A WSJ.com online article, Do-It-Yourself Religion, gives more of the near-absolute privitization in U. S. culture of religious faith. (Props to Michael.)
The article starts off with a strong warning the author surely did not intend:
Looking for a priest she could relate to, Cecilia Schulte had been church shopping since moving to Austin, Texas, a few years ago. But when the fifth parish she tried had an elderly priest and, in her view, not enough participation by women, the 43-year-old internist took a novel approach: She started her own worship group.
"It's as deep as anything I've experienced in the Catholic Church," Dr. Schulte says. "Dogma doesn't get in the way." Her prayer gathering of about 12 people meets every two weeks in her living room, incorporates readings from many sources and doesn't use a pastor. Dr. Schulte acknowledges that the approach is outside the bounds of Catholicism, but she says the group helps strengthen her spirituality.
This, regrettably, is the tired old saw about individual freedom and fulfillment set over against the rigid and confining straight-jacket of dogma and organization. I don't doubt Dr. Schulte is sincere, nor that her current experience doesn't, in some sense, fulfill unmet needs. But I wonder if Dr. Schulte has been programmed by a conumerist society--and consumerist Christianity--to feel the way she does. And if she became aware of such an in-built mindset, would she have the courage to change, to allow herself dissatisfaction, at least temporarily, in exchange for a less self-interested approach to worship?
Still, the mid-parts of the article are a decent balance of attempting to explain the phenomenon of do-it-yourself religion.
One gets on the one hand, the tired complaint of dissatisfaction with organized religion. But in this article what is understood as organized religion now includes such things as megachurches, jazz Masses, and video presentations from the puplit. The megachurches are too impersonal, and jazz Masses lack transcendence. In other words, the recent boomer transformation of the church is no longer fresh and relevant. It has become the institution it chafed against. And the "nontraditional" is now, well, the traditional.
The nontraditional approach doesn't work for everyone. Chris Brooks, 29, recently tried out a Saturday night service at a start-up church in Minneapolis, where people sit on couches and easy chairs, not pews, and have adapted the Communion ritual to a sharing of chocolate-chip bread and juice. He went back to his Methodist church. "It's nice to be in a place where it feels like God is held in high esteem," he says.
Brooks has it right, I think: it's not about us, it's about God. (On the other hand, one might legitimately ask Mr. Brooks if his reversion back to the "traditional" is due to personal preference.) So long as worship is understood as the glorifying of God and not viewed from the standpoint of therapy and felt-needs, one is on the way to the worship that is in spirit and in truth.
The article also rightly points out:
The new DIY [do-it-yourself] trend could alter the way people worship, especially if churches and synagogues adopt the new approach. But if history is an indicator, the movement may have a limited lifespan. Many of the new groups already are becoming so popular they'll soon need to grapple with the same issues as established congregations: fund raising, building a sanctuary or permanent meeting space, keeping people's attention for the long run. In addition, as today's young, often single, members settle down and raise families, they may naturally look for clergy to marry them, and for religious schools to educate their children.
The search for the ever-new, the ever-relevant is never-ending. One is forced to a paradigm of endless chasing after the moving target of self-interest, and the therapeutic. This, to me, almost inevitably results in corporate burn-out and disillusion, the search for the first high through ever-diminishing returns on one's efforts.
One plus is that the Tradition of the Church is being, as it were, rediscovered--though you won't need to tell some Catholics and Orthodox that. However, one wonders if this rediscovery will transcend the cafeteria-style Christianity that the churches have largely become in the U. S., or whether a real "reversion" will take place.
Posted by Clifton at June 15, 2004 06:00 AM | TrackBackYeah.
Well, there you have it. The danger for the "emerging" churhc movement is that it too will fall to the wayside once it is perceived as an institution and not a "movement." Its asthetic grace will be deemed an issue of taste and not traditon. This is the way it works when relevance is calcified.
So, we will have two traditions: a make-shift catch as catch can universal spirituality and Christian Institutionalism.
How's that for starters?
Posted by: AngloBaptist at June 15, 2004 11:22 AMI think the best scenario is to understand not "Christian Institutionalism" on the one hand, and catch-as-can spirtuality on the other, but rather the conversion of mind and will necessary to see the Tradition as living and freeing.
But it will take conversion. Because even for those parishes who freely exhibit the living and freeing Tradition (and if I may be so bold as to suggest mine is one?), the filters by which it will be seen will have to be removed, or the reality will still be distorted.
Posted by: Clifton D. Healy at June 15, 2004 12:36 PMUm, I was not suggesting it. I was stating where the inertia takes us.
Posted by: AngloBaptist at June 15, 2004 04:24 PM"This is the way it works when relevance is calcified." Huh?
I can't figure out if that means "where relevence becomes the law of the land" or "where people fail to be relevant."
The Chavurah movement in Judaism went through the same problems: revolutionary... suddenly adopted by nearly all the "cool" synagoagues... suddenly as old hat as the local sewing circle. "Chavurah" is now used the same way I might say "a sisterhood meeting on wednesday".
Innovation. Feh.
Posted by: Huw Raphael at June 16, 2004 04:43 AM