Embedded Faith

The Faith Journeys of Young Adults within Church Communities

Carlton Johnstone

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781625641236
  9781498267809
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630870911
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Embedded Faith explores the way Christian faith journeys of young adults are embedded within church communities. It discusses why young adults go to church, why they change churches, why some are involved in the practice of church two-timing, and what they are looking for in a church. Embedded Faith also provides valuable insight into the relationship between geographic mobility and belonging to a faith community in a transient age. Embedded Faith discusses areas where young adults are engaging and disengaging with church life, such as preaching and worship. It addresses how stage of life transitions and life experience impact on one's experience and involvement in church. This book will enable anyone working with young adults in a church context to give shape to a ministry that is more sensitive and connected to the realities faced by young adults, and will call you to the importance of listening to the lived experience of young adults as it relates to faith and church.

1

Negotiating the Profile of Generations X and Y1

xIn 1951 when Time magazine was examining the “silent” generation it asked, “Is it possible to paint a portrait of an entire generation?” This question continues to hold sociological relevance. Time went on to say:

Each generation has a million faces and a million voices. What the voices say is not necessarily what the generation believes, and what it believes is not necessarily what it will act on. Its motives and desires are often hidden. It is a medley of good and evil, promise and threat, hope and despair. Like a straggling army, it has no clear beginning or end. And yet each generation has some features that are more significant than others; each has a quality as distinctive as a man’s accent, each makes a statement to the future, each leaves behind a picture of itself.2

“Don’t trust anyone over thirty” (which originally was “twenty-five”) became the symbolic slogan of the Boomer generation, highlighting a growing “generational gap.” The term “generational gap” emerged during this time in the 1960s to explain the cultural differences and divisions emerging between Boomers and their parents. Cultural differences in relation to fashion, music, politics, sexuality, and drugs were particularly noticeable. Some of this disparity is related to the unprecedented size of this birth cohort, which gave it unprecedented power and a significant voice and influence. However, since then, Margaret Mead has argued that the “generational gap” has undergone domestification.3 Not only has this original generation gap undergone domestification, but a generation later, the Boomers found themselves in the uncomfortable position once occupied by their elders.

Unlike the Baby Boomers, who became Time’s 40th “Man of the Year” in 1967, the collective portrait of Generation X has been strikingly less complimentary.4 The name “Generation X” was born out of a Douglas Coupland novel by the same name. Coupland got the idea from the last chapter in a book on class by Paul Fussell, and in his article titled “Generation X’d,” Coupland explains the sociological influence of the term:

The book’s title came not from Billy Idol’s band, as many supposed, but from the final chapter of a funny sociological book on American class structure titled Class, by Paul Fussell. In his final chapter, Fussell named an “X” category of people who wanted to hop off the merry-go-round of status, money, and social climbing that so often frames modern existence. The citizens of X had much in common with my own socially disengaged characters; hence the title. The book’s title also allowed Claire, Andy, and Dag to remain enigmatic individuals while at the same time making them feel a part of the larger whole.5

“Generation X” has become the moniker that has stuck. It could be argued that at least X has a history to its name, unlike the unfortunate succeeding generation, labelled Y. This is telling in itself, as there is no specific defining event that has shaped this generation enough to provide them with a more descriptive name than that of the alphabetical letter following Generation X.

The sociological profiles of Generations X and Y are somewhat ambiguous. Generation X and Gen Y are somewhat floating signifiers, created, Sherry Ortner argues, by “the politics of representation”:

One can see the play of various positionalities, interests, political claims, and marketing intentions at work in the competing representations. One can see as well that Generation X has quite literally been brought into being in the play of these representations. Finally, one may come to feel—as the images never stabilize—that there is a kind of Baudrillardian process at work—a free play of signifiers with no referent, really at all.6

In a similar manner, Lovell contends that the notion of “generation has never been so ubiquitous in public discourse as in our own present day.”7 The politics of representation has resulted in Gen X being misrepresented over the years. Coupland blames this on

boomer angst-transference . . . who feeling pummelled by the recession and embarrassed by their own compromised 60s values, began transferring their collective darkness onto the group threatening to take their spotlight. As a result Xers were labelled monsters. Their protestations became “whining”; being mellow became “slacking”; and the struggle to find themselves became “apathy.”8

Theorizing Generations

Karl Mannheim’s now-famous essay, “The Problem of Generations,” has become the central reference point for many contemporary discussions in sociology and politics concerning generational issues. Mannheim argues that a distinction between the categories of “generation location,” “generation as actuality,” and “generation unit,” is required for any in-depth analysis of generations.9 Mannheim insists on the importance of specific sociological influences in the development of a social generation. Mannheim also emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between the various subgroups to be found within each generation. Being born during a similar period does not, Mannheim points out, guarantee a common life experience or worldview between members of a birth cohort.

Mannheim’s distinction between generation as location and generation as actuality is an important one. Generation as location refers to the broadest use of the term: coexisting or being located with others of the same age or born between a certain period. A generation as an actuality begins to become more specific, as it refers to a community of shared experiences and feelings. This shared experience of an actual generation occurs at a general level. Mannheim’s concept of “generational unit” provides a more specific analysis of generations. Generational units share a similar view and interpretation about events, and in the process, a shared identity. Mannheim explains the difference between a generational unit and an actual generation as follows:

The generation unit represents a much more concrete bond than the actual generation as such. Youth experiencing the same concrete historical problems may be said to be part of the same actual generation, while those groups within the same actual generation which work up the material of their common experience in different specific ways constitute separate generation units.10

Mannheim also speaks of the phenomenon of “stratification,” or life stages when various generations can experience certain historical processes together, yet do not share the same generation location due to their social situatedness. Social stratification such as class, gender, race, and religion all influence the way one responds to and interprets significant social and cultural changes and events. This is something often overlooked in the literature on Generations X and Y, rendering them seemingly homogenous generations. Ortner is a notable exception to this, at least in relation to class and ethnicity, for Ortner argues that popular representation of Gen X in American public culture “is an attempt to deal with profound changes in the U.S. middle class in the late 20th century.”11 Beaudoin, who argues that a defining characteristic of Gen X is their common engagement with popular cultural events,12 concedes that participation in the forms of popular culture...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Negotiating the Profile of Generations X and Y
• Chapter 2: Embedded Faith
• Chapter 3: Rituals as Bonding and Collective Memory
• Chapter 4: Church Switching
• Chapter 5: The Relational Dimension of Embedded Faith
• Chapter 6: Worship and Modes of Engagement
• Chapter 7: Preaching and Interpretive Communities
• Chapter 8: Church Two-Timing
• Appendix: Methodology
• Bibliography