McCORMICK THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY POST-CHRISTENDOM CONFIRMATION

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1 McCORMICK THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY POST-CHRISTENDOM CONFIRMATION A THESIS IN THE PRACTICE OF MINISTRY SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF MINISTRY by JOHN W. VEST CHICAGO, ILLINOIS MAY 2014 THIS DOCUMENT IS SUBMITTED WITH PERMISSION TO McCORMICK THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY FOR ITS DISTRUBTION TO INTERESTED PERSONS

2 ABSTRACT John W. Vest Post-Christendom Confirmation This thesis project begins with the observation that the youth ministry I oversee typically loses a significant number of youth after eighth grade confirmation. Parents and adults have taken for granted that these young people will return to church once they begin to partner and/or have children of their own. But recent trends in American religiosity namely the overall decline of Protestantism and the so-called rise of the nones suggest that once our young people leave church many of them may never come back. If there is to be a future for the Christian witness of mainline Protestantism in 21 st century America, these realities must be addressed. Of the numerous interventions we could consider, this project focuses on the unique faith formation opportunities found in the practice of adolescent confirmation. Even in post-christendom America, confirmation maintains a high degree of cultural cachet as a rite of passage and therefore represents a brief window of time during which mainline churches have the attention of youth and their parents, an opportunity we cannot afford to squander. Confirmation is the last significant church-based faith formation that many young people will experience. We must ensure that youth who participate in confirmation programs receive quality discipleship because this experience may end up sustaining them for a decade or more. Yet I argue that typical confirmation practices in which youth are empowered to pick and choose the theologies and practices that they find most compelling have directly contributed to the decline of mainline Protestantism. After studying the long term impact of these confirmation experiences as I have facilitated them in two PC(USA) congregations, I suggest potential interventions that might feasibly transform our confirmation practices to better prepare young people to participate in vibrant expressions of post- Christendom Christianity. ii

3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract...ii Table of Contents...iii Acknowledgments...iv Introduction...1 Descriptive Theology...2 Youth Ministry Attrition...2 The Current State of American Religiosity...5 Vanishing Boundaries...8 Fourth Church as a Lay Liberal Congregation...9 From Lay Liberals to Almost Christian...10 The After Confirmation Survey...12 What Actually Happens in the Confirmation Experience?...14 Historical Theology...17 Doubting Thomas and the Gospel About Jesus...18 Proclaiming the Unknown God...20 Systematic Theology...23 Post-Christendom...23 The Birth of Something New...25 The Great Reversal...26 Post-Christendom Faith...27 Lived Religion: Beyond Belief and Traditional Religiosity..27 A Post-Congregational Church...29 Our Adaptive Challenge...30 Strategic Practical Theology...30 Post-Christendom Youth Ministry...30 Post-Christendom Confirmation...38 The Long Game Approach to Confirmation...38 Significance Beyond Youth Ministry...39 Appendices 1. Research Methodology Children and Youth Ministry at Fourth Presbyterian Church What We Know About American Religiosity What We Know About the Nones The After Confirmation Survey What is Confirmation? Confirmation as I Have Practiced It Potential Changes to Confirmation at Fourth Presbyterian Church...77 Notes...85 Bibliography...92 iii

4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am thankful beyond words for the support of my loving wife Anna. She is a far more patient partner than I deserve. With the completion of this project I look forward to spending more time with her and our two amazing sons. I will be forever grateful for the lifelong love of learning instilled in me by my parents and the numerous ways they have supported my education from pre-school through this degree. There is no greater gift to give a child. I have thoroughly enjoyed the exercises in practical theology that comprise the Doctor of Ministry course of study. To do this work with such faithful and thoughtful colleagues has been a blessing. I am particularly grateful for Peter Bartlett, evangelist to the conflicted, with whom I have travelled this journey from start to finish. I am very thankful for the guidance, wisdom, and patience of my advisor, Jeff Japinga, who as dean of the program has always gone the extra mile to make us feel welcome and cared for. Among my many great teachers at McCormick, I am especially appreciative of Lib Caldwell for her encouragement and support. As the contextual laboratory in which my studies and this project were grounded, Fourth Presbyterian Church has been a wonderful congregation to serve. I am grateful for the generous support of the Session and their trust in my work. While numerous members of the Youth Ministry Committee and others have contributed to my thinking about our practice of ministry with young people, I am especially grateful for my Advisory Group for Ministry: Kimberlee Frost, Lies Garner, Mark Nelson, and Kathi Rodak. Calum MacLeod was a helpful sounding board throughout my studies. I have enjoyed collaborating with Daniel Holladay and Katie Patterson as their entry into youth ministry has coincided with the completion of this project. Most of all, I am profoundly grateful for the youth it has been my pleasure to serve, both at Fourth and at Community Presbyterian Church in Clarendon Hills. It was at CPC that my love for youth ministry developed and I will always be indebted to my friend and first youth ministry mentor, Deb Helms. Finally, I offer thanks for the members of the first Mid Councils Commission of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and especially our moderator, Tod Bolsinger, for helping me see the value of using post-christendom as a framework for understanding the adaptive challenges of the church today. iv

5 INTRODUCTION Over the past several years news outlets ranging from USA Today 1 to Time 2 to NPR 3 have widely reported on the so-called rise of the nones the developing phenomenon in which surveys of American religiosity show that the fastest growing religious category is the group who says that they have no religious affiliation, often referred to as the nones. This phenomenon is the latest manifestation of the steady decline of American Protestantism experienced first primarily by mainline Protestants but increasingly experienced by evangelical denominations as well that has been happening for over half a century in the United States. My particular mainline denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA), has followed the typical trajectory of decline. The PC(USA) now has less than half the membership of its predecessor denominations in 1965, a loss of over 2,000,000 members. 4 In 2008, as the PC(USA) celebrated the 25 th anniversary of the reunion of the northern and southern branches of the church, the denomination had experienced a net loss of almost 1,000,000 members since the 1983 merger, from 3,131,228 to 2,140, In 2011 membership dropped below 2,000,000 for the first time and in 2012 dropped another 102,791 to a total membership of 1,849, What public interest in the rise of the nones adds to this familiar narrative of decline is the reality that mainline Protestant losses are not the result of transfers from more liberal to more conservative churches, a myth that persists in some quarters of the church. 7 Rather, more and more it is the case that mainline and evangelical churches are all losing members because people especially young adults are leaving church altogether and not coming back. Can anything be done to address the rise of the nones? Can anything be done to slow, stop, or reverse this hemorrhaging of members from mainline Protestant churches? Or, might we recognize this instead as an opportunity for these churches to participate in what more and more observers are recognizing as the birth of something new in North American Christianity? Adolescent confirmation is an important practice to investigate in regard to these challenges. In what follows I will argue that for most mainline Protestant churches, the experience of confirmation is the last opportunity to engage youth who are increasingly absent 1

6 from church as they become emerging 8 and young adults. These confirmation experiences are therefore critical opportunities to address these trends. I will also argue that typical confirmation practices are contributing to mainline Protestant decline rather than doing anything to prevent it. It is time to rethink what confirmation means in our rapidly changing world and how this practice might become a vehicle for the transformation of the church in these new contexts. In order to do this, I have done what rarely happens in ministry: I have attempted to learn more about the long-term impact of my youth ministry endeavors, especially the impact of confirmation. The outputs of this work have been clear: I have shepherded 282 young people through confirmation in two Presbyterian congregations. But what impact has confirmation and youth ministry had on the lives of these young people and through them the world we are called to serve as disciples of Christ? Using a survey instrument to assess this impact, I can now better evaluate the confirmation and youth ministry practices I have employed and suggest opportunities to improve these practices in order to achieve more desirable results. 9 This thesis is organized according to the four movements of Don S. Browning s model of practical theology. 10 First, I will engage in descriptive theology and offer a thick description of the problems that prompted this study, the current context of mainline Protestantism, how my cohort of confirmands compares to this wider context, and what I think is actually happening in mainline Protestant confirmation. Next is historical theology, in which I will bring the questions generated from descriptive theology into conversation with two key biblical texts. This moves into systematic theology, which fuses these previous theological movements into a new vision of ministry appropriate for our current situation. Finally, I will move to strategic practical theology and propose new ways of doing confirmation to address the realities of today s world. DESCRIPTIVE THEOLOGY Youth Ministry Attrition Several years into my ministry at Fourth Presbyterian Church 11 I began to take note of the significant attrition we experience between eighth grade confirmation and our high school youth ministry. Each year we can count on many of our confirmands never coming back to participate 2

7 in youth ministry activities and for participation to gradually diminish with each successive year of high school. This current program year is illustrative. Up through Sunday, January 19 we saw 51 high school students at least once at our Sunday morning youth gatherings. Five of these were visitors and 46 were youth who were confirmed with us in eighth grade. 18 of these 46 are freshmen, representing 64.29% of last year s confirmation class. (This number is much higher than I expected.) 10 of these are sophomores, representing 41.67% of their confirmation class. 13 of these are juniors, representing 32.5% of their confirmation class. 5 of these are seniors, representing just 20% of their confirmation class. As you can see, with each successive year our participation gets lower. So far this year we ve seen 39.32% of the 117 youth who have been confirmed in the past four years. Our current overall attrition rate is therefore about 60% probably higher if you take into consideration that some of these youth only came one time during this four and a half month period of gatherings. A few years ago, as I was discussing this phenomenon with our Youth Ministry Committee, I put on a whiteboard the life cycle of a typical mainline Protestant (if such a person even exists anymore): This traditional pattern begins when a person is born into a mainline Protestant family or at least a family that attends a mainline Protestant church. They are baptized and eventually 3

8 enrolled in Sunday School. After several years of children s Sunday School and initial experiences of youth ministry for tweens, this young person participates in some kind of confirmation program and joins the church. Ideally, they will continue to attend the high school youth ministry after confirmation. 12 From here young people move into a gray area during college and emerging adulthood that typically does not involve significant or consistent church participation. It is often the case that these young people do not return to church until they begin to partner and/or have children of their own. 13 At this point, the cycle begins again with the baptism of the next generation of children. There are typically two significant breaks in this cycle. There is a soft break between confirmation and high school. Many families functionally treat confirmation as a graduation from Sunday School and allow their youth to decide for themselves whether or not they will continue to participate in church activities during high school. It is often the case that the busyness of contemporary adolescent life overshadows church participation, which steadily decreases as a family priority. Some unscientific comparisons with other Presbyterian congregations in our area and Presbyterian congregations of similar size across the country indicate that our experience is not atypical. For a while I referred to these missing postconfirmation high school students as MIA youth. But I now prefer to call them liminal youth, based on a phenomenon described by Robert Putnam and David Campbell discussed below. There is a second, harder break after high school as young adults effectively drop out of church. I have begun to call this the mainline Protestant Rumspringa because it is an expected and accepted hiatus from church participation. Many of the parents and adult leaders in our congregation experienced this themselves. They were not especially active in church during college or young adulthood, returning with consistency once they settled down as singles or as families. As recently as a few decades ago, this pattern was recognized and considered normative in the study of church involvement. 14 4

9 When I first discussed this pattern with the Youth Ministry Committee, they assumed that their children would experience a similar phenomenon. They fully expected their children to be less involved in church after high school but eventually return, just as they did. But the rise of the nones is changing all of this. Current research is revealing that this once typical pattern is no longer holding. 15 Young adults are not coming back to church as they did in the past. Rather, the fastest growing category in surveys of American religion, especially among young people, is the group who says that they have no religious affiliation at all. It is not sustainable for mainline Protestant churches to take this pattern of attrition and return for granted. We can no longer count on the seeds we plant in confirmation and high school ministry to blossom later in life. It is already the case that the average age of the Presbyterian Church (USA) is If the cycle of attrition and return is in fact breaking down, this age will only rise and the PC(USA) along with all other mainline Protestant denominations will quite literally die out. The Current State of American Religiosity While the United States remains a remarkably religious nation by world standards, the story of American religiosity right now is the overall decline of Protestantism and the rise of the nones. 17 According to the most recent data from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, for the first time in U.S. history there is no longer a Protestant majority now that only 48% of the total population identifies as such. This report goes on to claim that one fifth of all Americans and one third of adults under the age of 30 identify as nones. This includes 6% of the American population who identify as atheists and 14% (33 million people) who have no particular religious affiliation. These are the highest percentages in the history of religious polling. 18 What many scholars refer to as the American religious marketplace is quite fluid with considerable turnover and switching, what many researchers call churn. This is a dynamic process in which every group is simultaneously gaining and losing adherents. 19 Pew surveys suggest that about one half of Americans have changed religious affiliation at least once in their life. Of these, 28% changed from the religion they were raised in. Most change happens early in 5

10 life, before the age of 24. Again, the group that is growing the most as a result of this is the nones. 20 Robert Putnam and David Campbell add to this picture the notion that religious identity in American has become less inherited and fixed and more chosen and changeable. 21 According to their analysis, at least a third of Americans choose their religion instead of inheriting it, and that number is rising. They also describe what they call liminals, people who drift in and out of each religious tradition, a penumbra of about 10 percent surrounding each group. 22 While every study notes that mainline Protestants have suffered the largest cumulative losses in the past half century, 23 Mark Chaves offers an important corrective to the typical understanding of liberal Protestant decline. He maintains that this decline is not because of defection to more conservative churches. Rather, this decline is likely due to lower birthrates among mainline Protestants, a decrease in the flow from conservative to liberal churches, the fact that conservative churches lose less young people to disaffiliation than liberal churches, and the fact that conservatives are still enjoying the boost in membership created by a conservative backlash against the cultural revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s. 24 Yet Chaves and others note that evangelicals are losing their competitive edge and recent data confirms that evangelicals are now declining as well. 25 This overall pattern of decline is contextualized by Putnam and Campbell in their detailed study of American religion. As the PC(USA) statistics that I cited in the introduction demonstrate, most discussions of trends in American religion contrast current realities with the high point of American religious involvement in the middle of the 20 th century. But Putnam and Campbell remind us that the 1950s and 1960s should not be considered typical. There was a massive surge in religiosity after World War II, especially among young people in their 20s. This no doubt had to do with anxieties caused by the war and the great post-war baby boom. It was also the case that churchgoing became part of the new middle class American identity. This cultural establishment of Christian religiosity, fueled by anti-communist patriotism in the midst of the Cold War, made church attendance something like a civic duty and resulted in the peak 6

11 membership numbers of the mid-1960s. 26 It may be that what we are seeing now is a return to more typical pre-wwii levels of religious involvement. Putnam and Campbell trace the decline of Protestantism from its mid-20 th century high mark by describing a significant cultural shock and two subsequent aftershocks. 27 The shock came in the form of the wide ranging cultural revolutions of the 1960s. Confidence in institutions diminished, mainline denominations began to suffer, 28 and overall religious observance declined. The first aftershock was the rise of religious conservatism in the 1970s and 1980s which resulted in the Religious Right becoming the most vocal and seemingly representative form of American religion. The second aftershock is the dramatic rise of the nones in the 1990s and 2000s, some of which represents a rejection of the conservative revolution of the previous decades. 29 Finally, an important observation that is not often recognized in discussions of American religiosity: despite the clear decline of liberal mainline Protestantism, it is actually the case that liberal values have become more normative in American culture. Chaves points this out with regard to the more widespread acceptance and appreciation of religious pluralism, an openness to the possibility that other religions are valid paths to God and eternal life, the decrease in belief in biblical inerrancy, and a greater willingness to adapt to changing circumstances. 30 This can also be seen in the growing acceptance of homosexuality in all sectors of American culture. N. Jay Demerath goes so far as to suggest that liberal Christianity has actually triumphed in the transformation of American culture. 31 According to this theory, liberal Protestantism s core values individualism, pluralism, emancipation, tolerance, free critical inquiry, and the authority of human experience have come to so permeate broader American culture that its own churches as organizations have difficulty surviving. 32 This might actually explain certain aspects of mainline decline. Perhaps it is the case that liberal mainline Protestantism has become so mainstream that its churches seem redundant in a wider culture that has more or less adopted its way of being, if not its particular religious narrative. 33 7

12 Vanishing Boundaries Though they might not have predicted it, this notion is in fact supported by a landmark study of Baby Boomer young adults published in 1994 by Dean R. Hoge, Benton Johnson, and Donald A. Luidens. Called Vanishing Boundaries, 34 this study utilized a research strategy similar to the one I have followed by focusing on young adults (ages in 1989) who had been confirmed as adolescents in Presbyterian churches in the 1960s. 35 They found that only 29% of their sample remained active members, even when defining active membership with a generously low threshold as those who attend church at least six times a year. In profiling these active Presbyterians, they note that this group demonstrated a far lower level of involvement than other groups of churched people and represented a wide range of beliefs and significant departures from orthodox Christianity. It was also the case that 52% had dropped out of church for one or more periods of time after confirmation. The single most important reason for coming back to church was providing religious education for children. This is representative of the old attrition and return model. Hoge, Johnson, and Luidens called these Presbyterians, and by extension other mainline Protestants (for whom the distinctions between denominations are not well known or important), lay liberals. They are liberal because they reject the notion that Christianity is the only true religion. The modifier lay is used because the theological language they use is not connected to any particular theological school or tradition (e.g., classical liberalism, neo-orthodoxy, or postliberalism). Rather, the theology of these mainline Protestants is articulated in common, nontechnical terms seemingly not in conversation with historic or contemporary theological discourse. More important to lay liberals than traditional orthodoxy is a commitment to a shared moral code that stresses honesty, fairness, not hurting others, and generally leading a good life. 36 There is a reluctance to talk about matters of faith and a rejection of anything that smacks of proselytism, even with their children. Significantly, Hoge, Johnson, and Luidens found little difference between the lay liberals of the active membership category and the uninvolved but religious category, the second 8

13 largest group of their sample. As those who do not belong to a church, do not attend at least six times a year, yet still consider themselves religious, these people are very similar to what we would call religious nones today. 37 The most significant difference between these people and the active church members, all of whom are described as lay liberals, is church attendance, which is not necessarily very high among the active members either. This means that of those sampled in this study, at least 50% of Baby Boomers who were confirmed in Presbyterian Churches as adolescents in the 1960s became lay liberals who may or may not attend church. 38 The difference between those who participate in church and those who do not is very minimal. Of the motivations that differentiate the 29% that are active members and the 21% that are unaffiliated but in some way self-identify as religious (or spiritual), providing religious education for children is the most prominent, 39 followed by personal support, community, and inspiration. 40 Of these, only religious education is a benefit that these individuals and families cannot find elsewhere. With such a minor differentiation between lay liberals who participate in church and those who do not, it is no wonder that post-confirmation youth (and their families) gradually stop showing up. With the boundaries between churched and non-churched life disappearing in mainline Protestantism, there is less and less incentive for people to affiliate with churches or participate in traditional church activities. Fourth Church as a Lay Liberal Congregation Hoge, Johnson, and Luidens characterization of lay liberals is an apt description of the congregation I serve at Fourth Presbyterian Church. In 1999 Jim Wellman, one of my predecessors in youth ministry at Fourth Church, published a study of the four key 20 th century pastorates of this congregation called The Gold Coast Church and the Ghetto: Christ and Culture in Mainline Protestantism. 41 Wellman attributes the successful growth of Fourth Church to the ability of its pastors to read the surrounding culture and shape the congregation in correspondingly compelling ways. 9

14 Wellman describes the pastorate of John Buchanan (recently retired after 26 years at Fourth) as a prime example of lay liberalism in which the congregation embraced a nondogmatic form of Christianity that is highly tolerant of diversity and pluralism and places few demands or expectations on members. Whereas Hoge, Johnston, and Luidens find the theological liberalism and low-demand ethos of lay liberalism problematic and the primary cause for mainline Protestant decline, Wellman argues that the significant growth of Fourth Church under Buchanan s leadership demonstrates that lay liberalism is in fact highly attractive, the belief of choice for many middle- and upper-middle-class Protestants. 42 Though Wellman presents a compelling argument, the long term success of lay liberalism in churches like Fourth remains to be seen. In their account of the decline of mainline Protestantism, Hoge, Johnson, and Luidens suggest that the growth boom mainline denominations experienced in the 1950s happened precisely because post-world War II Protestants were looking for a less dogmatic, low demand form of Christianity and found it in liberal mainline churches. Yet, they argue, the openness and low demands that created this boom only contributed to decline over the long run. 43 Perhaps the same thing happened at Fourth Church in the 1990s. Maybe the congregation grew because it created a niche for non-dogmatic theological openness that expects little of members, but this very ethos has resulted in the participation gaps that have prompted this study. 44 From Lay Liberals to Almost Christian Despite the significant attrition our youth ministry experiences between confirmation and high school, I have found that many of our liminal youth continue to think of Fourth Church as their religious community, even when they are not present. They consider me their pastor, interact with me via digital social networking platforms like Facebook, and turn to the church in times of crisis or need. This has become the new norm for church in our post-christendom times. In fact, what we see among our youth is a direct reflection of the wider congregation. At Fourth Church and this is true of many mainline Protestant congregations church membership and church attendance are very different things. Many of our most active 10

15 congregants only attend church two out of every four Sundays. In a recent congregational survey, just under a third of respondents reported attending church 4 or more times per month during the last year. Many of our adult members follow the same patterns and maintain some of the same attitudes about church as do our liminal high school students. This observation confirms the analysis of Kenda Creasy Dean in her influential book Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church. 45 Based on the groundbreaking research of the National Study of Youth and Religion, Dean s work articulates and addresses sobering realities about the faith of young people. Instead of long lasting foundations for religious practice and spiritual growth, what Kara Powell and Chap Clark call sticky faith, 46 young people have adopted what Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton of the NSYR call moralistic therapeutic deism, a non-dogmatic feel-good faith without grounding in any particular religious tradition, which they claim is in fact the dominant religion of American youth. 48 Dean also contends that what we see among our youth is a barometer for the rest of the faith community. According to Dean, the religiosity of American teenagers must be read primarily as a reflection of their parents religious devotion (or lack thereof) and, by extension, that of their congregations. 49 Based on Vanishing Boundaries, this should not come as a surprise. Now that the children and grandchildren of the Baby Boomers studied by Hoge, Johnson, and Luidens are youth, emerging adults, or young adults themselves, we should expect diminishing commitment from generation to generation and a continuation of the trends outlined in that study. 50 Most lay liberals will probably produce offspring who are comfortable with a mainline Protestant church, but their reluctance to take a strong stand on religious issues, or even to discuss them, makes it likely that their children will be even less committed to Christianity or to the church than they themselves are. Few of their children will rebel, for there is little to rebel against; they are more likely to be marginally involved in church life or to drift away entirely

16 There is, in fact, a high degree of correspondence between the lay liberalism described by Hoge, Johnson, and Luidens and the moralistic therapeutic deism described by Smith and Denton. Indeed, there is a direct line that connects lay liberalism to the almost Christian faith described by Dean. While this type of faith was demonstrably successful among certain Baby Boomers (the growth of Fourth Church is Wellman s prime example), it may not prove sustainable at least in terms of maintaining the institutions of organized religion in the post- Christendom culture it helped create. The After Confirmation Survey To test the long-term viability of lay liberalism as it has now been passed on to successive generations, and as a way to gauge the lasting impact of confirmation (and for some, continued participation in the youth ministry), I designed a survey based on questions from the NSYR and Pew surveys along with questions of my own. The results of this survey provide the most detailed understanding of the impact of my youth ministry that I have ever been able to consider. The resulting portrait of the post-confirmation youth I have worked with both confirms and challenges some of my assumptions leading into this study. 52 First, while it is the case that about 21% of the emerging adults confirmed under my pastoral guidance have disaffiliated from organized religion, they do not exactly fit the Pew profile of the nones, 30% of whom are atheists and agnostics and 70% of whom claim nothing in particular. 53 As best I can tell, the emerging adults from my sample who no longer affiliate with religion are all atheists or agnostics, which actually represents a higher percentage than the Pew estimate of 6% of the overall American population. In my sample, emerging adults who might have responded to a Pew survey as nothing in particular nones still consider themselves part of a religion, denomination, or church though not necessarily the Presbyterian Church of their baptism and confirmation. Regardless of affiliation, worship attendance among these confirmed youth and emerging adults is quite low. Though most of them still believe in God, have positive perceptions of organized religion, claim that religion is in fact important in shaping how they live daily life, and 12

17 engage in personal spiritual practices like prayer and meditation, worship attendance and other elements of traditional congregational life are not a priority for them. While most of them ponder the meaning of life what Paul Tillich called questions of ultimate concern they are not coming to church to engage those questions. Though they report overwhelmingly positive impressions of their confirmation experience, they have not found ways to replicate that experience in their current lives. Given their theological liberalism and prioritization of being good people and helping others, these young people fit the basic profile of lay liberalism and even some aspects of moralistic therapeutic deism. This is all generally consistent with what we know about the liberal beliefs of Fourth Presbyterian Church, which is to say that what we see in the youth of this congregation is in fact a reflection of the congregation as a whole. However, I am not convinced that none is the best description or category to understand the young people confirmed at the two Presbyterian churches I have served. Rather, these young people are liminals as described by Putnam and Campbell. Though they do not participate in traditional congregational life, they still consider themselves affiliated with church or religion in some way. If pressed, I think many of them would identify me as their pastor. They are not missing in action as I once described them. Rather, as I will outline below, we need to rethink and redefine what we mean by religious or spiritual action for these emerging adults and find ways of being church for and with them in their particular life contexts in our rapidly changing world. The traditional metrics for gauging religious involvement support my suspicion that for many of the young people confirmed in churches like Fourth, confirmation is their last substantive engagement with religion and spirituality. (The youth confirmed at Community Presbyterian Church are a notable exception given their higher rater of involvement during high school, though their engagement in church has not continued beyond high school.) This survey suggests that there is mostly continuity and some minor change in beliefs as young people age beyond confirmation. The faith that people walk away from confirmation with is the faith they 13

18 will likely maintain throughout emerging adulthood and beyond. It is therefore critical that we make the best use of this brief window of time in which we have the attention of both youth and their parents. Of course, to understand the full impact of confirmation and youth ministry in the lives of these emerging adults, further longitudinal study is necessary. What I have here is a snapshot of religiosity and spirituality for young people in three distinct phases of life: high school, college, and emerging adulthood. It is hard to know if more of these young people will disaffiliate from religion in years to come or if significant portions of them might in fact return to congregational involvement as they partner and/or have children of their own. What is abundantly clear is that they do not have much more than their personal and non-communal confirmation faith to sustain them during the turbulent years of emerging adulthood. What Actually Happens in the Confirmation Experience? This then begs the question: what kind of faith are young people in fact taking away from their confirmation experience? 54 There was a time, not so long ago, when confirmation within mainline Protestant churches was a primarily dogmatic exercise. Students were expected to memorize and recite creeds and catechisms. These catechisms defined faith by asking questions and providing answers answers that are scripted and learned by catechumens or confirmands. While there was surely some attention given to the meaning of these faith statements, the primary focus was the transmission of orthodox faith (as understood by a particular faith community) from generation to generation. For hundreds of years, this practice made perfect sense to the church. It was an efficient and effective way to communicate the essential tenets of faith. Yet for a variety of reasons, this practice has fallen by the wayside in most mainline Protestant churches, especially those that maintain more progressive approaches to theology and Christian practice. The world has changed in significant ways. The triumphant certainty of modernity has been eclipsed by the ambiguity, uncertainty, and humility of postmodernity. Along the way, confirmation became more about inquiry and individual appropriation than the 14

19 rehearsal of concretized doctrinal statements. It is now more typical that greater emphasis is placed on confirmands developing personal statements of faith than on the recitation of historic communal creeds or catechisms. For over a decade, I have led confirmation programs that reflect this newer paradigm. 55 I stress the attitude and process of actively questioning the faith young people inherit through baptism. No questions are off limits. Discussion and debate are central features of the process. At the end of the experience, like in many mainline Protestant churches, we ask our confirmands to write statements of faith and share them in a public way. Yet to both objective and subjective observers, these statements of faith are the most confounding aspect of the confirmation process because many (if not most) of these writings could more accurately be described as statements of doubt than statements of faith. 56 My typical approach to confirmation involves presenting youth with historic perspectives on the central loci of theological inquiry revelation, the nature of God, creation, providence, Christology, and so on. For each topic, I encourage youth to consider the concepts presented and then come to conclusions of their own. The culminating statement of faith is a summary or synthesis of these conclusions. This is quite consistent with almost all confirmation curricula that appeal to progressive mainline Protestants. These curricula teach historical doctrines and ask students to respond with statements of their own belief. Youth will either accept or reject these doctrines, picking and choosing the beliefs they find compelling, and often developing novel beliefs of their own. More so than theological content the particular beliefs confirmands claim and profess as adolescents I am convinced that what students really take away from this experience is a theological method, namely picking and choosing based primarily on personal opinion. In my survey of young people who have participated in this form of confirmation with me, the vast majority (73.33%) agree that it is okay to pick and choose their religious beliefs without having to accept the teachings of their religion as a whole. 15

20 Picking and choosing has indeed become the de facto theological model of many American Christians. Cultural critics and theologians have called this cafeteria religion. 57 Evangelical researcher George Barna describes our culture as a designer society in which we customize everything, including religion, to suit our personal preferences. 58 This is nothing new. Over twenty-five years ago, Robert Bellah and his colleagues famously described this kind of individualized religion in Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. 59 A recent popular theology book demonstrates the way in which pick and choose theology has become the norm for American mainline Protestants. Ronald J. Allen s A Faith of Your Own: Naming What You Really Believe, written for an adult audience, very closely resembles the contemporary approach to confirmation I have described. 60 In chapters devoted to core topics of Christian theology, Allen presents possible understandings from the Bible, Christian history, and contemporary reflection. At the end of the book, he invites readers to write a statement of faith based on the perspectives they find most compelling. One of the suggested methods lays these perspectives out like menu items from which to choose. It is essentially a guidebook for cafeteria Christianity. It is not difficult to see why and how this consumerist approach to faith has taken root in American culture. It is shaped by and reinforces the individualism and consumerism that pervades our society. With a nod to Ken Wilber, Brian McLaren calls this narcissistic boomeritis. 61 Like lay liberalism in general, Baby Boomers have passed on picking and choosing to successive generations of mainline Protestants. In this way, typical confirmation practices have are in fact contributing to mainline Protestant decline rather than doing anything to prevent or reverse it. Having traded in a robust sense of community for radical individualism, the excesses of cafeteria Christianity no doubt exacerbate the waning of congregational involvement we have seen in the young people who have been confirmed in the two Presbyterian congregations I have served. The biggest problem with pick and choose theology and confirmation programs that reflect it is that it is 16

21 essentially an individualistic endeavor. If young people walk away from confirmation Sunday understanding that faith is primarily about individually picking and choosing beliefs, it is no wonder they think religion or spirituality is something they can do on their own. We are socializing them to believe this way and to act accordingly. According to my survey, 90% of the young people who have been confirmed with me do not believe that it is necessary to be involved in a religious congregation in order to be religious and/or spiritual. 62 By contrast, the religion(s) of ancient Israel, the Second Temple Judaism(s) of Jesus day, and pretty much all forms of pre-reformation and pre-enlightenment Christianity placed far greater emphasis on community than on individualism. Today, Christian doctrines from the rich and polyvocal history of the church are treated as menu items to be selected based on personal preferences. The resulting theologies are effectively idiosyncratic and potentially disconnected from the roots of Christian tradition. Somehow, we must recover the communal nature of our faith. Yet for progressive mainline Protestants, a retreat to dogmatism or any kind of fundamentalism is not an acceptable solution to liberal individualism. Slavish conformity to a rigid orthodoxy is not the only way to be more attentive to the communal nature of our faith. Rather, our challenge is to reconceive our understanding and practice of theology in such a way that transcends picking and choosing without sacrificing our progressive commitments. An approach to confirmation that reflects this reconfiguration will shape and support such a shift among progressive mainline Protestants. HISTORICAL THEOLOGY In the praxis-theory-praxis model of practical theology I am following in this thesis, the practice I am most concerned with is adolescent confirmation. In my description of this practice and analysis of its impact in the lives of the young people who have experienced it, I have set it within the context of the broader phenomena of mainline Protestant decline and the so-called rise of the nones. Now it is time to bring these issues into conversation with two key biblical texts. 17

22 Doubting Thomas and the Gospel About Jesus It was a happy accident several years ago that Fourth Church moved our confirmation service to the Sunday after Easter, for which the Revised Common Lectionary always has as the gospel reading the story of so-called doubting Thomas in John 20: What a fascinating, and in many ways perfectly appropriate text to consider on Confirmation Sunday. If Protestants did such things, I suppose we might say that doubting Thomas is the patron saint of confirmation, our exemplar of voicing and engaging doubt. Even more, he is our hope that through this process we might experience an encounter with the living Christ. As I have noted, it is typical for confirmands statements of faith to be as much about doubt and disbelief as they are about faith. This is to be expected. These young adolescents are right in the midst of sorting out what they believe and what is important to them, right at the beginning of figuring out who they are and how they fit in the world. Year after year, our confirmands learn what many others have discovered: doubt is not the end of faith, but is often the beginning of a more robust experience of trusting God. Consider, for example, what one of our students wrote in her statement of faith last year: The experiences I have gotten out of confirmation have been great, but when I first came I realized that other kids questioned the Bible and had doubt about God. This is something I never even thought of doing. But this doubt ended up helping me. For example, a few weeks ago someone asked whether or not Jesus was with us. I smiled to myself because I knew what I believed and I believed that he is here with us just in different ways. With every trace of doubt, my faith grew a little more. The story of Thomas prompts us to ask: is seeing believing? 63 Further, is believing the same as having faith? Or can we have faith or be faithful even though we are full of doubt? Can we be faithful and not believe? There is a famous debate in New Testament scholarship about how to translate pistis Iesou Christou in the Pauline epistles. Is it faith in Jesus Christ or the faith of Jesus Christ? 64 18

23 The latter is the way Christ lived in relation to God and other people; the former is a set of doctrines about Christ that one must believe in order to be a Christian. Do we preach the gospel of Christ (the good news of the kingdom of God that Jesus himself proclaimed in word and deed) or do we preach a gospel about Christ (a list of things to believe about Jesus in order to be accepted or saved)? 65 The story of so-called doubting Thomas brings us right to the moment at which the gospel of Jesus became the gospel about Jesus. According to this story it happened on the very day of his resurrection and it is perfectly understandable how this transition took place. Jesus was no longer with them in the way he was before. When Thomas missed the post-resurrection appearance of Jesus, he had to be told about it. In that moment, the message became one about Jesus instead of the message of Jesus. The writer of the Gospel of John is very concerned with belief. Time and again throughout this gospel, much more so than in the other three, belief about Jesus is lifted up as the foundational principle of Christianity. Here at the end of John s Gospel, we discover that the essential belief about Jesus is belief in his resurrection. And the way the writer of John tells the story of Thomas, it seems as if believing, especially believing without seeing, is the greatest act of faith for a follower of Christ. But the narrative itself argues against this perspective. If believing without seeing were really what Christianity is all about, Thomas should have been content to believe the report of his fellow disciples. He was perfectly poised to exemplify for all time believing without seeing. Jesus didn t have to patronize Thomas by capitulating to his demand to see Jesus for himself. Jesus words about the superiority of believing without seeing only highlight the internal tension of this story. It turns out that this story is not about believing without seeing. Thomas is the very first person to question the most difficult doctrine about Jesus. In this way, Thomas represents each one of us who struggles to accept this or any other belief or doctrine or creed about Jesus or anything else. Thomas is like nearly every young person who participates in a confirmation program. 19

24 Yet in this story, Thomas doesn t receive a theological or philosophical defense of what the Gospel of John considers the foundational belief of Christianity. He isn t confronted with either logical or biblical reasoning. He isn t made to conform to the nascent creed of the early church. Instead, Jesus himself appears. Jesus answer to Thomas question is not a theological treatise. It is a continuation of the relationship Jesus and Thomas shared. It was about trust, not belief. Jesus appeared, as a friend, and asked Thomas to touch him. If we strip away the clumsy attempts of the author of John to make this a story about belief, 66 we see that it is ultimately a story about relationships. Confirmands are often quite bold with their questions, as bold as Thomas on the very day of Jesus resurrection. And as children of our new, emerging, postmodern world, I think they intuitively understand the answer Thomas received, rather than the answer the gospel writer tried to force into this story. Faith is not about intellectually accepting a list of beliefs, even if their truth is staring us right in the face. Faith is about establishing a relationship with God and others. And when we are bold to doubt, when we are bold to ask questions, it is often (and sometimes only) then that we encounter the living Christ. Proclaiming the Unknown God My appreciation for Paul s speech to the Athenians on Mars Hill (Acts 17:16-34) has fluctuated over the years. When I was an evangelical teenager I marveled at the brilliance of his presentation of the gospel in thoroughly Hellenistic form such that his audience would respond with faith though the narrative suggests that only a few actually did. In college and seminary, as I grew to value the full biblical context of Jesus life and message, I began to resent Paul s speech because it is completely disconnected from the story of the Hebrew Bible, which is the proper context of the gospel. It never even mentions Jesus by name. It started to sound to me like the simplistic gospel of certain kinds of evangelicalism in which Jesus is presented as the universal solution to a generic human problem with no reference whatsoever to the sweeping 20