The Pill and the pew
Sex, not theology, caused the decline of the mainline church.Simply put, conservatives breed more than liberals.
That's the argument of a trio of sociologists who say differences in fertility rates account for 70 percent of the loss of membership in mainline churches during the 20th century.
Their findings question the popular notion that conservative churches are growing because mainline churches are too liberal, suggesting that a simpler cause--the use of birth control--explains most of the mainline decline.
It's work like this that feeds my growing sense that every seminary needs a sociologist of religion on faculty . . . .
.: Posted by Duane Bidwell on Friday, October 28, 2005
What pastors read (or, Is pastoral theology marginal to the parish?)
If the Barna Group can be trusted, the discipline of pastoral theology doesn't have much influence on pastors already working in the church.A survey of books and authors that parish pastors identify as most helpful (published in May but unnoticed by me until Christian linked to it at faithasawayoflife) suggests that most Protestant clergy read books about:
- "discipleship" and personal spiritual growth (54 percent)
- church growth, congregational health or ministry dynamics (23 percent), and
- leadership (22 percent)
These results ought to give pause to pastoral theologians.
The books and authors with the greatest influence on parish pastors could be considered, in some ways, works of practical theology. But they are far outside the interests and methodologies that shape the academic discipline of pastoral theology.
Consider, for example, the titles cited as most helpful: The Purpose-Driven Life and The Purpose-Driven Church.
The most influential authors included Rick Warren, John Maxwell, Phil Yancey, George Barna, John Eldredge, Henri Nouwen, and Leonard Sweet.
No pastoral theologians in that lists. And no pastoral theology texts cited, either.
I do not want our discipline to become more "market driven" than it is already (and it is driven by market concerns, both because of expectations for tenure and promotion and the limited resources of publishers).
But it might be prudent for members of our guild to talk about what this survey suggests for our work and our field--the relevance of pastoral theology to the day-by-day practice of ministry, its accessibility to those who have been out of seminary for some time, and its ability to address the pastoral concerns that are primary among those surveyed.
For example, the survey results make me wonder how the field of pastoral theology addresses spirituality and spiritual formation, topics related to the concerns most important to the broadest range of surveyed pastors. Do we adequately address these areas through theological reflection, theological praxis, and critical scholarship? [An answer to this question might be a topic for a longer post.]
The survey is particularly interesting for what it suggests about pastors under 40 years of age. These pastors, says researcher Barna,
lean toward books and authors that extol adventure, shared experiences, visionary leadership, supernatural guidance and relational connections. If their choices in reading are any indication, they seem less obsessed with church size and more interested in encounters with the living God. They are also less prone to identifying the most popular books in favor of those that are known for their passionate tone. The fact that less than half as many young pastors considered the Purpose Driven books to be influential in their ministry suggests that the new legion of young pastors may be primed to introduce new ways of thinking about Christianity and church life.
.: Posted by Duane Bidwell on Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Religious romanticism
AKMA offers up a fine mini-rant about the curious, contemporary intersection of cultural romanticism and faith. I'll let you read it for yourself, but must say "Amen" to this sentence:[R]omantic religion makes teaching practically impossible; romantically-conditioned audiences already know everything they need to, they are predisposed not simply to question but to disbelieve authority, and they may expect that anything that doesn't warm their hearts doesn't matter.
.: Posted by Duane Bidwell on Friday, October 14, 2005
Anticipatory action
Combine a damp, grey, chilly morning with Elizabeth Stuart's chapter indicting lesbian and gay theologies for failing to address HIV/AIDS, and a memory arises.In October 1992, the AIDS quilt was displayed in its entirety on the Mall in Washington, DC.
It was a heady time; certain of a Clinton victory in the coming month, tens of thousands of us clutching candles surrounded the White House chanting, "Four more weeks! No more Bush!" That night, Liza Minnelli led us in the Lord's Prayer as the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial refracted the candlelight into a universe of stars.
Later that weekend, a cold rain fell all night and into the morning. At dawn, a friend dropped me off at the Quilt display on the Mall. It was a ghost town.
I ducked into one of the canvas tents where merchandise had been sold one day before.
Inside was an old lady, nearing her 81st birthday. She had come to see her son's quilt panel. We chatted briefly, wondering if the Quilt could be pieced together in the rain.
Then we were quiet, listening to the rain drum on the tent while icy water swirled around our ankles.
After a while, a soaked man without a jacket or hat pushed through the tent flap. He sloshed in, clutching something wrapped in a black garbage bag.
"Where do you turn in panels?" he asked, anxiously. He was in his mid-30's, younger than I am now. "I have to catch my plane in about an hour."
He was from San Francisco. His partner's panel had been finished for more than a year, but he had not been able to part with it. Something had changed over that weekend, though, and he impulsively caught a red-eye flight to DC to hand over the memorial.
As minutes passed and no volunteers arrived at the site to receive quilt panels, he grew more and more agitated, pacing back and forth wordlessly in the cold water.
Finally, he stopped and looked at us. "I've got to go. Could one of you . . . ?" He held out the plastic-wrapped package.
The old lady reached for it. "I'd be honored," she said. She unwrapped the plastic bag. "May I?" she asked, reaching inside.
"No one but me has ever seen it."
There is a dramatic and graceful choreography to displaying the Quilt, in which volunteers dressed in white silently and purposely unfold each section like the opening of a lotus, turning a quarter turn after each movement. When the section is open, they lift it into the air where it billows like a parachute, settling slowly to the ground.
Without discussing it, we three strangers spontaneously performed that liturgy, unfolding this secret panel the size of a grave, turning as each petal opened, finally thrusting it toward heaven and letting it billow down until it was stretched between us.
It was gorgeous.
We stood silently, looking. Tears streamed down the man's face, and without a word or sign we began to fold the panel closed.
When we were done, he held it to his chest and looked at each of us, a penetrating gaze directly into our eyes. "Thank you," he whispered.
He handed the folded panel to the woman and slipped out of the tent.
That moment, for me, has always been a foretaste of God's reality, what my colleague Nancy Gorsuch calls "anticipatory action," in which kindred folk enact an eschatological reality, living for a moment the ultimate destiny of all things.
It was a moment of solidarity and justice, of grief and honor.
Simply put: grace.
.: Posted by Duane Bidwell on Saturday, October 08, 2005
"Versatile God": Queering the liturgy
My wife elbowed me after the eucharist last Sunday. "Why were you laughing during communion?"Because God works in strange ways, sometimes.
As the pastors prayed the Great Thanksgiving during the World Communion Sunday liturgy, Fritz said, "Merciful God . . . ."
Except I heard, "Versatile God . . . " and couldn't help laughing.
(That's what I get for praying under the influence of too much queer theology [especially Robert Goss, whom I read all of last week].)
"Versatile" is the word that men who have sex with men use to describe a guy who enjoys both top and bottom--the "active" and "passive" positions during sex.
I laughed because the thought of Jesus as a versatile man seems radically appropriate, undermining all of the patriarchal theology and heterosexist assumptions of many congregations.
And doesn't that seem like something Jesus would do?
We tend to focus on race and ethnicity when talking about diversity in the church. But sexuality is an aspect of the diversity that God created, too.
I am sure someone, somewhere, has reflected at length on the versatility of God, an active/passive diety who delights in being with us in creative, subversive, passive and active ways--both to pleasure Godself and to pleasure us.
For me, mishearing one word in the Great Thanksgiving queered the liturgy in a way that gave new and richer meaning to the eucharist, changing my experience of receiving the Bread of Life and the Cup of Salvation--a physical and spiritual act in which Christ penetrates all that (and whom) we are, nourishing us to take an active role in the world on his behalf.
It is a moment that makes all Christians queer, undermining our sexual and gender identities in order to take into ourselves the power of a bisexual God who is neither male nor female, gay nor straight, but forever "in between" the human categories that hide and even serve to negate our baptismal identities as One in Christ.
.: Posted by Duane Bidwell on Monday, October 03, 2005