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“Because in fact, we are slipping back fast into something like the ancient world. We are slipping back towards a world of narrow tunnel vision of religions and superstitious practice, a world where lots and lots of people have their lords and god, their practices and their mysticisms, that do not really relate to each other. We are slipping away from the idea that there might be a faith that would bring all human beings together. We are slipping back socially and internationally into the assumption that there really are such differences in human beings that we can forget about God’s universal righteousness.”
Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, during Bible studies delivered at the 13th meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council, Nottingham 2005
Kenda Creasy Dean in her new-ish book, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church, describes the primary “faith” of American teenagers as “Therapeutic, Moralistic, Deism” rather than a form of the enduring Christian Faith. This description of the faith-system (as much as it can be a formal “system” at this point) comes out of the results and analysis of the National Study of Youth and Religion project.
Both with Rowan and Kenda, these are pictures of where we are culturally, particularly among the emerging generations, and what is to come within the culture and within our individual lives as believers or not. How are we ready?
