Did you know we have a "marriage gap" in the United States? (And no, I am not talking about gay marriage.) What the heck is a marriage gap? I'm glad you asked.
Ross Douthat, in his recent column in the New York Times ("The Changing Culture War") defines it this way: "college graduates divorce infrequently and bear few children out of wedlock, while in the rest of the country unwed parenthood and family breakdown are becoming a new normal."
Without going through his entire column, Douthat is essentially sharing more data (in this case based on education levels) that tell us something we already know if we are paying attention: societal definitions of marriage and of family are changing . . . rapidly! For more reasons than I can name here, we're witnessing a huge shift in what it means to be a family. This is not insignificant as the family has been a core institution in our society (and I should add here that I believe this broader definition of family is a good thing).
What really caught my interest in the column is this paragraph:
"But as religious conservatives have climbed the educational ladder, American churches seem to be having trouble reaching the people left behind. This is bad news for both Christianity and the country. The reinforcing bonds of strong families and strong religious communities have been crucial to working-class prosperity in America. Yet today, no religious body seems equipped to play the kind of stabilizing role in the lives of the 'moderately educated middle' (let alone among high school dropouts) that the early-20th-century Catholic Church played among the ethnic working class."
I'm not sure if I agree with Douthat here, but I believe while sharing his thoughts on the institution of marriage he is saying something significant about the institution of the church and its place in American society. From his view, the institutional church is no longer strong enough or equipped enough to play a stabilizing role in a society in which fear and anxiety are prevalent and deep.
Is he correct? I hope not. I'd like to think that--at least on the local, congregational level--the church still manages to be a place of stability in people's lives.
But I have no doubt that--correct or not--he reflects an increasingly common view of the place and value of religious communities in American society. We are not in the center any longer.
So, what are we going to do about it?
1 comment:
John,
It's so interesting that you pose this question with this kind of backdrop: I was just quizzing my mentor about marriage as a sacrament, and wondering about the prevalence of divorce. And then what role, if any, does (or should) the institutional church have in any of this?
Here in the South, the church isn't as "irrelevant" to people as it is in the north. You would not see a school scheduling hockey practice between 8am-3pm on a Sunday in Tallahassee! As such, if you belong to a church, the church becomes an extended family. And as the economy continues to limp along, the family is around to be there for you.
Still, my sense is that the institutional church does have to struggle to make its place in the world. IF it stays true to a mission of welcoming the stranger, and reflecting the love of God that is inherent in Scripture... and gets away from being the loud mouth moral judge of who is welcome to the banquet, then it stands a chance of being that one safe harbor in an increasingly dog-eat-dog world that will attract people seeking stability.
That's just my opinion.
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