By David Gushee
I am 48 years old, and I acutely feel the generational reality of being caught in the middle, betwixt the 80-year-old generation represented by my parents and the 20-year-olds represented by my children and students.
It is perhaps inevitable that there would be an acute two-generation gap between twentysomethings and eightysomethings. But when it comes to Baptist life today, that gap sometimes seems insuperable.
I write today based on several recent experiences with the Baptist eightysomethings (outside my local congregation). I want to communicate what I am hearing, and then circle around for some closing reflections.
For at least some eightysomething Baptists, worship is changing in disorienting and unsettling ways. Through their entire lifetime a Baptist worship service hung on The Baptist Hymnal and a preacher’s proclamation of the meaning of a passage of Scripture. But now the music leaders have taken the hymnbook out of their hands and replaced it with words on a screen. Even when the old hymns are sung according to their original design, no one knows what the tunes really are supposed to be because no one opens the hymnbook. And that’s when the hymns are not altered so that they seem familiar but have been musically changed beyond recognition. Then, of course, there are the many times when worship leaders seem to transition into performers, with the expectation of applause at the end of their songs.
The eightysomethings are distressed by the turn to praise choruses that are unfamiliar and do not carry the same deep emotive associations of the hymns sung from childhood. They consider the new worship songs musically inferior and less worshipful than the classic hymns. They wonder whether these songs will stick in anyone’s memory in the way that classics like “Amazing Grace” once did.
As for preaching, at least some Baptist eightysomethings find similar disorientation in an apparent loss of confidence and zeal from the pulpit. These men and women grew up in Southern Baptist churches (they were all Southern Baptist churches then) in which preachers preached. They spoke clearly, forcefully and directly. They believed they had something to proclaim, and they did so. But some in the new generation of preachers seem more interested in conversation than in proclamation. The eightysomethings wonder whether these preachers no longer have confidence in their own message. Or is it just that someone has told them to replace proclamation with hesitant mumbling?
Eightysomethings dress up for church. The men wear suits, with starched shirts, ties, dress belts and polished shoes. They don’t slouch into church in cutoffs, flip flops, and ragged T-shirts. They don’t “dress up” by showing up in untucked shirts flopping over blue jeans with designer holes in them, or (on a good day) in polo shirts and khakis fit for the golf course.
Eightysomething men shave for church. They don’t sport three-day beards. They wash and comb their hair. They understand that younger generations don’t carry the same dress standards that older ones did but they do not see the change as an improvement. They cannot imagine that the worship of God is improved through an informal approach to how one dresses for church.
Eightysomethings go to Sunday school. When they go there they study a lesson from a quarterly and/or from the Bible. They bring their tithes and offerings. Sunday school classes remain central to their experience of Baptist church life. They are not sanguine about the fading of so many of the older programs that instructed Christians in the rudiments of Christian faith. This includes Sunday school but goes beyond it — they remember Training Union (actually, so do I).
Ours is a niche society. Even our websites learn to track us by our preferences and put ads in front of us specific to our demographics and desires. But the average Baptist church remains a non-niche community. Here we cross generations, politics and life experiences. Eightysomething WWII veterans share membership with iPhone 4-toting 12-year-olds. Ardent Democrats share pews with equally ardent Republicans. Rachel Maddow fans shake hands with Rush’s Dittoheads (maybe).
Certainly the health of our congregations depends on finding common ground in Christ amidst all of our many differences. But it may also be true that the health of our nation depends in surprising ways on the ability of our few surviving non-niche, multigenerational, multi-convictional communities to live together in peace. This involves all of us stretching to understand, include and love one another, across every kind of difference.