This following quote from the NY TIMES December 3, 2008 article entitled “Secrets only your witch would know”:“Enchantments, the witchcraft store in the East Village, recently moved down the street from where it had been a landmark since 1982. Last year, my friend Nancy bought me one of its customized Solar Blast candles for my birthday. After lighting it, a flurry of life-altering changes suddenly occurred — which was, at least, an amusing coincidence. I developed a more absorbing curiosity when Nancy gave me a second Solar Blast this year, and this one, too, seemed to be a cosmic throw-switch, releasing yet another mother lode of life-changing events.
“Years ago, I had been dumped by my boyfriend and was out of my mind,” Nancy told me as we waited at a cafe for Enchantments to open (a bit later than the posted store hours). “This chick walked up to me at a party and told me she was ‘drawn’ to my ‘grief mask.’ ”
I chortled.
“I was in that place where you’ll insinuate yourself on anyone, so I told her my story,” Nancy continued. “She told me that I had to go to Enchantments.
“I said, ‘Wait ... aren’t they, like, Wiccan?’ And she said, ‘Do you want your boyfriend back, or what?’
“I went. First I got a tarot reading from this absolutely stunning witch, with big blue eyes, tons of black hair, a thick Bronx accent and a huge pentagram necklace. I was weeping, and she was so comforting! So maternal! She said, ‘I am going to give you something very hard core.’ She comes back with this fire engine red candle in the shape of a penis."
O Ye of Great Faith! It has been perplexing in conversations to hear how religiously non-Christian so many young people from Christian families are among affluent America.
It isn't so much because there are people that don't believe in anything, quite to the contrary. These young people are willing to accept that there is some truth and spiritual insight in any faith- Wiccan, Word Magic, Karmic Buddhism, "Kabbalah" or any bastardizations of bastardizations thereof. (Seldom Islam however, because the media has informed them that it is bad and even worse, like devout Christianity.) Many also have a faith in their own "psychic" ability to have messages sent or to receive guidance from unknown and supernatural basis.
Any faith but Christianity in any and all forms are an anathema to young, affluent urban Americans, even though they have in general never explored them.
Why then not the interest or approval of Christian mysticism, lectio divina (meditational reading of a NT passage), logos (word magic), do-unto-others ethics (karma), neo-Platonic philosophical discourse, and other alternatives that are more easily accessible and frankly more developed parallels to "exotic beliefs" ? Surely the void filled by the cursory familiarity that so many young adults have with exotic religions could be fulfilled in a religion that was developed within their own cultural and history.
Yet Christianity is an anathema to so many for whom the religion has been passed to for OVER A THOUSAND YEARS.
Let me be clear: these young people are not making a partial dismissal. When "educated" affluent young people hear of someone who has a thoroughly Christian faith, they are apt to guffaw, dismiss and look down upon the person. Undoubtedly a certain number of avowedly Christian politicians have helped keep red states red because so many young people found their Christian faith repugnant.
The rejection of Christianity was not simply rejection of a belief system but rejection of a culture, community and identity. Few young apostates know enough of the religion to dismiss the belief system, but they imagine it to be JUST a belief system, which is of course, dead wrong.
Particularly at the heart of Protestantism is the cultural notion of each church as a "community of faith" interpreting what they believe, working this out in themselves and among each other. A community- people of different ages and occupations, etc. coming together in goodwill and brotherhood, practicing age-old, edifying traditions and marking the days with rituals that they experience in themselves.
Acts of faith, hope, charity are also part of Christian culture. That identity is not wholly dependent but reinforced in a community.Even if just for an odd Sunday, holidays and weddings, birth, christenings, funerals, meetings, events and community projects, etc. (Or let's face it, subsidized childcare, SAT/ACT classes, career networking, and an extra safety net in time of need- and that's fine.)
This Christian culture in the United States has not been replaced of course; such markings are indelible, even with the faux-culture of consumerism and materialism. Where there is not a cultural force to replace American Christianity's impact this is to some extent the "default" influence.
Replacement would require something more than rejection; it would require the comprehensive deconstruction and refashioning of all facets of perspective that individuals in society are just not equipped to enter into as individuals. Never to worry- the market has found part of the solution.
What we have seen is the increase of disparate “quick fixes”: consumerism, commercialism, support groups, entertainment, gurus, drugs and addictions of all kinds.
None of this deals with the lost culture, community or identity. None of it deals with the spiritual experiencing of seasons of the year and cycles of our lives- birth, death, commitment, the sorrow and joy of the spirit. None of this "religion ersatz" deals with the yearnings, fears and loneliness that come in blasts, bustle and our quiet moments.
Rational wondering and irrational spiritual hinting are not explored in any substantial way by the crassness that has replaced Christianity. The wisdom of centuries tucked away in works of religious philosophers (of many faiths) like the collective advice of elders hasn't been replaced by cheap catch-phases and facile advice delivered by our modern commercial gurus. The market has not replaced or offered guidance and strength to the relationships that we have with each other as individuals, families, neighbors, friends, husbands, wives, daughters, sons, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers...
So why THIS REJECTION of what has been part of an identity, BINDING SOCIETY AND TRANSMITTING TRADITION AND CULTURE for over a millennium? It would be far too easy to simply say, “social decay”, “the media”, “progressivism gone awry”, “influences in higher education”- though all of these answers would be correct. These are the manifestations, not the causes.
Christianity is today as it has always been- a threat to many powerful interests.
Christianity has at its core a rejection of materialism. The moral issue of whether people gain their possessions in ways that injure others and whether they take responsibility for those who lack basic necessities is problematic for those in power. In Christianity wealth by oppressing others is severely criticized. Failing to share with the weak and powerless is condemned.
Christianity is communal. Naked individualism marks a certain turn in American capitalism (modern, untraditional and seldom in the best interest of the individual). This form which becomes a mindset approaching a religion itself serves powerful interests.
Christian identity also serves as a powerful force for identity and thus a powerful political force. So far political leaders have been able to marginalize, regionalize and manipulate Christian identity in interesting ways: Christian Zionism, or (red herring) single issue activism such as abortion or gay marriage. Ironically none of the supposedly orthodox stances are overwhelmingly popular with Christians or high on their reported list of concerns. To the degree these issues are important for most people they are not triggers of "reactionary Christians" but nuanced arguments rooted in concern for society. The wide platforms of mainline churches, including Catholicism, have had no national impact in recent decades.
There is another actor responsible for the decline among the urban (and suburban) youth. The American church is, perhaps primarily to blame, particularly mainline Protestantism. It has fetishized external philanthropy; rejected communalism; turned away its community; responded with hatred to its own identity and traditions; rejected both utilitarian and spiritual needs of the entire swath of its traditional base; and generally houses clergy ignorant or hostile to the faith which they allegedly serve.
Young men and women in a city like New York who don’t fit into an exotic, or non-traditional category will find it nearly impossible to find a church that addresses their needs. Seemingly every urban church must cater only to the illegal-immigrant, drug-addicted, homeless, HIV positive, homosexual or transvestite population. It also has taken an odd interest in avant-guard performing arts- but never to all the neighborhood denizens or their concerns.
It should be noted that the urban church seldom seems involved in alleviating the causes for the conditions for the perceived less-fortunate but instead in dispensing the charity of yesteryear like a package of band-aids (or in the case of the truly disengaged church, like a performing arts council.) These are not churches that want to involve themselves with a community of men and women who trudge through the day and look for spiritual comfort in a community led by a faithful and wise minister who joins them in their struggles to reconcile their mundane and spiritual affairs. Many clergy have seemingly stopped believing.
The clergy before anyone realizes that the church is an institution and culture. It is not surprising then that some would be satiated by having an authoritative hand in the institution without the bother of maintaining either flock or faith.
Christian apologist GK Chesterton said: "The danger when men stop believing in God is not that they'll believe in nothing, but that they'll believe in anything."
Chesterton wrote those words almost 100 years ago and he wrote them at a time when people like William Butler Yeats were devotees of the New Age fad of their time, namely theosophy. Clairvoyants, palm readers and the most esoteric forms of Eastern mysticism were all the rage. Anything but Christianity was the order of the day. Anything but what is so intrinsically tied to the faith of our fathers.
Faith of our fathers-- It is arguable that the exoticism that the young are so seemingly attracted to can be found not in commercial pop-psychology wrapped in Eastern garb but in Christianity. Irish American Catholicism carries something of the ancient druid in its ritual and understanding; traditional Scottish austerity and communalism are reflected in the Presbyterian Church; more than trappings remain of the pre-Christian Germanic faith in both Protestantism and Germanic Catholicism; the Eastern Church is very apparently Hellenistic, Near Eastern and Slavic- as relevant to its subscribers; the strongest echoes of Africa in America are found in a Black Protestant church; and among some endemic traditions of American Protestantism and Latin American Catholicism the continuation of Native American practices through syncretism. Often there is a cross pollination that is seldom acknowledged or celebrated.
It has been a desperate, punishing effort to retain the faith of our fathers, specifically against Christianity. Faiths pre-dating the Christian Church have struggled mightily to preserve their logic, traditions, spirituality, ritualism, and no small measure of identity; interwoven into religion are accumulated knowledge and responses to conditions and environments. It has been one of the greatest misfortunes of history that the institution of the Church has not been able to spread a simple message without attempting to eradicate other cultures. It is in the church's failure that has come an unintended blessing; Christianity has been as transformed as it has been transformative.
The main thread of Christianity, as much as the gospel itself has been as a central institution BINDING THE COMMUNITIES IT SERVES. American Protestantism can be seen libertarian democracy and reason- in fact IT IS THE BACKBONE OF THE AMERICAN EXPERIMENT; the American Catholic church institution building and social empowerment. And the Black church has not been a celebration of the religion of oppression but a reinterpretation of the faith- supporting resistance, hope and mutual aid.
Any Anabaptist out there don't get in an uproar- while I believe it obviously impossible to divorce religion from culture, Christianity is not just a culture, it is a belief system.
At its simplest Christians are urged to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ (and most say "meddling" Roman and Hellenistic philosophers and vernacular translators.) The faithful try to model their lives on his (perhaps idealized) life. That means living for others and not just for ourselves.
Rather than mount a defense of the supernatural claims of Christianity in the short space left, I'll simply limit myself to pointing out a gigantic qualitative difference between Christianity and the various forms of superficial narcissism that has taken its place.
It is this: Christianity is an ethical system as well as being a religion, and the various forms of fortune telling, greed assuaging, and superficial self-validation are not. They offer no ties of community, overarching ethical guidance, or ongoing religious-philosophical inquiry and exercise.
The deeper rationalism, and yes challenges of all forms of belief that philosophers have worked through under the wide banner of "Christianity" have not been replaced by something more sound, astute or developed (if only because Christianity has tended to be so broad and so old.) Whether proofs or doubts, arguments of efficacy or for that matter mysticism and even psychology can be found in the deep well called Christian thought.
The exotic dilettantism (though not the religions themselves) served by popular pseudo-religion and pseudo-philosophy are all about the self, not others. It is not surprising then that that Western "practitioners" never delve deeply into Eastern beliefs or practice them too strenuously. They have, in their superficial point of view, dismissed religion.
Anyone who can't tell the difference between an ethical system like Christianity, and sub-species of narcissism like consumerism, pop-religious exoticism, etc. needs to come out from behind their own prejudice and perhaps- dare I say show a little bit of reason.
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