Entertainment and the Suburban Condition

Finally (!) delving back into Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, I want to dig into a phenomenon that Putnam argues is the most significant shaping influence in terms of social capital in modern American life - namely, electronic forms of entertainment and, specifically, television. This particular chapter of the book is both enlightening and depressing, if not entirely surprising. Putnam offers devastating analysis and commentary that relentlessly links television with civic disengagement in measure after measure. In conclusion, he writes:

Americans at the end of the twentieth century were watching more TV, watching it more habitually, more pervasively, and more often alone, and watching more programs that were associated specifically with civic disengagement (entertainment, as distinct from news). The onset of these trends coincided exactly with the national decline in social connectedness, and the trends are most marked among the younger generations that are...distinctively disengaged. Moreover, it is precisely those Americans most marked by this dependence on televised entertainment who were most likely to have dropped out of civic and social life - who spent less time with friends, were less involved in community organizations, and were less likely to participate in public affairs. (p. 246)

I suppose I should be clear that what Putnam is discussing here -and in the book generally speaking - is not in any way isolated to suburbanites. Obviously the influence of electronic media pervades all demographics and communities in our society. Putnam, in fact, relates a story from a town in northern Canada where, due to a topological anomaly, television signals were unavailable until the mid-1970's. This community was studied alongside two neighboring communities that had ready access to television signals. Once television became available, this community demonstrated an immediate, measurable decline in residents' participation in community activities. The other two communities were used as a control to demonstrate that the only variable in play was, in fact, television.

But my concern is specifically with the way in which electronic media interact with suburban culture. I'm convinced that there is a reciprocal relationship between the isolating effects of suburban geography, the counter-competent effects of chronic outsourcing, and the demotivating effects of electronic entertainment. Put simply - these three elements of suburban life reduce the ability, desire, and personal connections needed to make meaningful change in ourselves and our communities. An example perhaps will help to clarify what I mean - take sports, basketball for instance, something that I used to play regularly with friends in high school and college. I haven't played basketball in years, and if I thought of starting again, I'd face three hurdles: it's easier to get my basketball "fix" by flipping over to ESPN, lack of play has atrophied my skills (such as they were), and I don't know anyone else in my neighborhood who would like to get together for a few hoops. There it is - isolation, outsourcing, and entertainment all combine to keep me off the courts. And if I wanted to translate this into the area of Christian faith - well, I don't think I'd have much difficulty, would I?

But here's what I'm currently starting to wonder - would a change in one of these categories be enough to overcome the inertia that keeps me in a rut (in any particular area of my life, but faith in particular) and push me forward towards action? That's the question that I want to take up next.

Technorati Tags: Bowling Alone, suburbs, entertainment

Professionalization and the Suburban Condition

I mentioned in my last post on Putnam's Bowling Alone that I wanted to discuss a phenomenon that I'm calling professionalization. This isn't something that Putnam necessarily addresses directly, but rather I think it's tangentially related to both isolation and entertainment, which I plan to discuss next. This particular concern fits nicely at this point because I think it both follows from and reinforces the trend towards isolation that I discussed previously. By "professionalization", I'm referring in a general sense to what seems to be an increasing trend away from doing things for oneself and instead toward hiring a third party to do things for us or in our stead.

What put me onto this particular train of thought was Putnam's discussion of lawyers and the shift from informal to formal means of conflict resolution and reinforcement of norms. My thought is that we are becoming a society that is less able to disagree respectfully and resolve conflict amicably, primarily because we have outsourced our disagreement and conflict resolution to a professional class of persons who do these things for us. In other words, as we lean more and more heavily on lawyers and other formal means for resolving differences, we as a society gradually lose the ability to do so for ourselves, much like a muscle that atrophies due to lack of use. This prompted me to think of other ways in which professionalization has crept into our lives - and I'm surprised that, the more I think about this, the more confident I am that this is in fact occurring in many ways.

Think, for example, of the decline of the home cook. Gone are the days when a meal was a labor of love, or at least a labor of craft and skill. Go into any supermarket and you'll be confronted, not with aisle upon aisle of fresh ingredients, but with mountains of prepared and packaged foods, waiting merely to be reconstituted into insipid piles of carbohydrates with chemically enhanced flavors. Cooking is more and more a hobby instead of a necessity - we've outsourced our food preparation in the interests of expedience. And, I would wager that this trend is more pronounced among younger folks. According to Food Technology magazine, fewer than one third of all meals in America are still prepared from scratch:

While three-quarters of all adults ate last night’s meal at home, the number of meals prepared at home continues to decline, falling from 64% in 2003 to 58% in 2005 (MSI, 2005). “Scratch” dinners prepared at home dropped another 7% over the past two years and now account for only 32% of all evening meals. One quarter (26%) of last night’s dinners used convenience foods and 17% used restaurant/supermarket take-out, while 23% were eaten at a restaurant.

Think of it this way - for how many people does the process of making cookies begin with opening a box of premixed dry goods? Does tomato sauce begin with a tomato, or a can opener? When was the last time that you took your bread from an oven instead of from a bag? Even our salad comes in convenient packages - we can't even be bothered to cut our own lettuce anymore. But I think we lose something of ourselves when we outsource even our most basic of necessities, something that makes us human. We become disconnected from our very selves, unable to even participate in sustaining ourselves from one day to the next, passive recipients of whatever lowest common denominator has made it through the assembly line and onto our plates. We cede power over our day to day existence to a faceless corporate entity that is most concerned with market share and protecting a brand.

I know there are reasons for this - I know them myself. I am the primary cook in our house, so I bear most of the burden of meal preparation. And there are nights when a pizza just fits the bill. But I try to resist, and I try to do as much from scratch as possible - it's almost a spiritual practice for me, one that I try to maintain as I'm able. But this shift towards professionalization is bigger than just cooking. We could discuss the same trend in any of a dozen different spheres of life. Besides the discussion of lawyers, Putnam also discusses it in the context of social engagement - meaning that, for most people, social action has become more about writing a check than about actually working to implement change. We are chronic outsourcers - we want someone else to do our stuff, and we'll pay good money for them to do so. And people of faith should absolutely recognize this trend - we see it every day as folks outsource spiritual development.

That's a tangent that I'm dying to engage right now - but I want to place a few more pieces in the puzzle before I go there. It's part of a bigger picture that frames where we are, and I want to resist making it the whole scene.

Technorati Tags: Bowling Alone, suburbs

Isolation and the Suburban Condition

Continuing our discussion of Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, I want to reflect for a bit on the connection between suburban isolation and the loss of social capital that Putnam describes. While Putnam is clear that this phenomenon is by no means limited to suburban communities, he also discusses in detail the ways in which the suburban condition participates in the decline of social capital through mobility and sprawl. He concludes that suburbanization is a factor in three ways:

• Time - Sprawl associated with suburbanization results in valuable time consumed in commuting, primarily alone.
• Social homogeneity - Suburbanization creates isolation between persons and families of different backgrounds. In other words, when we choose our neighbors, we are more likely to choose neighbors that are much like ourselves. Suburbanization represents in large part the end result of such self-selection.
• Community "boundedness" - This is Putnam's way of discussing what I have elsewhere called the sense of "place" that a community has, its sense of itself as a community. In a vague sense, it describes the sense of commitment and "neighborliness" that a group of geographically located people feel towards one another. It's hard to put into words - but I know exactly what he's talking about here. Suburban living is designed primarily for the pursuit of privatized, personal self-fulfillment and contentment, often in opposition to community well-being.

In short - the suburban ethos drips with isolation. The interconnectedness that characterizes a community with robust social capital finds no purchase in the craggy heights of suburbia, each home a castle surrounded by a moat and walls.

As my wife and I are currently attempting to move to a larger house, I've become cognizant of how even the architecture of the suburban home is oriented towards isolation. Others have remarked on the demise of the front porch and its significance for American social interactions. I'm particularly intrigued by a further move: the emphasis on private spaces in the current market, particularly kitchens, bathrooms, and bedrooms. The elements of a home that are most in demand and most upgraded are also those elements that are most private. In spite of the fact that we Americans seem to be doing less actual cooking, a well-apportioned kitchen is at the top of most buyers' lists. Increasingly, a master suite is also viewed as a necessity, including a private bathroom that is distinct from that used by the rest of the family. In other words, the center of the home - the places in which we invest time, money, and emotion - is increasingly moving farther and farther to the interior, to the extent of even introducing isolation from members of our own families. This is, of course, to say nothing of the desire to have a yard that is hidden from the view of the neighbors, or the prominence of the television in our spatial arrangements. Simply put - the suburban experience is oriented towards privatization, even down to the way in which we position our furniture.

The corresponding trend, then, is most certainly disconnectedness from one's neighbors. Not only do we no longer know our neighbors on any level more than a first-name greeting, we most certainly do not interact with them in any meaningful sense. And, in truth, it is becoming increasingly likely that we no longer even know our neighbors' first names. In the cul-de-sac where we live, my wife and I know the names of six of our roughly sixteen or so neighbors - and we've lived in our home for nearly ten years. Only four of those six have actually been inside of our home. In truth, nearly all of our original neighbors have since moved, leaving us as one of the longest-tenured resident families in our part of the development. This only serves to complicate matters further. Suburban culture lives by the words of the Robert Frost poem, "Good fences make good neighbors."

What has happened in parallel with these trends is a corresponding movement from informal to formal enforcement of norms in suburban life. (Whether this relationship is causative or not is unclear.) Things that were once accomplished through relationships and networks are now accomplished through rules and legalities. If my neighbor's property begins to deteriorate, I can do several things to encourage him or her to pick up the slack: I can approach him or her directly and mention my concern (informal), or I can invoke some sort of authority, such as a homeowner's association, to do so in my stead (formal). Informal ties are reflections of strong social capital - they grease the wheels of society, so to speak. Formal mechanisms reflect a lack of trust and neighborliness and serve in some sense as a substitute for relationships and connection. The shift from informal to formal in our society is not an encouraging sign, and is evidenced by our increasing reliance on lawyers to serve as our intermediaries. Putnam has this to say:

Throughout the American society and economy, beginning around 1970, informal understandings no longer seemed adequate or prudent. The suddenness of this change and its timing seem uncannily similar to trends in other measures of social capital that we have examined. Spouses, neighbors, business partners and would-be partners, parents and children, pastors and parishoners, donors and recipients - all of us abruptly began to demand to "get it in writing." (p. 147)

The problem is that most quality of life endeavors work best when supported by informal, not formal, ties. Formal mechanisms carry significant overhead, as they rely on external structure. In addition, they create less of a reciprocal effect - there simply isn't the sense of shared well-being and neighborliness that undergirds informal ties. They lack the intrinsic motivation that comes with trusting relationships. In other words - I am more likely to do the right thing when I view that thing as a reflection of my relationship with another person, as opposed to a mandate from a faceless entity. Conversely, I am more likely to ignore a request or mandate when it comes from an impersonal representative or group. Deterioration of social capital directly results in a deterioration in the quality of life of a neighborhood, as Putnam demonstrates excellently (and relentlessly).

I'll return to this shortly - I think this has direct and massive implications for the task of communities of faith in suburbia. First, though, I want to comment on a related trend, something I describe as the increasing professionalization of American culture.

Technorati Tags: Bowling Alone, suburbs

Bowling Alone in Suburbia

I can't state enough how riveting I've found Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone. It's been on my list for a long time, but I decided when I last ordered books to pick up a few things that are outside the vein of what I've been reading lately, and this one fit the bill nicely. I dig theology but theologians aren't always the best folks for drawing the connections between theology and everyday existence. Putnam is a Harvard scholar writing from an academic's perspective on social connectedness in America. It has the rigors of an academic study while being accessible to anyone (that is, anyone with a penchant for charts and graphs). And it's surprisingly thick - I don't know what I was expecting but it wasn't five hundred pages, I'm certain. This is a book that is both meaty and engaging, both rigorous and readable, and on the whole utterly fascinating.

Putnam's premise is that America has been experiencing a decline in what he calls social capital:

Whereas physical capital refers to physical objects and human capital refers to properties of individuals, social capital refers to connections among individuals - social networks and the norms of reciprocity that trustworthiness that arise from them. In that sense social capital is closely related to what some have called "civic virtue." The difference is that "social capital" calls attention to the fact that civic virtue is most powerful when embedded in a dense network of reciprocal social relations. A society of many virtuous but isolated individuals is not necessarily rich in social capital. (p.19)

It is this "dense network of reciprocal social relations" that Putnam investigates, and finds that in every measure to which we are put, America is losing social capital. The book is a relentless march of data, in sphere after sphere of our collective lives, that documents this trend, along with Putnam's analysis of why this change is occurring and some thoughts on what to do about it.

Anecdotally, this really should come as no surprise to those of us who are involved in some form of ministry or service at this moment in American cultural history. It particularly rings true to me as someone who desires to live missionally in a suburban context. I've written before about my thoughts on the isolation and disconnectedness of the American suburb, about the loss of a sense of place and the redefinition of community around shared values (most frequently leisure) instead of shared geography. And even within this redefined community, the connections to which community refers are themselves weaker and more transient than in times past.

But perhaps I have a unique perspective on this particular topic, as I grew up in an area that could in no way be described as suburban. I grew up in small town America, a distinct slice of Americana if ever one existed. Actually, small town isn't even quite the right way to describe it - my hometown is a rural community in central Pennsylvania where farming forms a large part of the local landscape and manufacturing jobs are still significant employers. And looming large over my childhood is the image of my grandfather, a product of another time and a place that most of you have probably never experienced. Pap, as he was known to his grandkids, was a steel man who worked for Bethlehem Steel for much of his adult life. He was also a man of the soil - not a farmer by trade but a throwback to an earlier time when families would raise their own livestock and produce. Pap kept a garden that was about a half acre of produce that he raised himself, and for much of my childhood he also had several cows, both for milk and for meat. I remember summer afternoons spent pulling potatoes from the ground, fist-sized golden nuggets that the earth would yield only after a struggle. I remember riding on the back of a tractor-pulled trailer in scorching August heat, catching bales of hay that were thrown from the baler to be stacked later in the barn as winter feed for the cows. I remember ears of corn pulled from the stalk and dropped in boiling water before the sap had a chance to dry on the stalk, and watermelons that left trails of juice running down my chin. But over it all I remember my grandfather, a hardworking man who was a pillar in his community, who showed little affection but great love.

When my grandfather died in the early spring of 2001, the funeral was deeply moving. I think the entire county showed up to pay respect to our family and to Pap. We had to hold two days of viewing for hours at a time, and the line of people would stretch out the door and onto the porch of the funeral home, person after person that knew my grandfather and had been impacted in some way by him. That's the way things were growing up - I knew a deep and rich connection to a large community that couldn't be identified on a map. And even if I didn't participate in that community or appreciate it for what it was, still I knew that if something went wrong that there existed a deep network of folks who would support us and that we would do the same for them.

That experience has no parallel in my current context. In truth, those bonds of community are fading even in my hometown - true to exactly the scenario presented by Putnam. But in my current neighborhood, the situation is strikingly different - I know fewer than one quarter of my neighbors. None of them have ever joined us for dinner or drinks. The turnover in our community is high - we live in a townhouse development that cycles neighbors through every several years. We're actually just starting to get to the point where I'd feel comfortable engaging some of our neighbors on a more personal level, but instead we find ourselves searching for another home with plans to move in the next six months or so. And I feel the lack of connection in my bones - I find that loneliness of late creeps upon me with ever increasing frequency.

All of this to say that I find Putnam's description of social capital compelling: compelling in the sense that I've seen what happens when it is present, and compelling in the sense that I know its lack. I think that Bowling Alone touches on something that those of us who desire to be missional would do well to address. More on this next...

Technorati Tags: suburbs, Bowling Alone

Living Towards Resurrection

When I last poked my head above the waters, I mentioned that I was working my way through a collection of essays by Stanley Hauerwas called A Better Hope. Hauerwas is nothing if not challenging and thought-provoking, and he's sort of rattled around a few ideas that have been sitting in my head for a while and given them some new life. Most folks who have been reading this little site for any length of time will know that one of my main concerns theologically is to begin to think about how we are to be Christian in suburban America (which is my current context) and what challenges and opportunities such a context presents. Part of that process is to describe where we are in the sense of what forces shape the way we think and act. Economics represent a significant influence in that regard, forming what seems to me to be the predominant sphere of meaning for suburbanites in America. More on this in a moment.

Look underneath the surface of suburban America and I believe that you'll find a simmering anxiety, frustration, despair, and even at times rage. We live in a society that is defined by instant gratification and disposability, an extraordinarily bad combination that creates a situation of lingering discontent. No matter how much we spend or how many things we purchase, we are unable to achieve any sense of lasting enjoyment or even stability. More than that, we are a people who cannot help but spend, because we have lost the means to create or produce anything of value for ourselves.

Stop and think about that for a moment, because it's utterly significant, I think. We are completely dependent on the continued health of our economic system for our very survival. Without the market, we have no food or shelter. It's that simple. Most people in first-world cultures in the twenty first century are completely incapable of self sufficiency when it comes to our food, because we lack the ability to grow crops or raise herds or hunt game. Likewise our housing - without a means of purchasing a home, or at the least the land and materials required to construct a home, we have no place to live. Our two basic necessities, food and shelter, must be purchased with money earned at the workplace. At the most basic level, we sell our services to corporations so that we can in return eat and stay out of the weather. And if a corporation will not buy our services, we do not eat and we sleep in the rain.

It's no wonder that we've become a consumerist society - we don't have a choice. The economy that we've constructed around ourselves won't allow anything else. Even the self-sufficiencies of a generation ago are dying - witness the steady decline of small businesses. The economies of scale that a multinational corporation can achieve makes it nearly impossible for "mom and pop" stores to compete on many levels. We are driven slowly and inexorably into the arms of big businesses.

I find it fascinating that we face a conundrum of choice - we have more choices available to us, for everything from transportation to toilet paper, and yet so little of those choices actually have meaning. We're merely selecting a brand from the multitude that are available. All of our choices seem to revolve around a simple pattern: we are born, we consume, and we pass away. And our value, our worth, our dignity as human beings is tied to that ability to consume - if we cannot generate capital, then we do not have value. We are something less than human. But the reality is that, by linking so strongly our dignity to our ability to consume, we have already devalued ourselves and made each other to be something less than human. We exist merely to serve the whims of the market.

I'm not tearing down capitalism, by the way. I think that capitalism offers much that is good. My concern is that it makes a wonderful servant, but a terrible master - and master it has become. The tragedy is that we do not recognize it for what it is.

I'm not entirely certain of how to go about fixing this mess - I'm simply one small voice stuck in the system along with everyone else. But I can perhaps tell a different story, one that speaks of humans created in the image of God, who possess dignity because of that image and not because they can produce and consume. I can tell a story about a New Creation towards which we hope, one that has already broken into this present age. And I can tell a story about resurrection, about those things which will be incorporated into that New Creation and about our task in living towards that coming resurrection.

Such stories have power, and moreso when they are true. And when we allow them to become true in our own lives, then something is unleashed which cannot be bought or sold, but which just might begin to turn the whole system upside down...

Technorati Tags: economics, image, imago dei, suburbs

A Gospel for the Suburbs

To bring this series to a close, I want to reflect briefly on a question posed by Steve McCoy over at Reformissionary. Steve asks:

Do you think the suburbs are so difficult because by their nature they are a salvation from something else, a gospel delivering people from "sin," poverty, homelessness, interruption, filth, etc? In other words, when we try to give them the Gospel they generally won't listen because they already have one in the suburbs?

This is a great question. In fact, it's probably the most important question to ask. My purpose in taking up this series in the first place was to construct a framework in which to think about exactly this, and Steve states the question about as succinctly and accurately as anyone I've seen. Unfortunately, there isn't an easy way to make the answer nearly so succinct. This is a question that cannot be casually dismissed - it's the sort of question that we need to invite to become a part of our rhythms of life, a part of our narratives and practices both personal and communal.

One of the significant challenges that we face in answering this question is simply defining what, exactly, the gospel is. For my part, I see the gospel as an integral part of the biblical narrative - in other words, any framing of the gospel that doesn't make sense in the context of the whole of the Story is at best incomplete. In order to grasp the gospel, we need to begin to inhabit the biblical narrative, allowing it to define the problem to which the gospel is the solution. And we need read no farther than Genesis 3 to discover that any description of the problem that doesn't include our fractured relationships with God, each other, and Creation is woefully inadequate. This narrative grounding is what sets the Christian story in context; sin is tragic at least in part because of its scope. It's not just about me - it encompasses the entire cosmos.

But if we define the problem in a smaller way, so that the problem is my personal contentment and well-being, then a "gospel of the suburbs" becomes an easy remedy. And this gets to the heart of Steve's question. The "gospel of the suburbs" is tenable only when we've defined the problem in a way that fits such a response. But, I must ask, how small is that leap from the gospel as often articulated in twenty-first century American evangelicalism? If the gospel is personal, spiritual, and eternal - as opposed to cosmic, holistic, and present - then, I'd suggest, we've left a lot of room for other answers to the problem. The gospel of personal relationship is really no threat to the gospel of suburban existence - they can coexist peacefully, as should be patently obvious to anyone paying attention. So I can enjoy the pursuit of happiness now, so long as I don't offend God, and get to heaven when I die. It's the perfect suburban life.

I don't know another way to say this - we should be disturbed, profoundly disturbed, that this telling of the Story has such a grip on American Christianity. God's actions through the biblical narrative are always about calling a new people to practice redemptive living - to participate in a new way of being human, in opposition to the ways defined through sin and curse. How we tell this story makes all the difference - I can't emphasize this enough. Part of what we need to be doing as missional people is creating dissonance and dissatisfaction among our friends and neighbors so that we can realize together that the problem is bigger than can be solved by a nice house and an SUV. The gospel of the suburbs is ultimately a hollow one - but that realization is a stretch for many of the folks with whom we live and serve. In truth, it's often a stretch for me. Only through continual retelling and reenacting of the Story can we free our imaginations from the suburban ethos enough so that we can begin to truly live in the ethos of the Kingdom.

Technorati Tags: contextual theology, suburbs, gospel, narrative

A Theology of the Suburbs (p. 10)

I have one final post on a theological response to the suburban ethos, and then I think there's something of a wrapup post floating around in my head with a few concluding thoughts and some questions for further consideration, if anyone wants to take me up on that. ;) This has been a fascinating series on a personal level, as it began with a few guys from my MDiv cohort sitting around over lunch one Saturday afternoon trying to get a group project pulled together. I hadn't intended to keep it going this long, but there are so many elements to bring to the table in this discussion that it's not something lightly abandoned. I still feel as though I've only scratched the surface on this, so I wouldn't be surprised to see myself come back to it at a later point.

At any rate - the last bit that we discussed in relation to the suburban ethos was the fruit of isolation and rootlessness. When I wrote the original post, I was thinking largely in terms of geography, or about the suburbs as locations without a sense of place. We work in one place, we shop in another, our kids attend school in yet another, and our church is in still another. Geography has simply ceased to serve any sort of unifying or cohering function in suburban life. This results in dislocation, isolation, and what I'm choosing to call rootlessness, or lack of connection to our own homes and neighborhoods.

This presents a formidable challenge to any attempt to bear witness to the gospel. I want to suggest what might seem a surprising narrative response, followed by two significant practices. The narrative resource that we can offer in the face of isolation and rootlessness is, I believe, the hope of New Creation. Eschatology gets a bad rap these days, and frankly, for good reason. Most of what seems to get attention anymore sounds like horoscopes and tea leaves - and I think I'm being quite generous with that description. And let's be honest - Left Behind is an eschatology for the suburban ethos, marketing machine and everything. Why are we surprised that a theology that's all about escape and comfort - let's be honest here - should appeal to such a large segment of American Christianity?

I'm suggesting that we recover a true, robust, and deeply Christian eschatology, one that has its roots in the Old Testament promises of a New Creation and looks forward to mercy, justice, and shalom reigning forever. I want to hear about death passing away, about all things being made new, about oppressive empires being toppled and the poor and oppressed being lifted up. I want to hear about the restoration of the Image of God in humanity and about our final return to our true purpose. I want to hear about the restoration of right relationships between us and God, each other, and Creation itself. I want to hear, not about our escaping to some home far away in the clouds, but rather about home coming to us, right here, in the middle of the mess that we've made, when God takes what is broken and restores it to what it was intended to be all along. Christian eschatology is not about escape - it is about the Kingdom's fullness finally breaking into the present, resulting in the restoration of all things as they were always intended to be. And that's a narrative that makes the other version seem all pale and hollow, a pretender masquerading as something grand and glorious.

Why this narrative response? I contend that isolation and rootlessness had their origins in Genesis 3. More than anything else, Christian eschatology is about the final defeat of the power of the curse, the power from which isolation and rootlessness spring. And, in truth, we fool ourselves if we believe that anything less than the fullness of the Kingdom can bring them to an end. They find their source in our own brokenness.

To conclude, I offer two practices for consideration. The first is hospitality. I won't say much on this point - I'll instead point to an excellent bit of thought by David Fitch here on the subject. My thoughts are simply that I cannot think of a better way to live incarnationally in an isolated context than by making connections and by taking the startling steps of opening our lives to our neighbors.

The second practice is one that I think is fitting to bring these thoughts to a close. A recovery of a robust theology of the Eucharist would do much for churches that minister in suburban contexts. It has to become more than crackers and grape juice to us. The Lord's Table represents so much of what suburban culture does not. It celebrates our unity in a way that specifically critiques a culture of isolation. "Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf," Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10, and we would do well to remember that and celebrate it. In addition, more than any other element of our shared practice, the Eucharist is an eschatological tradition. It is a simultaneous looking back - "we proclaim the Lord's death" - and a looking forward - "until He comes". We are not, in truth, a rootless people. We are instead a community, bound together in hope, looking forward to the renewal of all things. And that, I believe, is a perspective that the suburban ethos can never offer.

Technorati Tags: contextual theology, suburbs, eschatology, hospitality, Eucharist

A Theology of the Suburbs (p. 9)

We've discussed the question of the primacy of the economic domain in suburban contexts, as well as the emphasis on the pursuit of happiness. I next want to take up the central praxis of suburban life, which I take to be the exercise of control-through-choice. This, I remain convinced, is a power dynamic that enables the suburban ethos to exist and to flourish. How are we to think of this dynamic in terms of the Kingdom?

First, I want to be explicit about one thing - there is nothing inherently wrong with choice, or even with power exercised through choice. It is a tool, nothing more. I am glad that I can choose - I can choose where I work, how I spend my leisure time, how and where I worship, and how I will spend my money. These are great things. Oppression, in some sense, is the removal of such choices; it is the removal of the freedom that is in some sense present even in the Creation narrative, where man and woman are granted the authority to act in God's stead to order Creation. What I think should concern us as those attempting to bear witness to the Kingdom in suburban contexts is the way in which we exercise choice. Choice is power, and as I've discussed elsewhere, the Kingdom demands of us a particular way of approaching power. We can exercise power in service of self, or we can choose to use power in the way of the Kingdom, by giving it away and using it to both serve and empower others.

For our narrative grounding, we need look no further than the Cross. I see no need to expand on these words from Paul:

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death - even death on a cross! (Phil. 2:5-8)

I suggest here two practices that should work in tandem. The first is simplicity. In a context where happiness is defined as bigger-better-faster-more, a Kingdom ethos will instead look to live more responsibly. Rather than submitting to the will of the Market in its incessant drive for production and consumption, we should instead look to be economically responsible, being content with less, and seeking to use our resources in the way of the Kingdom - not in service to self, but in service to others. That, naturally, leads to the second practice - generosity. Besides being a practice deeply rooted in the Christian faith tradition, generosity can become the means by which we share our power in service to others. We give away the power of choice by enabling others to do the same, and in doing so, we identify more closely with the generosity demonstrated by Christ towards us.

Technorati Tags: contextual theology, suburbs, simplicity, generosity, Kingdom

A Theology of the Suburbs (p. 8)

In my previous post, I discussed the centrality of the economic sphere to the suburban ethos. One question that I raised to which I provided only a partial answer was this: who is telling the stories that shape the imaginations of those in suburban contexts?

This question is critical to addressing the idea of the pursuit of happiness as the focus of the suburban lifestyle. As I've mentioned before, happiness in this context is typically defined in terms of comfort, security, and personal fulfillment. And who is it that does the defining? I'd argue that it's primarily the voice of marketing and consumption. The stories that are told that give shape to the suburban ethos are, interestingly enough, primarily stories about lack. The irony is biting - the affluent are being told that they need more stuff to find fulfillment, and the story is being accepted and owned.

I've been listening to a lecture by Walter Brueggemann called The Narrative of the Gospel Vis-a-vis the Narrative of Our Consumer Society. (Thanks Chris! ;) One of the things that Brueggemann compares in the lecture is the Exodus story and the modern rat race. He makes the point - in typical Brueggemann fashion - that the Israelites were two verses out of Egypt before they wanted to go back. They leave in Exodus 15; by 16:2 they're already complaining. Although they left Egypt, they brought it along with them. The ideology of the empire is harder to defeat than its military, it seems.

The narrative response, then, to the pursuit of happiness is the Exodus story. We need to recognize that the stories that legitimate happiness as comfort and security are being told by those with a vested interest in our ever-increasing consumption and production. We need to recognize that our stories have been hijacked by this agenda, and that we haven't truly left Egypt behind. We have much in common with the people of Israel, it seems.

I'd like to suggest two practices that can help us to recognize the stories of our culture for what they are. One is personal, the other communal. First, on a personal level, I suggest that regular practice of silence and solitude constitutes a resistance against the omnipresent stories of advertising and marketing. Silence and solitude disrupts the continual refrain of advertising that comes to us through multiple channels - print, television, radio, internet, and the omnipresence of corporate logos. While it is surprisingly difficult to isolate oneself fully from these voices, even little resistances such as turning off the car radio and driving in silence can create a space in which the voice of marketing is not welcome - and, as a result, a space in which the voice of God can be heard.

The second practice is a communal one, and in some sense is perhaps the most basic of Christian practices in which we engage as a community. I think that the regular telling of the Story can serve to reorient ourselves away from the stories of the market. We tell the Story in our worship, in our preaching, and in our shared practices such as baptism and eucharist. But I think that, often, we assume that the meanings behind the practices are known, and we fail to give attention to the larger themes of scripture in our worship and speech. We don't tell the story as Story, but as disconnected bits and pieces of disembodied truth statements that have no coherence and no greater reference. Instead, we must enter into the Story, tell it as Story, and find our place in the Story so that we can tell it as our own.

Technorati Tags: contextual theology, suburbs, Exodus

A Theology of the Suburbs (p. 7)

I'm going to endeavor to wrap this series up in short order here - I've been mulling on a lot of stuff for a while now, and it's time for me to put my thoughts in order. For a quick review of where I'm heading, my summary post is here; all of the posts can be found here. I want to begin by tackling the question of the dominance of economics in the suburban ethos.

One question that I asked previously that still keeps me up at night is this: who is telling the stories that shape the imaginations of those in suburban contexts? This question is the reason that I've chosen to begin here. The pursuit of happiness may be the central concern of the suburban ethos, but the economic sphere provides the system of meaning in which the question of happiness is asked. This means, simply, that the way in which suburbanites think about happiness is primarily defined in terms of economics. And, consequently, the stories that we tell, the metaphors that we use, the very structures of our thinking are constantly being shaped by economic forces - marketing, employers, merchants, educators, and so on. In short, human worth is derived from the ability to produce and consume. Through the surrender of our imaginations to the Market, we become little more that units of production or members of a market segment - mere cogs in the wheel of commerce.

Our narrative response must begin here, with the recovery of a robust theology of the imago dei. For an absolutely wonderful treatment of this subject, I have to again plug Richard Middleton's The Liberating Image. Middleton suggests that the concept of the image of God in Genesis has its origins primarily in two ancient customs: the practice of kings setting up representations of themselves in distant lands to remind the inhabitants of who rules the land, and the practice of referring to those kings as the image or representation of the gods. In short, the ancient context for image was a legitimization of the divine power of kings and the subjugated nature of the people. The king, as the image of god, demanded the loyalty and service of the people, primarily in terms of their economic production. Genesis, however, subverts that view completely by stating that all people are created in the image of God. There is no divine prerogative of rulers here - all people have been granted authority to rule, to subdue and order the earth in keeping with the task assigned by God. In short, a theology of vocation has its beginnings here, with the granting of authority to continue the divine task of creation.

This, then, stands in sharp critique of the current elevation of the Market as the driving force behind suburban lifestyles. Human worth, human dignity, is not predicated on one's ability to produce and to consume. Human dignity comes from the divine task and the corresponding authority to carry out that task - the care of Creation itself. Economics - the Market - is a tool that, when used well, can help further the pursuit of that task. Nothing more.

This deserves a longer treatment. I offer these thoughts as a humble beginning of what I think is an absolutely significant and critical line of thinking that needs to be taken up by those of us in suburban contexts. But there is a practical connection as well. The Christian tradition, and the Jewish tradition from which it grew, offers a key practice that in and of itself critiques the dominance of the economic sphere. I am, of course, thinking of the practice of Sabbath keeping. Sabbath places bounds on the economic realm - it declares, on the one hand, that we are free from service to the Market, and on the other, that we are dependent on God. Sabbath breaks the rhythm of producing and consuming that defines life in suburbia and carves out sacred space in keeping with the praxis of God Himself. Is it any wonder that Sabbath is so rarely practiced, or that we who struggle to practice it are so much at the mercy of the Market? Keeping Sabbath is part of what it means to be human - to rest, to worship, and to be free from the domination of the Market.

Technorati Tags: contextual theology, suburbs, imago dei, Sabbath

A Theology of the Suburbs (p. 6)

Last week, I began reflecting on the subject of race and, in particular, how the question of the suburban ethos intersects with questions of race. I want to pick this up with some specific thoughts on the basic framework that I've proposed as a means of discussing the suburban ethos. I think it provides a helpful way to approach this discussion - we shall see, I suppose, if this proves to be true. To restate, my categories for this discussion are:

• Pursuit of happiness - the suburban context is oriented towards procuring comfort, security, and self-actualization for suburbanites.
• Centrality of economics - most suburbanites, consciously or unconsciously, approach life through the dominant sphere of economics. The primary metaphors, symbols, and values of suburban contexts are economic in nature.
• Control-through-choice - the attainment of happiness is accomplished through the exercise of choice in the market. Choice is used to control one's life circumstances; economics drive the power of choice. Power, therefore, is centered in the ability to exercise greater choice through purchasing power.
• Rootlessness and isolation - this exercise of power has the effect of insulating suburbanites from the impact of their choices. The result is a geographically disconnected world which is impermanent, transient, and increasingly isolated.

As I stated previously, the discussion of race issues intersects with this context in complex and convoluted ways. My own reflections make me wonder whether the suburbs are a cause or a symptom of racial inequality; I suspect that's something of a chicken/egg question, to be honest. If power is economic, then it follows that those who have access to capital are those with power. If power is exercised through choice, and the desired outcome is comfort and safety, then neighborhoods that begin to suffer depression and hardship will invariably begin to be abandoned by those with the ability to do so - a power dynamic if there ever was one. The result is an increase in the concentration of power (as capital) in the hands of those who are fleeing impoverished neighborhoods, and those who remain are derived of both power and choice because the capital has also left the neighborhood. And those individuals are more likely to be non-white.

That's really abstract and sterile. If you want to see what this looks like in practice, remember the images in the aftermath of Katrina. Again, it's a complex situation. But here's what Barack Obama, Senator from Illinois, had to say in the aftermath of the disaster:

Obama, the only African-American in the U.S. Senate, says "the ineptitude was colorblind." But he argues that while...there was no "active malice," the federal response to Katrina represented "a continuation of passive indifference" on the part of the government. It reflected an unthinking assumption that every American "has the capacity to load up their family in an SUV, fill it up with $100 worth of gasoline, stick some bottled water in the trunk and use a credit card to check into a hotel on safe ground." (source)

The power of choice, predicated on economic ability and exercised in pursuit of comfort and safety, has thus far resulted in greater racial isolation and has at the least contributed to the removal of that power from those in impoverished areas, who statistically speaking are much more likely to be of ethnicities other than white. And, as Landon rightly noted earlier, any theology of the suburbs that fails to address such concerns is one that is not true to the gospel. But I'm interested in your thoughts as well - does this ring true to you? Or have I overstated, understated, or otherwise misspoken?

Next up - the Kingdom response to the suburban ethos.

Technorati Tags: contextual theology, suburbs

A Theology of the Suburbs (p. 5)

A few days ago, Landon asked a question related to my thoughts on a theology of the suburbs. He writes:

have you thought of how race would intersect with your statement of "the suburban lifestyle is predicated on the pursuit of happiness, primarily defined in a sort of neo-Epicurean desire for comfort, ease, and personal fulfillment"? if not, what would a shoot from the hip thought be on that for you?

I've been mulling the question ever since. To be honest, I have been thinking about it all along - it's been in the back of my mind through the whole series. However, I'm going to be forthcoming - I wasn't certain that I wanted to make my thoughts explicit. It's not that I don't think the topic is important - far from it! It's rather that I feel most unqualified to speak here. I have rarely felt as out of my element as I do at this very moment as I write this post. I feel as though I should be asking the questions and doing far more listening here than speaking. I am a thirty one year old middle class caucasian-American male, and I am about to step into waters too deep for me.

But step I will, even if I must do so cautiously and clumsily. First, in the interests of being a good host, I feel an obligation to my guests to respond. But, more importantly, I think that part of the problem that faces us is this reticence to enter the waters, so to speak, to join in constructive dialogue and thought and reflection and repentance. And, if I may speak frankly, this reticence is symptomatic of everything else that I've been discussing. I can avoid discussing these things, because I do not live them. In other words, my thoughts on race intersect with my thoughts on the pursuit of happiness in precisely this location: it is easier to seek my own comfort while I am ignorant of the suffering of others. I know of no other way to say that more plainly. We (I) avoid the conversation simply because we (I) can. Others, on the other hand, do not have that luxury. So I enter this question with a degree of hesitancy and a consciousness of my own inadequacy, asking for patience and grace for my own halting missteps as I do so.

To begin with, I want to describe my own context and identify the ways in which this particular question hits close to home, in fact quite literally. I live in the western Philadelphia suburbs in a neighborhood that's experiencing expansion and growth. According to the latest Census data (from this widget, which by the way is a fantastic tool that combines census data with Google Maps), within 1 mile of my home the population is 91% white, with a median income of nearly $70,000 and a median housing value of over $150,000. Those numbers are five years old now so the housing value is vastly understated, but it's important for the comparison I'm going to make. Now, when I pull the data for the next zip code over, I find a significantly different picture. Within one mile of that location, the population shifts to over 40% ethnicities other than white. However, the median income plummets to approximately $40,000, and the median housing value to around $95,000. If the data were available for smaller slices than an entire zip code, I can guarantee that the numbers could become even more stark.

I'm going to pause here. I want to reflect on those numbers, and more than that, on what (and who) those numbers represent. Obviously this is a small, small picture. I could provide more data like this, but to what end? I knew what I was going to find before I ran the search - the data only proved what I already knew to be true. In category after category, the contrast between these two neighborhoods is stark. The reality is that, although they are touching on the map, they are worlds apart. And I would wager that many, if not most, folks reading this post can recognize a familiar context in numbers such as this, one that could likewise be proven with a few clicks of a mouse but which is readily identified even without.

So how does the suburban ethos contribute to this contrast? More thoughts tomorrow...

Technorati Tags: contextual theology, suburbs

A Theology of the Suburbs - Restatement

I feel as though I need to pause for breath here, to summarize what I'm proposing as descriptive of the suburban ethos. I want to do this so as to frame my coming thoughts succinctly and to provide some structure for this. The reality is that, from this point, there are many directions that I desire to take. A part of me wants to continue this particular thread - there are elements that I haven't touched that desperately need addressing. A few that I would dearly love to tackle:

• Pace - The tempo of suburban life is one of continual acceleration. This deserves a response. I'm going to forgo this for the moment, because one of the books on my stack right now is Carl Honore's In Praise of Slowness, which I suspect will provide a better framework for approaching this question than I currently have.
• Networks - Although I believe isolation to be a significant force in suburbia, it is tempered by the transition from neighborhood to social network. What was once geographic and local is now something else - relationships are increasingly structured more like networks, with hubs around common interests or life situations. They also seem to be more ad-hoc and mobile. This has significant impact on how we approach any sort of incarnational ministry.
• Technology - much of the suburban ethos is predicated on a particular approach to technology. I have a lot to say on this one too, but I'm again going to punt until I get an opportunity to discuss The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture by Shane Hipps, which I'm currently finishing.

And I could go on - but I want more to begin to tackle the constructive work of building a response. So, with the caveats that this is incomplete, provisional, and certainly a generalization, here is the framework in which I'm approaching the question of the gospel in suburban culture. First, I'm suggesting that the suburban lifestyle is predicated on the pursuit of happiness, primarily defined in a sort of neo-Epicurean desire for comfort, ease, and personal fulfillment. I'm also suggesting that the dominant sphere in suburban contexts is economic. People in suburban contexts look to the economic realm for the stories, metaphors, values, and symbols through which meaning is assembled. This economic lens means that the pursuit of happiness is accomplished through the exercise of control-through-choice, resulting in a power dynamic in which the ability to choose and to shape the choices of others is the chief form of power. The power of choice exercised in pursuit of happiness has resulted in an increasing isolation, as happiness becomes defined in terms of economics, namely the ability to pursue safety and comfort through the acquisition of goods and choice of environment / neighborhood.

More could - and should - be said, but this should be sufficient to begin. I realize that much of what I've stated thus far has slanted towards the negative, even when I've tried to present things from as neutral a perspective as possible. This may make it seem as though I don't find much of redeeming value in the suburban lifestyle. I hope that, as we walk through the next few posts and begin to construct an approach, the redemptive possibilities will begin to become evident.

Lastly, a word about method. I'm interested in a model that is functional as well as theoretical, that is holistic and imaginative, and that provides its own opportunities for revision. As a result, each of the following posts will contain two proposals: the narrative approach, and the resulting spiritual practice. The idea is to suggest a true suburban praxis in the technical sense, which is a dialectical engagement of reflection and action - in other words, acting reflectively and reflecting on one's actions, to borrow from Bevans. First up: imago dei as critique of the Market.

Technorati Tags: contextual theology, suburbs

A Theology of the Suburbs (p. 4)

I believe that, when I think of suburban life, what I think of more than anything else is rootlessness. If control-through-choice is at the core of the ethos of the suburbs, rootlessness is its fruit. Disconnection, isolation, transience, impermanence - all of these characterize suburban life; all are symptomatic of a culture that has no connection to place, no connection to history, and no connection to the other.

I do want to pause here and mention that, as James rightly noted earlier, some of these things aren't going to hold true in a particular context. I think of a neighborhood near my home that is an honest neighborhood, with local businesses and front porches - the whole package. And it's not just surface, or at least not all of it - I have friends that actually know their neighbors and the folks who own the businesses they frequent. On the other hand, a group from my cohort at Biblical sat around a few weeks ago and talked about all of the ways that we, and the folks in our faith communities, experience isolation on a daily basis. Just noting that the average commute (one-way) for American workers in 2003 was 24 minutes (just over 30 in Philadelphia) should tell us something about this (source).

I don't want to oversimplify this. I think it's complicated and multilayered. But I think that, for many in suburban contexts, isolation is a reality. More and more, the thought of "settling down" sounds hopelessly quaint - there seems to be an increasing expectation that a family will live in several different homes over the course of their lives, "trading up" as the family grows in both size and wealth. Speaking personally, my family has lived in our current home for almost eight years. In that time, we've had at least four different neighbors in the home on our left, and three on our right. But, truth be told, I can only remember some of them - by and large, we simply never connected with the people who lived literally next door. And, this summer, we're also preparing to move. At least in my area, this is not unusual - it is, rather, the norm. But at the end of the day, it's a phenomenon that results in a disconnection from our neighborhood - there simply is nothing tying us to this particular area, other than preference and convenience. And I don't think I'm alone in my experiences here - I know too many folks who simply assume this to be the way things are, a sure sign to me that there are particular values in play here.

By and large, the suburbs seem to me to be places without a sense of place. It's a context in which the question, "Who is my neighbor?" isn't really all that rhetorical. Practically speaking, this is a challenge for those of us who want to embody the gospel in our communities. For one thing, it completely rearranges our metaphors - for example, we simply can't speak of "home" in a theological sense in the same way that we could in the past. But there's a bigger challenge - how do I demonstrate the love of God in a context where I'm challenged to even know the name of the person next door, especially when the turnover rate for residents in my community seems to be a scant few years? To put it more succinctly, how does one embody the gospel as a part of a community in a context where the very idea of community seems more a quaint anachronism?

I think it's about time to start synthesizing some of this - more to come...

Technorati Tags: contextual theology, suburbs

A Theology of the Suburbs (p. 3)

Chris brought up an excellent thought in the comments on my last post. Chris has this to say:

I think that too, like the early Christians, choice is mediated by economy. I know that you alluded to it, but I don't think that you can emphasize enough the power of economy in the control structure.

This brings up another concern that I've hinted at but haven't discussed explicitly here. Robert Schreiter, in his excellent book Constructing Local Theologies, defines culture in terms of semiotic domains, which he describes as systems of signs, symbols, metaphors, and meanings that operate in a particular sphere. In his words:

When this complex sign, code, message, and metaphoric process spreads itself over an area of culture and brings it together as a constellation of meaning, we have a semiotic domain. A semiotic domain could be considered an assemblage of culture texts relating to one set of activities in culture (economic, political, familiar), which are organized together by a single set of messages and metaphoric signs...A culture can be seen as a series of linking (sometimes hierarchically organized) semiotic domains: religious, economic, political, social, sexual, and so on. Often one or other of the domains will be given priority over another.

Schreiter suggests that, in Western urban cultures, the economic domain dominates. I think that's true - and I think it reaches its pinnacle of domination in the suburban context, where economics often trumps entirely the systems of meaning found in other domains.

Let's think about this practically and experientially for a moment. One of the things that defines suburban existence is the need to commute. It's part of what it means to be suburban - home is in this place, and work is in this other place, and my children go to school in another place, and shopping is in another place, and entertainment is over there, and then once in a while I get to travel great distances to another place entirely to spend my leisure time doing much of the same things I'd do at home - shopping, eating, and being entertained - but with new scenery. And I'd suggest that the relationship between all of these places is primarily grounded in economics. I live where I can afford the mortgage and taxes for a home of reasonable size surrounded by reputable neighbors. I work where I can get the most money and best benefits for my efforts expended. My children attend school where they will be positioned most advantageously for future opportunities, with the ultimate goal of finding employment that will grant self-sufficiency.

It's all economic - everywhere I look, I'm confounded and confronted by the all-pervasive influence of the market. I can't even type these words without being assaulted by dozens of logos and other subtle imagination-shaping devices that sit silently and effortlessly fulfilling their purposes in my own living room. And the degree to which the economic sphere is spilling over its bounds is frightening; even religious imagery is being co-opted by the business world in ways that leave me dumbfounded. In a context where product advocates and salespeople are increasingly becoming known as "evangelists" - bearers of Good News - we sit by, oblivious, complacent, and complicit.

A Christian theology of the suburbs that fails to challenge the all-pervasive influence of the Market is no theology at all - it is a weak and anemic thing with no voice and no power.

Technorati Tags: contextual theology, suburbs, economics, Schreiter

A Theology of the Suburbs (p. 2)

I want to think a bit more on the idea of choice as power. I mentioned yesterday that the suburban ethos reflects the centrality of control-through-choice. In the comments, we were discussing the relationship between choice and structure; my thoughts are that the true power of the suburbanite is in the ability to choose one's structures. In other words, neighborhood isn't a given for a suburbanite - it's a choice. Education is a choice between structures. Employment is a choice between structures. Everywhere one turns in suburbia, one is confronted with an opportunity to exercise choice. This is a power dynamic in the sense of power as the ability to act. There is a lot of power in being able to choose one's structures - power that, in some ways, is localized in suburbia in a way that it simply is not in urban or rural contexts.

What I mean is this - in suburbia, I choose my neighborhood by virtue of my power to purchase a home. This choice is also rescindable - if I find that I don't care for the neighborhood, I can choose again by exercising my power of purchasing a second time. In the same way, if I don't want my children to attend a particular school, I exercise my ability to choose by sending them to a private school, by homeschooling, or by moving to a different school district. Power is choice in middle- and upper-class America. Even our system for distributing political power is premised on the fundamental ability to choose those who will govern us - to choose our authorities, in some sense.

Choice is powerful. But - and this is significant - choice is limited to one's perceived options. And perceived is the operative word in that sentence - power in suburbia is bounded by imagination, by the ability to reco