Assume Imperfect Formation

Happy Friday, y'all. I am basking in the glow of a new project management paradigm that is actually kinda working for me (Lenten grace abounds once more!), so I have not just a link round-up for you today but an Actual Thought.

It's one I scribbled a quick note about in a draft of this post and then didn't return to for {checks calendar} nine months. But I think the takeaway is evergreen.

Last summer, I was listening to the Luther Seminary's Pivot interview with sociologist and author Christian Smith. I found more than I sometimes do in Smith's work to agree with in this conversation. I especially appreciate that he gestures at the broad social forces that have been at work in making religion "obsolete" in the U.S., at least some of which may have little to do with the culture and leadership of individual congregations per se.

(My one-sentence, Robert Putnam-informed take is that what many Americans remember as the "gold old days" of denominational religious life were tied in very specific ways to the cultural configurations of the Baby Boom and have abated more or less in parallel with all the other forms of social capital that have been uniformly declining as those configurations unravelled.)

But Smith definitely still thinks there are religious causes for the distinct decline of religious social participation, which is fair enough and may well play a bigger role than I believe. So let me share with you the relevant interview excerpt and the little mantra I've been repeating to myself off and on since I heard this interview. I'll give you a couple of paragraphs of lead in so you understand the thrust of his argument:

The majority of Americans have these background assumptions about why religion would be good, what it's good for ... Religion is good if and when it helps people be moral. It helps people make good choices. That's why raising children in the church is good, even if the parents aren't sure about the whole package. It's good for national solidarity if it holds us together as a people. It's good when religious leaders are sort of moral public exemplars to society ... It's good for providing people community ...

In my argument, what happened is the world changed in a lot of ways that either absented those goods or in people's minds violated those goods ... What broadly Americans expect religion is good for ... in their minds, it stopped doing and even it violated what they thought it was good for ... [e.g., decline of community and solidarity, clergy abuse scandals, televangelist grifting, etc.]

How did they get to think that? It's not just like a general Americanism. These are peoples in pews. So it raises the question, "How is it that whatever gets taught and preached, by the time it gets in people's brains and in their spirits, they end up thinking that's what religion is good for?" And if it doesn't do that, we don't have any need for it.

I think that raises a lot of questions about religious education, faith formation, catechesis, whatever. And I'm not pointing any fingers at anything other than it's not the case that most Americans have real clear ideas of what their traditions in an orthodox, faithful, historical sense would want them to believe in and value. There's a big gap.

I don't want to re-litigate the 2005–2015 "moral therapeutic deism" discourse here. Other sociologists I admire would, I think, broadly cosign Smith's account, so I take it seriously even if I engage in a little internal eye-rolling along the way.

And anyway, however much weight you give to this argument, I think it's pretty undeniable that the gap he's speaking about—the empirical picture this argument is trying to account for—about is real.

So here's my advice to anyone teaching religion or leading Christian formation in any context, in any era:

Maybe their formation is imperfect because your sixty-something stalwart was subject to boring, instructionist Sunday school that never had a chance of making a meaningful spiritual impact. (But they've been coming to church anyway because that's what people of their generation did.)

Maybe their formation is imperfect because your forty-something newcomer didn't go to church that regularly as a kid, or didn't listen very carefully, or didn't receive Spirit-filled witness to the grace of God in Christ. (But they started showing up recently because they're having a major life crisis and a friend of theirs who navigated something similar told them their church helped them a lot.)

Maybe their formation is imperfect because your twenty-something acquaintance grew up in a world where religion was becoming obsolete and they never had any occasion to learn what Christians believe or practice. (But they show up to the yoga class in the basement because they're starved for community and exercise but can't afford a studio membership.)

Maybe their formation is imperfect because human being forget things, selectively ignore things, find out discipleship is hard, don't have time for midweek classes, work on Sunday mornings. The list can go on and on.

Maybe their formation is imperfect because no one's is perfect. How much algebra do you remember? How often do you ignore the advice or your therapist or sensible feedback from your spouse?

Guess what: Learning is hard. Genuine personal and collective transformation is harder. Of course people's formation is imperfect! Next week we will hear the story of why we needed what Jesus did for us, what it cost him, and what responding in kind might cost us. We shouldn't expect any of this to be easy or a given.

None of this is to to say we should give up as formation leaders. Just the opposite.

If we assume imperfect formation, then we'll recognize we have a fertile mission field before us and perhaps a more realistic backdrop for our expectations. And we'll get to learn about faith from and alongside people who bear the image of God despite their imperfect formation—just like we do.

In the world of obsolete religion Smith describes, it will be more important than ever to try to unlearn our assumptions that the people we serve, and want to serve, will know or care about what we're bringing to our work.

Maybe that's Good News for us. Imperfect formation is the perfect condition for an encounter with grace. If we can learn instead to assume that all of us, together, are imperfectly formed, that is a much firmer foundation for the relationships (with us, with God) that will actually save us all.