Hacking Christianity

The Church Has Won

A review of new research on youth spirituality has me rethink the gloom and doom of the mainline Protestant Church.

The Christian Century has a review of Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults that includes this nugget (h/t Nathan on Facebook):

Drawing on sociologist N. Jay Demerath's thesis that "liberal Protestantism's core values—individualism, pluralism, emancipation, tolerance, free critical inquiry, and the authority of personal experience—have come to so permeate the broader American culture" that these values no longer need liberal Protestantism to survive, Smith makes a fascinating move: he argues that young people are not more involved in American religious life because they don't have to be. The values of America's dominant religious outlook for the past century are now carried forward by American culture itself... Far from being in decline, Demerath suggests, liberal Protestantism has won in American culture.

In other words, the values that drove the American Protestant church have now become embedded in culture and thus the church has won. Its values have become American values. The Church has won. But in doing so, the value of attending church has gone down from a socio-cultural perspective. So the church succeeded in embedding culture with its values, but now the culture has left the people behind. But at what cost? The book concludes:

The gospel gives liberal values redemptive traction, acknowledging the limits of human optimism by offering real hope in God's activity through human communities.

In other words, the church is still necessary to make sense of the culture to which it has contributed. Like the keymaster who needs the gatekeeper, church and culture are now embedded in each other, symbiotic, requiring the other.

So, that's the thesis. And if it is in a truthful direction, then it is not the mainline church that is in the decline; it has won, remember? Rather, the churches that continue to reflect society's values of consumerism, echo chambers, segregated experience, and glitzy shiny worship are the impoverished ones because they don't seek to change innate cultural values (innate is more than simply abortion but respect for all life; more than just gay marriage but deliniation of church/empire limits; etc). The churches that grab ahold of the progressive values, the ones that beckon us forward to just relationships with one another, they are the ones who by cultural standards of numerical growth are failing, but by the kingdom's standards are the only hope it has left.

Yeah, a bit soap-boxy, but it's an interesting conclusion. Thoughts?

Order, Chaos, and Jesus

What does the Joker and Luke Skywalker have in common? They both oppose order: be it rational order in Gotham City, or the Empire's New Order.

But don't take my word for it. When two blogs that I follow type up very similar posts, I have to wonder if they are reading each other (actually, I know they do).

But check out these quick hits because anytime theology, Batman, and Star Wars are in the same post, you know it's gonna be good.

Blake Huggins: The Joker was/is right . He writes about the Joker quote while he was in the hospital room with Two-Face. But he had this tidbit which caused me to think a bit:

[W]e had all been conditioned to go along with “the plan,” even if, as The Joker notes, the plan is horrifying. The plan was indeed horrifying, but most everyone went right along with it because the establishment said so and had, in effect, manufactured the consent of the masses beforehand.

It seems to me that unless this hegemony of thought is somehow subverted, not necessarily by complete chaos, but by intentional anarchic acts of liberative resistance and inquiry, the established Order will continue to see that everything goes according to plan.

Jonathan Brink: Order v. Chaos . He writes about Darth Vader's plan to bring Order to the Galaxy, which Luke rejects and parallels it to the existence of Dictators and evil men in a world that God brought "order" to in Creation:

[W]e’re left with the same question Darth Vader presents to Luke. “Join me and we can bring order to this planet.” Taking these men down seems right. But in doing so, we’re left with the question of which side we’re joining. Is control and order really the answer? Is force really the most restorative pathway?

Because once I join the effort to control, I then approve of its measure. If I approve of the killing of these people, to remove what seems like the chaos of the universe, I approve of the removal of me the moment I create chaos. And that line of order becomes entirely subjective on any side. It can be moved at any time based upon whim and circumstance, or as the men above choose. And what eventually occurs is a culture based in fear, not freedom. The order that was supposed to happen occurs, if only for a select group of people. As long as we’re on the good side, we’re safe. But step over the line and we’re at risk.

Done reading? Good. Thoughts?

Think about religion and politics abuses like these idiot pastors. By amassing political power into the church, they risk prescribing Christian behavior instead of embracing our human freedom to choose it. And that's a failure of the church even if it results in outlawed "unChristian" behavior.
Think about church growth. By systematically encouraging church growth through marketing principles with an "ends justify the means" paradigm, we risk Order overturning the chaotic relationships that often result in Christian discipleship.
Think about pastors and church leaders. Do you regard them as prophetic in every word they say? I have to wrestle with and challenge even my closest of prophetic friends, because I won't let them sell me a plan that I'm not with.
Think about Jesus. Better yet, read what both these bloggers write about Jesus and Order.

Blake : maybe Jesus has more in common with the Joker than we are willing to admit. Indeed, perhaps Jesus goes even further than the Joker by actually taking on the violence of the established Order and unmasking it for what it is — and the best part is that he, unlike the Joker, refuses to play by the rules of the Order, that is, by participating in violence. Thus, Jesus is the ultimate villian of the established Order.

Jonathan : I keep thinking of the moments Jesus is standing in front of Herod and dying on the cross. He could have assumed control and brought order to the world. But to do so would be to go against love. Instead he established a world based in chaos that allows people to harm each other. But more importantly, he provides the ability to transcend that chaos through love by the power of His Spirit. It’s a culture based in the exact opposite, in freedom not in fear.

I've got a lot to think about. I don't really have a well-thought-out plan of how to respond to these excellent (and geeky) posts. Do you?
Type the rest of your post here

Christian Digg? Anyone?

Went to add a "digg" button to my arsenal of web pandering, and realized something odd: there is no religion/spirituality section on Digg.com, the popular link-sharing website. Politics and news, certainly, but no religion/spirituality. I even searched the offbeat section to no avail.

So, I figured someone else musta done something about this, wrote a "Christian Digg website" and I found three versions of basically the same thing:

GospelShout looks the best themed, but the picks are few and far between. The blog hasn't been updated in a year, either!
Blogs4God looks very similar, but has less new posts and more votes for them. The latest comment was 36 days ago.
FaithTag is ugly and covered with ads and the news are ads too. Hey, I just write what the Holy Spirit told me to say, and she said it was ugly.

More after the break...

Two other pages of note from my googloogling:

Minor Prophets Homepage, has a digg-like section on what looks to be bible passages. Not much here either.
Semi-Definitive list of Web2.0 Christian apps, is really old and out of date. But it's one of the first google results!

So, near as I can tell, there is no dedicated Christian Digg system. If Christians read a story or...ahem, read an amazing blog post, they don't have a captive audience to send it to.

It seems like if all three of the above apps would join together, there would be enough synergy to really make it work. As it is, they are all irrelevant because they are in their own camps. I don't know who came first, but really, this is pretty sad.

Is there some fantabulous Christian Digg website out there? Am I missing something? Or is this another case of Christians who disassociate and then ghettoize themselves from their "competitors" instead of working together to solve a common need?