The June issue of Christianity Today devotes several
articles to “The Juvenilization of the American Church.” Thomas E. Bergler’s
long cover story, “When Are We Going to Grow Up?” presents a history of
American Evangelicals reaching out to youth through organizations such as Youth
for Christ and Young Life. He notes the success of this outreach but cautions
about unintended consequences: “Juvenilization tends to create a self-centered,
emotionally driven and intellectually empty faith.”
Throughout its history, the Christian church has adapted the
gospel message to its culture, with varying degrees of success. At the same
time, such efforts have been criticized as either watering down the message or
presenting a false one that doesn’t adequately challenge people to follow
Jesus.
White evangelicals, in particular, writes Bergler, found
success in adapting the gospel message to the culture, especially to young
people: “It fared equally well in the buttoned-down 1950s and the psychedelic
1960s.”
Meanwhile, in the wider culture, the meaning of American
adulthood underwent change. Instead of encouraging responsibility, self-denial
and service to others, a new “psychological adulthood” encourages the
individual’s needs and wants above obligations and attachments to
relationships.
He quotes sociologist James Côté, who says the seven deadly
sins have been redefined: “pride has become self-esteem … lust has become
sexuality … envy is now channeled into initiative and incentive … sloth has
become leisure.”
Bergler refers to the National Study of Youth and Religion
by Christian Smith and other researchers, which found that the majority of
American teenagers are inarticulate about religious matters. Smith labels their
pattern of religious beliefs as Moralistic Therapeutive Deism.
This kind of adolescent narcissism, Bergler writes, has come
to typify many Americans today: “God, faith and the church all exist to help me
with my problems. Religious institutions are bad; only my personal relationship
with Jesus matters.”
In that same issue, several other writers respond to
Bergler’s article. John Ortberg, a megachurch pastor, mostly agrees with
Bergler but calls the issue a missiological one of contextualization. He asks,
How do we contextualize the gospel to a youth-worshiping culture?
He also notes that we need help defining just what spiritual
maturity is.
David Kinnaman, a researcher and president of Barna Group,
says we under- and overestimate the power and shape of the next generation. He
notes that “typical parents are just as ‘addicted’ to media and technology as
are their teenagers, just in different ways.” He says they’ve interviewed
teenagers who complain that their parents’ use of technology inhibited quality
family time.
David Zahl, a cultural critic, agrees with Bergler’s
diagnosis but says “it misses the freedom at the heart of the gospel.”
He makes the point that we don’t grow out of spiritual
adolescence by trying to grow up. “The Christian religion,” he writes, “is not
ultimately about the Christian, either adolescent or mature—it is about the
Christ.”
The question Bergler raises is an important one: Are we too
immature? One of the better resources I’ve found in discussing spiritual
maturity is Richard Rohr’s book Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two
Halves of Life. He posits that we create an ego structure in the first half, then
“fall upward” in the second half as we search for meaning.
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