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Post-modern Religious Sensibility
By Larry | April 11, 2009
Referring back to the earlier discussion about a Post-Christian America, I found this commentary by Judith Warner relevant. Giving her first-person views of a mixed religious childhood, she quotes Charles Darwin who said if the brain is impressed early with a belief it holds onto it with an almost instinctive quality. It remains independent of reason. Paradoxically, however, it isn’t determinative.
Warner, who is Jewish, recounts her early childhood impressions attending an Episcopal school. She says on a good day her mind fills with hymns and she can see sunshine streaming through stained glass windows.
However, she describes a religious sensibility, not acceptance of a belief system. She writes that she and many of her friends are defined by bits and pieces of experience that don’t fit into traditional categories. This mosaic is sufficiently coherent for them. "Some of us just can’t find a home for ourselves in the categories of identity that make sense for other people."
Thus, to call these self-differentiated individuals religious seekers is to misconstrue their religious makeup, a point made by a commentator to my post. It presents a dilemma for religious groups who see their mission to evangelize from within a coherent belief system.
For example, Warner describes her daughter’s rejection of her invitation to attend a Unitarian church. “Enough harm has been done in the name of religion . . . I don’t want to be a part of it,” her daughter replies.
It seems to me Warner’s comments underscore the complexity of the human religious terrain today. She provides insight into how religious sensibility is formed, how it recedes and how it is rejected. The individuals she writes about respond with emotion and reason and are secure in their responses.
Her daughter’s views are consistent with research that reveals outright rejection of religion by many young adults today. Others are skeptical of religion and religious groups.
Warner is characteristic of what researcher George Barna dubs the “mosaic generation.” He applies the description to teens born 1984 and later but it applies more broadly in a secularizing culture. Among other things, they are comfortable with contradiction, eclectic with regard to faith, open-minded toward the beliefs of others and morally pragmatic.
This is a new religious landscape.
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