Christian Smith on Handing Down the Faith

There’s an interesting interview (here) with Christian Smith about his forthcoming book, Handing Down the Faith: How Parents Pass Their Religion on to the Next Generation, co-authored with Amy Adamczyk.

The headline captures it nicely:

‘Sociologist Christian Smith says most American moms and dads see the Body as nothing more than a resource center for their kids.’

Some bits of the interview that stood out to me are these:

‘[M]ost parents think what’s really important about raising kids in the faith is that it’ll be good for them in this world. There’s very little reference to salvation or eternity. It’s very “this worldly” focused: The kids will be happier and make better choices. So I think religious parents have a very immanently oriented, not transcendently oriented, rationale.’

’[t] became very clear how important parents were in the formation of their children. We realized that what parents are doing with teenagers really matters more than media, school, or friends.’

‘[F]or the most part, religion has been redefined. It’s an individualistic thing that may or may not be part of one’s personal identity, along with other features like your career or your sexual orientation or your hobbies. Religious faith may be a piece of that larger sense of individual self.’

‘Parents are looking to congregations basically as resource centers. They’re not community ways of life. They’re not bodies of people who are embodying some alternative or renewed way of living.’

‘This is not a new conclusion, but it’s reinforcing what we have known for a while: American religion has really morphed into an individualistic, consumeristic reality.’

The US context means their discoveries won’t necessarily provide an exact match in other situations, but it could be worth reflecting on the overlaps.

Bible Engagement Among Young People in Australia

Philip Hughes and Claire Pickering, Bible Engagement among Young Australians: Patterns and Social Drivers (Christian Research Association, 2010).

Scripture Engagement notes the publication of a 53-page report from the Christian Research Association in Australia on Bible engagement among young people in Australia.

The report, commissioned by the Bible Society (South Australia), is available as a pdf here.

It looks at national patterns of Bible reading, attitudes among young people to the content of the Bible, as well as major influences and social drivers of young people’s attitudes to the Bible.

They summarise:

‘Conservatively interpreted, the surveys show that around 4 per cent of young people read the Bible daily, another 6 per cent read it weekly, and 15 to 20 per cent read it very occasionally. About 70 per cent never read it. The frequency of Bible reading is a little greater among older young people, although this is probably a result of changing history patterns over generations and not related to age. Of those who read the Bible daily or weekly, most attend church services and youth activities, such as a Bible study group. Most also have parents and friends who attend church frequently. Those who read it frequently are mostly involved in Protestant Evangelical or Charismatic denominations, such as the Pentecostals, Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Seventh-day Adventists.’

They propose the following recommendations for the Bible Society:

• Focus on building youth groups and Bible study groups
• Develop materials for occasional readers and the curious
• Work with families in encouraging Bible engagement
• Explore relevant forms of communication and community for encouraging Bible engagement

And their recommendations for future research include these questions:

• What are the catalysts for Bible reading?
• How is the Bible interpreted?

Jenny Baker on Fresh Approaches to Sharing the Bible with Young People

Notes from a seminar at the London launch of Biblefresh (30 March 2010):

Jenny began by saying that young people don’t share our view of the Bible, showing a video clip of young people answering the question, What do you think of the Bible?Answers: long, lots of pages, small writing, few connections with life and their world, lots of misinformation.

The context in which we teach is that we have good relationships with young people, recognising that they are going to be looking at our lives.

Creative expression is really important for young people; children are often self-starters here, and self-expression is part of the cultural furniture.

Some suggestions here included:

Revisiting the psalms through making videos. Give them an exericse about what the back story to a psalm might have been, ask how they might have felt. Or, get them to rewrite a psalm of their own. For instance, David himself knew what it was like to care for sheep, and he imagined God doing for him what he had done for sheep. How about: ‘The Lord is my football coach. He makes me stretch after training…’ Some psalms are acrostics, so we could encourage them to write an acrostic psalm of their own.

Use imagination in stories – get inside the skin of a biblical character.

Learning through experience, citing Kolb’s cyle of experiential learning – experiencing, reflecting, generalising, applying.

The prophets engaged in symbolic acts that communicated their message.

Encourage young people to think about how biblical stories apply to their own lives, think about which character they identify with, or use art.

Lectio divina – a slow and prayerful way of praying the Bible – read a passage a number of times leaving space to linger on the words, seeing Scripture as a place of encounter with God. Lectio divina is enhanced when it is coupled with a good working knowledge of the Scriptures.

See the big picture of the Bible, the narrative running through from beginning to end. At this point Jenny showed a video from the Lacey Theatre Company portraying the Bible in three minutes, and mentioned Nick Page’s The Big Story (especially useful for young people themselves) and The Bible Book: A User’s Guide, as well as a resource from Urban Saints – God’s Living Story for Young People – written by Jenny herself.

Patrick D. Miller on Esther

Patrick D. Miller, ‘For Such a Time as This’ (2006).

The Institute for Youth Ministry at Princeton Theological Seminary makes available online their Lectures on Youth, Church, and Culture.

The theme for 2006 was ‘For Such a Time as This’, taking its cue from Esther 4:14.

They write:

‘Esther’s is a story of tenacious courage, a willingness to follow God’s call, and a firm trust that the community of faith will survive by the grace of God. Her story provides a rich theme for the 2006 Princeton Lectures on Youth, Church, and Culture, for we live in a time when courage is often called for in ministry and when many challenges face the church and its young people. These lectures address a range of topics within this theme, including the future of the church, the nature of time, the practice of lament, and the call for youth to speak out.’

Interesting and useful though they may be, it’s not at all clear to me that the lectures engage terribly much with the book of Esther – with the exception of Patrick Miller’s piece.

His discussion takes in ‘time’, Esther, Mordecai, and God. About Esther he asks whether there are features of the story and her role that are paradigmatic and instructive for ‘such a time as this’, and suggests the following three:

1. ‘Such a time as this requires both realism and courage… [which] is evident all through the report of this young woman’s response to what happens. Heroism may finally characterize her act, but her perspective is quite realistic – about herself and her situation’ (65).

2. Such a time as this ‘suggests that what is needed is the joining of wisdom and faith, of sensible thinking with commitment to the faith and practices that have kept the community through thick and thin’ (66).

3. ‘In such a time as this, the young person of this story knows that in relation to her elders she is both bound and free – bound to listen and free to act’ (67).