"Most emerging adults have religious beliefs. They believe in God. They probably believe in an afterlife. They may even believe in Jesus. But those religious ideas are for the most part abstract agreements that have been mentally checked off and filed away. They are not what emerging adults organize their lives around."
Capitalism is not perfect. In his look at the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers, Christian Smith considers mass-consumer capitalism as one of the formidable cultural factors shaping teenage (and adult, for that matter) spirituality. Smith says,
"Capitalism as a system must ever grow or it will die. The intrinsic problem in capitalism's logic, however, is that actual human needs are somewhat limited and modest: it takes only so many goods and services to sustain a healthy, potentially satisfying human life. For mass-consumer capitalism to forever grow, therefore, it must constitute masses of people as consumer selves who misrecognize new wants as essential needs, whose basic sense of necessity always expands. Consumer demand must always escalate if capitalism is to succeed." (178, Soul Searching)
Enter the Snuggie. This product is a symbol of just how far this capitalistic enterprise has taken us. It is a testimony of our frailty as humans that the Snuggie exists (and the Snuggie Puppy for those pet lovers out there). And there are other products. Jerry Seinfeld recalled being up late one night thinking that he could use the Ginsu Knive because he didn't have any kitchen knives that could cut through boots.
The Christian's task in the midst of all this is to remember that Christ alone will satisfy. Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee, as Augustine famously said. Consider how the gospel might satisfy the needs stirred up by advertising (for more on this I recommend Sam Van Eman's On Earth As It Is in Advertising? Moving from Commercial Hype to Gospel Hope)
Maura J. Casey has written a good piece in First Things on the too often overlooked woes of gambling.
Here is one excerpt: Part of the reason that gambling spread so far and so fast is that the industry markets its product as just another form of harmless fun. In a brilliant move, the industry coined the term gaming as the euphemism of choice. Organized religion was slow to challenge the spread and, even today, rarely speaks out. Most of all, government has become predatory in its use of gambling as a worry-free method of increasing revenue without raising taxes. Indeed, the states have moved from granting permission to cheerleading. Government boosterism has legitimized gambling, eroding what few moral scruples remained on the part of average people against engaging in a behavior that, just a few decades ago, would have been considered largely unacceptable.
To read my two cents on this documentary on religion and some thoughts on the general mood represented by the film (a mood that dominates our religious landscape), click here.
"American society is a nonliturgical society, its pace of life too fast, its commitments to individualism too powerful, its treatment of authority too irreverent, and its craving for innovation too intense to tolerate religious practices that call believers to repeat the same word or songs with little room for creative expression" (17)
from Alan Wolfe, The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Live Our Faith (New York: Free Press, 2003).
"Calvin Miller can tell stories. Miller, writer in residence and research professor at Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Ala., has the ability to make grown adults feel like children captivated at story time. And his hearers are captivated, not because they are listening to children’s stories, but because they perceive a richness and depth to the story; one senses that within Miller’s narratives are profound truths capable of plumbing the depths of human experience.
Not surprisingly, Miller advocated at the 2009 annual meeting of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma narrative preaching, that is, story-like preaching. After all, this is how the master-teacher, Jesus, taught. Moreover, the preacher’s text is a story. From the opening words of Genesis to the closing words of Revelation, one is presented with the story of God’s redeeming work in the world. Unlike propositional preaching, which preachers often do, Miller believes that narrative preaching sustains the listener’s attention and leaves indelible marks on the listener’s memory."
The Simpson's evangelical character, Ned Flanders, attended Oral Roberts University in Tulsa. It is a fitting choice given Oklahoma's (and Tulsa's) decidedly evangelical hue. While broad, many have wondered just how deep this evangelical culture is. To read more on this, click here.
What is the relationship between Southern Baptists and evangelicals? Are Southern Baptists evangelicals? In Southern Baptist circles, I've often heard Baptists quickly distance themselves from evangelicalism because of the boundaries present there. These Baptists, for example, do not want to be forced into evangelical understanding of the scriptures. These Southern Baptists felt that evangelicalism was too conservative.
Curiously, I have heard evangelicals argue the same point (that Southern Baptists were not evangelicals) but for the opposite reason. Southern Baptists, they believe, fit best in the Fundamentalist, not evangelical, camp. In other words, whereas some Baptists avoid evangelicalism because it is too conservative, some evangelicals believe that Southern Baptists are too conservative (i.e. Fundamentalist) to belong in the evangelical camp.
Is this not odd? I welcome explanations or thoughts on the matter.
You can read more about the relationship between Southern Baptists and evangelicals here.
I am a Christian seeking to cultivate a Christian consciousness. I have a lovely wife and a delightful daughter. I am a member of a Baptist church. I have studied at Oklahoma Baptist University, Gordon-Conwell Seminary, and, currently, I am a student at Durham University.
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