Kony 2012 Tells Us What We Care About

By now, most of you know about Kony 2012, the 30 minute video gone viral. So many people have seen it, and the commentaries are multiplying.

But what does this massive sharing of links tell us about Americans?

Over at the Patheos blog Black, White, and Gray, I wrote a brief post -- Here’s my conclusion:

The campaign to “Stop Kony” is less about removing a brutal military overlord and more about what Americans showcase as their sacred values.

Read more here.

Worship across the Racial Divide: A Response from Three Practitioners

My new book on the dynamics of worship and music in diverse congregations has been out for just a few short weeks, but thanks to Art Lucero the first reviews are now in.

Last week, three Christian music leaders, Josh Davis, Nikki Lerner, and Jeff McCourt, took time to write their own reactions to the book. I am so pleased with how carefully they read the book and the responses they gave:

Josh Davis wrote, "Marti clearly states that no one knows 'what manner of worship is best for stimulating and accelerating racial and ethnic diversity in churches.' Absolutely. There is no one-size-fits-all method or approach to multicultural worship."

Nikki Lerner wrote, "I could not agree more with his conclusions at the end of this book: As I continued to pursue my research, I came to understand that it is not the acoustics of musical style but rather the visible presence of diversity—a racialized ritual inclusion—that stimulates integration of different racial and ethnic groups into their churches [pg. 198]."

Jeff McCourt wrote, "Honestly, I argued with Dr. Marti most of the way through the book but was beginning to feel an openness to his perspective due to the thoroughness of his research..."

Each of them wrote much more, and they're worth reading for yourself. I also provided a brief response that you can see at the bottom of the page.

Welcome to Pub CHurch

Image from public Facebook Page for Pub Church in Buffalo NY

I began an online conversation with church leaders, theologians, and seminarians on Monday over at the Duke Divinity Call and Response Blog (part of their Leadership Education program) on the phenomena of "Pub Church."

The Pub Church is broadly defined there "as spiritual discussions held in 'open spaces' like bars, pubs, coffeehouses, and restaurants."

From a sociological perspective, this represents an interesting form of social assembly for religious purposes.  From a theological perspective, there are several issues about whether such meetings should be considered "church" at all.

I invite you to check out the post there and contribute your comments.  I especially appreciate the links provided on Theology Pubs and the experience of participants in their own versions of Pub Church.

Smartphone Religion at the Duke Divinity Call & Response Blog

Christmas season is in full gear at the Marti house -- finishing up my classes, the kids homework projects before the end of the year, community activities here in Davidson.

In the midst of it all, I've been able to take Jason Byasee's invitation to again contribute last week to the Faith & Leadership Blog at Duke Divinity.

My latest post on The Wi-Fi Church of the Future (and the Present) is tagged under Innovation | Liturgy | Technology ):

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"The past two years have seen a rapid acceleration in the adoption of portable computing by the average person. This will inevitably prompt changes by church leaders."

It's prompted a good online exchange.

I'll encourage you to read the whole post on your own. But more than the post itself are the responses that follow it.

The Executive Director of Leadership Education at Duke Divinity first describes his "knee jerk" reaction against churches leaning on such technology. Another believes "the app" already exists. And yet another comment brings concern for the poor and their access to wi-fi technology and information.

I appreciate the dialogue. I'm learning all the time, and the comments are helpful.

Overall what this exchange suggests to me is that we've arrived at an interesting moment in the relationship between technology and church.

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The American culture has swallowed the use of smartphones almost whole -- after all, analysts can readily predict how many iPhones will be found under the Christmas tree this year.

But church leaders remain nervous about learning new techniques to harness the use of these advanced devices to their ministries.

Smartphones are not the future; they are already here.

So the failure lies not in ministry budgets (people have their own phones), it lies in the imagination of leaders to use these devices to advance their ministry.

Sociologists Need to Account for Evangelicals’ Vitality

Thanks to Jason Byassee, executive director of Leadership Education at Duke Divinity, I was asked to contribute a post to the Call & Response Blog. As a sociologist, I'm fascinated by the intersection of religion and social change. Because much of my focus has been on the American context, it's impossible to ignore the vitality of Evangelicalism in the United States.

I've noticed that not everyone is as sanguine about Evangelicalism as I am.

In fact, most sociologists ignore all forms of religious enthusiasm. At Duke Divinity's Call & Response blog, I write:

Spiritual vitality is not a topic normally addressed by sociologists. My discipline historically has more often severely critiqued religion for its oppressive beliefs and practices.

Of course, sociologists are not alone in this: gauged by books and magazines at my local bookstore and conversations with colleagues and neighbors, arguments for the oppressiveness of religion are everywhere. The disappointment and hurt so common among people I know fuels the attention given to the "new atheism" in recent books like Sam Harris’ “Letter to a Christian Nation,” Christopher Hitchens’ “God is Not Great,” and Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion.”

But, a few social scientists do pay attention, and I point out that my reading of some recent publications reveals social scientists promoting their own particular religious bias.

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There is a lot they don't like about Evangelicalism.

They acknowledge the strength of Evangelicalism and the evidence that churches in the "Mainline" are adopting Evangelical tactics. Yet, the very spread of "Evangelicalism" is not seen as success, or less the work of God, but rather evidence of a noxious spread of the frightening demons of shallow individualistic spirituality, right-wing freakishness, and worldly decline.

I say to my colleagues that we need a broader analytical approach that encompasses, rather than ignores, the strength of Evangelicalism --

Social scientists must switch from merely a critique of evangelicalism to a broader analysis of what constitutes the set of dynamics broadly labeled (and vilified) as “Evangelicalism.”

How do we account for the passion, excitement, and (dare I say it?) spiritual vitality evident in at least a portion of evangelical churches?

I'm not alone. Theologian Philip Clayton at the Claremont School of Theology has also aggressively promoted a more open-minded understanding of evangelical vitality. This is a call not to promote Evangelicalism, but rather to avoid merely dismissing it.

Brazilian Evangelicals - New National Religion?

According to UK's Guardian, Brazil's evangelical churches are booming, but for all their marketing savvy they don't have the status of Catholicism.

A fascinating article from the UK pits Evangelicals versus Catholics in the battle for Brazil's religious self-identity. Pictures from the story show young, enthusiastic worshipers pouring their hearts out in worship.

This ain't your grandma's Sunday school.

The vibrancy of commitment seen here can be excused as being "Brazilian" - the Latin passion manifesting itself through worship. Except this same style of worship can be seen in the contemporary Evangelical churches in the American mid-west.

It's not an ethnic religion, but a charismatic worship that's being seen here.

Instead, we are seeing continued evidence of the Global South embracing forms of ecstatic Christianity. From the article:

In the past 20 years or so, Brazil, cited as the country with the biggest catholic population in the world, has witnessed a migration from Rome to the booming evangelical churches. According to IBGE (the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), the Catholic population in the country was 91.8% of the total in 1970. But the most recent survey, in 2000, revealed that the number of Catholics had fallen to 73. 8% with the number of evangelicals up from 5.2% to 15.6%.

The shift is accompanied by new methodologies of "doing church" similar to things we've seen in the United States. According to the article, "Rock concerts, fighting events and surfer rituals are some of the activities laid on by new churches that are garnering increasing numbers of followers."

But can we explain away this spiritual vitality by approaching it as savvy marketing?

I don't think so.

According to Antonio Flávio Pierucci, professor at the department of sociology of the University of São Paulo and a specialist in the sociology of religion, "the new Pentecostal churches [are good at] media and marketing..." BUT "analysing the statistical data shows that older evangelical churches have grown too."

For Pierucci, "It means that Catholicism is struggling against older Pentecostalism as well as the new varieties."

Pierucci says a key reason for churchgoers' change in allegiance is the development of the religious freedom, a process which began at the end of the 19th century. With the end of the empire and the advent of the republic in Brazil, the Roman Catholic church lost much of its power. And although the article does not explain how this works, Pierucci also states that the military dictatorship (1964-1984) also helped sow the seeds of the evangelical "boom".

We've got to look at the bundle of social changes that stimulate new religious developments. Media push and marketing "tricks" are simply not enough to sustain broad growth in any religious orientation.

And the new wave in Brazil is experiencing it's own challenge in how people understand the new movement. "It is really rare to find a student who is brave enough to say that he is a new Pentecostalist. There is still some prejudice."

"It is not just about class, but about the status of the new Pentecostalism."

Religious Nones Spark Even More Sociological Research

Quick Post: The annual meetings of the American Sociological Association and the Association for the Sociology of Religion have kept my last several days full bouncing between meetings, presentations of research, catching up with friends, and a little bit of sleep here and there.

Scholars don't accomplish much all by themselves. While it can be a lonely business, and we can publish papers with our names on it, the foundation of our work is how we all participate in larger conversations on broad topics and questions. These large, yearly get-togethers become critical for our work.

Image by ruSSeLL hiGGs via Flickr

In attending these conferences, one of the most important things for me to do is to listen to what other people are paying attention to. This year, so much attention is focused on "religious nones." Religious Nones are people who do not mark a religious preference or affiliation on surveys. The percentage of Nones have gone up (lots of news this year on this like here), but we are still trying to figure out what this really means.

Everyone agrees on one thing - being a Religious None does not mean a person is an atheist.

Religious Nones is a survey category, and it can be asked in a lot of ways. For example, there are people who go to church and others who do not. Among those, there are people who go to church who believe in God (as we expect), but there are people who go to church who say they do not believe in God (not many). This simple example shows how there are different ways to discover types of Religious Nones, adding further complications about what it means.

In a session with sociologist Michael Hout, he demonstrated using new data how over the past decade the proportion of Conservative Believers becoming Religious Nones is greater than any other religious group. Conservatives are moving toward Nones more than any other segment of the religious population. Hout thinks this may be due to the growth of attention on the Religious Right from the media - he showed a striking parallel between the two - and that Conservatives are eschewing the label of religion to get away from the stigma of being part of those fundamentalist-moralistic crazies.

Think about that for a moment. If Conservatives are leaving a label, are they leaving religion? Or is something else going on?

In short, are Religious Nones less "religious"? Hmmmm...

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Well, we frankly don't know in part because we do not have a commonly agreed definition of what it means to be religious. Working with notions of "atheism" doesn't seem to help either. But other research out there seems to suggest that we need to pay attention to how people are defining and living out their religious practices rather than relying on these survey scores.

There are probably lots of ways to be a Religious None.

Still, the notion of a Religious None has filtered it's way into congregational leader's thinking about ministry for a long time. Here's one thought -- From my own research, I believe much of the vitality we see among entrepreneurial evangelicals comes from the attempt to craft a church that will appeal to a growing culture of "Religious Nones". This has some relationship to the "unchurched" or "seeker" ideas of the last decade.

Catch the irony here - creating church for people who have rejected religion. Doing so is based on crafting our own understanding of who is rejecting "church," "God," or "religion" and why they do. Then create church (in language, ritual, style) that seeks to overcome those things.

Anyways, this is only one of several dozen ideas that flow through my head as rich information and new perspectives are being brought by the bright, curious, and ambitious scholars I encounter here every day.

Workshop on Theology and Social Science - Jürgen Moltmann Conversation in Chicago

Quick Post: Scheduling for the coming year is in full gear, and I'm happy to have a few opportunities to dialogue and develop new directions in my thinking with others.

The annual Emergent Village Gathering this year features the notable theologian Jürgen Moltmann in Chicago in September.

In addition to four sessions with Moltmann, the conference is adding several workshops on various topics connecting his work with a variety of issues. I'm pleased to host one that centers on possibilities for connections between theology and social science.

From the workshop announcement:

Can We Bridge Social Science and the Theology of Hope?

Gerardo Marti

For most of the 20th century, the study of God and the study of humanity have been at odds. The uneasy and often antagonistic relationship between sociology and theology might yet become productive - if we realign the paradigms guiding the conversation. Jürgen Moltmann's theology offers several points of connection that can energize a new dialogue centered on a common concern over the future of humanity.

Other workshops are listed on the conference website.

Registration is limited to 300 participants, but as of today there is still room for more. Join us in Chicago!

The Cultural Practice of Self-Critique among Evangelicals

After recently reading several Christian books and posts, I want to draw attention to the pervasive practice of self-critique among contemporary evangelicals.


Evangelical Self-Critique as Cultural Practice

I suspect most people don't see just how much Evangelicals continually criticize themselves. Whether the tone is sincere or smug, the practice of speaking critically about the shortcomings of their faith community is bound to come up in any serious discussion among Evangelicals.

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For Evangelicals, this is obvious and mundane (Dude, tell me something I don't already know). But for those outside the movement, it highlights aspects of this religious orientation that are both critical and complimentary. So, here's my take on it.

Another way to characterize this is that contemporary Evangelicals continually look in the mirror and are not quite satisfied with what they see. So, they turn to each other and talk about the practice of their faith.

I consider such critique to be "insider talk" with "insider language" about "insider dynamics." It makes it as compelling as gossip for those who are inside. It can also sound like gibberish to those outside.

Image by Coach O. via Flickr

Because there are so many Evangelicals in the U.S., the conversation can be sustained at a national level through Christian publishing houses, individual blogsites, and constant twitter updates. It's not just local church fellowships (although it happens there), its also readily available at national conferences. The back-and-forth discussion in these settings easily turns to bantering and can become a screeching match. For anyone who cares to pay attention, the public nature of this conversation makes it accessible for study.


Evolving Critique and the Future of American Religion

Why bother paying attention? Because the evolving critique that happens among Evangelicals tells you a whole lot not only about Evangelicalism but also the near future of religion in America.

Image by Don Orrell via Flickr

Take the sharp rise of Fundamentalism in the early 20th Century (George Marsden's book is an excellent source.) In that case, severe critique of what became characterized as "modernism" and "liberalism" redefined Evangelicals into the "Bible church orientation" we are all so familiar with today -- the primacy of exegetical preaching, the focus on Bible as Word of God, the salvation focus driving bullet-point evangelism, and the requirement of church membership affirmed by checking-off a series of doctrinal affirmations.

Since the dawn of the Evangelical movement, it might be said that Evangelicalism functions as an ongoing process of critique in the practice of religion. (See a my recent posts on Charles Finney's remarkable ministry.) Indeed, Christian maturity in some circles is measured -- not by how much you pray or know the Bible but -- by how incisive you can talk about Evangelicals.


Example of Evangelical Self-Critique

As excellent example of Evangelical Self-Critique just came out this week. Read a post by Scot McKnight who recently wrote this fascinating piece on "Spiritual Eroticism."

Spiritual Eroticism:

Are we really in love with Jesus, or with the experience of loving Jesus?

by Scot McKnight

A peculiar development occurred in the medieval age regarding love. Behind closed doors and in the rush of brief encounters, there developed what has been called “courtly love” or “romantic love.” Married men found themselves emotionally carried away with either another married woman or a single woman. This courtly love, so we are told, remained at the emotional and non-physical level.
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The interpretation of many is that the Lover, because of the emotion it generated, preferred the nearly intolerable absence of the Beloved over the presence of the Beloved. The Lover preferred the titillation of fantasy over the toughness of fidelity. The essence of courtly love was to become intoxicated with love, to fall in love with love. It was to prefer the fire of love over the Beloved and delight in the experience of love over the presence of the Beloved. Think Tristan and Isolde. Perhaps even Romeo and Juliet.

Friends of mine today worry about consumerization or commoditization in the church. I offer a slightly different analysis of what might be the same thing: for many, Sunday services have become the experience of courtly love. Some folks love church, and what they mean by "loving church" is that they love the experience they get when they go to church. They prefer to attend churches that foster the titillation of courtly-love worship and courtly-love fellowship and courtly-love feelings.

They say they love worship, and by this they mean they love the courtly-love-like songs that extol the experience of loving Jesus or the experience of adoring God or the experience of a concert-like praise team that can generate the sound of worship intensely enough to vibrate the very soul of the worshiper.

Such folks might like sermons that create powerful contrasts between God’s wrath and human sinfulness or between our sinfulness and God’s gracious love; or they might like stories told so well as to usher them into the depths of human loves and hates and tragedies and comedies. What they like is the freshness of discovery or the flush of shame or the intoxicating sense of learning something new. They may create such a stir of silence in expectation of some great preacher or some great leader that the sheer presence of that person makes their soul swoon.

But this does not describe worship.

My contention is rather simple: the shaping of a Sunday service or a worship event or a concert in order to generate a profound experience might emerge from a courtly-love sense of worship. The expectation of such an experience on the part of the worshiper might also emerge from a courtly sense of worship. The opening of the Bible to read in search of an experience, or the entrance into a prayer time in order to rediscover some powerful emotion might also emerge from the intrusion of courtly love into how many today understand spirituality.

Let’s call this was it is: spiritual eroticism. And those who are good at it can be called spiritual erotics.

Cover of The Four Loves

So, what can be done? The same thing that good critics of courtly love, like C.S. Lewis, did about that distortion of love. Love, proper love—the love of God and, by extension, the love of others that both Moses and Jesus reveal—is to focus on God as the Sole Beloved worthy of our entire heart. Eros, Lewis argued in The Four Loves, wants to be a god, wants to be an idol. Eros left to itself, will not lead us to Charity. Eros needs to be tamed by Charity. When Eros is tamed by Charity, what happens?

Charity always leads us to the Beloved. Charity skips over the intoxication that comes with the experience of love and leads us straight to the face of the Beloved—Father, Son, Spirit. Those who know the Beloved and desire nothing but the glory of that Beloved may well know the experience, but they are so enthralled with the Face of the Beloved they forget where they are and dwell in the presence of God with but one thought: God deserves praise, God is worthy of praise.

There is a big difference between saying “You are worthy of our praise” and saying “I love praising God.” The second, I am suggesting, is courtly love. It is in love with loving God; but it is the first that is in love with God.

McKnight is the Karl A. Olsson Professor in Religious Studies at North Park University. His books have been well-received among Evangelicals of all types.


Characteristics of Evangelical Self-Critique

In my recent reading, I think the best Evangelical self-critique today draws on aspects of Christian history as a point of comparison or apply a sensitizing concept to draw out subtle aspects of contemporary practices.

Image by who.log.why via Flickr

Scot McKnight's writing here is a good example of what can be found almost everywhere once you start looking. See books by Erwin McManus or Doug Pagitt or Tony Jones or Tony Campolo. See articles in Christianity Today or Relevance magazine. See online material like blog posts and podcasts at emergentvillage.com.

If I began some attempt to formalize it, I would begin with these characteristics of Evangelical Self-Critique:

1. Modern Christianity is off-point on several (most?) aspects of "True" Christianity.
2. The word "Christians" is generalized, although it often means only other Evangelicals.
3. Observation of common practices resonates with the experience of other "Christians" (see point #2).
4. Some type of experience -- intrapersonal experience (what happened to me), interpersonal experience (what happened to us together) or extra-personal experience (what happened to my friend, neighbor, brother) -- is weaved into the narrative to root the observation in "reality."
5. Finally, the use of Bible verses is far less important than the application of a biblical theology - that is, applying an interpretive concept of "Christian" living is what is required to drive the point home.

This is only a beginning.

At the core, I think it's important to know that Evangelicals continually have discussions -- intense discussions -- on nearly every aspect of "normal" Christian life. Such discussion can lead to endless spinning of ideas, but others further stimulate the practical decisions being made by church leaders and church attenders (as well as non-profit organizations and broad organizational networks) about practices and priorities that fuels further developments.

Defining What a Scholar Does

Read a post by Amanda French, not quite an English Professor (yet), but still a "scholar."

Amanda French is seeking a tenure-track position. Until then, she considers herself largely undefined. She writes, "Recently I’ve claimed 'digital humanist,' though that term is arcane and hard to define. I define it as 'someone with a humanities degree who’s interested in computers.'”

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So, she blogs about her identity.

In the midst of talking about her recent engagement blogging about Facebook's Terms of Service, Dr. French writes,

One label that I secretly like a lot and hope to deserve is “scholar,” and that’s what scholars do, I think: find out and tell the truth. Journalists do that too (ideally), but scholars get a lot more time to do it than journalists do, and scholars can seek out the truth about stuff that very few people care about at the moment.

We scholars, bless us, can be as verbose and sesquipedalian as we like, and we can duck the current daily frenzy and spend our days humming through frenzies long turned to dust. That was my very favorite part of graduate school. While I was writing my dissertation, I got my investigation on, big time. Such fun.

And then I also had fun finding a way to write the truth in a way that was accurate, fair, compassionate, and interesting.

The trick is always to balance the desire to be witty or shocking or alliterative or otherwise attention-grabbing with the mandate to be correct and thorough and just. Get out of balance one way, and you’ve got a tabloid; get out of balance another, and you’ve got a 1040 form. As a scholar, I want to be, oh, let’s pull a phrase out of the air, “engaging and authentic.”

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And I think Dr. French makes observations in this post that I've wrestled with myself in my professional work.

Distinguishing between the "journalist" and the "scholar," she hits on the investment of skill and time put into ideas, questions, and issues beyond fleeting hot-button topics of the day. And the balance between "tabloid" and "1040" is spot on.

I'd like to think of myself as a "scholar" too. Despite the frustrations and misunderstandings, there is a satisfaction at being dedicated to the pursuit of truth and using that truth to expand the boundaries of our too-often-mundane humanity.

And beyond the technical achievement of producing knowledge, the goal of being "engaging and authentic" seems about right.

Christianity Today Editor Suggests "Church Shrink" Conferences

A senior managing editor of Christianity Today, suggests evangelical churches need to become more demanding and that conferences on "How to Shrink Your Church" should be promoted.

Mark Galli says, "I'm not kidding."

What churches need to do is "introduce the harder edges of the gospel" and preach in such a way that attenders actually leave "because they see, finally, what Jesus is asking of them."

That necessitates creating new church conferences to show leaders how to manage decline as pastors demand more from their members.

Yes, welcome to the Church Shrink Conference with special workshops on "Exit Ministries" and answering the question "My Church is Growing, What Did I Do Wrong?"

For Galli, evangelicals may appear successful, but actually they have "succumbed" to "an emotionally and spiritually shallow culture."

He finds his evidence in a new book Holy Mavericks: Evangelical Innovators and the Spiritual Marketplace.

Co-authors Shayne Lee and Phillip Luke Sinitiere argue that the growing ministries profiled in their book are not strict in doctrine or strict in behavior. Instead, their ministry growth is the result of crafting slick marketing, sympathizing with felt-needs, and appealing to local culture.

Galli is not convinced such growth is the kind of "growth" Christianity needs.

Citing older -- and highly controversial -- research found in Dean Kelly's 1972 Why Conservative Churches are Growing and Laurence R. Iannaccone's influential 1994 essay, "Why Strict Churches Are Strong," Galli claims much of evangelicalism's past success has been due to the demands of doctrine and behavior placed by these churches on their attenders.

The underlying argument of this research is that strict churches draw people into greater participation in their churches, greater solidarity with other believers, and a greater sense of purpose in living to a harder-edged gospel -- especially in comparison with liberal, mainline churches.

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Strict churches, therefore, grow more and faster than looser, low-commitment congregations.

Galli admits (I'm sure reluctantly) that "Many churches are growing because they preach a God of second and third and fourth chances, and a faith that gives palpable hope, joy, and acceptance. What's not to like?" 

He concedes that the "gracious aspects of the faith" are attractive.

Yet, Galli goes against the strict church research to argue that strict Christian groups are small. "The more strictly you adhere to the teachings of Jesus, the smaller the church will 'grow.'" 

What is his core belief? Galli believes that theologically better churches with strict moral standards may be numerically small, but they are spiritually superior despite less attendance. "These theologically conservative and morally strict communities are not winning converts by the tens of thousands." 

Of course, Galli is conveniently ignoring that most morally "non-strict" communities aren't growing either.  Galli is also dismissing that 1) few churches are large (like 1,000+ attenders), and 2) the "accommodation to culture" has been happening even among "strict" evangelicals since they began. 

(See my recent posts on the ministry of Charles Finney.) 

Never mind all that.  There is a clear vision in Galli's mind of what churches should be like, and this new book really irks conservatives like him who hope that the future of American religion does not follow any of these various developments.

Instead, Galli believers pastors and leaders in "superficially successful" churches need to introduce the difficult demands of the gospel. And this introduces us to the tricky notion of how to measure any congregation's "success."

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Perhaps Galli would object less to the ministries of Mosaic or Oasis as I describe them. While these are certainly not conservative churches in his mold, they do call people to high standards while simultaneously accommodating to a changing culture. I don't quite know.

I'm confident strict churches will survive well into the 21st Century, but I am not so sure that the development of evangelicalism as a whole will follow this path ignoring an accommodation to the life circumstances of people's contemporary situations.

Video Clip on the New Evangelicalism

Quick post: Here's a brief video clip from a talk given at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley at the end of January and recently posted on their website.

It's only 3 minutes out of a 40 minute talk, but it shows some initial ideas on what I called the "New Evangelicalism."

There's more to describing what I mean by "New Evangelicalism" and its implications in my closing remarks of the conference.

To hear that and more, the full audio of both my opening and closing sessions are available at the PSR website.

Imagination, Uncertainty, and Economics

An argument for nuance, imagination, and ambiguity.


An article by Geoffrey Galt Harpham, president and director of the National Humanities Center, takes a moment to demonstrate the value of learning from the Humanities in the face of the current economic crisis.

At the heart of the argument is an appreciation for imagination and the unknown.

Harpham writes,

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I've read: "It is all so obvious in retrospect," and "Our models failed to predict this." Put those two together, and it becomes clear that the most sophisticated tools developed to analyze and predict movements in the economy failed spectacularly to grasp some very large, crucial, and — in retrospect — fully visible facts.

The key factor...escapes abstract models because it is human and social, not mathematical — a vast imaginative construction composed of hopes, fears, illusions, calculations, judgments. Unlike the house, the imaginative construction that determines the house's value can be destroyed by a pinprick — hence the term bubble.

Bust of Homer. Image via Wikipedia

So our models failed not because they were imprecise but because they were too precise, too neat and crisp to take in the imaginative and social nature of value.

Nor did they take in the fully human character of the behavior of lenders, borrowers, analysts, shareholders, or traders, all of whom were driven by largely unconscious and partly irrational beliefs, including the simple desire for social approval, even as they were persuaded of their own powers of analysis and of the underlying "rationality" or "efficiency" of the market.

[T]he reason that our models and modelers failed to predict the current economic crisis was that they did not engage in what I call "projective retrospection," nor did they try to anticipate the diffuse effects of nonquantifiable, shifting collective beliefs. They were, I presume, simply trying to be as rational as possible in plotting their moves.

Their imaginations were constrained by their assumption that the economy was a kind of game with arcane rules rather than a human activity embedded in the general human scene.

Image by Cotecho' x via Flickr

The economy in which people do or do not have confidence can be understood as a persuasive fiction that is, in critical ways, not fully responsive to rational analysis. Indeed, the financial instruments whose implosion we've been watching — the notorious credit-default swaps and derivatives and securitized mortgages — were so complex and opaque that not even those who staked their fortunes on them understood what they were.

Our material lives are sustained by our belief in such fictions, and when we stop believing — as we now have, temporarily — we see revealed the immaterial foundations of the real world. When, a generation ago, a few "postmodern" theorists began to talk about the fictional character of reality, they were laughed at by those who considered themselves hardheaded realists; nobody, not even the most doctrinaire postmodernist, is laughing now.

What a "Liberal" Professor Appreciates about Evangelicals

Quick post: found an interesting video from Philip Clayton, Ingraham Professor at Claremont School of Theology and Professor of Philosophy andReligion, Claremont Graduate University, answers the question of what he learns from Evangelicalism. 

Why Young Adults Lose Their Religion

I found a great article available online describing how and why teens seem to "lose their religion" as they grow into young adults. One of the co-authors is sociologist Mark Regnerus. I mentioned his excellent book on sex and religion among teens Forbidden Fruit a few days ago in a post on teen virginity pledges.

Does College Secularize Younger Adults?

Yesterday, I wrote about a Muslim Televangelist who had lost his religion in college before re-discovering his faith. I am reminded that most people believe that going to college leads young adults to move away from religion.

But here's published research that shows those who avoid college are actually more likely to lose their religion.

Image by murplej@ne - under deconstruction via Flickr

From the introduction:

Contrary to expectations, emerging adults that avoid college exhibit the most extensive patterns of religious decline, undermining conventional wisdom about the secularizing effect of higher education. Marriage curbs religious decline, while cohabitation, nonmarital sex, drugs and alcohol use each accelerate diminished religiosity – especially religious participation – during early adulthood.

This article is easy to read and challenges our common sense assumptions.

How to Get the Essential Points from the Article

If you don't have time to read the whole article, focus on pages 1-6, and 17-20.

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Other Online Resources

• A shorter summary of the article is also available.
• Many other essays and bibliographies available on a website on the "Religious Engagements of American Undergraduates."