Rachel Held Evans - Why Millennials Are Leaving the Church

The future is looking a little brighter after reading this piece from CNN's Belief Blog. It seems that the next generation of leaders, the millennials, are not much enamored of the evangelical church's narrow and limiting views on human nature. Specifically, these young people are voting with their feet, by leaving the church, in opposition to their perception that "evangelical Christianity [is] too political, too exclusive, old-fashioned, unconcerned with social justice and hostile to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people." The research indicates that "young evangelicals often feel they have to choose between their intellectual integrity and their faith, between science and Christianity, between compassion and holiness."

Why millennials are leaving the church

July 27th, 2013

By Rachel Held Evans, Special to CNN

(CNN) – At 32, I barely qualify as a millennial.

I wrote my first essay with a pen and paper, but by the time I graduated from college, I owned a cell phone and used Google as a verb.

I still remember the home phone numbers of my old high school friends, but don’t ask me to recite my husband’s without checking my contacts first.

I own mix tapes that include selections from Nirvana and Pearl Jam, but I’ve never planned a trip without Travelocity.

Despite having one foot in Generation X, I tend to identify most strongly with the attitudes and the ethos of the millennial generation, and because of this, I’m often asked to speak to my fellow evangelical leaders about why millennials are leaving the church.

Armed with the latest surveys, along with personal testimonies from friends and readers, I explain how young adults perceive evangelical Christianity to be too political, too exclusive, old-fashioned, unconcerned with social justice and hostile to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

I point to research that shows young evangelicals often feel they have to choose between their intellectual integrity and their faith, between science and Christianity, between compassion and holiness.

I talk about how the evangelical obsession with sex can make Christian living seem like little more than sticking to a list of rules, and how millennials long for faith communities in which they are safe asking tough questions and wrestling with doubt.

Invariably, after I’ve finished my presentation and opened the floor to questions, a pastor raises his hand and says, “So what you’re saying is we need hipper worship bands. …”

And I proceed to bang my head against the podium.

Time and again, the assumption among Christian leaders, and evangelical leaders in particular, is that the key to drawing twenty-somethings back to church is simply to make a few style updates – edgier music, more casual services, a coffee shop in the fellowship hall, a pastor who wears skinny jeans, an updated Web site that includes online giving.

But here’s the thing: Having been advertised to our whole lives, we millennials have highly sensitive BS meters, and we’re not easily impressed with consumerism or performances.

In fact, I would argue that church-as-performance is just one more thing driving us away from the church, and evangelicalism in particular.

Many of us, myself included, are finding ourselves increasingly drawn to high church traditions – Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, the Episcopal Church, etc. –precisely because the ancient forms of liturgy seem so unpretentious, so unconcerned with being “cool,” and we find that refreshingly authentic.

What millennials really want from the church is not a change in style but a change in substance.

We want an end to the culture wars. We want a truce between science and faith. We want to be known for what we stand for, not what we are against.

We want to ask questions that don’t have predetermined answers.

We want churches that emphasize an allegiance to the kingdom of God over an allegiance to a single political party or a single nation.

We want our LGBT friends to feel truly welcome in our faith communities.

We want to be challenged to live lives of holiness, not only when it comes to sex, but also when it comes to living simply, caring for the poor and oppressed, pursuing reconciliation, engaging in creation care and becoming peacemakers.

You can’t hand us a latte and then go about business as usual and expect us to stick around. We’re not leaving the church because we don’t find the cool factor there; we’re leaving the church because we don’t find Jesus there.

Like every generation before ours and every generation after, deep down, we long for Jesus.

Now these trends are obviously true not only for millennials but also for many folks from other generations. Whenever I write about this topic, I hear from forty-somethings and grandmothers, Generation Xers and retirees, who send me messages in all caps that read “ME TOO!” So I don’t want to portray the divide as wider than it is.

But I would encourage church leaders eager to win millennials back to sit down and really talk with them about what they’re looking for and what they would like to contribute to a faith community.

Their answers might surprise you.

~ Rachel Held Evans is the author of "Evolving in Monkey Town" and "A Year of Biblical Womanhood." She blogs at rachelheldevans.com. The views expressed in this column belong to Rachel Held Evans.

A Whole Lot of Philosophy from Bookforum's Omnivore

From Bookforum's Omnivore blog, three recent collections of links on philosophy and critical theory. One of the highlights is a free download of Critical Theory and Social Justice, ed. Alessandro Pinzani and Milene Consenso Tonetto - unfortunately, only 4 or 5 of the articles are in English, the bulk of them are in Spanish.

The field of philosophy

MAR 27 2013

9:00AM

• From The New York Times' The Stone blog, was Wittgenstein right? The man who insisted that Western philosophy was based in confusion and wishful thinking is not popular among philosophers — but he should not be dismissed (and a response). 
• Walter D Mignolo on non-European thinkers and philosophers (and more). 
• What is feminist philosophy? Nancy Bauer talks about what attracted her to the field of philosophy and what made her remain there. 
• Virginia Held is the philosopher of care ethics which she thinks is a feminist ethics that preserves the persuasive aspects of kantian, utilitarian and virtue ethics but is better. 
• James Diamond reviews The Quest for God and the Good: World Philosophy as a Living Experience by Diana Lobel. 
• Philosophy is literally the "love of wisdom" — but what does it mean to love, pursue, and possess wisdom? 
• Tom Morris on the Philosopher King of Reality TV.

* * * * *

The Frankfurt School and critical theory

APR 11 2013 

1:00PM

• Claudio Corradetti (Oslo): The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory. 
• Caroline Kamau (Birkbeck): On Erich Fromm: Why He Left the Frankfurt School. 
• Daniel Chernilo (Loughborough): Jurgen Habermas: Modern Social Theory as Postmetaphysical Natural Law. 
• Kevin Anderson (UCSB): Resistance versus Emancipation: Foucault, Marcuse, Marx, and the Present Moment. 
• From Ceasefire, in the first instalment of a new eight-part series, Andrew Robinson introduces Walter Benjamin and Critical Theory. 
• From The Guardian’s How To Believe blog series, Peter Thompson on the Frankfurt school (part 1 and part 2 and part 3). 
• Piotr Stalmaszczyk reviews Hannah Arendt: A Critical Introduction by Finn Bowring. 
• Peg Birmingham reviews Arendt and Adorno: Political and Philosophical Investigations. 
• Jade Montserrat reviews Adorno Reframed by Geoffrey Boucher. 
• You can download Critical Theory and Social Justice, ed. Alessandro Pinzani and Milene Consenso Tonetto.

* * * * *

Big thinking in philosophy

APR 19 2013 

9:00AM

• From The Philosophers Magazine, Hilary Lawson on going back to big thinking in philosophy; and captive audience: Alan Smith on the highs and lows of teaching philosophy in prison. 
• Is there any connection between philosophy and running? Mark Rowlands, who began running to exercise his pet wolf, thinks there is. 
• Dead philosophers are cool: Paula Cerni reviews Philosophy Bites Back by David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton. 
• Justin E. H. Smith on Immanuel Kant and his man-servant Lampe. 
• Colin McGinn has no time for interviews because he’s too busy writing his books, practicing his backhand and doing the philosophical stuff. 
• Jay Jeffers on philosophy as conceptual border patrol. 
• A year of Praxis: Steven Mazie on what philosophy teaches us about politics, rationality and the pursuit of happiness. 
• Michael Pereira reviews Philosophy in Children’s Literature. 
• If you’re not that familiar with PhiLOLZophy, here’s a description.

Talking Back: A New Theory of Individuality - Dr. Sarah Joan Moran at TEDxBern

Interesting TEDx talk. The introduction is in Swiss German (I think), but the talk itself is in English. Dr. Moran examines the way the media (print, visual, and so on), especially the perpetuation of stereotypes, shape our identities and inhibit social justice through their assertion of "power over."

The images, objects, and buildings crafted by human hands create ‘truth’, assert authority, and mediate our understandings of past and present, self and other, and even right and wrong.  Although most of the time we consider the stories we tell about ourselves in terms of words - words written in a book, typed on a screen, or spoken on the news - images and buildings play crucial roles in shaping our worldviews and, often, in both perpetuating and challenging inequality within dominant power structures. 

Talking Back: A New Theory of Individuality - Dr. Sarah Joan Moran

TEDxBern - Interactive news media is changing the global conversation. During this talk, Dr. Sarah Joan Moran (personal site) presents the potential of these platforms for breaking down stereotypes and fostering a sense of global social justice.

Dr. Moran is a historian of early modern visual culture at the University of Bern's Institute for Art History, She researches how power structures have worked to create and perpetuate inequality, and of the roles played by visual and textual communication within those beliefs and structures.

From Yes! Magazine - an excellent interview with author, poet, activist, and multiple award winning novelist Alice Walker, an American icon. She is known for her magic realism, but more important perhaps is her commitment to social justice.

Alice Walker: “Go to the Places That Scare You”

The acclaimed novelist on why a life worth living is a life worth fighting for. 

 

by Valerie Schloredt

posted Oct 02, 2012

Photo by Harley Soltes.

Alice Walker is a poet, essayist, and commentator, but she’s best known for her prodigious accomplishments as a writer of literary fiction. Her novel The Color Purple won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award in 1983 and quickly became a classic of world literature. Set in an African-American community in the rural South during the decades before World War II, the novel is told in letters written by Celie, a woman who survives oppression and abuse with her spirit not only intact, but transcendent.

Walker’s writing is characterized by an ever-present awareness of injustice and inequality. But whether describing political struggle—as in Meridian, which deals with the civil rights movement—or meditating on the human relationship to nature and animals, as in her latest book, The Chicken Chronicles, her work conveys the possibility of change. In Walker’s vision, grace is available through love and a deep connection to the beauty of the world.

 

Walker was born in the segregated South, the eighth child in a family who made their living as sharecroppers in Georgia. She came of age during the civil rights movement, and emerged early in her career as a defining voice in feminism and an advocate for African-American women writers. She is a prominent activist who has worked, marched, traveled, and spoken out to support the causes of justice, peace, and the welfare of the earth.

Alice Walker spoke to YES! about the challenges of working for change, and the possibility of living with awareness—and joy.

Valerie Schloredt: Over the past few days I’ve been immersed in your work, and I’ve been wondering how you do it. Being able to move someone to tears with a few words on a page is extraordinary to me.

Alice Walker: I want very much for you to feel for whoever I’m talking about, or whatever I’m talking about. Because it is only by empathy being aroused that we change. That is the power of writing. I’ve experienced exactly what you’re saying, reading other writers. I remember the book I first had that experience with was Jane Eyre, being right there with Jane, and understanding, yes, we have to change these horrible institutions where they abuse children. Today, I’m the supporter of an orphanage in Kenya. And one of the reasons comes from having been so moved by reading about Jane at Lowood.

Schloredt: It’s interesting to hear about what you read as a child, because some of your best-known work, like The Color Purple, draws on the stories of your ancestors and your family and aspects of the world you knew as a child.

Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth
A new documentary on how the poet, activist, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author 

has changed the world with her words.

Walker: I think the foundation of everything in my life is wonder. We were way out in the country, and why wouldn’t you just absolutely wonder at the splendor of nature? It’s true I had various sufferings, but nothing really compares to understanding that you live in a place that, moment by moment, is incredible. That your mother could say, “I think we’ll have tea tonight,” pull up a sassafras root, take it home, boil it, and you have sassafras tea. I mean, it’s such a miraculous universe. For a child, this magic is something that supports us, even through the hard times.

Schloredt: Do you go back to your childhood home?

Walker: It doesn’t exist.

Schloredt: No?

Walker: No. And there were many of them. We lived in shacks. Each year the people who owned the land (that they had stolen from the Indians), after they had taken the labor for the year, forced us to another shack. How could people do that, to people that they recognized as people? They did this to babies, they did this to small children, they could look at the people they were exploiting and actually see that they were working them into ill health and early death. It didn’t stop them.

 

The most beautiful parts of the area that I lived in are now an enclave of upper-class white housing tracts with a huge golf course. They built a road that went right through the front yard of our church. Most of the people moved to cities, they moved to projects. So, it doesn’t exist.

Schloredt: Something I wanted to ask after listening to you talk last night [at the YES! celebration in Seattle], is the idea that some people don’t experience empathy, and don’t have a conscience that bothers them when they’re treating people extremely badly. Where can progressives go with that idea? How do we relate to knowing that?

Walker: You relate to it by being honest. We’re sitting back thinking that every single person has a conscience, if you could just reach it. Why should we believe that? I mean, what would make you actually believe that? Certainly not the history of the world as we know it. So it’s about trying to understand the history of the world, how it’s been shaped, and by whom, and for what purposes.

Understanding trumps compassion at this point. When people are forcing you out of your home, starving your children, destroying your planet—you should bring understanding of them to bear. Not everybody is loving of children, not everybody cares about the ocean. I think if we collectively decide that we are going to confront this, we have a chance. Because humanity is very smart, and we’d like to survive. And we’re not going to survive the way we’re going. I think we know that.

Schloredt: Your novels are among those books that cause people to say, “This book changed my life,” or “This book changed my way of thinking.” For me the book of yours that really did something to my way of thinking was Meridian.

That is a very powerful book. One thing that really affected me was the description of the cost of racism to the psyche, what a struggle it is to fight such embedded injustice. I think I saw you as the character Meridian. Are you—have you got some Meridian in you?

Walker: I think all people who struggle at the risk of their lives have some Meridian in them. It’s an acceptance of a kind of suffering. You hope that something will come of it, but there’s no way of knowing. What I didn’t realize was so close to me was how Meridian gets really sick as she encounters various struggles. She’s using every ounce of her will, her intelligence, her heart, her soul. It often leaves her debilitated. And that has certainly been true in my life. And it’s something that I have to accept.

 

In Jackson, Mississippi, during the civil rights movement, the mayor had a tank that the town bought just to use against us. So there’s the possibility of the tank running over you, and you have to stand there. So I understood that, well, this is probably going to mean a few weeks of just being immobilized. And then you figure out ways to recuperate.

It’s learning to accept that the cost is great. It would have to be, because we’re talking about emotional intelligence and growth and stretching yourself, reaching for the sun, kind of as if you were a plant. It’s a difficult thing to change the world, your neighborhood, your family, your self.

Schloredt: Not only is Meridian risking her life, like the other civil rights activists in the South, but there’s also internal oppression, an inner struggle the characters deal with.

Walker: The inner struggle is extremely difficult for all of us, because we all have faults, severe ones, that we will struggle with forever. One of the things that I like about Meridian is that it is about how we like to have almost a stereotype about leaders and revolutionaries and world-changers, that they are always whole. It’s wise to accept that [human faults] are inevitable. Factor that in and keep going.

Schloredt: I love the passage where Meridian visits a black church after the assassination of Martin Luther King and finds that they’ve incorporated his rhetoric into the sermon.

Walker: This is the segment where B.B. King is in the stained-glass window with a sword—where the people needed to incorporate, as far as I was concerned at the time, a bit more militancy. More awareness of what you’re up against, and confronting that with real clarity. In some ways it’s the same issue that we’re talking about. You have to go to the places that scare you so that you can see: What do you really believe? Who are you really? Are you prepared to take this all the way to wherever the truth leads you and accept that you have to figure out different ways of confronting reality?

Schloredt: I wanted to ask you about Occupy and uprisings in the Middle East. You’ve been politically active over your lifetime. Is there advice that you would give to people who are organizing now in the United States?

Walker: If you want to have a life that is worth living, a life that expresses your deepest feelings and emotions, and cares and dreams, you have to fight for it. You have to go wherever you need to go, and you have to be wherever you need to be, and place yourself there against the forces that would distort you and destroy you.

I love the uprisings, I love the Occupy movement, and I think the young people especially are doing something that is very natural. It is natural to want to have a future. It is very natural to want to live in peace and joy. What is lovely about this time is the awareness that is sweeping the planet. People are just waking up, every moment.

Schloredt: One thing that I worry about for progressives is that we are often distracted from effective direct action by the project of improving ourselves, of being good.

Walker: And also, “good” in that sense can sometimes be very facile. And a good cover, you know, “I’m doing good, so I don’t have to change very much.” But I think for most Americans, the change that’s required is huge.

Schloredt: How do we make that change happen?

Walker: Well, you know, you’re doing it. I think YES! Magazine is part of what’s changing people’s consciousness. And I think the spread of Buddhism—the retreat centers, the meditation practice—has had a huge impact on people’s consciousness. Americans learning Buddhist tradition has helped a lot of people understand that they actually have a power that is theirs. They have their own mind. It’s not somebody else’s mind, and it’s not controllable, unless you permit it. That’s a foundation for huge change.

Schloredt: Your writing has, I’m sure, also changed consciousnesses. How does it feel to know that your work has in some way changed the world?

Walker: Well, it’s a gift the universe has permitted you to achieve—but it’s not just dropped in your lap, you have to really work for it. For instance, years ago when I wrote Possessing the Secret of Joy, the campaign against female genital mutilation [FGM] was a dangerous subject. There was a great deal of flak about my wanting to address it.

 

I wrote the book, and then Pratibha Parmar and I made the film [Warrior Marks, a documentary about FGM], and lugged it around Africa, and London, New York, all over. It allowed women who had no voice about FGM to speak. Progress is slow, and sometimes it’s discouraging. It’s like knocking on doors in the South asking people to vote, and they’re terrified of voting. And then seeing over the course of years that people started understanding that they had a right to reject the practice of FGM, that they had a voice. I feel grateful that I could be an instrument to stop any kind of suffering. I mean, what a joy.

Schloredt: In your novels you describe profound suffering and pain, but there is also often the potential for reconciliation and healing. If you could create healing and reconciliation for something that’s happening in our country today, what would it be?

Walker: I think the War on Terror is really absurd, especially coming from a country that is founded on terrorism. The hypocrisy of that is corrosive, and we should not accept it. There is no way to stop terrorism if you insist on making enemies of most of the people on the planet. Why should they care about you? All they feel is fear.

So I would stop the War on Terror, and I would start making peace with the peoples of the planet by trying to understand them. I would like us to be able to say, “If that happened to me, I would feel exactly the way you do. And what can we do from here, from this understanding? What can we do together?” 

---

Valerie Schloredt interviewed Alice Walker for It's Your Body, the Fall 2012 issue of YES! Magazine. Valerie is associate editor of YES! Magazine.

 

Madness Radio: Healing Sex with Staci Haines

Staci Haines is the author of Healing Sex: A Mind-Body Approach to Healing Sexual Trauma, a sex-positive approach for women healing from sexual trauma. In this segment of Madness Radio, she talks about her book and about her work in transformative justice and liberating society from child abuse.

Madness Radio: Healing with Sex Staci Haines

First Aired 7-1-2012

Childhood sexual abuse is pervasive in our society, leaving lifelong wounds that affect men as well as women. Is it enough to hold perpetrators accountable, or are there deeper causes of abuse? Do police, courts, and child protection services help heal -- or lead to more trauma? And how can body-oriented approaches move beyond the limits of talk therapy? Child sexual abuse survivor Staci Haines, author of Healing Sex: A Mind-Body Approach to Healing Sexual Trauma and co-founder of Generation Five, discusses transformative justice and liberating society from child abuse.

Useful links:

• From sexual trauma to healing sex / Author Staci Haines opens up to Violet Blue about sexual healing after incest, rape or abuse
• Generation Five
• Generative Somatics - Somatic Transformation and Social Justice
• Staci Haines, Integrating Personal and Social Transformation

• Rt/Ctrl-clck download