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Chris Smith attempts in chapter 4 to describe the "relgious and spiritual lives" of 18-24 years olds. Again, this is an abtraction as the study only has statistical warrant to analyzed groups that Smith argues are "Conversative Protestants," "Black Protestants," "mainline Protestants," "Roman Catholics," "Church of Later Day Saints," and "Jews." Sociologically, the groupings emerge that put Conservative Protestants, Black Protestants, and LDS emerging adults together; mainline Protestants fall with Roman Catholics and Jews -- with Jewish young adults showing the deepest accomodations to the liberal democratic culture in which we live that undercut their own sense of adherence to the synagogue. The statistics suggest that America is currently doing what early 20th century German could not -- eliminate the Jews as a historic, visible, distinct worshipping people.

Smith assesses on-going "beliefs" and "practices" of emerging adults, largely through methods of self-reporting. He doesn't find mass abandonment of the church or synagogue, although a decline is no doubt present. He writes,

"Ths first, simplest conclusion that one may draw from these findings, then, is that over the half decade between the teenage years of ages 13 to 17 and the emerging adult years of 18 to 23, there is a significant though not massive decline in religious identification--most of which in absolute numbers is drawn from the two main Christian traditions of Protestantism and Catholicism, but in relative numbers is taken especially from Judaism and Catholicism" (p. 105).

One notes that Catholics and Jews are those that emphasize the historicity of their divine election, and run into the most conflict with the presuppositions of a liberal democratic culture. But it seems as if they have lost the ability to name this tension for their youth, and to call them to deeper adherence to their historic tradition rather than their contemporary life.

Smith finds statistical evidence for what Charles Taylor has called "fragilization": the movement to and from and through different theological traditions (a la Bob Dylan). Taylor writes, "The existence of an alternative fragilizes each context, that is, makes its sense of the thinkable/unthinkable uncertain and wavering. This fragilization is then increased by the fact that great numbers of peole are not firmly embedded in any such context, but are puzzled, cross-pressured, or have constituted by bricolage a sort of median position. The existence of these people raises sometimes even more acute more acute doubts within the more assured milieu (A Secular Age, p. 556).

Because we live in a cultural tradition that undercuts other traditions to make claims on person's lives by creating selves that must express themselves according to one's own will, Smith finds nearly half the emerging adults move traditions (or subtraditions) from those in which they were formed as teenagers. Most of these movements are slight -- and usually in a direction of non-adherence or groups more assimilated to the culture. Except for those who had "no religion" as teenagers. Almost 1/3 of these when they hit emerging adult become engaged in a historic theological tradition. One sees that "fragilization" is not absolute secularization, but bears within it its own limits.

The statistics of the movement of emerging adults show that high adherence to a particular tradition becomes rarer and theological convictions becomes more privatized. Smith writes, "Clearly, personal involvement in actual religious communities is not for most of the emerging adults of any tradition examined here a necessary part of a life of faith" (p. 136). "Faith" is internal, non-bodily, intellectual assent relegated to certain times and places.

Here is the primacy of the cultural struggle in congregations like Mid-City that attempt to demand bodily adherence to a specific congregation in the proclamation of the Word, participation in the Sacraments, and personal engagement in the works of mercy. As the culture "develops" humans from childhood to teenager to emerging adult to adult years, the liberal institutional patterns gradually "de-naturalize" our concrete human relationships into abstractions and/or private convictions. "Human development" becomes a cypher for cultural assimilation, even if what the culture teaches is blatantly false and ultimately personally and morally debilitating. As persons "develop" more "autonomy" (i.e., are more deeply assimilated into the cultural categories provided by the political structure) and achieve "financial stability," they become less willing to have their lives embedded in social structures that are not "voluntary" -- based on the will -- unless one is paid to do it. And, one might add, have less time or interest to interact with the poor when they have so many other things to do.

Smith tells a story of how assimilative the American "social imaginary" is to "emerging adults." Theological traditions (mainline Protestantism, post-Vatican II American liberal Roman Catholicism) that have assimilated to these structures, to support it, end up losing their teen age adherents to the secularity of the culture; some evangelicals migrate to mainline Protestants to sustain their numbers (only to secularize in the next generation). Until the ultimate implications of total secularity with its nihilism sink in. Then bigger questions are raised.

Fragile and fragilization. This is not normal; this is the particular institutional form with which we must deal with in North America. We have to be able to name the dynamics so us not to let it distort life from how it really is. We are embedded in a social, institutional context that seeks to fragilize all others. It is this larger, largely silent claim on our lives, that we must learn to name and be reshaped from to achieve a genuine freedom -- not freedom to exercise our will arbitrarily, but freedom for the Triune One who has created and redeemed us, and called us into concrete congregations for the formation of our lives.

Posted by johnwright at 12:31 PM | Comments (41)

Chapter 3 in Souls in Transition provides comparative data to ask if North American culture is secularizing within ages 18-23. Sociologists (and pastors) have long known that this demographic in the US possesses the lowest church attendance rate in North America -- except for those over 80, but probably for different reasons! With the emergence of the cultural elements that have formed this new life phase, Smith's data shows both continuities and shifts that are occuring. I think these shifts are related to how deeply churches have accomodated to the liberal democratic presuppositions/formations of the society in which we live. This shows that what we call "secularization" is not a "natural process" in relation to science and the "advancement" of the age, but is very much a political program that is still very much in progress.

Smith writes, "The purpose of this chapter is place the religious and spiritual lives of contemporary emerging adults in the historical context of the last quarter century and to compare them, in the area of religion, to older adults in more recent years" (p. 88). The findings are both interesting but not. Smith finds that "beliefs" of the age group are consistent with older groups -- the difference is in the tangible, empirical practices: "when it comes to prayer, strong affiliation, religious service attendance, and religious identity among American adults, emerging ones are much less religious than older ones" (p. 89). Here one finds the privatization, the internalization of "religion" -- a separation of "beliefs" and "practices" that ultimately, Smith will argue, undercuts the ability of the church to sustain and transmit its life.

Smith does find, however, a striking difference when he looks at four Christian traditions in the United States: evangelical Protestant, black Protestant, mainline Protestant, and Catholic (all other groups were not sufficiently represented to make conclusions). While Smith claims he studies "religious and spiritual lives," he is actually measuring the vitality of historically-formed traditions within the United States within the life of the church as it has been malformed in the United States. Evangelical Protestant and black Protestants have kept adherence up much better than mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics: "the gap in strength of affiliation between black Protestant and evangelical Protestant adults, on the one hand, and Catholic and mainline Protestant emerging adults, on the other, is sizeable - roughly 20 percent" (p. 91). There are underlying social and theological causes for this. The post-Vatican II North American church has embraced an American liberalism that mainline American Protestantism has always in the 20th century embodied. Only the United States can make Roman Catholic liberal Protestants. Of course, the inability of Protestant liberalism to sustain the life of the church is historically well documented -- what I call the Protestant liberal institutional death-wish.

The second half of the chapter gives consistent data when contemporary "emerging adults" are compared to emerging adults from 1976 and after (a group that includes me!!!). Smith asks, "How religiously different, if at all, are American emerging adults today from their counterparts in previous decades?" (p. 94). One notices shifts within a greater stability. Smith's data crunching shows "12 percent growth in emerging adults identifying themselves religiously as liberal (from 23 percent in 1972-76 to 35 percent in 2004-6) and a 12 percent increase in the number of emerging adults who say they have no religious affiliation (from 14 percent in 1972-76 to 26 percent in 2004-6). Finally, we note a slight decline in weekly or more frequent religious service attendance among emerging adults, dropping from 19 percent in 1972-76 to 15 percent in 2004-06. In these ways, emerging adults in the United States have become slightly less religious over the last quarter century' (pp. 94-5).

One point that Smith does not discuss. With the relatively statistical stability of the evangelical young adults and the demise of mainline Protestant young adults, this data may suggest that evangelical emerging adults are becoming the new Protestant liberals -- which means in another generation, they will become the next generations non-affiliated. I think data that Smith shows in chapter 4 shows this as well.

Smith concludes his analysis of the data discussing a related trend:

This backward historical glance at the religiousness of emerging adults reveals that, on the whole, 18- to 24-year-old Americans have not since 1972 become dramatically less religious or more secular. When viewed as a single group, they have on most measures changed by only a few percentage points in either direction. . . . What these data do show with greater certainty, however, is that varying levels of religious strength or vitality among emerging adults are evident in different major American religious traditions. Evangelical Protestant and black Protestant emerging adults generally reflect higher levels of religious commitment and practice and more allegiance to at least certain theological beliefs than do Catholics and mainline Protestants" (p. 100).

Even evangelicals, with their weak ecclesiology, end up with higher empirical adherence rates from mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics. Of course, African American congregations know from experience to be wary before acculturating into the racism of the surrounding culture. They know their life depends on the witness of the saints who have sustained them through the explicit racism to the current implicit racism.

Smith wonders if this is because of an implicit "church-is-okay-if-you-find-your-kicks-there culture, from a more antagonistic, scientistic modernist culture of the 60s and 70s. Perhaps. He also concludes with the following suggestion: "If there has been any form of increasing religious decline, weakening, or decay in the past quarter century, it has to have been of a more subtle, cultural, or internal nature--for example, a growth in more social club-oriented motives and in less God-or religious convictions-oriented motives for attending church at the same frequency, a decline in the overall shared cultural standards for what counts as a 'strong' religious faith, or an increase in the selfish and instrumental use of personal prayer" (p. 102).

If this is so, the emerging adult generation is a stepping stone. As Protestant liberal/mainline churches fade into their institutional obsolescence, evangelical churches have moved to ride the wave at the very point between resistance and accomodation to the underlying liberal democratic social formation of its members that allows it to pick up the strength of these cultural presuppositions before being carried over the falls, so to speak, into the liberal logic that undercuts the witness of the church. While transformations continue, God somehow sustains the church even amid its own sinfulness and accomodation --but not without it ultimately finding judgment.

Posted by johnwright at 2:52 PM | Comments (17)

I am trying to use the blog just to communicate what life is for those whose homes are on the streets downtown. I found this news just on a website, quite by accident. I'm trying to get more information from friends downtown. I want to cut and paste the news in, and then, afterwards copy a letter that I sent a week ago, asking the city to allow persons who have tents to use them during the cold weather.

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local-beat/Life-on-Streets-Ends-on-Sidewalk-76522497.html

Homeless Man Dies Across Street From Shelter
Transient dies in sleep within steps of cold weather shelter
By GENE CUBBISON

A 48-year-old man was found dead across the street from San Diego's winter shelter for the homeless Friday morning.

Medical examiner's deputies believe Steven Alan Andrade succumbed to natural causes. The 230-bunk shelter's occupants are both saddened -- and glad they made it inside last night.

Directly across Island Avenue from where Andrade's body lay under a thin blanket, the shelter was into its third day of operation.

While San Diego is envied for its balmy climate, especially in winter, temperatures had dropped below 50 in the Center City area overnight.

Police got a report of Andrade's death at 6:23 a.m.

"We went through three days of total chaos and mayhem standing in line to get in [Wednesday]," said shelter occupant William Yarling. "A lot of us became a little ungrateful, for what we had to do -- until we got a friendly reminder this morning of how hard life is on the streets, when we woke up to a dead man across the street."

Outrage mixed with gloom around the shelter when officers Tasered a man who shelter occupants said was praying over Andrade's body. Police said he repeatedly crossed crime scene tape, interfered with medical examiner's deputies and fought with officers who escorted him away.

Shelter operators say Andrade never tried to access the site's services. It's that way with a lot of the homeless. The shelter has rules against drugs, alcohol, sexual activity and disruptive behavior. For those who can obey them, it beats nights on the street.

"We've been out here for the last two weeks, talking to people, getting them ready to check in," said Bob McElroy, whose Alpha Project administers the shelter under contract with the city of San Diego.

"We were down here at midnight, and that concrete sidewalk is cold," McElroy recalled. "You get a lot of people out here who are sick. So, hopefully, we're going to save some lives."

Lives that for many homeless used to be so much better.

"Three years ago, I had a house,a bank account, two Mercedes-Benzes, toys, tools and antiques from three generations," said Keith Kelly Jennings II as he sat next to a pushcart filled with books and belongings on the corner of 16th street and and Island Avene.

"I trusted the wrong people," Jennings added, by way of explaining his impoverished circumstances. "Some of these people who drive by and look at us like we're trash don't realize how close they are to being right down here with us.

First Published: Nov 27, 2009 3:14 PM PST

A series of my correspondence to the Office of Housing and Homelessness, City of San Diego
abenjamin@sandiego.gov

____________________________________________
Correspondents should assume that all communication to or from this address is recorded and may be reviewed by third parties.

-----Original Message-----
From: John Wright [mailto:JohnWright@pointloma.edu]
Sent: Friday, November 20, 2009 8:15 AM

Dear _________________:

I just received an email telling me that my friends whose homes were the side walks in and around the post office were evicted and "banned" from the area as part of a wider eviction of those residents of downtown who live on the streets by the SDPD. I assume that this story is true. I am confused and bewildered and concerned for my friends and their neighborhood.

Tuesday evening people were cold, more angry, and, honestly, many more than usual intoxicated. It was my hope that they be able to set up tents in protection from the weather -- they take up little more room than blankets for sleeping, but protect. Obviously sleeping directly under the sky raises the incidence of severe illness and hospital/emergency room expenses. I deeply appreciated the fact that when tents were set up, the police gave initial warnings rather than tickets. But it seems inhumane, when people have the tents, not to allow them to sleep under them to protect against 45 degree weather, especially since the city council is blocking the winter tent from a place.

Now I don't know what to say. My stomach is literarly in a knot, and I fight illness due to my concern, as anyone would who heard about the forced movement of friends from where they resided. Was last night a shift in police/city policy? Did the cities attorneys look at the manueuver in light of the federal judges ruling? What is the ultimate purpose of the action?

Those whose homes have been on the streets have bodies that necessarily take up space, that they can't make invisible. I recognize the issues that come for the city as a result of their poverty and their bodies and would love to work creatively with you and the city in addressing such things; in the meantime, many who live there are my friends. I have come to love that neighborhood and those who live within it. It is an insane place where I find great sanity among the people, in the most difficult circumstances. Additionaly, as a Christian, I find our Savior in the bodies of the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God.

I would like very much a prompt reply so that I may be informed, rather than guided by rumor and inuendo.

Please join me in prayer for those whose lives were so disrupted last night, the poorest of the poor in San Diego.

Peace,
Rev. Dr. John Wright

_________________

Rev. Wright,

The City Attorney's office recently informed SDPD that tents are not allowed on the public or private property. The City's winter shelter is on track to open up next Wednesday, November 25th, and will provide respite for up to 220 homeless sleeping on the streets.

You concerns are appreciated as well as your dedication to this issue.

Regards,

Dear _______:

One final thought: I am not dedicated to an "issue" -- I am friends with human beings, some with profound struggles in dealing with life; others with tremendous skill in dealing with the life they've been given. It seems to me that if the displacement and cold of those who do not have material means for shelter is dealt with as an "issue," we lose that the very humanity of those persons is at stake -- and therefore, our own humanity as well. I speak just as you would for your friends and workers who had been forced to move without any prior warning by government officials, pleading to find assistance and information through the bureaucracies that our culture has established to try and keep some semblance of order in a crazy, complex world.

I understand why we want to see my friends as an "issue." It protects us, it protects me, from our/my own fragility, our own/my vulnerability, the contingencies of our own/my lives. I also recognize that "issues" do arise around the bodies of the poor. But these people are not "issues"; they are human beings whose and feet and ears get cold, whose colds develop into bronchitis and pneumonia and sometimes die prematurely because of inhaling cold air at night, who laugh, talk, fight, argue, just like the rest of us, but without walls to obscure them from public view. I would hope that as the person who has the responsibility of your office, that you will not reduce these human beings to "issues" even as we try to work together to deal with issues that arise from the bodies of the weakest and the poorest in San Diego.

Pastor John

Posted by johnwright at 6:30 PM | Comments (2541)

The particular socially and culturally-induce life-state of emerging adulthood, according to Christian Smith, has implications for adherence to the life of the church, synagogue, or mosque. Smith does not extend his analysis to liberal democractic political theory, but the connection is very clear. Emerging adulthood results from the institutional stripping of the concrete tradition in which a human being exists in order to assimilate a person into the liberal political tradition -- a tradition that masques that it is a tradition. This move is a move from particular traditions to another, hegemonic tradition that presents itself as "wider, more inclusive, and generic." The supposedly particular traditions that one must leave behind make no claim on lives except in terms of "choice." This retraditioning makes adherence to another tradition "optional" -- anchored in the will rather than what is good, true, and beautiful. It is a painful, long instituted, institutionally constructed realignment that is necessary because of the demands of liberal democratic practice.

It is no surprise, then, that Smith recognizes that many of the implications for adherence to concrete congregations and the Christian life -- what Smith calls "religion" -- a liberal democratic abstraction that takes away the particularity of what Smith actual finds. Smith documents that the time of emerging adulthood is filled with transitions and distractions that arise from having to remake oneself as an "unencumbered self" (Michael Sandel) -- "a self understood as prior to and independent of purposes and ends."

According to Smith, emerging adults are learning to cope with adult responsibilities, and find themselves incredibly busy. Smith writes, "That is made worse by another factor: after school and work comes play. . . . The fun emerging adults believe they are supposed to be having usually centers on the evenings and weekends, and especially weekend evenings. . . . More generally, there is simply too much else going on at the time to go to church, synagogue, temple, or mosque" (p. 77). The emerging adult must experiment to discover what is most therapeutic for them to help them deal with the strain of the managerial realm. They are learning how to be assimilated into North American structures between work and play that drive the economy forward.

The prolonged time of identity differentiation, renegotiating relationships with parents, delaying of marriage and family formation, keeping options open for future opportunities, all cast weight to construct a self that is unencumbered except for how the individual wills it, how he or she finds it right for them. Rather than moving into a formed life, this self demands toleration, pluralism of experiences, and the distinct cultural modes of "partying, hooking up, having sex, and cohabiting." The unencumbered self must become an expressive self through the employment of its own unfettered will; these activities are culturally offered to help (?!?) this occur.

All these factors, grounded in liberal political institutions, have anti-ecclesial pulls on the lifes of emerging adults. It reduces the church to a "life-style enclave." If one adheres to a congregation, it is more likely that one does it for "community" (other emerging adults who are working their ways through the cultural demands to end in what the culture calls adulthood). Interestingly, the one cultural force that moves emerging adults toward the church are those who have suffered from the de- and re-traditioning forces of the liberal political institiutions. "These emerging adults, if they have even been able to pull out of their damaged and damaging lives at all--some have not--need serious help to stop their self-destructive behaviors and engage in the hard work of rebuilding themselves and their futures. . . .For some of them, it turns out, religion provides a crucial source of this help" (p. 85). Ironically, this means those who have been most secularized by the culture find themselves moving back to the church in order to reconstruct a life in participation with what human lives are supposed to be about -- one on the other side of an unencumbered self exercising an expressivist will. As a Christian, I can account for this movement.

What all this shows is that there are cultural/institutional forces at work that seeks to remove those in their late teens and twenties away from the church as constitutive of their lives. The logic of liberal democracies are strongly at work in its body formative powers. Only when the cost to the human beings that this extracts is evident, do the social forces move persons back to the context of where they can discover what it really is to be human. Even here, however, the danger is that the church becomes merely a voluntary association for a type of experience for the self, constructed by human will.

This is not the church. In Sanctorum Communio, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote even in 1929 that applies still today:

Our age is not poor in experiences, but in faith. One faith can create true experience of the church, so we think it more important for our age to be led into belief in the church of God, than to have experiences squeezed from it which as such are of no help at all, but which, when there is faith in the sanctorum communio, are produced of their own accord" (p. 198).

Posted by johnwright at 9:57 AM | Comments (82)

It seems as if the disruptions downtown have played themselves out. I do not know exactly what happened, but those who were displaced from the library on Thursday night have been allowed to return to their homes -- although Tuesday night the numbers had been thinned about 1/2 to 2/3rds. I am awaiting contact from an officer of the "Homeless Outreach" unit to discuss the incident. It highlights the tenuous life of those whose home and neighborhoods are on the streets. We forget the stability that comes from the architectural feature of walls, doors, and roofs.

I do want to return daily to summaries of Souls in Transition. I think that it is an important work to understand ourselves, our world in North America, and some of the dynamics of Mid-City. I hope that the change of pace the next couple of days in much of our culture will allow you to follow and participate in the discussion. Today I focus on the first half of chapter 2 -- the new, socially constructed "developmental stage" of "emerging adults" -- age 18-29, or for Smith's study, 18-23.

Smith (with Patricia Snell) begins their book with extensive descriptions of three interviews as representative of the age group - a technique that Robert Bellah used in Habits of the Heart. The analysis begins in chapter 2, "The Cultural Worlds of Emerging Adults" (pp. 33-87). One of the virtues of Smith's analysis is his connection between "low culture" ("popular culture" and "high culture" (philosophical discourse) to produce what Charles Taylor calls "the social imaginary" --the inarticulate presuppositions of persons' lives. This at times can lead to a loss of the precision in our understanding of both, but it also helps see these as deeply related - which helps see the cultural logics that either malform perceptions or truthfully form us to be grasped by what is real.

Smith divides the chapter into two sections: Important Typical and Alternative Cultural Themes and Implications for Emerging Adult Religion. The "cultural themes" functions much as an illustrated list; the "alternative themes" seem almost as the binary opposition to the "typical" - and therefore reproduce the same cultural presuppositions in its very opposition. I wish to highlight what I think is most significant of Smith's analysis. I do not do this for descriptive purposes of the overall phenomenon, but to highlight what I have seen most evident and most fundamental.

Smith writes, "Perhaps the most pervasive, consistent them in the lives of emerging adults is the fact of their frequent and varied major life transitions. To an extent matched by no other time in the life course, emerging adults enjoy and endure multiple, layered, bid, and often unanticipated life transitions" (p. 34). Amid these deeply socially dependent transitions, "the central, fundamental, driving focus of nearly all emerging adults is getting to the point where they can 'stand on their own two feet.' Life's major challenge for them is transitioning from dependence to independence, from reliance on others to self-sufficiency, from being under other's authority and eye to living on their own" (p. 34).

Two things. First, we need to see the contradiction in this life stage at its very foundation. The very fact that life is always transitioning means that one cannot establish "independence" because one is always moving, moving, moving, having the social conditions necessary for 'independence' consistently cut out from underneath one. Second, the terms also set up a false dichotomy. The movement is seen from "dependence" to "autonomy" from "under authority" to "living on their own." This is just plain false. The issue is always good dependence, appropriate dependence; good authority, appropriate authority. No one lives as completely dependent, nor completely autonomous, as under authority or free from authority. By setting the terms in this binary system, the culture produces a type of personal and emotional drama that keeps the transitions going.

Second and related, the culture and phase presupposes what Michael Sandel calls "the unencumbered self" - before the good or true or beautiful, lays a self that is determined by the will. Smith writes, "The majority of emerging adults can express very well how people are shaped and bound by their personal subjective experiences. But most have great difficulty grasping the idea that a reality that is objective to their own awareness or construction of it may exist that could have a significant bearing on their lives. In philosophical terms, most emerging adults functionally . . .are soft ontological antirealists and epistemological skeptics and perspectivalists - although few have any conscious idea what those terms mean. They seem to presuppose that they are simply imprisoned in their own subjective selves, limited to their biased interpretation of their own sense perceptions, unable to know the real truth of anything beyond themselves. They are de facto doubtful that an identifiable, objective, shared reality might exist across and around all people that can serve as a reliable reference point for rational deliveration and argument" (p. 45). Again, the irony is thick. A shared objective social order has so formed us within a "reliable reference point" that there is no reliable reference point. Science, materialist//values, production. Knowledge//faith. Pure reason//practical reason. Again, notice the binary opposition - subjective versus objective; realist versus antirealist. Kant would be proud. We have met the modernism within the so-called postmodernist, and we have found that it is us.

Smith writes, "This, it seems, is not merely basic American individualism. It is individualism raised on heavy doses of multiculturalism and pumped up on the steroids of the postmodern insistence on disjunction, difference, and differences 'going all the way down'" (p. 48). As a result, most emerging adults "are still sorting out what their purpose in life might be, to what good they want to devote themselves. Here we mean not mainly some philosophical 'ultimate purpose of life' . . but rather the more prosaic issue of what one as a person out to be doing with one's life. Nearly all emerging adults have a general vision . . of what a 'good life' looks like. But more specific questions about careers and causes and life devotions are as yet unformed" (p. 53). Concrete purpose is always based in the will, and only in the will, and therefore life becomes paralyzing; to move for the right concrete purpose leaves one on a hamster wheel. Whereas earlier generations were moved in horde into a bureaucraticly-determined "slot" that sucked their life from them over the years, no slots really exist within the present generation and life is sucked out of them in the paralysis of beginning. Education, therefore, is important, but "higher education seems to have almost entirely to do with the instrumental advantages it produces--as well as the fun one can have in college" (p. 54).

Of course, to deal with such pressures, drugs, alcohol, and sexual expressions are rarely far from the surface. They are means of experimentation; perhaps it is a time even to end experimentation that came from earlier in life as one moves towards "settling down" - which, of course, is deferred: "rather than being settled, most of them understand themselves to be in a phase of life that is free, fluid, tentative, experimental, and relatively unbound. They want to enjoy it while it lasts. . . .They want to acquire independence and the ability to stand on their own two feet. But most of them also do not want full adulthood to come too quickly" (p. 56).

Smith charts how optimistic emerging adults generally are in their ability to negotiate through life. Yet most of their time and energy is taken up negotiating interpersonal relationships: "they pursue these private-sphere emotional and relational investments with fervent devotion. Much of their lives appear to be centered on creating and maintaining personal relationships. What makes emerging adults most happy are their good relationships with family, friends, and interesting other associates" (p. 73). Smith writes, "the apparent move of Americans away from civic participation [or, I might add, more importantly, congregational participation] and the enjoyment of 'lifestyle enclaves'--previously noted by various cultural observers - may for emerging adults be progressing yet further toward the nearly total submersion of self into fluidly constructed, private networks of technologically managed intimates and associates" (p. 74).

Perhaps this is enough for this entry. Certainly a lot to chew on. The underlying irony of all is that the liberal democratic political ideology and its institutions has formed a culture so suspicious of any institutions that undercuts the type of social stability necessary for human beings to flourish outside a constant transition that requires personal reassurance within relationships that must always be maintained, reconfigured, and reinforced. Chased into institutionally arranged "private networks" for significance, the society refuses emerging adults an appropriate stability to help them to face the constant flux that the world puts on them, encasing them in their own subjective, unencumbered self.

Posted by johnwright at 8:21 AM | Comments (20)

I really don't have much to report as far as advance. I hope to go downtown this evening and see what is going on. Supposedly several news organizations are looking into the story of the re-location program -- we should call it for what it is. I did hear last night that some had reoccupied the area around the library.

I received an email response from Amy Benjamin that spoke only that the City Attorneys had ruled that setting up tents was illegal "on public and private property" (I wonder if that includes backyards throughout the city?) and that the tent, holding 220 people will be open on Sunday. I did get this last night from my friend, London, who one can't help but like and who will soon be moving to Texas -- to my loss.

Here is what London wrote last night:

This is London,

I just heard some interesting news, via a friend out on the street who spoke to a policeman. It seems that the whole reason the eviction is taking place is due to 2 block parties. That are happening this weekend and next weekend, Friday through to Sunday night. The second block party is supposedly being held for the Chargers.

This maybe San Diego's way of hiding the fact we exist to the incomers or some other ploy they are being careful not to reveal.

Sadly though, they have moved on over 100 people from the area, a 4 block radius without any concern to where we will be going. "A" Street and "C" Street on 2nd are already overflowing with people who have already been there for a while. So there is not a whole lot of places for people to relocate to.

But I thought you would like this information. Seems the whole Gaslamp area will be closely watched for the next couple of weekends at least, we are talking from about 10th to 4th (Horton Plaza) from Broadway down to the end of Gaslamp (Harbor Drive) NO Homeless Allowed.

I don't know how concrete this information is, but from my experience out here I wouldn't be surprised at all.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Pray for our friends as their community has been disrupted, and the social patterns that they depend for support and safety have been dissolved. If you would like to help find information and lend them personal support, please send me an email.

Posted by johnwright at 7:09 AM | Comments (32)

I have an entry on Christian Smith already done and ready to post. As I checked my email this morning, however, my day quickly changed. It was from Gary, one of my friends from downtown, a man looking for employment, but unable to find it. He and London look out for each other underneath the overhang of the library. Here is his email to me:

As of Thursday November 19th the Library and Post Office have been "BANNED" for the homeless as far as sleeping. The SDPD has cleared most of the homeless out of the immediate downtown area. Only real groups of homeless now are down "A" Street and down by 16th and Market. Thought you should know so you can pass the word around.

I have immediately sent an email to Amy Benjamin (abenjamin@sandiego.gov) if you would like to email her as well. She has an office of director or something under the city like that for "housing and homelessness":

Dear Ms. Benjamin:

I just received an email telling me that my friends whose homes were the side walks in and around the post office were evicted and "banned" from the area as part of a wider eviction of those residents of downtown who live on the streets by the SDPD. I assume that this story is true. I am confused and bewildered and concerned for my friends and their neighborhood.

Tuesday evening people were cold, more angry, and, honestly, many more than usual intoxicated. It was my hope that they be able to set up tents in protection from the weather -- they take up little more room than blankets for sleeping, but protect. Obviously sleeping directly under the sky raises the incidence of severe illness and hospital/emergency room expenses. I deeply appreciated the fact that when tents were set up, the police gave initial warnings rather than tickets. But it seems inhumane, when people have the tents, not to allow them to sleep under them to protect against 45 degree weather, especially since the city council is blocking the winter tent from a place.

Now I don't know what to say. My stomach is literarly in a knot, and I fight illness due to my concern, as anyone would who heard about the forced movement of friends from where they resided. Was last night a shift in police/city policy? Did the cities attorneys look at the manueuver in light of the federal judges ruling? What is the ultimate purpose of the action?

Those whose homes have been on the streets have bodies that necessarily take up space, that they can't make invisible. I recognize the issues that come for the city as a result of their poverty and their bodies and would love to work creatively with you and the city in addressing such things; in the meantime, many who live there are my friends. I have come to love that neighborhood and those who live within it. It is an insane place where I find great sanity among the people, in the most difficult circumstances. Additionaly, as a Christian, I find our Savior in the bodies of the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God.

I would like very much a prompt reply so that I may be informed, rather than guided by rumor and inuendo.

Please join me in prayer for those whose lives were so disrupted last night, the poorest of the poor in San Diego.

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It hurts very much to have friends so treated; we need to be with them in some ways as they are displaced and shoved around by the coercive authority of the city. If someone in the area can email me who would be willing to be a point person in our remaining with them in their displacement, please do so.

More, Sam Nichols sent an email describing a similar event of spatial control of the poor through state-sanctioned violence that his friends in Palestine have suffered. It's intensity is much higher than even the displacement forced downtown. By the dynamics are similar. The fact that Sam's Christian Peacemaker's Team took the violence into their own bodies is both tragic and beautiful, a witness to faith in God and in Christ the King who will judge all according to their treatment of those who are poor, in need of food and water (Matt 25:31-46). Here is Sam's email:

Hello loved ones,

I wanted to send a brief email about things that have been going on in Tuwani lately.

The 'bare bones' version of the story is that two CPTers got beaten by settlers. They were pushed to the ground and kicked in the ribs; they sustained minor edges, cuts, bruises and rib/head pain. They were walking near a Palestinian family who was walking home, when settlers appeared. They (CPTers) tried to intercept the settlers and took the brunt of the beating.

Here is the CPT release
Here is my blog, where I post some other related things to the incident

Basically, it's been a really hard week. It's really hard to see your friends get beaten up. It's even harder when its not a random mugging for a couple dollars, but when it is because of real hatred, and real evil. The whole thing just feels so evil, so dark, and it's really hard to deal with that.

Going to the hospital with my friend to get stitches because she was pushed down a hill, hit her head on a rock, and then kicked in the ribs until she surrendered her video camera (which showed their faces on film). It's just evil.

Today I read MLK's dexter avenue christmas sermon. He speaks about loving enemies. Some of it was really good to hear and some of it was really hard to hear. I encourage you to read the sermon.

I don't have many profound things to say, just that I (and we) could all use your prayers. Please pray for the Sarah and Laura (who were beaten), the Palestinian family (the Nasser Ali Awad family, who can't walk home with their 3 children in any semblance of safety, the children were crying during the incident), and please pray for the people who carried out this attack.

The world seems really dark right now, so I pray that God's light shines through into this night which is devoid of stars.

Allah bisa'idna (God help us),
Samuel

Posted by johnwright at 8:14 AM | Comments (21)

I finally finished the major chapter that will introduce the interviews that I conducted with George Lindbeck, David Burrell, and Stanley Hauerwas three years ago. As part of my research, I discovered that Christian Smith, a prominent sociologist, has a new book out to follow up his "Soul Searching" -- a sociological study of the theological convictions of American 13-17 year olds. This new book, published in September, is called Souls in Transitions: The Religious and Spiritual Lives on Emerging Adults. I have decided to blog the contents of the book and my responses in the next week, chapter by chapter.

Part of this pupose is intellectual: Smith describes in this new category of "emerging adults" the deep institutionalizing of intellectual trends (and vice versa) that have formed 18-23 (or 29) year olds in North American culture. It thereby gives a wonderful summary of the "given" cognitive formations by the American culture as the "baseline" in which people live their lives. It helps understand the "filtering down" effect of the intellectual convictions of the past 30-40 years.

But more than this, the purpose is pastoral. If there has been a sociological phenomenon that has (over)determined the life at Mid-City, it is "emerging adulthood" -- a new phenomena that we had no idea was occuring when we planted the church. Moreover, those who have been or are my students are deeply shaped by these dynamics. It seems to me that bringing these sociological dynamics to light both renders the past more intelligible, but also allows us to be more intentional about the concrete environment in which our lives are lived. By bringing to light, one is no longer trapped under what seems necessary. Ironically, sociological study can undercut sociological determination (to a degree) and learn to ask the write questions, not as a means of conformity to them as in the church growth movement and the baby boomers, but as a means of acceptance and resistance, of moving beyond generational experiences to ask what is genuinely true, good, and beautiful -- questions that the study shows cannot be supressed, even if a language no longer exists to ask them.

Smith recognizes that "emerging adulthood" is a new developmental phase that has been institutionally formed by American culture: "it is encessary to realize that life stages are not naturally given as immutable phases of existence. Rather, they are cultural constructions that interact with biology and material productrion, and are profoundly shpaed y the social and institutional conditions that generate and sustain them" (p. 6).

He lists several background factors: (1) "the dramatic growth of higher education;" (2) "the delay of marriage by American youth over the last decades;" (3) changes in the American and global economy that undermine stable lifelong careers and replace them instead with careers with lower security, more frequent job changes, and an ongoing need for new training and education"; and (4) "partly as a respnse to all of the foregoing, parents of today's youth, aware of the resources it often takes to succeed, seem increasingly willing to extend financial and other support to their children, well into their twenties and perhaps early thirties . . . These resources help to subsidize the freedom that emerging adults enjoy to take a good, long tiem before settling down into full adulthood, culturally defined as the end of schooling, a stable career job, financial independence, and new family formation " (p. 5).

I think that there is one other factor, at least, that Smith does not describe -- the influence of mass media that has formed and reinforced this lifestyle in order to capture more "disposable income" of this age group. It thereby in the long term impoverishes these persons by forming this "transitional" phase defined by experiment that has strong economic implications -- experience, whether it is travel, relationships, education, media, costs money. In earlier times this would have been spent on building financial and social equity in the United States; now it must be spent on "experience" and "experiment" so that when equity time comes, it is supposedly insured (whether in relationships or jobs or personal 'values'). Of course, the empirical data in many areas suggests that such "experiment" actually has an inverse affect on long term ability -- those who cohabit before marriage have higher degrees of divorce, for instance. Instead, it seems to me that the formation of "emerging adulthood" exhausts persons of the financial and social capitalthat they need for the long-term stability that persons rightfully seek.

This is a new phase or cultural that I never directly lived. I was married at age 20 years, 11 months (the average male age of marriage in the US is not 27 years, 6 months, I believe). I ran from educational institution to educational institution with as much intensity that I could. Yet I have lived my life surrounded by this phenomenon, often sensing it, never able to articulate it fully. Smith helps put this together. Maybe by uncovering what is obscured, Smith can help us be a pilgrim people vowed to care for a pilgrimage way-station more faithfully and minimize the cultural, institutional fall-outs that can happen by letting the culture uncritically drive us.

Posted by johnwright at 9:26 AM | Comments (20)

A week or so ago I received a poster from the Claremont School of Theology. The outside just contained one word: "Change." On the other side, it said, "The Study of Religion is Changing" with a PhD of Asian descent its iconographic representative.

I wondered, "Have they actually read the new literature that shows that the very concept of "religion" has no basis except for an arbitrary dialectical opposition to the "secular" as Bill Cavanaugh shows? Are they announcing that they have forsaken the study of religion because it is like studying unicorns, a type of imperialistic, colonial Protestant liberalism as Timothy Fitzgerald has shown? That the study of religion has no integrity at all as a discrete field of study, as "religionists" themselves have studied and as D. G. Hart has shown in The University Gets Religion.

I thought, has Claremont found its soul after selling it out for its bourgeois liberal constituency, and is it going to return to what it says it is: a genuine School of Theology?

Alas, no.

Instead the change is a new and improved repetition of the same -- now moving to the end of its logic. The "change" the Claremont School of Religion is to move into a post-Christian type of graduate school of Religion. "Claremont School of Theology is transitioning into a multi-religious graduate university, to bring people of all perspectives together to teach and learn about religions, theologies, and cultures." It has become formally what it has been in function -- a type of Protestant liberalism that ideologically masks its hegemony behind a rhetoric of pluralism. Now, however, it seeks to separate its central mission from the church, leaving the church as one prong within the commodity of religion and spiritual care. Who needs God when you can study "theologies" for your own, individualized, customized self-expression?

A few years ago CST lost its accreditation due to financial issues. My guess, and it is strictly a guess, is that the institutional weakness of its liberal protestant church constituencies has weakened the financial patronage there, and that these elite are seeking patronage elsewhere. My guess is that the "for-profit and not-for-profit chaplaincy" is the new market for their students -- kind of like how Vitas Hospice, the leading for profit hospice care company, hires chaplains as part of the "end-of-life" care package to provide therapeutic relief for its customers -- and thus was bought out by Roto-Rootor. Gives new meaning to "chase your troubles down the drain, ro, ro rooter."

On the other hand, here is the academic institutional end of liberal Protestantism, as seen over and over again -- but now, at its graduate level, not merely undergraduate level. It is part of the institutional death wish of Protestant liberalism, documented by sociologists and at work for almost 2 centuries. Their cultural victory means their ecclesial defeat -- which, of course, is what they always really hoped for in making the church a means to a greater end for the liberal nation-state -- and the world. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad. And the joke is how well intentioned the move is. Not to mention the money spent in marketing with such a high-quality paper and pictures. I'm sure the marketing consultants were paid well too.

Yves Congar wrote in Divided Christendom (1938) about similar processes at work in Protestantism. He didn't see much an ecumenical future in the Protestantism he saw dominated by Protestant modernism:

"Vast changes are necessary before they can think of any movement towards reunion. Protestantism presents two outstanding features - particular objects of belief and a particular way of approaching and interpreting religious reality. We believe that the latter of these is always inimical to the former; that the specifically Protestant mind is gradually destructive of the objects of its own belief, and of what survives of the heritage of historic Christianity. . . . . (pp. 273-4).

Congar sees the problem, not in the Reformers themselves, but in the historical processes and movements and convictions of their heirs:

"Reunion will only become possible when Protestantism has got rid of these fundamental oppositions, which, with the intention of doing Him honour, belittle and defame the creative operations of God. One way alone seems open, though it is impossible to foresee where it may lead. In spite of everything the Reformers handed down many articles of the Christian Faith, In so far as Protestantism endeavours to live by the positive content of its belief, even while remaining what it is, caring rather to be Christian than Protestant, and is less concerned to develop what is really only a philosophys of religion, it will to that extent be living in the atmosphere of Christin unity and on the way to reuninon. One in particular among objects of its belief is fitted for that interior work of Christian wholeness -faith in the Incarnation. . . . The Incarnatin is the key to the whole mystery of the Church and the sacraments. In the degree to which Protestantism can school itself in profound and realist contempolation of the mystery of the Incarnation will it return to the sphere of apostolic Chrisinaity and prepare itself for reunion in the Church. The insurmountable obstacle of its present attitude would be in some degree obviated by the real and objective content of a belief where so much is common to us both, and a closer approach would beome possible. (pp. 274-5).

Several quick notes: Claremont's PhD in relgion no longer has theology, but it does include a degree in "process studies" -- how could Congar have seen? There is absolutely no concern with 'apostolic Christianity". With Elvis, it has left the building.

A final quote from Congar:

A more or less general movement of reunion with the Catholic Church might become a real possibility for a Protestantism converted from its false dialectic of dualisms and disjunctions to an objective adherence to the positive Christian faith, in whatever form it has been received. We have, after all, already seen Christain communities taking fresh cognisance of the true apostolic inheritance. (p. 275).

The irony is that Congar was read as being a "liberal" in his day by conservatives. You can bet that he made no friends among liberal Protestants. Has this same Hegelian dialectic between left and right going on for that long, in North America and Europe.

Before a final word from the Claremont poster, why don't you, as the 60s song said, 'put a little love in your heart":

"You study religion for a reason. Maybe you're religious, and maybe you're not. But you want to make the world a better place. And so does Clarement."

The white man's burden lives on; Claremont wants to make the whole world like Claremont and call it pluralism.

Posted by johnwright at 12:24 PM | Comments (37)

Long time readers of the blog know that I think that Jesus Christ as witnessed to in the Scriptures calls the believer to non-retaliation, and thus not to participate in mortal violence of any kind. They also know that I think that history shows that the formation and political theory behind the European nation-state is one of the, if not the most, violent and death-dealing type of political formation in human history. This also has been accompanied by the technical development that allows widescale death -- but I don't think this technical development is independent of the formation of the nation-state. Readers know as well that I think that the United States is a major perpetrator of this violence.

In light of this, I still face Veteran's Day with more sympathy than other national days of remembrance. Even if it is a parody of All Saints Day, and even if the sacrificial language shows a false theory of atonement, there is an appropriate saddenness to the day. As I meet Iraq vets on the streets, I mourn the difficulty that has been embedded in their bodies. Two ex-Iraq vets help now cook our meal on Tuesdays for the Salvation Army. In working through the horrors that they have experienced -- and still experience, their effort to engage in the works of mercy to fend off these demons is humbling. The key is to remember the veterans, not only those who have died, but also who bear the weight of having killed or witnessed killing. And simultaneously, remember the countless "Others," never mentioned on days, who have suffered death, displacement, and poverty as a result of the wars in which the United States has caused and in which they have participated. Saddness, mourning, remembrance. All this is appropriate for Christians, maybe especially Christians who are veterans.

At the same time, we need to rid the day of its propaganda value that makes it easier to declare or escalate wars, such as the Obama administration is doing in Afghanistan. Veteran's Day began as Armistice Day as a day commemorating the end of the "the War to End All Wars," "the Great War," or as United States historians now call it, World War I. As such we need to see its establishment, and embedded within it, the propaganda elements that the Wilson administration set up to turn the US into a major colonial and interventionalist state -- a major shift in foreign policy from that which was established by the United States original regimes.

A new book has been published that I recently read: Susan A. Brewer, Why America Fights: Patriotism and War Propaganda from the Philippines to Iraq (Oxford University Press, 2009). Brewer's thesis is simple: "To explain to Americans why they fight, government leaders translate war aims into propaganda--the deliberate manipulation of facts, ideas, and lies. To do so they condense complex foreign policies into easily communicated messages. . . . The official narratives have presented a conflict as a mighty clash between civilization and barabarism in the Philippines and World War I, democracy and dictatorship in World War II, freedom and communism in Korea and Vietnam, and, most recently, civilization and terrorism in Iraq. . . .These official narratives show that American fight for both their ideals and their interests. . . . . Compared to its enemies and allies, the United States suffered far less devastation and, in the case of the world wars, emerged a stronger and richer countery. . . . For many U.S. polictymakeers, observed Tony Judt, the message of the twentieth century is that war works.' To sell that message to the public, leaders equated the expansion of a U.S.-dominated international order with the aims of spreading democradcy andf reedom. The official narrative served to camouflage any contradiction that might exist between America's pursuit of power and its principles. Indeed, propaganda projected the appealing notion that American's global ambitions and democratic traditions are one and the same." (p. 4).

Despite its propaganda interests and origins, Veteran's Day radically calls into question that "war works" -- or at least asks the question, "for whom does war work?" and "for whom does war not work?" It calls families into the tragedies of war, and perhaps, even looks beyond the personal tragedies -- and they are there and they are profound -- to the tragedies "beyond," deeper, continuous, and creating new tragedies. Part of Brewer's tale is how the propaganda "gets beyond itself," turning against the ability of the national leaders to contain the very public that they aroused for the cause. Maybe we can observe Veteran's Day as a means to question the very 20th-21st century presupposition that "war works." No, human beings kill and destroy in war; in the face of this death, war brings forth heights of heroism and depths of depravity in human beings. But the workings of war involve death, destruction, and the fall-outs for human beings who encounter this is such a direct manner. To enfold Veterans into our lives, not in heroism but in sharing in the tragedy of their lives compassionately, hopefully, honestly, to end the cycles of violence and the propaganda of the state, is perhaps a message that we, the church, can take from the commemoration of Veteran's Day. We meet Veterans, not with "thank you" and bowing but with "I'm sorry" and a hug. They have encountered what no human beings has been created to encounter.

Posted by johnwright at 12:28 PM | Comments (22)