Angst, or just Wanderlust?
19 August 2007
Been reflecting on some old themes lately, in particular the church/consumer/community issues that have occupied a number of posts on this blog. Basically, it feels like I am “between churches,” when in reality I am in no such position. I’m a member of one place, where I attend during the academic year and where my wife is an Elder, and during the summers I go to the place we’ve gone since 2001 and where we were members before moving away. Without a doubt, these two churches are my immediate church families. The two of them are so very different from each other, as two sets of parents may be very different from each other between spouses in a marriage. One is considerably to the left of the other; one is a deeply traditional evangelical church right out of the 1950’s. There are people that I love and dearly cherish in both.
And yet.
I feel the pull, indeed the temptation, to engage in that favorite American pasttime for lifelong (Protestant) church-goers, which is the temptation to visit another section of the religious superstore that is America and shop for something else. And the thing is that I know which section of the superstore I’d visit, kind of like I know what kind of computer I’d buy right now if I could afford to get one at all.
The problem is that I feel much more part of a particular religious tradition that I’m not even a member of than the ones I am officially involved with. As someone who views religions as communities of memory, to use Robert Bellah’s phrase, this perplexes me, especially because the very “community” I feel so drawn to is not one where I have a storehouse of individual memories. Most of my individual memories in religious communities vis-a-vis my religious upbringing are in evangelicalism and fundamentalism. Yet I no longer feel at home in these “isms,” for a variety of reasons, and with my present left-leaning mainline church I have no mnemonic links whatsoever. I’m not part of the community where most of my community memory lies, and I’m not part of the community where I am a member of because I share nothing with the communal memory of the place, although I do sympathize with much there from a purely intellectual standpoint, which is not (and has never been, at least for me) an adequate reason for becoming involved in a community of faith of any sort. In the one tradition, my mnemonic roots run deep, but the tree is dead, where in the other, the tree struggles to survive because the roots, though green, are only penetrating through cracks in the concrete, if they penetrate at all.
I think that one reason so many of us feel unsatisfied by our particular church communities is because our experience with the community memory is incomplete. It is incomplete because the memory is either not perpetuated, or it is not understood, or is incomplete (as in missing important parts). Many of us, likewise, feel like we are unconnected to community memory in our faith traditions because we have other social and interpersonal relationships with people outside those particular communities that nurture “alternative” memory that, for whatever reason, are more compelling than those maintained by our faith traditions. I suspect it is a combination of all of these, with some aspects being more dominant than others in life.
We have a tendency to think of “memory” only insofar as it helps us with something. We can probably blame Freud for this more narrow view, who saw memory as an aid for therapy of the individual and frequently as the source of individual and collective neuroses. When we think of memory only in this “therapeutic” way, we neglect other important aspects of community memory; we ignore various stories, rites, liturgies and litanies, language, and physical and sensory experiences. People who value sensory, physical, and bodily representation and expression of our participation in a community are not likely to be much impressed with worship in many Protestant denominations, such as most Baptist traditions (my own), that place little or no spiritual value in elements of worship that aid in re/presenting community memory in these ways. Similarly, for “think-tank” denominations, such as presbyterian and numerous fundamentalist traditions who perpetuate a more logical and systematic presentation of the community memory, liturgy that involves anything more than a book and the mind is usually going to be regarded as so much excess baggage that is little more than a distraction from the real work of the mind and the spirit.
I dunno. Mostly just “thinking out loud” here. I’m very much a sensualist who places a tremendous amount of value in the role that the body and the senses play in being a full participant in individual and community memory. I value the stories, both the positive and the negative, of community memory. I value the work of the mind to be analytical and critical even while an engaged and full participant in community work. I also value the companionship of like-minded individuals, of whom I have met many, but (alas!) few in my own geographic area. Are our communities of faith able to incorporate a more “total” or “wholistic” approach to representing and expressing their memory so as to permit membership that doesn’t, at the same time, leave an empty component in our experience in that memory?
Entry Filed under: Christianity, Church, Community, Consumerism, Memory, Religion. .
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1.
Ken | 19 August 2007 at 3:51 pm
Its angst.
I don’t think this problem has a solution - at least not one you or I would choose.
Peter Berger tackles this problem in one of his books. He says that most of us seek a community in which to express our faith, to worship God, but that we are faced with a choice, “Which church?” He says we cannot answer this question definitively, unless we surrender our freedom which is something we cannot do.
Douglas Hall also discusses this problem in one of his books. He discusses how each church tends to fit a certain economic, educational, racial and cultural class. If we don’t fit that mold, we can never completely feel at home in that church. We may not fit the church of our youth or past because of a change in our economic, educational or cultural class. A friend of mine who is an American born Chinese pastor has talked to me about his experience related to this. He looks Chinese, but Chinese immigrants don’t consider him to really be Chinese, and white Americans don’t consider him to be anything other than Chinese. So his life as a pastor has made him keenly aware of Douglas Hall describes. At the PCUSA church where I grew up and at the one where I worked in ministry, the congregation was white, well educated, affluent and liberal. Everyone else was silently rejected, in spite of how much the church tried to insist in its inclusiveness. At other churches, wealthy educated white liberals are rejected.
From what you have written, I know that you no longer fit in the type of church in which you grew up and that you do not fit in the new church either.
I think the problem for those of us who have made a home in a secular university is that a liberal education provides a narrative about reality that is in most respects more believable than the narrative told in churches.
I no longer fit in the church in which I grew up. It was a liberal church. Although my theological leanings still reflect the theology of the church in which I grew up, that theology is so close to the narrative that is told in the university that has been very easy to make the transition to the university narrative without missing the liberal protestant narrative. I think I could abandon faith completely if the university narrative offered hope that was enough to face suffering and death. But it does not.
So, like you, I long to find the right church, but I find it neither here nor there.
2.
Benedict | 19 August 2007 at 5:29 pm
It is indeed angst, my friend. But I hope that I’m not being misunderstood here; I certainly have no delusions that there is a “perfect” church, certainly not one that will be “perfect” for all parties involved in my family, but I DO think that some churches fulfill more of the commitments of community memory than others, which of course depends on our upbringing, education, and so forth. What I find simultaneously fascinating and perplexing is the realization that I am far more a part of a particular church-community of memory that I have never been a member of than of any denomination that I HAVE been a specific member of, which suggests to me that these memories transcend the boundaries that are ordinarily associated with the group that constructs and maintains them.
I’m not sure that I can agree with Berger. To be a part of a community of memory can entail a voluntary choice; one can reject the stories and so forth that a specific community remembers and perpetuates in its own way (if it perpetuates it at all, which is part of the problem), and the freedom to make that choice allows us to figure out where we “belong.” That sense of belonging, of course, consists at least in part of being able to speak the same language as the community we seek to become one with, but our individualism in America kind of precludes this option simply because it takes too long, and we’re too impatient to do this, as a rule.
You penultimate comment about the “university narrative” vs. “church” narrative deserves more thought and discussion; a blogworthy topic that I promise I’ll take up in the near future.
3.
Benedict | 19 August 2007 at 5:58 pm
And by the way, I went on a spectacular hike this past week at Giogiana Falls in NH. I’ve noticed I do more blogging when I hike.
4.
Ken | 19 August 2007 at 6:44 pm
Your mention of individualism reminds me that I hear a different interpretation of the problem in Bellah than I hear in Berger. Let me explain how I hear the difference and why I favor Berger’s interpretation.
Bellah sees the problem as individualism, Berger sees it as pluralism. Bellah sees the problem in moral terms, Berger sees the problem in ontological terms.
I think that if we look at the experience of white American-born middle class people, then Bellah’s analysis seems sufficient to explain the problem. But I don’t think it explains the experience of other groups of people living in the United States. For example, immigrants from China and India bring a communitarian perspective with them from their cultures. It survives in the immigrant generation and yet those immigrants have the same problem with choice and suffer from the same inability to find a place where they fit as American born people. Berger’s analysis seems to explain this in a way that encompasses both the immigrant experience and the experience of American born people. I have heard similar descriptions of this experience from immigrants from Mexico and from Central and South American countries and from the Middle East. They do not embrace individualism, but they have the same problems as the rest of us related to choice. And they also talk about missing what they have lost (essentially the community of memory,) but they also talk about how they now prefer freedom, having tasted it. The internal conflict bothers them, but they can no longer believe what they once believed. This is what convinces me of the power of Berger’s theory.
Nevertheless, I think Bellah’s analysis is quite illuminating of the American experience and of the personal and cultural price we pay for our freedom. Our freedom comes with a feeling of guilt about who we are and what we have done. It comes with a sense that something is morally wrong. It affects American born and immigrant people.
And BTW, your observation about the sensual aspect of your self and how that draws you to certain communities reminds me of a passage in Chaim Potok’s book, either The Chosen or The Promise. Reuven’s father, a college professor and Reform Jew, says to Reuven that although he cannot believe the way Orthodox Jews believe, that “they can dance,” meaning that he envies that aspect of Orthodoxy and that the sensual does matter even to man whose work is of the mind.
I feel the same way.
Your hike sounds wonderful and I think it resulted in a very important posting to your blog.
5.
katbowling | 7 September 2007 at 12:48 pm
Sorry for the silence!
Don’t you think that technology (ie Aedificium) allows us to develop a different type of community, one in fact that you seem to desire? I wouldn’t call it angst, I would call it a craving. But then I missed getting my expresso brownine for starbucks today and am angry with Fredu and Lacan today. Sometimes I really do want the object of my desire more then the continuation of desire.
6.
Benedict | 7 September 2007 at 5:12 pm
Lacan makes me crabby too more often than not. But to answer your question, I think you are correct, it is definitely a craving. But on the other hand, I’m not willing (ready?) to go all-out in to digital community.
Nice to see you again.