What Are We Doing Here? Thinking about the church’s mission of religious/spiritual Christian Formation--Part 2

The past week's news in the United States should have moved those of us in the church community to think long and hard about what makes for a healthy environment for raising human beings. The formation of a fully-faceted human being—physical, emotional, intellectual, social, spiritual—includes all dimensions of human life, including the spiritual dimension.  Human formation doesn't occur in a vacuum.  Influences--including depraved ones--from all over can lay claim to the nurture of young people, and the results can include spiritual depravity. 

Lately there has been a lot of talk about the phenomenon of 'spiritual, but not religious.' [See many good bloggers around this theme. like this one, quoted by Patheos. ] The Pew study (referred to in my past few posts) had some investigation of that, but not a lot.  What do people mean when they say that they are spiritual, but not religious?  What I think they mean is that people do recognize that a human being has a spiritual dimension (maybe undefined), but that such a part of a person has no relationship with any particular religious organization or faith tradition.

I want to propose that there is a relationship between the spiritual and the religious, and I want to use a very robust metaphor to describe it, using an organic kind of understanding of 'religion.'

In any particular person, I want to propose that developing a whole spiritual life is like acquiring a language, just as becoming a whole social person is like acquiring a real spoken language.  And more, I want to propose that what we call 'religious' is the institutional manifestation of that language, just as 'culture' is the institutional manifestation of the spoken language.

Let me elaborate.

Human beings are born into communities that speak a language, a particular language.  The language has been living in the community of people who speak it for eons, into the dark and unknowable past. The language migrates and evolves with the community that speaks it.

A religion is a manifestation of a particular spiritual language, spoken by a particular spiritual community.  Spiritual nurture is like teaching that language, and it requires the participation of and in a 'religion.'  Remember, this is a metaphor, so there are aspects of language acquisition that are not like acquiring a religion.  Let’s just see how far this can take us.

First, religion is particular, just like a language.  There are many spoken languages, just like there are many faith traditions and communities, but there is no such thing as a universal, general language that all humans understand, such as something analogous to undifferentiated 'spirituality.'  When a person is born, there exist already particular languages, not HUMANESE in general.  Children must learn a particular language in order to grow into the culture of their community.  The language already exists, with its grammar and vocabulary, with its literature and stories, and also with its own cultural baggage.  None of it is something that a child can change wholesale or arbitrarily to the whims of her own ideas, although each individual speaker can influence the language, even as they contribute to its spoken and written history.  However, to do so, each speaker must participate in learning and speaking it.  

Go back to the above paragraph and replace 'language' with 'religion' to see the parallels I’m drawing. The Church is in the business of teaching the particular language of Jesus.  I don't mean Aramaic, but Christian. We teach the stories, vocabulary, literature, poetry, grammar and concepts that give a person the tools to incorporate and express spirituality in the Christian genre.  That's 'religion.' Christian spirituality is religion with a particular shape. When we call people to Christian discipleship, we're inviting them to learn the language that will form their spiritual lives into lives that look like Jesus.  Next...

Question: Are languages morally neutral? Are religions morally neutral?

What are we doing here? Thinking about the church’s mission of religious/spiritual Christian Formation--Part 1

In my last post about the current Pew Research report on religious life in America, I begged for some more intelligent conversation about what it means to talk about "religion." So I'll have to take my own medicine and offer up some starting comments.

The Pew Research study of our changing religious landscape in America is still generating lots of commentary.  See here for example, or here for the full report.  The results of the study were stunning: the number of people who claim no religious affiliation has grown nearly 7 percentage points in the seven years since the previous Pew report to a whopping 22.8% of the population.  Both mainline and Roman Catholic churches show significant decline in numbers.  Many interpretations are being bandied about.  The only thing that the interpreters appear to say in common is that someone ought to be paying attention to just what the mission of the church is, if it is not “making disciples.” Matthew [28: 19]  Do the numbers and their trend mean we are failing?

The 'little church with a big mission' has a mission statement that's more than 40 years old. It's our reason for being.  It said, in part, “We are committed to Christ…To this end we commit ourselves to call people to discipleship…” A few years ago, our governing board undertook a bit of self-examination to see if the Mission Statement seemed adequate.  After a few months of word-smithing and good discussion, it seemed that the old mission statement would serve just fine.  A little tweaking here or there probably wouldn’t improve it much.  So “calling people to discipleship” it is.

But just what is that?  Getting people to recite a list of beliefs about Jesus?  Making them attend church on Sunday?  Turning people into “good citizens?”  For too long, the church has been hampered by narrow understandings of what “discipleship following Jesus Christ” means, so I think that the discussion about dying religion(s) in the US has been impoverished.  I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that we deserve better.  I want to have better conversations and thinking about this topic, so I’m going to offer some of my own ideas in the next several blog posts.  I really welcome your feedback.  Ready...