That phrase, though not original with him, comes from sociologist Eric Klinenberg in his new book, Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone, which is getting lots of attention now.
I haven't read the book but want to comment on some of its implications. My comments will be based partly on reviews I've read of the book, particularly one by Nathan Heller in the April 16 New Yorker.
You'll note that this is Part 1. In future blogs I plan to comment on an article in The Atlantic about the psychological effects of Facebook (Part 2) and on some recent articles on Jesus vs. Christianity (Part 3).
Klinenberg and his research team interviewed more than 300 people over seven years and learned that living alone has become much more common. He points out that in 1950,
4 million people in the United States lived alone. Today, that number is 31 million. He notes many possible reasons for this shift: Americans are getting married later than ever, and half of marriages end in divorce. The sexual revolution and feminist movement have helped make it possible for more women to live independently, he notes.
In his review, Heller writes that the solo life, which used to be "a mark of social abandonment," now "tends to be a path for moving ahead." This has implications. Heller writes: "The single life is inherently self-interested; it calls for vigilance on matters of self-preservation both large (financial autonomy) and small (dish detergent), and, in many cases, it frees the solitary from the sorts of daily interaction that help craft a sense of shared responsibility."
He refers to Robert D. Putnam's landmark book from 2000, Bowling Alone, which noted a three-decade decline in what he called "social capital."
The basic point of these books is that people are not only living alone but not getting together much for social interaction, particularly civic participation.
One example is meeting people to possibly date. My parents, who weren't regular churchgoers as I grew up, nevertheless met at a church because that was the setting in their community for social engagement. (Actually, Jeanne and I also met at church, but that was at a worship service, not a dance or a game night.)
Today, many feel the need to go online to meet others.
Please understand, I'm not seeking to judge people's choices--and neither are these books. Instead, they're descriptive. They show us where we've come. And as people seeking to live healthy lives, it's important to pay attention to the environment in which we live and ask, How is that environment affecting us and our neighbors?
Klinenberg's first book was about the Chicago heat wave of 1995, Heller writes, "in which hundreds of people living alone died, not just because of the heat but because their solitary lives left them without a support network."
That's one implication of where we've come.
Part of the American identity is what's been called "rugged individualism." I grew up with a strong sense of the value of self-reliance. Most of us are affected by this ethos. It's not just the libertarians. We place a high value on meeting our own responsibilities and not being dependent on others.
The Bible, on the other hand, does not talk about self-reliance but about community. I write about this in my book Present Tense, particularly in Chapter 4, "Politics." In our faith we learn that we need each other, that we cannot make it on our own. And the Bible is clear that those in our community who are especially vulnerable--the widows and orphans--are to be cared for by the community.
I've seen the power of community not only in my church but through my involvement in Circles of Hope, which I've written about in an earlier blog, a group works with people who are seeking to get out of poverty. Poverty is particularly isolating, and one of the most effective strategies in fighting it is community. When people are part of a larger group, they not only have access to more resources, their sense of self changes, expands, grows stronger.
The cult of the individual is strong (and if cult sounds too negative, think culture). It affects us in ways we often don't notice. We need each other to grow as individuals and as a society.
A week ago, I went to see Pina, a film by Wim Wenders that was nominated for best documentary at this year's Academy Awards. I'd read about it, but I was not prepared for its impact. I knew it was a tribute to Pina Bausch, a famous German choreographer who died in 2009. But I'd never seen her works. I'm no expert on dance, and I can't adequately assess or explicate what I saw. Instead, I'll comment on what I see as implications for our spirituality.
But first, let me say a bit about the film. Just look at the poster (above). That image itself is stunning. Now magnify that with about 90 minutes of dances that, as A.O. Scott writes, "enact dramas of desire, sexual violence and the passage of time." They're set on stages and in all kinds of other settings, from city sidewalks to tram cars to forests and fields. The combination of dance and film is often expertly done.
Now notice that quote beneath the title on the poster. It's in German but can be translated as "Dance, dance, or else we're lost." These are Pina Bausch's final words in the film and summarize her passion for her art, which is also her life. Such passion can feel threatening to many of us. Art has the power to frighten us because it deals with emotions, and good art gets to the heart of who we are in our world. It reveals both the beauty and the ugliness of our world and helps us feel that. Many of us don't want to go there.
This was evident in the theater, where only seven or eight of us were watching.
As I viewed this film, I kept wanting a narrative, an explanation of what I was seeing. To get that, you can go to Wikipedia or other sites, which describe some of the pieces shown in the film. But, besides some interviews with the dancers, and a few with Pina, the film is mostly dances. Some of these are disturbing, depicting various kinds of oppression, while others make you want to get up and dance, even though you know you can never match the skills of these magnificent dancers. Pina tells one dancer simply to express joy. He comes up with a movement that does just that. It is--how else to say it--joyful.
Now, two things I want to apply to our spirituality. One is the nonverbal nature of dance. As I sat there, I thought of something that's been bugging me lately. So much of our spirituality, mine at least, is verbal. It tends toward thought and framing that thought into words. And as I've sat in worship services and, last weekend in Indiana as part of my job, in meetings of church leaders, I thought, We talk too much. We fill our worship and our meetings with words, when maybe we need to do more listening to the Spirit and, dare I say it, dance.
Here's the other thing, which is related. Dance is so physical. Pina's dancers are usually barefoot and wearing few clothes. They express their art with their bodies, contorting them into all kinds of positions, moving them in graceful and frenetic ways to display various emotions. That the film is in 3-D only accentuates the viewers encounter with bodies.
As I argue in my book Present Tense, spirituality is often equated with the nonphysical. But true Christian spirituality, as opposed to what I call Gnostic spirituality, does not deny the body but incorporates it into spirituality, which means following or living in the Spirit, not out of the body.
I could go on about these implications for our spirituality, but I'll stop. Perhaps I can summarize these thoughts this way: Instead of living in our head and talking (or writing) about it, maybe we should shut up and dance.
On Good Friday, let's consider capital punishment, which the Romans practiced in putting Jesus to death those many years ago.
Herald Press has released a book that collects the writings of John Howard Yoder on capital punishment. Who is John Howard Yoder? Some have called him one of the most important theologians of the past century. Certainly he's the most renowned Mennonite theologian, though Yoder saw himself as more of an historian than a theologian.
Yoder, who died in 1997, wrote many books and articles, and new collections of his writings keep coming out, along with books by others responding to his thought. This recent book, The End of Sacrifice: The Capital Punishment Writings of John Howard Yoder, is edited by John C. Nugent. Nugent points out in his introduction that this book is not exhaustive, that "several essays have been omitted because they primarily repackage old material for new contexts." The book consists five chapters, and the longest is Chapter 4, which contains all of Chapter 2 and more.
In reading this book, I kept underlining passages, and I thought, These are too important to let pass by, so I've decided to share some of those quotes here. Capital punishment is an important topic too often ignored and too easily accepted by Christians who claim to follow the Bible's teachings. For related material, see my earlier blog, "The Shame of U.S. Prisons."
In his introduction, Nugent writes: "Central to [Yoder's] position is his conviction that both biblically and culturally, from ancient society until today, capital punishment is an inherently cultic and ritual practice."
He describes Yoder's core thesis thus: "Since the death of Jesus brought a decisive end to sacrifices for sin, Christians should proclaim its abolition, and death penalty advocates should no longer claim biblical validation."
In a footnote, Nugents writes that "this collection should put to rest the notion that Yoder had no theology of atonement."
Now to Chapter 4: "Against the Death Penalty: A Debate with Wayne House," which includes Yoder's position. A footnote explains that "none of House's material is presented, nor is Yoder's critique of House's specific position."
In response to the use of Genesis 9:6 ("Whoever sheds the blood of Man / In Man shall his blood be shed / For in the image of God / He made Man.") to support capital punishment, Yoder writes: "It is then a mistake to read the word to Noah as if it were a command ordering its hearers to do something that they would otherwise not have done. It is not that; it is a simple description of the way things already are, an accurate prediction of what does happen, what will happen, as surely as summer is followed by winter, seedtime by harvest. That killers are killed is the way fallen society works; it is not a new measure that God introduced after the deluge to solve a problem that had not been there before, or for which God had not yet found a solution."
More from Chapter 4: "The killing of a killer is not a civil, nonreligious matter. It is a sacrificial act. … If there is killing, the offense is a cosmic, ritual, religious evil, demanding ceremonial compensation. It is not a moral matter; in morality a second wrong does not make a right. It is not a civil, legislative matter; it is originally stated in a setting where there is not government."
In reference to the book of Hebrews' mention of the high-priestly sacrifice of Christ, Nugent quotes the famous Swiss theologian Karl Barth in a footnote: "Which category of particularly great sinners is exempted from the pardon effected on the basis of the death penalty carried out at Calvary? Now that Jesus Christ has been nailed to the cross for the sins of the world, how can we still use the thought of expiation to establish the death penalty?"
In reference to "an eye for an eye," Yoder writes: "The appetite for imposing symmetrical suffering is thus a natural reflex in primitive cultures, poetically apt but not always applicable. … It is a standard cultural reflex rather than a prescriptive guide. Jesus explicitly sets it aside."
In reference to Jesus and the civil order, Yoder writes: "The Christian challenge to the death penalty properly begins where Jesus does, by challenging the self-ascribed righteousness of those who claim the authority to kill others." See John 8:1-11.
He adds: "The saviorhood of Jesus applies to law and to social punishment for sin, no less than to prayer."
"The civil order is a fact. That it might be done away with by pushing the critique of love 'too far' is inconceivable. … Thus the Christian (and any believer in democracy) will be concerned to restrain the violent vengeful potential of the state."
"Justice is a direction, not an achievement. It is a relative, not absolute concept."
"Christians begin to deny their Lord when they admit that there are certain realms of life in which it would be inappropriate to bring Christ's rule to bear."
"It is thus formally wrong to look in the New Testament for specific guidelines for a good civil society."
In reference to Christ transforming culture, Yoder writes: "To say that every human being is endowed at birth with an inalienable right to life is our analogy to the Bible's speaking of the sacredness of blood."
"The primary threat to human dignity is not the impunity of individual offenders not proven guilty, but the absolute power of the state itself to punish."
In reference to the clash of rationales for capital punishment, Yoder writes: "The Bible's witness on these matters is a long story, not a timeless, unchanging corpus of laws or of truths. What matters for us is not the cultural substance of where the story started (with is racism, its superstition, its slavery, its holy warfare, its polygamy, and its abuse of women), but where it was being led. That direction is toward Jesus; toward validating the dignity of every underdog and outsider, of the slave and foreigner, the woman and the child, the poor and the offender. This is done not on the grounds that this or that outsider is an especially virtuous person, but on the grounds of God's grace."
"By unjustly condemning the Righteous One in the name of the Pax Romana and the welfare of the people (John 11:50; 18:14), the claimants to human righteousness refuted their claim for the rightness of the death penalty in the very act of imposing it."
Yoder goes on to make other arguments tied less directly to the Bible, including how the death penalty is often murder, as people are put to death who are later proved innocent. And there are many more fine quotes I could have used from this excellent book, but I've gone on long enough.
Bottom line: Don't accept the frequent claim that the Bible supports capital punishment. The death penalty is a ritual of sacrifice, and Jesus put an end to sacrifice. Today is Good Friday, the celebration of Jesus freely giving himself up to death at the hands of the Romans, who certainly believed in capital punishment.
