Monday, October 23rd, 2006
On Friday afternoon I was part of a panel responding to Dean Hoge’s lecture on young adults in the Catholic Church.
Dean’s a Presbyterian who’s been lecturing in sociology of religion at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC for thirty years. He was part of the team that published the 1994 book, “Vanishing Boundaries: The Religion of Mainline Protestant Baby Boomers”. On Friday Dean was presenting research on Catholic young adults in the United States, to an audience consisting mostly of Catholic educators and youth ministry staff from Brisbane.
There were some eye openers for me. The top two values in a 1997 survey of Catholics 20 to 39 years old, relating to Catholic distinctiveness, were belief that God is present in the sacraments (no surprise), and a charitable efforts toward helping the poor (interesting). Fourth on the list was devotion to Mary the Mother of God. Emerging values identified in teenagers and young adults included a commitment to short-term projects and a strong will to protect the environment.
Dean took us through a national sample of American Catholics held in 2003, looking at issues of individual conscience and Catholic teaching, ethics relating to homosexual acts, abortion, pre-marital sex and birth control. It was clear that there was a strong delineation between Pre-Vatican II Catholics (63 years and older) and post-Vatican II Catholics (40-62 years of age). Young adults (18-39) were quite similar to the latter. Clearly a lot of the difference was related to generational change, particularly in the emergence of the Baby Boom generation.
Dean talked about the challenge faced by liberal denominations like the PCUSA and Uniting Church in Australia when it comes to identity. As denominations we highly value individual capacity for discernment, education and decision making. We are loathe to tell young adults what to do and believe. Some young adults stay around for that very reason. However many drift off because they perceive to be vagueness in doctrine and distinctiveness. The Uniting Church in Australia does not have much connection with the narratives told by the Methodists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists in earlier years. We focus so much on being accessible and inclusive to Christians of all varieties that we’re in danger of being a generic brand, standing for nothing much.
My response included a reference to brand loyalty among emerging generations. People like Kevin Roberts at Saatchi and Saatchi prefer to talk about love than loyalty, thus the phrase “Love Marks”. We see that at work in the emotional connection many young Australian Christians have with Hillsong. I referred to Pope John Paul II and his inclusion in the Love Marks web site, between Pop Secret (pop corn) and Porsche. We have the challenge of nurturing passion that goes beyond consumerism, modelling this capacity for love in our own lives. I pointed out that organisations like Greenpeace found a following in the Baby Boom generation when a group of people now in their late sixties committed themselves to sharing their vision with students and workers ten years younger than themselves.
Young Adult Catholics: Religion in the Culture of Choice (2001) at Amazon.com
Dean Hoge is pictured below (left) with my fellow panel members Selina Harris (Sunnybank Catholic Parish) and Paul Mergard, (right) photographer and Salvation Army church planter in West End, Brisbane.
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Sunday, January 15th, 2006
William Strauss & Neil Howe are probably the best known proponents of generational theory in the United States, if not the world. Their reputation began with the publication of their first book, Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584-2069, in 1991, fifteen years ago.
13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail? came out in 1993. The Fourth Turning was first published in 1996. Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation hit the bookshops in 2000.
Before teaming up with Howe, William Strauss co-wrote Chance and Circumstance: The Draft, the War, and the Vietnam Generation, with Lawrence Baskir in 1978. Neil Howe wrote On Borrowed Time: How the Growth in Entitlement Spending Threatens America’s Future
in 1989 with Peter Peterson.
Arthur Scheslinger Jr, a historian and political activist, is credited by Strauss and Howe as pioneering the cycle approach to American History. His work on generational cycles appeared in essays before being published together in the 1986 book, The Cycles of American History, since reprinted in 1999.
Strauss and Howe use the generation theories developed by Jos� Ortega y Gasset and Juli�n Mar�as, Spanish philosophers who wrote on history as a system. Marias died only last month at the age of 91. See Ortega’s book of essays, History as a System. They credit Anthony Esler, author of The Human Venture, with keeping generational theory alive for twenty years.
Age Bracket Fallacy
Strauss and Howe cite Gail Sheehy’s 1976 book, Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life, together with Daniel Levinson’s 1978 book, The Seasons of a Man’s Life“, as examples of a cohort-group biography - a ‘persuasive rendering of the collective personality of American men and women now in their fifties’ (read mid sixties in 2005). These authors, as Matilda Riley pointed out in an essay in Graubard’s 1978 book, Generations, were promoting the fallacy of age reification, in which one generation projects its life experience on to another. Gail Sheehy responded in 1996 by publishing New Passages, which took into account the impact of history on young adulthood in the 1990s.
Generations as Trains in Motion
Strauss and Howe attempt to follow each generation as a train in motion rather than as a station. This they do by tracing the development of cohorts from childhood through to death, marking the distinctive events which influence each group. They say that each generation has a different experience of the life cycle. For this reason the authors provide the biography of each generation from the Puritans through to the Millennials.
Social Moments
Strauss and Howe focus on the impact of social moments - critical events which could be secular crises or spiritual awakenings. A social moment is an era, typically lasting about a decade, when people perceive that historic events are radically altering their social environment. Secular crises are when society focuses on reordering the outer world of institutions and public behavior. Spiritual awakenings are when society focuses on changing the inner world of values and private behavior. During social moments dominant generations are entering rising adulthood and elderhood, while recessive generations are entering youth and midlife.
Four Generation Cycle
However, through their research into generations through history, they come to the conclusion that generations come in cycles. “Just as history produces generations, so too do generations produce history.” The authors label the four generational types Idealist, Reactive, Civic and Adaptive, always recurring in a fixed order. Strauss and Howe suggest that the passage of four generations completes a full generational cycle over four 22-year phases of life, roughly ninety years.
1. A dominant, inner-fixated IDEALIST generation grows up as increasingly indulged youths after a secular crisis. It comes of age inspiring a spiritual awakening, fragments into narcissistic rising adults, cultivates principle as moralistic midlifers, and emerges as visionary elders guiding the next secular crisis.
2. A recessive REACTIVE generation grows up as an underprotected and criticized youths during a spiritual awakening, matures into risk-taking alienated rising adults, mellows into pragmatic midlife leaders during a secular crisis, and maintains respect (but less influence) as reclusive elders.
3. A dominant, outer-fixated CIVIC generation grows up as increasingly protected youths after a spiritual awkaening, comes of age overcoming a secular crisis, unites into a heroic and achieving cadre of rising adults, sustains that image while building institutions as powerful midlifers, and emerges as busy elders attacked by the next spiritual awakening.
4. A recessive ADAPTIVE generation grows up as overprotected and suffocated youths during a secular crisis, matures into risk-averse, conformist adults, produces indecisive midlife arbitrator-leaders during a spiritual awakening, and maintains influence (but less respect) as sensitive elders.
Strauss and Howe name the four generations reading their book in 1991 as:
GI - elders, born 1901 - 1924 (now age 81-104)
SILENT - midlifers, born 1925-1942 (now age 63-80)
BOOMER - rising adults, born 1943 - 1960 (now age 45-62)
13ER - youths, born 1961 - 1981 (now age 24 - 44)
They mark the passing of the previous generations:
MISSIONARY - born 1860 - 1882
LOST - born 1883 - 1900
They anticipate the emergence of a new generation:
MILLENNIALS - children, born 1982 - 2003 (now 3-23)
Strauss and Howe Online
These web sites provide a chance to engage with the authors.
Life Course Associates
Fourth Turning
Millennials Rising
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Thursday, January 12th, 2006
Bryan Turner and June Edmunds provide a thorough examination of the role of generations in the shaping of contemporary culture, intellectual traditions, social movements and national consciousness. In their 2002 book, Generations, Culture And Society, they consider the particular impact of the post-war early Baby Boomer generation on the UK, North America and Europe. Their sociological insight is made credible by their consideration of national perspective alongside the particularities of gender.
In their concluding chapter Turner and Edmunds explore the global responses to the collapse of the World Trade Center. Benjamin Barber in 1995 wrote that the world is organised around the dialectic of Jihad vs McWorld, between anti-global loyalties and the neutral cosmopolitanism of world trade. Turner and Edmunds take a more optimistic view, suggesting that the emerging generation is likely to be motivated to avoid the repetitions of such horrors.
Turner and Edmunds summarise the benefits of generational analysis:
1. Mounting evidence that the post-war generation, by virtue of its size and strategic position, has been particularly critical to social change in the twentieth century.
2. Post-war generation was important to the rise of modern consumerism which tends to be structured around generational markets - motivated by the creation of a youth movement that shapes contemporary fashion.
3. Demographic changes associated with the growth of an ageing population have created a range of pressing policy issues and increased potential for intergenerational conflict.
In their book Turner and Edmunds build on the sociological tools developed by Karl Mannheim by complementing them with the cultural sociology of Pierre Bourdieu.
Mannheim suggested that generational consciousness emerged through shared experience of a shared traumatic historical event. Maurice Halbwachs built on this theory in his book, On Collective Memory, by arguing that generational consciousness was sustained and reinforced through collective memories and rituals.
Pierre Bourdieu argued that inter-generational conflict brings about social transformation. The social success of emerging generations takes place through competition with existing generations in power. Bourdieu’s work is outlined in An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology.
Turner and Edmunds argue that the chronological understanding of generation will not bear much interesting fruit for sociologists. Date of birth may become irrelevant as members of a generational cohort express preferences for the values of another. What is more interesting, they argue, is the ways in which a generational cohort (born in same era) becomes a generation.
Edmunds and Turner distinguish between active and passive generations. A generation becomes a strategic acting generation by using available resources to innovate in the cultural, intellectual or political spheres. They suggest that active generations tend to be followed by passive generations that simply inherit the changes wrought by their predecessors. They point to the British experience of an active wartime generation, followed by a passive inter-war generation, followed by an active consumer generation which in turn was followed by a passive Generation X.
They argue that the globalization of culture, expressed in the passive media of television and developed in interactive web-based media, is the product of the 1960s generation.
Turner and Edmunds grapple with the ideas of Allan Bloom, who says in his 1988 book Closing of the American Mind, that unfettered democratization and extreme relativism in education have led to the ‘dumbing down’ of American society. The authors, while accepting some of Bloom’s points, argue that a new internationalism was created by the interconnectiions between different cultures expressed in the Baby Boom era. While traditional approaches to higher education have been spurned by many, the authors are able to tell the story of emerging generations of intellectual politicized women who had entered higher education en masse.
Turner and Edmunds say that their main concern in this book was to show that society is being shaped by generational location and shared generational experience rather than economic class. Institutions such as universities have been surpassed by broader intellectual movements expressed in wider global forums. Intellectuals, through the internet, have been both carriers of national distinctives as well as creators of a global community.
One of the most helpful chapters in this book focuses on the role of emerging generations of ethnic minorities in shaping national conscioussness. Edmunds and Turner map out the role of ‘founding fathers’ in developing a nation’s self-identity, often around a simple homogeneiety. New generations of minorities, politicised by involvement in a broader generational movement, take on the challenge of re-shaping the nation’s identity. Clear examples are found in the emergence of African American, Indian American, Asian American and Hispanic generations in the USA who have been effectively challenging the concept of ‘melting pot’.
The authors reflect on the UK context in which emerging generations of intellectuals are able to advocate for cosmopolitan transcendence of national boundaries while tolerating benight local and national identities such as the Scottish and Welsh. Being British is no longer simply about being English.
The emerging generations of global intellectuals is able to go beyond the polarisation of “Cold War intellectuals, pro-American apologists or nostalgic migrants.” The authors acknowledge that the post-September-11 environment will test this trend.
Turner and Edmunds explore the emerging voice of women created out of traumatic events such as the First and Second World Wars, Algeria and Vietnam. They argue that in the UK an emerging group of intellectual women are providing alternatives to the war-focused identity developed by the ‘founding fathers’.
The authors conclude with the prospect of generational change developing national consciousness in places of trauma like Palestine and New York. “Watch this space”.
Bryan Turner
Bryan S. Turner was Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge from 1998 to 2005
and is currently professor of sociology in the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. He was previously Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Deakin University in Australia. He is the founding editor of three journals - Body&Society, Citizenship Studies and co-editor (with Mike Featherstone) of Body & Society and Journal of Classical Sociology. He is the author of Orientalism, Postmodernism and Globalism, (1994), The New Medical Sociology: Social Forms of Health and Illness, (2004), edited Max Weber: Critical Responses (1999), in three volumes and wrote the introduction for the 1992 edition of Karl Mannheim’s Essays on the Sociology of Culture. There are many more books written by Bryan Turner.
Over the next six years in Singapore, Bryan will direct research on globalisation and religion concentrating on such issues as religious conflict and the modern state, religious authority and electronic information, religious, consumerism and youth cultures, human rights and religion, the human body, medical change and religious cosmologies. These research foci will be explored through various religious systems. The general aim is to develop a comprehensive overview of the impact of globalisation on religions, and the consequences of religion on global processes. He intends to complete three volumes for Cambridge University Press on religion and globalization.
June Edmunds
June Edmunds is on the staff at University of Cambridge in the area of development studies. Her research background is in nationalism, ethnic relations, politics, culture, and the sociology of generations. She has published widely in these areas with articles in journals such as Twentieth Century British History, Politics, Ethnicities, the Journal of Consumer Culture, and Social Science and Medicine, as well as book chapters on national identity and generational closure. She is the author of The Left and Israel: Party-Policy Change and Internal Democracy (2000), and edited (with Bryan Turner) Generational Consciousness, Narrative and Politics (2002). Dr Edmunds is currently working on the impact of cultural trauma on political identity and activism in migrant communities. Forthcoming articles explore global generations and social change, and transnational social movements. She is also developing a research project on transnationalism among young Muslims in the UK.
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Wednesday, October 12th, 2005
Darren Wright tonight pointed me in the direction of Tara Brabazon’s book, From Revolution to Revelation.
From her web site, Brabazon.net, comes the editorial summary:
What happens when a strobe light is turned off, a bar closed, the colostomy bag belt unhooked, and a sweaty, smiley bandana discarded? How do we understand our own past, and the collective past we share with others? Popular culture offers a bridge, vehicle and vessel for memory, providing the building blocks of identity. The politics and passion of life are captured in the unforgettable song, the energy pumped out of an extraordinarynightclub, the exuberance of an unexpected goal in extra time, and the love of a film. For a fan, the joy and exhilaration is enough. For those writing on the coat tails of fashion, we need to understand why particular popular cultural forms survive through time and space.
This is the task of From Revolution to Revelation. To rewrite the maxim of the great rock writer Greil Marcus, I am interested in the dustbin of Cultural Studies, the discarded remnants of political struggles and theoretical hopes unrealized. To commence this rummaging, I return to Richard Johnson’s theory of popular memory as a way to understand the - now named - Generation X.
Those born between 1961 and 1981 have endured many (post) youth cultural labels, from slackers to the chemical/blank generation and baby busters. Yet there is no systematic study of the popular cultural literacies that are the basis of - and for - this imagining community. I document the disappearances of history, showing how popular memory - like the Hacienda - can be (re)built, even after the building itself has been destroyed.
The link between Generation X and Cultural Studies is not randomly selected. The histories of both these labels are taken for granted. It was left to Lawrence Grossberg to remind us that Cultural Studies is The Generation X of the academic world
Like the post baby-boom generation that is referenced in this odd phrase
everyone is talking about it but no one seems to know what it is. Lots of people are suddenly claiming to do it while others, nervous about its rather sudden success, are attacking it.
Such a realization is radiantly revealed and well captured, but requires evidence and clarification. From Revolution to Revelation takes up Grossberg’s challenge, following the bread-crumbed trail of popular memory that snakes through both Generation X and popular culture.”
Tara Brabazon lives in Perth, Western Australia, teaches in the School of Media, Communication & Cultural Studies at Murdoch University, and is the director of the Popular Culture Collective. Over the past few years Tara has taught Cultural Studies and History throughout Australasia, working in New Zealand, Queensland and Western Australia.
Tara’s research and writing includes the history of cultural studies, particularly with regard to the theoretical and political relationship between Britain, Australia and New Zealand. She’s written on Australian and New Zealand immigration history, film and television, popular music, feminism and men’s studies.
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Sunday, July 31st, 2005
Spent yesterday afternoon with a workshop of church leaders considering healthy relationships in regional churches (generally churches over 150 people).
We started with two tastes of culture guaranteed to bring generational conflict to the surface.
We looked at the Carlton Draught Big Ad, considering the fact that thousands of people have seen this short film on the internet, before its official release on television. As expected, I got a bite from one or two who could not understand why people spend so much time online. “How can you have real community with people who aren’t in the same room?”
We worked through material by Schewe and Meredith, considering the move from mass marketing towards one-to-one marketing. Schewe and Meredith break down the generations into smaller cohorts, helping us read generational differences with more subtlety.
We looked at the values of people who came of age in the years after World War II - values linked to ‘building a future for our children’.
The second half was spent looking at the sociological approach to congregational life provided by Jackson Carroll and Wade Clark Roof. On reflection, some of the material was too technical. If I present that material again I’ll try and present it with my own words and examples.
One of the ‘ouch’ points of the afternoon was the lesson given by George Barna on large regional churches and younger generations. He points out that large churches are preferred by older Baby Boomers. Busters, he says, are often too busy to get involved in the busy program and worship life of such churches.
From my observation it’s also about values. Younger generations tend to favour environments characterised by flexibility, intimacy, honesty and humility.
Barna provides a summary of generational differences in relation to activities, faith, and self descriptions at his site, The Barna Group.
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Tuesday, July 26th, 2005
The first session of the Emerging Generations course will focus on an understanding of generational culture and generational cohorts. I’ll be engaging with:
1. Karl Mannheim’s “A Problem of Generations”, from Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, written for post World War I Germany. This will provide a historical context for current approaches to generational theory. Opportunity to unpack the meaning of ‘cohort’.
2. Turner and Edmonds - looking at the dynamics of generational cohorts and sub groups, with consideration of education and gender as factors.
3. Strauss and Howe - their theory of generational cycles in the United States - how valid is their theory? Application by Mike Regele in his book, “Death of the Church”.
4. Hugh Mackay - his Australian research on ‘generational slices’. Insights gained. The limitations of such approaches.
5. Meredith and Schewe - their framework for generational culture based on defining moments. Marketing in the context of life stage, natural ageing, socio-economic background and ethnicity as well as generational culture.
6. Andy Crouch - a critique of defining distinctive and innovative generations - appeal to continuity, consideration of Biblical models of generation.
I’ll be looking at Jesus as an example of a counter-cultural prophetic leader - challenging the assumptions of his elders and peers.
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Thursday, April 28th, 2005
Karl Mannheim could be regarded as the grandfather of generational research. Born in Hungary 1893, he moved to Germany to study philosophy and sociology, with a particular emphasis on the roots of culture. He worked under Alfred Weber, brother of well-known sociologist Max Weber. His essays on the sociology of knowledge are now regarded as classics. Mannheim moved to Britain where he attempted a comprehensive analysis of the structure of modern society by way of democratic social planning and education.
From Wikipedia: Mannheim’s book Ideologie und Utopie (1929) was the most widely debated book by a living sociologist in Germany during the Weimar Republic; the English version Ideology and Utopia (1936) has been a standard in American-style international academic sociology. Mannheim was not the author of any work he himself considered a finished book, but rather of some fifty major essays and treatises, most later published in book form.
It is one of those essays that sparked off generational research. “On the problem of generations”, published in German in 1928, outlined Mannheim’s analysis of the impact of generational experience on groups of people across class and geographical lines.
The essay was published English in 1952 in Collected Works of Karl Mannheim, Vol. 5, Routledge, London. The set of complete works was published again in 1996 by Bryan Turner. The set of resource is so huge and expensive it is only ever bought by libraries.
June Edmunds and Bryan Turner, in their 2002 book, Generations, Culture and Society, explore the implications of Mannheim’s pivotal essay. Rather than seeing generations as continuations of societal norms, Mannheim portrayed generations as “sources of opposition, challenging existing societal norms and values and bringing social change through collective generational organisation”.
The three building blocks of Mannheim’s theory of generation, as identified by Bryan Turner and June Edmunds, are:
1. Generational Site or Location
Mannheim taught that a generation could be defined in terms of collective response to a traumatic event or catastrophe that united particular cohort of individuals into a self-conscious age stratum. Mannheim was aware of the angst faced by German youth in the wake of World War I, not only in response to trench warfare, but also the poverty and shame associated with international mood.
2. Generation as Actuality
Mannheim critiqued the Marxist tradition of class analysis and deterministic approach to consciousness or knowledge. Age groups, he observed, were able to act as agents of social change and become carriers of intellectual and organisational alternatives to the status quo.
3. Generational Units
Mannheim wrote about ‘articulate structures of knowledge or consciousness that express particular location’. Even though each generation may include within itself a number of ‘differentiated, antagonistic generation-units’ who fight one another, they belong to each other because of their orientation toward each other.
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Sunday, December 5th, 2004
Wade Clark Roof and Jackson Carroll, in their book, Bridging Divided Worlds, use the word ‘reflexivity’ to develop their alternative for complacent approaches to generational diversity.
They’re talking about self-understanding, generationally conscious reflection. They challenge congregations to cultivate awareness of themselves in social and historic religious contexts. Congregations as well as individuals can use the skills of reflexive thinking: sociological imagination, recognition of one’s own views, values, and identity in relation to others. In some ways Carroll and Roof are talking about theological reflection (see my blog: GodPost for more on this)
The Chambers Dictionary gives us a definition of reflexive:
“Indicating that the action turns back upon the subject”.
as in “He cut himself”
There are a few steps suggested by Carroll and Roof for reflexivity:
1. Recognise that generations have varied, and at times conflicted, views about the meaning of religious involvement itself.
2. Make it possible for institutions to evolve as clientele and circumstance change.
3. Ensure that individuals from different generations are able to express themselves, put their faith into action in ways that are meaningful to them.
4. Bring generational awareness into ongoing strategic structural planning.
5. Recognise that traditions, if they are to be living traditions, are constantly being renegotiated and retraditioned through a reflexive conversation with the culture.
6. Redefine congregational strength in terms of inclusiveness: capacity to accept others, their beliefs and values, even if they are different to the interpretations of those presently in control of the institution.
7. Keep traditions with a small ‘t’ in perspective. They are historically and contextually bound expressions of the ‘Tradition’ with a big ‘T’.
Carroll and Roof call for researchers in this field to explore the ways in which religious traditions are transformed by emerging generations. We need to see new generations as ‘carriers of culture and religious styles’.
I appreciate the authors’ avoidance of ‘how-to’ solutions for congregations. Contextualisation is so important. We’re given an example of a boomer program based around country music and line dancing - an approach specific to the local environment rather than a global culture.
What the authors do offer is a call to do the hard work that leads to self-aware approaches to generational diversity rather than arbitrary borrowing of programs. They lead their readers to explore deep cultural change rather than dabble with of superficial communication styles.
At times, the authors show their sympathy for a middle-ground liberal Protestant interpretation of Christian tradition. They appear to be comfortable in the negotiated blended approach to generational diversity. However they have made a strong effort to cast their research over a wide variety of congregational responses to emerging generations.
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Wednesday, November 24th, 2004
Congregations are the central focus of Jackson Carroll and Wade Roof Clark in their book, Bridging Divided Worlds
As they studied twenty congregations and two campus ministries in California and North Carolina. The samples included Jewish, Catholic, mainline Protestant and evangelical Protestant congregations and included predominantly African American, Caucasian, Korean and Latino congregations. In their book they profile nine congregations.
Carroll and Roof divide their nine congregations into three models:
1. Three congregations focusing on an inherited model - valuing tradition over contemporary engagement.
2. Three congregations genuinely attempting a blended approach to generational diversity.
3. Three post-traditional congregations focusing on a specific generation.
This typology is based to some extent on the analysis of E. Brooks Holifield in the book, “American Congregations Vol. 2“. Carroll and Roof add a category to his description of four phases in the historic development of the American congregation as an institution:
- Comprehensive (one congregation per town)
- Devotional (a variety of congregational styles with competition between them)
- Social (end of 19th century, programs providing a life centre)
- Participatory (a wide range of programs for the seven day a week church)
- Carroll and Roof add the fifth category:
Post-traditional/New Paradigm (building on the particpatory model but valuing contemporary relevance rather than traditional faithfulness.
What I find most helpful in “Bridging Divided Worlds” is not so much the description of each of the three models. I recognise the dynamics well enough. I find more helpful the SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) for each model.
Inherited Model Congregations - We’ve Always Done It This Way
These congregations focus on maintaining the tradition they stand in. Newcomers are expected to appreciate and invest in the forms of worship, buildings or institutions that are valued by these congregations. Attempts to cater for emerging generations, if they are attempted, tend to be stalled in the planning process or are only partially implemented.
We’re given a reality check for people in the inherited tradition congregations. Yes there’s a stability and security. Key gate keepers attempt to pass the baton on to members of emerging generations who are interested in running the race in similar ways. Smaller and smaller proportions of emerging generations find it possible to belong in this kind of situation.
A Uniting Church in Australia example of this approach near where I live would be Burleigh Uniting Church, Gold Coast.
Blended Congregations: Seeking the Best of Three Worlds
This approach values inherited traditions of faith but seriously engages with contemporary culture. As the authors write, ‘the result is a negotiated and often fragile normative order’. A wide variety of people are able to engage with the gospel, learning from one another and enriching each other’s experience and expression of faith. However this model is marked by continuous tensions and inevitable conflict.
Factors for success
a A substantial percentage of Baby Boomers and Gen Xers in the membership.
b. Focused commitment by congregation to generational diversity, even at the cost of losing traditionalists
c. Backing from the denomination
d. Young in congregational age - ‘recently planted’
e. Large size. Multiple programs can be implemented while leaving intact the programs preferred by pre-boomer members.
A Uniting Church in Australia example of this approach near where I live would be Robina Surfers Paradise Uniting Church, Gold Coast.
Generation-Specific Congregations - Beyond Tradition
This approach begins with the concept of ‘target audience’ - designing programs and practices around the cultural characteristics and needs of a particular generation.
The authors address the question, “Isn’t the inherited church designed for the needs of a specific generation, the Pre-Boomers?” They point out that the traditional church is not developed by its leaders with the needs of pre-boomer generations in mind. Instead, these older single generation churches work on the assumption that they’re doing things the way they’ve always been done.
The Generation-Specific congregation tends to provide a model of church that is fresh, uninecumbered by traditional approaches to music, architecture, dress styles and expressiveness in worship. They’re willing to ‘dance with the culture’. There’s a high level of innovation. There’s a strong attempt to engage with a sensory culture - with a variety of multi-sensory approaches to learning and worship.
The generationally specific church may appear to be less fragile (in terms of intergenerational conflict) but it has its challenges. One frustration is the high level of curious onlookers - people coming to experience the novel version of church without any commitment to staying or leading.
Then there’s the challenge that comes as people age or move into a different life stage. Do they continue to hold the reins or are they able to seed the development of a new form of ‘contemporary church’? I’m reminded of a cartoon that appeared in Leadership Magazine in which a bunch of octegenarians gather around their leader who proclaims that their church was formed for the needs of baby boomers - and it will continue to major on baby boomers, even if it is 2025.
There’s a risk in this setting that younger members of the congregation will miss interaction with pre-boomer members. My experience is that a generationally-specific congregation will still attract older members who have an interest in innovation.
A Uniting Church in Australia example of this approach near where I live would be Pacific Parks Uniting, Gold Coast.
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Monday, November 22nd, 2004
In chapter two of their book, “Bridging Divided Worlds“, Jackson Carroll and Wade Clark Roof explore changes in spirituality that have happened in response to unsettled times.
Drawing heavily on work by Robert Wuthnow in his book, “After Heaven: Spirituality in America since the 1950s“, the authors suggest that we have moved from a preference for stability to a preference for exploration.
Spirituality in stable times (read before World War II) was cultivated through habitual practice within the familiar world of one’s particular tradition. In unstable times (read since World War II) seekers explore new vistas and negotiate among alternative systems of belief & practice.
Carroll and Roof unpack what this might mean in the religious scapes of the USA. They describe the end of the hegemony of white Anglo-Saxon male protestant assumptions. Judaism, Catholicism, Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism have taken their place alongside ‘mainstream’ Protestantism. I’ve seen this time and time again in Australia and New Zealand. What once was ‘mainline’ is now ’sideline’ as independent or more recent Pentecostal movements draw the bulk of emerging generations.
The authors go on, though, to examine the impact of liberalised immigration on pluralism in the USA. The arrival of people from the East (and I’m not talking about East Coast!) has led to a greater awareness of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and many other religious movements. Individuals now have the capacity to mix and match - drawing from the wisdom of each movement as they see fit.
More and more, emerging generations are valuing dialogue, respect of the ‘other’, while retaining the capacity to positively assert one’s own point of view. As Carroll and Roof point out, this is more prevalent among people with higher education.
At this point the authors call on the wisdom of Peter Berger, a writer on religious psychology and sociology. Berger points out that the rise of pluralism is associated with the privatisation of religion in which the centre of focus moves to the inner world. Carroll and Roof describe individualistic & humanistic orientations clashing with theistic interpretations of life.
The third section of this chapter focuses on the process of detraditionalization. This is a topic covered in more detail in Jackson Carroll’s book, “Mainline to the Future: Congregations for the 21st Century“. The authors point out that tradition has not been discarded. It is merely treated in a different way. In the search for meaning, emerging generations are more likely to sift through a number of traditions, holding them up for scrutiny in the light of science, contemporary thinking and popular culture. I would add here scrutiny of individual and shared experience.
A common thread coming through in the authors’ research is the tension faced in the development of ‘contemporary worship styles’. What is developed today may become old hat within ten years. The authors use the word ‘arbitrary’ to describe the unpredictable way in which Biblical texts are favoured or ignored, and the voices of tradition are respected or shunned. That’s a valid point. At times leaders can lurch from trend to trend without any sense of theological reflection or consistency. But it could also be the reflection of outsiders trying to understand the rhythms of a strange movement.
Finally, we come back to the paradigm of ‘dwellers and seekers’. Ann Sidler worked with Robert Bellah and others on “The Good Society“, 1992, and “Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life“, 1996. Here we’re able to benefit from her article in American Sociological Review outlining the concept of culture as a tool kit of symbols, stories, rituals & worldviews which people may use in varying configurations to solve different kinds of problems.
In settled times, the predominant culture is drawn on by people for constructing broad well-established strategies of action that become traditions that anchor their lives. Inconsistencies are tolerated.
In unsettled times, however, it becomes obvious that the inconsistencies reveal the inadequacy of previously accepted strategies of action. Entrepreneurial leaders draw again from the cultural toolkit to develop new meaning systems, cultural styles and strategies of action.
Which brings us the nub of “Bridging Divided Worlds”. The development of new cultural forms in unsettled times is emotionally charged. Conflict is inevitable as those who seek to create cultural forms clash with those who have no desire to leave behind the certainties of the previously accepted paradigm.
The Chambers Online Dictionary defines “hybrid” as
noun
1 an animal or plant produced by crossing two different species, varieties, races or breeds; a mongrel.
2 linguistics a word whose elements are taken from different languages, eg bicycle.
3 anything produced by combining elements from different sources.
adj
being produced by combining elements from different sources; mongrel. hybridism or hybridity noun .ETYMOLOGY: 17c: from Latin hibrida the offspring of a tame sow and wild boar.
So that’s what we’re seeing here with the development of pluralism, individualism and posttraditionalism. Each person developing within themselves, and with others, their own assortment of resources from the cultural tool kit.
Robert Wuthnow - After Heaven: Spirituality in America since the 1950s, 2000
Jackson Carroll - Mainline to the Future: Congregations for the 21st Century, 2000
Ann Sidler - Talk of Love: How Culture Matters, 2003
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