Faith in America

Yesterday, The Barna Group posted their "12 Most Significant Religious Findings from 2006 Surveys." There were some interesting things on the list, to be sure. The coolest was that 9% of Americans were involved in some form of house church this year, although 80% of that group still have some affiliation with a larger church. My guess would be a lot of responders are really only a part of a cell group in a larger church, which is cool, but not as interesting as go-it-alone home churches.

The really striking part comes in the summary section:

American Christians are not as devoted to their faith as they like to believe. They have positive feelings about the importance of faith, but their faith is rarely the focal point of their life or a critical factor in their decision-making...few people take the time to evaluate their spiritual journey, or to develop benchmarks or indicators of their spiritual health.

If people’s faith is objectively measured against a biblical standard of how faith is to be practiced, Americans are spiritually lukewarm. “Very limited effort is devoted to spiritual growth. Most Americans experience ‘accidental spiritual growth’ since there is generally no plan or process other than showing up at a church and absorbing a few ideas here and there."

I think this pretty accurately describes us as Americans, unfortunately. This puts pretty succinctly some of the things I learned about myself during the last two years. The problem, though, is that these same things have been true of us (I think) for sometime, but what's the solution?

Barna suggests:

The growth of various converging movements of deeply spiritual people who are departing from the conventional forms and communities of faith, the Revolutionary community – which incorporates divergent but compatible groups of people who are seeking to make their faith the driving force in their life – is reshaping American faith in ways which we are just beginning to understand.

It seems as though all the work we do to make ourselves more appealing through newer music, more programs and a more relevant Christian popular culture (if that's not an oxymoron) isn't worth much if we don't seek "to make...faith the driving force" in our lives.

So where do we start?

Stranger Than Fiction

I just finished reading Chuck Palahniuk's Stranger Than Fiction (no relation to the recent film of the same title). Palahniuk is an amazing writer, the author of Fight Club and a good number of other books that will mess with your head, as a rule.

Stranger Than Fiction was recommended to me by a friend in Spain, Eva (see the sidebar for her blog), who pointed out to me these paragraphs:

If you haven't already noticed, all my books are about a lonely person looking for some way to connect with other people.

In a way, that is the opposite of the American Dream: to get so rich you can rise above the rabble, all those people on the freeway, or worse, the bus.

Whether it's a ranch in Montana or basement apartment with ten thousand DVDs and high-speed Internet access, it never fails. We get there, and we're alone. And we're lonely.

It wasn't until a writing workshop that I discovered the idea of friendships based on a shared passion. Writing. Or theater. Or music. Some shared vision. A mutual quest that would keep you together with other people who valued this vague, intangible skill you valued...We fought and praised each other. And it was enough.

In so many ways, these places - support groups, twelve-step recovery groups, demolition derbies - they've come to serve the role that organized religion used to. We used to go to church to reveal the worst aspects of ourselves, our sins. To tell out stories. To be recognized. To be forgiven. And to be redeemed, accepted back into our community. This ritual was our way to stay connected to people, and to resolve our anxiety before it could take us so far from humanity that we would be lost.

In these places I found the truest stories. In support groups. In hospitals. Anywhere people had nothing left to lose, that's where they told the most truth.

I like how well Palahniuk pegs this. People in America, especially in our generation, have a deep desire for community. But the kind of formal community that our parents' (or grandparents') generation had in church isn't what we're looking for.

And unless we find ways to form meaningful Christian communities, we wind up trying to fill ourselves with whatever we can find, even if it pales in comparison to the Truth.

Unsuccessful Hunting

So I just got back from a 10 day hunting trip to Pennsylvania. An unsuccessful hunting trip, overall, since we didn't actually shoot anything. I didn't even shoot AT anything. The upside, though, was that I got to spend time with my grandfather and see a bunch of family I haven't seen in the last two years, so all in all, it was a good trip, even without the meat to back it up.