{"id":638,"date":"2007-10-22T16:36:21","date_gmt":"2007-10-22T20:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/archives\/638"},"modified":"2007-10-22T16:36:21","modified_gmt":"2007-10-22T20:36:21","slug":"cut-flowers-sheilaism-and-other-unsurprising-offspring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/archives\/638","title":{"rendered":"Cut Flowers, Sheilaism, and Other Unsurprising Offspring"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many of us have followed the work being done at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on the religious beliefs of American teens.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Moralistic therapeutic deism\u00e2\u20ac\u009d now rolls off our tongues with growing ease, though it does nothing to ease our minds about the future of the church.\u00c2\u00a0 I heard the Rev. Rhonda VanDyke Colby do a highly effective job of interpreting the research to a group of pastoral counselors, social workers and medical personnel recently.\u00c2\u00a0 As I listened I heard voices from the past.\u00c2\u00a0 This is something that often happens to those of us who have more past than others.\u00c2\u00a0 I knew that I had heard similar critiques of current beliefs.\u00c2\u00a0 Where and when?<\/p>\n

First, I thought of Robert Bellah, who is credited with coining the term \u00e2\u20ac\u0153civil religion\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in a 1967 essay, but the roots of that term include, among others, the work of H. Richard Niebuhr, Ernst Troeltsch, and Max Weber.\u00c2\u00a0 Also included was Jewish social philosopher and sociologist of religion Will Herberg who used the term in the late fifties.\u00c2\u00a0 Herberg railed against \u00e2\u20ac\u0153secularist thinkers\u00e2\u20ac\u009d who systematically disengaged what he understood to be the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153moral principles of western civilization\u00e2\u20ac\u009d from their scriptural foundations in order to live \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a life of their own\u00e2\u20ac\u009d based on humanistic ethics.\u00c2\u00a0 The result, he lamented, was what he called a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cut flower culture.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 Cut flowers keep their original beauty and fragrance but, lacking roots, they wither and die.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Without the life-giving power of the faith out of which they have sprung,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Herberg wrote, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153they possess neither meaning nor vitality.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Civil religion is not moralistic therapeutic deism, but Bellah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work continued and, with others, gave us the 1988 book, Habits of the Heart<\/em>, introducing us to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Sheilaism.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 Sheila abhorred strong statements of faith, seeing them as fanaticism.\u00c2\u00a0 She couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t remember the last time she went to church, but her faith (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153just my own little voice\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) has carried her a long way: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just try to love yourself and be gentle with yourself.\u00c2\u00a0 You know, I guess, take care of each other.\u00c2\u00a0 I think God would want us to take care of each other.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

10-22-bks.jpg<\/p>\n

It isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t much of a stretch to see today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s teens, to the extent that their faith can be described as moralistic therapeutic deism, must surely be Sheila\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unsurprising offspring.\u00c2\u00a0 Two suggested antidotes for moralistic therapeutic deism:\u00c2\u00a0 Elizabeth Newman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Untamed Hospitality: Welcoming God and Other Strangers<\/em> and Kenda Creasy Dean\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Practicing Passion: Youth and the Quest for A Passionate Church<\/em>.<\/p>\n

judybanner1.jpg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many of us have followed the work being done at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on the religious beliefs of American teens.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Moralistic therapeutic deism\u00e2\u20ac\u009d now rolls off our tongues with growing ease, though it does nothing … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,31,5,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-education","category-discipleship","category-theology","category-world-view"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}