You can purchase the book here.
Choosing to walk
the Pilgrim Way
Do you wish to be
baptized? I do.
As sociologists and other observers of culture note,
there are many religious trends occurring simultaneously throughout the
American culture. I have listened to the
leaders of the Episcopal Church think seriously about these trends within our
missionary context in the United States.
One of the important books influencing our thoughts as leaders is a book
entitled: Soul
Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. It was originally published in 2005. The
book’s premise is based upon some 3,000 interviewers with teenagers; and
highlights commonalities emerging in this new generation of spiritual
pilgrims. Perhaps it is because I have
not been a teenager in a long time, or perhaps because the thinking explored in
the book is so different than my own, I have found the reading of the book and
the discussions fascinating.
The authors claim that there are five concepts that
make up this generation’s faith foundation. These are concepts or ideas
communicated throughout the 3,000 interviews.
They are ideas that are assumed in large part by the group interviewed,
and they go largely unchallenged in their circles of friends. The authors of the book have chosen to call
this set of beliefs moralistic
therapeutic deism.
These young people do believe that a God exists who
created and ordered the world and watches over human life and earth. They
believe that God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other as
taught in the Bible and by most world religions. They believe that the central goal of life is
to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
They think that God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s
life except when God is needed to resolve problems. They also believe that good people go to
heaven when they die.
These are not a bad set of beliefs
to live by. In fact, if the whole world lived by these basic beliefs the world
might actually be a better place. As
fascinating as this unchallenged “rule of life” is, I would say that we as
Episcopalians have a different way of seeing the world and our place in
it. When we are asked if we wish to be
baptized, or when we reaffirm our baptism, we step forward and say to the world
that we believe differently. There are
some things we hold in common with all religious belief. There are some things
we hold in common with other Christian believers. When we rise up and step forward and affirm
the faith of the Church and reaffirm our own faith, we challenge ourselves by
claiming to be particular and unique people in our community.
The baptismal covenant which we make
with God says we believe in a God who created and ordered the world but ordered
it for a particular purpose which is for beauty and relationship. We believe in a God who watches over human
life and a God who interacts with all life on earth with a particular
interaction with the human community. We
believe in a God who desires that people to be good, nice, and fair to each other and a God who says we have a
responsibility to take care of those who are poor, hungry, alone or in
need. We believe that Jesus Christ is
the living resurrected example of how humanity is to treat one another and
that we are to set as our goal the living of life which is most like Jesus’
own. We believe it is a good thing to be
happy and to feel good about one’s self but we do not believe that this is the central goal in life. Our faith teaches us that God asks us to
sacrifice for others. We believe our God
invites us not to seek our own desires as primary and central attitudes of
living our life but to make the center of our life the God we believe in and
those who God most identifies himself – the weak and poor. We believe that living lives as consumers can
create disordered lives that are out of proportion with the wider needs of the
world around us. We believe in a God who
is with us in our problems and with us when things are going well. We believe
in a God who is a “friend” (John 15:15) and a God who is a companion along the
way (Luke 24). The God we proclaim is
present with us in all our doings. We do
believe in the kingdom of heaven, but we believe that we are to be about
bringing into reality the kingdom of God today.
Episcopalians do not spend a lot of time concerned with heaven; we spend
most of our time working to make heaven real in this world. We remind ourselves that Jesus’ work was
teaching and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of
God and curing every disease and every sickness among the people, and that he said,”
Follow me.” (Luke 4:12-23)
When
we as Episcopalians step forward and choose to make our confession of faith, we
remove ourselves from a general belief in a general God who participates
generally in our life. We choose
specifically to walk the pilgrim way with God and to live out a particular
revelation found uniquely in the Episcopal Church.
No comments:
Post a Comment