left out or left behind. This is tragic for the church because it means that the substantial investment in children and youth is too often allowed to be lost when they graduate high school. And it's tragic for the young adults because during the years when they make their biggest life-shaping decisions, they're outside the church's circle of influence and support.
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