In The Fire Next Time, Baldwin describes his encounter with his friend's regal pastor, who asks him the question above. Baldwin writes, "Now this, unbelievably, was precisely the phrase used by pimps and racketeers on the Avenue... Perhaps part of the terror they had caused me to feel came from the fact that I unquestionably wanted to be somebody's little boy. I was so frightened and at the mercy of so many conundrums, that inevitably, that summer, someone would've taken me over... (Baldwin, 28)"
Sociologist Christian Smith (UNC - National Study of Youth and Reigion, Soul Searching, Souls in Transition, etc.) and Youth Minister Mark Oestreicher (Youth Specialties, Youth Ministry 3.0, etc.) agree that developing affinity (or "network closure" in Smith's more technical sociological term) is a major task of both adolescence and youth ministries.
While teaching religion and theology classes at Messiah College and Temple University, I have been deeply aware that many students are struggling with religious issues because varying answers to certain questions about life, behavior, theology, ethics etc. have the potential to alienate them from a community of people (church, family, peer group). I recall one student in particular at Temple whose scientific friends and church community both told her she couldn't accept evolution and remain a Christian. She had to choose whether to belong to the scientific or Christian community according the representatives of these groups that she knew. But there are other cultural issues at work as well. One of the most divisive demands I'm seeing within and between faith communities today places political affinity ahead of ANY other commitment, but perhaps that is not the most insidious affinity demand. Identity politics in our world are completely understandable, even if the divisions created are regrettable. It takes solidarity to get anything done. Teenagers (and all of us I suppose) are being asked to identify as consumers.
Sociologist Christian Smith (UNC - National Study of Youth and Reigion, Soul Searching, Souls in Transition, etc.) and Youth Minister Mark Oestreicher (Youth Specialties, Youth Ministry 3.0, etc.) agree that developing affinity (or "network closure" in Smith's more technical sociological term) is a major task of both adolescence and youth ministries.
While teaching religion and theology classes at Messiah College and Temple University, I have been deeply aware that many students are struggling with religious issues because varying answers to certain questions about life, behavior, theology, ethics etc. have the potential to alienate them from a community of people (church, family, peer group). I recall one student in particular at Temple whose scientific friends and church community both told her she couldn't accept evolution and remain a Christian. She had to choose whether to belong to the scientific or Christian community according the representatives of these groups that she knew. But there are other cultural issues at work as well. One of the most divisive demands I'm seeing within and between faith communities today places political affinity ahead of ANY other commitment, but perhaps that is not the most insidious affinity demand. Identity politics in our world are completely understandable, even if the divisions created are regrettable. It takes solidarity to get anything done. Teenagers (and all of us I suppose) are being asked to identify as consumers.
We are all being asked to identify with a number of "pimps and racketeers" who will hold sway. Religious commitments are expected to fit in neatly with other commitments. It seems to me that often we do not reshape our faith to accommodate other loyalties. We reshape our faith so that it becomes subservient to those loyalties, and all of this under the guise of a highly destructive individualism. I'm concerned for youth. Not because of the terrors and tragedies of the world in which they are being asked to mature, but because the global and local affinities they are being invited to embrace are so anxious, ambitious, deceptive, exploitative and ultimately shallow compared to the richness of the kingdom of God.
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