Comment on Recovering the Lost Logic of the Church
Consider for a moment the typical beliefs of the emerging generation. For them, religion is a personal experience relegated to one’s private life. It meets a personal need and is chosen accordingly. For those born after the cultural dislocations of the 1960s, religious truth is subjective—that is, person-specific. When I’m talking about “spirituality,” I’m talking about “my” truth. I dare not impose my views on you, and the reverse is especially true. If religious truth is subjective, if authority is personal, and if religious experience is individual, then church as the traditional, institutional locus of religious authority has no place. In reaction, church leaders appeal in myriad ways to the consumer preferences of a particular target market. But in so doing a consumerist mindset is reinforced and the authority of the institution is ceded to the individual. Under these conditions, the church no longer claims any binding address on the person. The threat of excommunication or withholding the Eucharist is of little consequence when one can go down the street to sample from a different religious brand. This is the cultural situation that Nietzsche foresaw, when he stated that it would soon be impossible for any institution—family, church, school, or state—to say with any meaningful conviction, “Thou shalt not.” In consumer religion, the consumer rules. ...
[The] statistics prompt three observations: the church has lost its logic for church attendance by young adults; the typical way the church is seeking to restore its rationale—by becoming more appealing—is counter productive because it doesn’t address the underlying issues; and church attendance is the most important variable for maintaining an ongoing relationship with Jesus while at college. This is a significant, personal and institutional problem. ... The institutional church only makes sense if truth is objective, if belief is determinative, if plausibility is communal, and if real presence is uniquely promised.
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