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SHOW: All Things Considered
DATE: March 1, 1999
NOAH ADAMS, host:
This is NPR's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Noah Adams.
For much of this decade, the phrase ‘generation X’ has been used to define young people in their 20s and early 30s. The label is usually scorned by those it aims to describe. Gen Xers are often characterized as too cynical, too apathetic, too self-absorbed to believe in much of anything. Yet on Sunday evenings in Seattle, two popular gathering places for the gen X set are churches, two very different kinds of churches. In the first of a monthly series on young people and religion, NPR's Lynn Neary reports on what these gen Xers might be looking for and finding in church.
LYNN NEARY reporting:
Contrary to its popular image, generation X is intensely spiritual; so says Tom Beaudoin, the author of "Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X." What really sets his generation's spiritual journey apart, says Beaudoin, is the ambiguity of the times. Exposed to a wide range of ideas, beliefs and people, Beaudoin says generation X has embraced tolerance as a fundamental moral value.
Mr. TOM BEAUDOIN (Author, "Virtual Faith"): If you're going to be tolerant, you have to be able to hold at the same time lots of different contradictory views and ways of life and say they're all basically relatively equal. That's part of the ambiguity of being young and being in our culture right now and trying to come up with a spiritual identity. It's a basic unknowability or thick uncertainty about which religion really is true. Whose Jesus really is Jesus? Whose god really is God?
NEARY: The challenge of that uncertainty leaves some gen Xers with an intense desire for the opposite. They want a religious experience that provides some answers, but they also want it on their own terms.
In a borrowed church not far from the campus of the University of Washington, the Mars Hill congregation has set up shop. On Sunday evening, young people pour in for the first of two services. Some members of the congregation sport brightly colored hair and multiple piercings on their lips, eyebrows, ears and noses. But most wouldn't stand out in a crowd. Casually dressed in jeans and fleece jackets, virtually everyone appears to be well under the age of 35. A band takes its place under a rose window in the front of the sanctuary, and the service begins.
Mars Hill, an evangelical Christian ministry, has grown from a dozen people to almost 1,000 since it was founded in 1996. It uses contemporary culture--music, art, film, computer technology--to attract young people who might otherwise be turned off by the idea of church. Twenty-seven-year-old Alicia Faulkner is a member of the congregation.
Ms. ALICIA FAULKNER: This is different; it's saying that this is where we live, this is our culture, these are the people that we're around all day long, this is the music we listen to. It's good music, and it's about God.
(Excerpt from band performance)
NEARY: Mark Driscoll, the founder and pastor of Mars Hill, insists that his church bears no resemblance to the evangelical mega-churches which have set out to attract baby boomers with sophisticated marketing techniques. That approach, says Driscoll, wouldn't work with his generation.
Mr. MARK DRISCOLL (Mars Hill): This is a group of people that were raised on advertising to the degree that to market them is nearly impossible.
NEARY: Driscoll says Mars Hill has grown by word of mouth. And for all the emphasis on culture, Driscoll is convinced young people are attracted to Mars Hill because it stands for something.
Mr. DRISCOLL: If you guys could turn to Romans 8, please, that'll be great.
NEARY: The heart of the Mars Hill service is Driscoll's teaching on a biblical passage. He frequently uses contemporary references like popular movies to illustrate the sermon, but the basic message comes straight from the Bible.
Mr. DRISCOLL: I don't care what government officials say. I don't care what moral authorities say. And I don't care what individual preferences say. I really am concerned with something more transcendent and timeless than that, something that speaks into the chaos of the age with some sort of option. And so I'm not ashamed if I'm going through the Scriptures to say, ‘This is what God has said.’
NEARY: The biblical message combined with a familiar cultural context gives the young congregation a strong sense of community. And some members of the church are extending that idea of community into their daily lives, forming group houses with other church members.
A Saturday evening dinner party at a Mars Hill community house. Jazz plays in the background as young people mingle, eating cheese and sipping non-alcoholic drinks. Attractive and well-dressed, they look like any other group of 20-something young professionals or students. It's not obvious that this is a group of people drawn together by faith until they gather to pray before dinner.
Unidentified Man: Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time of getting together and having a meal put together and...
NEARY: After dinner, the group sits down to talk. They come from a variety of backgrounds. Some were raised in Christian families; others had little or no religious upbringing and are newcomers to the faith. All of them speak in intensely personal terms about their involvement with God.
Ms. MARY GALLAGHER: I want a real relationship; I want a real friendship, and I want to make it mine. Typical gen X thing to say, but I just want to make it real.
NEARY: Twenty-one-year-old Mary Gallagher was sick in living in her car when she turned to a Christian church for help. There she says she found unconditional love.
Ms. GALLAGHER: It wasn't like this wrathful, you know, ‘You're gonna go to hell if you're not Christian,’ and it was just like he loves you. His arms are open for you. He's, you know, your ‘Abba, father’ when you didn't have a father. And that's so appealing to have that somebody there for me all the time.
NEARY: A thinly veiled disdain for their parents' generation permeates the conversation. Twenty-three-year-old Jessica Wentworth says she was raised without religion, although her mother did believe in New Age spirituality.
Ms. JESSICA WENTWORTH: She would take us to have our palms read and tarot cards read for us, and she had an interest in spirituality. But I saw it as a very vague, ephemeral sort of belief system, and I didn't understand--there wasn't anything concrete behind it. And with Christianity, I did find something that was founded on what I believe is truth, that there is authority there.
NEARY: Moral relativity holds no appeal among this group of young people. They were raised with that idea, says 28-year-old Charles Kerber, and it simply doesn't work.
Mr. CHARLES KERBER: When you think of everything as relative, that's just--it's such shaky ground. It's just--it's such a quagmire to try and stand on because every situation from one step to the next, there's nothing constant, there's nothing certain.
NEARY: Like many of these young people, Kerber's parents were divorced, and experience which they say is the norm for their generation.
Mr. KERBER: I don't mean to be cruel, but the baby boomer generation, you know, laid out a lot on our lives: broken relationships, fragmented marriages, family strife and turmoil. We--you know, we lived through those in our childhood, so we come out of our childhood with just this kind of despair. I think then we look to God and to Jesus Christ, and we say, ‘Here's a hope. Here's hope we can cling on to. Here's a hope that's sure. You know, here's something we can put our feet on solid and believe and trust in.’
NEARY: But the given truths of evangelical Christianity and the easy familiarity of contemporary culture do not satisfy everyone. Some gen Xers are seeking spirituality in more ancient traditions.
(Excerpt from singing)
NEARY: Since the 1960s, young people have been coming here to St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle every Sunday night for the singing of the Compline office, the traditional last prayer of the day in a monastery.
(Excerpt from singing)
NEARY: The young people fill the pews in the vast, dimly lit space and spill out onto the floor. Some lie flat on their back staring at the huge vaulted ceiling of the cathedral. The Compline service, says choir member Dean Suess, places no demands on its audience, which in part explains its popularity with young people. Compline provides room for spiritual exploration.
Mr. DEAN SUESS: There is no sermon in the office of Compline, so we allow the people to come in and be themselves, which is something that in our typical Sunday morning services is not allowed. You have to come into the sanctuary and you have to divest yourself, leave it behind at the door, and then hear what the preacher wants you to be. So we have an easier introduction to spirituality.
(Excerpt from singing)
NEARY: The Compline service, says 28-year-old Christine Emmal, is a haunting, mystical experience that connects you to the world of the spirit.
Ms. CHRISTINE EMMAL: You feel this old tradition, but you also feel this amazing space in the cathedral. People sit very quietly, the music plays very gently, and you feel that you have a space where you can relax and you can be with God and you can contemplate what's going on in your own life.
NEARY: Raised as a Catholic, Emmal attended an evangelical college, but she found herself at odds with the teachings of both religions, so she began searching for a new spiritual home. That search brought her to the Compline service, and eventually she decided to become an Episcopalian. Drawn by its rituals and tradition, Emmal was also attracted by the way the church deals with difficult issues.
Ms. EMMAL: All the way along, the community has struggled and the community has argued and fought and tried to sort out what they believed and factioned off in some cases. And so you have some very interesting dialogues going on about homosexuality, about feminism and the Christian tradition, which make it for me a very fascinating place to be.
NEARY: While the Compline service attracts large numbers of young people, only a few like Emmal go on to become active in the Episcopal Church. But for young Episcopalians, traditions like Compline are important. Twenty-six-year-old Josh Hossler grew up in the church.
Mr. JOSH HOSSLER: It's comforting to me to be a part of a tradition that's been going on for so many centuries and to realize that, although my generation has its own particular characteristics, I'm just another one going through the process.
NEARY: The Episcopal Church, like most mainstream Protestant churches, is losing members, while evangelical churches are growing. And both Emmal and Hossler say they wish there were more young people in the congregation. Unlike their peers in Mars Hill, these young Episcopalians seem to embrace the ambiguity of the age. Josh says the church gives him what he needs: the freedom to search for answers to difficult questions.
Mr. HOSSLER: I can't find the answers by myself. I can't find the answers with the help of my friends. I can only find the answers with God, and that's if I find the answers while I'm alive. I think that there's much more meaning in the questioning process and in letting yourself be where you are on the journey at this point, not feeling like you have to have the whole thing wrapped up today.
NEARY: The young people of St. Mark's seem to have a very different approach to spirituality than their peers at Mars Hill. But Tom Beaudoin says they actually have a lot in common.
Mr. BEAUDOIN: People are looking for an experience that has somehow escaped the clutches of the institution. And the mysticism and the eclecticism of popular culture in that way are very much related. It's a search for what has not been domesticated by the institution.
NEARY: The suspicion of institutions runs deep in the post-baby boom generation, says Beaudoin, but he argues institutionalized religions should not give up on reaching young people. Instead, he says, they should take careful note of the ways this generation has already found to express its spirituality.
Lynn Neary, NPR News, Washington.