The Juvenilization of American Christianity - Softcover

Bergler, Thomas E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802866840 ISBN 13: 9780802866844

Verlag: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2012

Inhaltsangabe

Pop worship music. Falling in love with Jesus. Mission trips. Wearing jeans and T-shirts to church. Spiritual searching and church hopping. Faith -based political activism. Seeker- sensitive outreach. These now- commonplace elements of American church life all began as innovative ways to reach young people, yet they have gradually become accepted as important parts of a spiritual ideal for all ages. What on earth has happened? In The Juvenilization of American Christianity Thomas Bergler traces the way in which, over seventy-five years, youth ministries have breathed new vitality into four major American church traditions — African American, Evangelical, Mainline Protestant, and Roman Catholic. Bergler shows too how this "juvenilization" of churches has led to widespread spiritual immaturity, consumerism, and self- centeredness, popularizing a feel- good faith with neither intergenerational community nor theological literacy. Bergler's critique further offers constructive suggestions for taming juvenilization.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Thomas E. Bergler is associate professor of ministry andmissions at Huntington University, Huntington, Indiana, where he has taught youth ministry for ten years. He alsoserves as senior associate editor for The Journal of YouthMinistry.

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The Juvenilization of American Christianity

By Thomas E. Bergler

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Copyright © 2012 Thomas Bergler
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8028-6684-4

Contents

Acknowledgments.................................................................................................ixIntroduction: We're All Adolescents Now.........................................................................11. Youth, Christianity, and the Crisis of Civilization..........................................................192. Misreading the Signs of the Times: From Political Youth to Trivial Teenagers.................................413. Social Prophets or Silent Generation? The Failed Juvenilization of Liberal Protestantism.....................674. The Black Church and the Juvenilization of Christian Political Activism......................................925. Why Everyone Wanted to Get out of the Catholic Ghetto........................................................1196. How to Have Fun, Be Popular, and Save the World at the Same Time.............................................1477. Youth, Christianity, and the 1960s Apocalypse................................................................1768. The Triumph and Taming of Juvenilization.....................................................................208Notes...........................................................................................................230Index...........................................................................................................267

Chapter One

Youth, Christianity, and the Crisis of Civilization

All politics today is youth politics. The Doom of Youth, 1932

No part of the population is affected more vitally or occupies a more essential position in time of war or world crisis than youth.

A Program of Action for American Youth, 1939

Youth ministry as we know it today, with its power to shape the future of American Christianity, was born in an hour of world crisis. As the traumas of the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War followed each other in quick succession, people started to speak of a "crisis of civilization." They had reason to fear that their children might see the end of economic prosperity, democracy, and religious freedom.

Young people seemed to be both key actors in the international political drama and especially vulnerable victims of the times. So an amazingly broad spectrum of leaders both inside and outside the churches proclaimed that youth held the key to saving civilization. Most Americans not only nodded their heads in agreement, they opened their wallets to fund new youth organizations.

By capitalizing on fears about youth and the crisis of civilization, Christian youth leaders and young people were able to launch some much-needed reforms in their churches. Young people pioneered racial integration, created new and exciting methods of evangelism, and gained a newfound sense of their own political power. These changes were at first restricted to youth environments, but they would eventually reshape the lives of adults as well. Although they may not have single-handedly saved civilization, the Christian youth leaders of this era did help thousands of young people become stronger, more active Christians who made a difference in their society.

Youth leaders believed they were catching the wave of the future and channeling the innate power of young people. They were also building one of the engines that would drive juvenilization in subsequent decades. In a world of impending doom, who could argue against doing whatever it took to Christianize and mobilize the young saviors of the world?

The Crisis of Civilization and the "Youth Problem"

The Great Depression and World War II created significant suffering and new temptations for young people, but adults too easily assumed a close connection between these problems and the possible shipwreck of their civilization. For one thing, unemployment hit young people hard. As of 1936, an estimated 4.7 million Americans between the ages of 16 and 24 were unemployed. This number represented about one-third of all the unemployed in the country. In 1932 a railroad policeman in El Paso estimated that he saw 200 transients come through each day, at least half of whom were under twenty-five years old. The problem of indigent youth took on a threatening racial and sexual significance with the arrest of the Scottsboro boys in 1931. This widely publicized incident happened among the swarms of young people who were wandering from city to city by catching illegal rides on freight trains. Two young white girls accused nine African Americans of raping them. Although the boys were convicted, years later it would become clear that the accusations were false. African American and white parents had radically different interpretations of the case, but all found it deeply troubling.

Adults responded to the threat of unemployed, unsupervised young people by pushing them all to go to high school. Ironically, this new expectation that most teenagers should go to high school made the dropout problem seem worse than it had before. In their dreams about the possible benefits of a high school education, most adults chose to ignore the way that they were using schools as a place to warehouse young people and keep them off the streets.

But keeping kids in school was not enough. Adults also worried that unemployed young people would get in trouble during their leisure time. One 1942 curriculum designed to lead high school students through a study of the youth problem contained the following exercise: "Study the life of the French nobility during the 75 years preceding the French revolution. Was there a fruitful and creative use of leisure?" In hindsight it seems ridiculous to think that the young men hanging out on street corners or the young women trying to pick up soldiers would somehow lead America down the path of bloody political revolution. But at the time no one batted an eye at such outrageous ideas.

To be fair, anything seemed possible in a world in which a tyrant like Hitler could rise to power with the help of a fanatical youth movement. Many feared that communists or fascists could manipulate unemployed, idealistic young Americans just as easily. The Student Strikes for Peace in 1934 and 1935 and youth marches on Washington organized by the American Youth Congress seemed to confirm these fears. Some believed the AYC was a "communist front" and viewed its activities with alarm. President Roosevelt addressed the young people who marched on Washington and scolded them for listening to political extremists. The American Communist Party was at its zenith of strength during the Great Depression, so fears about it were not entirely unfounded.

Whether or not young Americans were about to sign on with the communists or fascists, many adults insisted that something drastic had to be done to properly direct the political power of youth. Literature on the "youth problem" proliferated with titles like How Fare American Youth?; Youth a World Problem; The Lost Generation: A Portrait of American Youth Today; Christian Youth and the Economic Problem and even Doom of Youth. Adult fears about the fate of America came to rest squarely on the shoulders of young people.

Preaching the Youth Problem

Christian youth leaders seized the day and proclaimed that they held the key to saving youth and civilization. In the process, they also convinced themselves of the political power and apocalyptic significance of young people....

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0802866840
• ISBN 13: 9780802866844
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 291
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland