I’m going to be taking time away from blogging for a while, so I can devote attention to some other projects. Thanks for reading and thinking with me about urban life and ministry.
Deborah
Are You Smarter Than Sherlock Holmes?
If I correctly remember my Sherlock Holmes, he is a character who notices everything. He does not, however, remember everything, because, as he tells Watson, he wills himself to forget stuff that isn’t important. So, the only thing in his memory is information that matters.
Recent scientific studies indicate that this Holmesian characteristic may be more a function of urban living than it is the result of a quick mind. People who live in cities process a lot of information, but we pay close attention selectively. We tend to pay attention to what’s new, or exciting, or dangerous, and not to the gazillion routine things that pass through our filters day in and day out. Researchers attribute this not to an act of will on our parts, like the will to remember that Sherlock Holmes attributes to himself, but instead to cognitive overload. The stress of processing as much information as we do everyday limits our capacity to pay attention to everything around us. It forces us to attend to some things more than others because we simply can’t do it all.
Maybe Sherlock Holmes isn’t as smart as he thinks he is. Maybe he just lives in London.
Eric Jaffe’s Jan 30 piece in The Atlantic Cities tells you more about this research, which is about to appear in an upcoming article in the Journal for Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.
Jim Wellman’s New Book
What do you get when you mix together a love for performance, a devotion to Jesus, a curious mind, a willingness to risk, and, perhaps, an affinity for attention? You might get Rob Bell, the subject of a new book by James K. Wellman (Rob Bell and the New American Christianity, Abingdon Press, 2012).
I had heard of Bell before reading this book, but I did not know much about him. The book introduced me to a compelling and complicated man who has a deep faith and a working mind. He is willing to examine his tradition critically, and he is not shy about engaging some of its most serious questions. What does it mean to accept Christ as one’s Lord and Savior? What difference does faith make in one’s life? What is salvific about Jesus—his life, death, and resurrection? Is substitutionary atonement the only right way of interpreting the crucifixion? If the answer is “No,” how shall we think about atonement? These questions matter to Bell, and he is willing to engage them with anyone who might be willing to listen and talk back.
Bell is also uniquely able to engage these questions through a number of media: traditional church preaching, book publishing, and film. He’s been very successful in all these ventures, but he has also gotten under people’s skins.
Wellman unpacks all this deftly. He looks at Bell from several vantage points: Bell as charismatic leader, Bell as heretic, Bell as artist. Each of the seven chapters explores a different dimension of Bell’s genius. At the same time, each chapter gives readers a sense of the chronology of this extraordinary career and the substance of the gospel Bell wants to proclaim.
Wellman anchors his analysis of Bell in a larger discussion about the contemporary landscape of American Christianity, a subject he has researched and written about extensively. Jim Wellman is an excellent scholar. The book, however, is written for a popular audience, and Wellman has done us all a favor by summarizing some very complicated material in ways that readers will be able to understand and discuss. He’s done a masterful job of describing in simple terms the complicated institutional and theological contexts in which Bell ministers.
I will be recommending this book to students and friends. I recommend it to you, too, for your own edification and as a possible book for adult education in your church.
Should We Worry About the Nones?
If you read this blog with any regularity you may have noticed that I am easily annoyed by overly simplistic social scientific observations. Comments like, “Everyone knows that that young people are community-averse,” or something like that, drive me nuts! Why? Because, for starters, everyone does NOT know this, and, in addition, young people are NOT a monolithic group and cannot be described by a single phrase. This is just an example of what I mean, and I could cite additional ones at length. There is all too much sloppy social observation circulating around the church and other settings. It is completely maddening.
A topic that is frequently bandied about with too few data behind it are observations about the growing number of Nones in the United States—people who claim no religious affiliation. There is no denying that the Nones is a growing category, and the Pew Research Center has helped us to understand the contours of this trend in complex and thorough ways. But before we panic about the rapid decline of religion in the United States, it is helpful to put this development in a broader perspective.
I was happy to read Molly Worthen’s opinion piece in The New York Times on Sunday, December 23. Worthen is a historian who reminds readers that “’nones’ are nothing new. Religion has been a feature of human society since Neanderthal times, but so has religious indifference,” Worthen argues, and she reminds readers that indifference has been part of our US religious landscape across our history. She also discusses various developments that she claims have fragmented America’s religious consensus since the Civil War.
Like Mark Chaves does in his book American Religion: Contemporary Trends, Worthen helps readers to see the complexity of religious change in the United States, and how the Nones figure into that. Both offer nuanced analyses and observations that people interested in this topic would benefit from reading.
Online Discussion Through January 18
An online global discussion about urban inequality is being held through this week at this link. The discussion, world-wide in scope, is being hosted by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), Slum Dwellers International, UN HABITAT and UNICEF. I found out about it a few minutes ago by reading a post on The Atlantic Cities, and the post is here. You can find provocative articles, moving first person accounts of urban challenges, and a rich discussion on this site. Also, you can contribute, and I hope you will if it’s appropriate.
Overwhelmed
I’m having one of those days when I feel overwhelmed by all the issues around me that demand the attention of faithful people. This morning Tony Campolo, who preached at my church, invited us to support his not for profit agency that deploys capable young people in urban settings around the world, where they try to make a difference. This afternoon I read Nicholas Kristoff’s provocative op-ed piece about violence against women, in which he invited North Americans to take the logs out of our own eyes when we think about violence against women in places like India. Yesterday I attended a day-long workshop on immigration and deportation sponsored by McCormick Theological Seminary.
All these issues, all these needs, all this injustice. Today it feels intense and overwhelming to pay attention to the world around me, and I’m only connecting with little bits of it. I need to find a way to take a deep breath and remind that myself that I’m not God, and it is not in my purview to deal with everything that comes my way.
Any advice?
People Power
Marilyn Pagan-Banks, pictured below, is one of many religious leaders 
who does community organizing. Marilyn’s ministry, A Just Harvest, is in West Rogers Park in Chicago. A Just Harvest incorporates three approaches to anti-hunger work: direct feeding, community organizing, and community development. The organization does great work, and Marilyn, the executive director, is a strong and dedicated leader.
Many religious leaders appreciate the role that community organizing can play in efforts to improve the well-being of people, their neighborhoods, and the city. A new volume issued by Brill Publishing details and examines the importance of this work for churches and other religious institutions. Katie Day, the editor of the volume, describes it: “The volume, entitled Yours the Power, is unique in that there are contributions from theologians, social scientists, and practitioners (representatives of the organizing networks.) You’ll recognize a lot of the contributors: e.g., Luke Bretherton, Mary Fulkerson, Rich Wood. In addition, we were able to include excerpts from foundational writings (Alinsky, Gecan, Stout, for example).”
I am linking to the order page for those of you who might be interested in getting this resource. Although this is available separately, it is a reprint from the fall issue of the International Journal of Public Theology, so consult your local library if you’d like to see a copy of this prior to purchasing.
Happy New Year!
Disappointing Reads
I should probably be honest and admit that one of my reactions to reading Eric Jacobsen’s books was admiration. In The Space Between: A Christian Engagement with the Built Environment (Baker Academic 2012) and Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian Faith (Brazos Press 2003), which I wrote about in an earlier post, Jacobsen displays intelligence, creativity, and the fruits of extensive reading and hard work. I was impressed by the depth of research and thought that undergirds both books, and I found both to be well-written. Both books are serious efforts to put urban theory into conversation with the Christian faith.
Jacobsen is a fan of the New Urbanism, and he’s interested in getting other Christians on board with this. He fervently believes that the country would be a better place if our communities were less characterized by sprawl and instead displayed characteristics that promote walking, mixed-use commercial and residential activities, and human wholeness in general. Jacobsen argues that how we build and organize our communities can promote the shalom in which God intends us to live. The built environment matters, he believes, and it’s within our power (and vocation) to build better and smarter than we sometimes do.
I like what Jacobsen is trying to do here, but in the end I was disappointed and frustrated by these books, and I do not recommend them. Jacobsen’s discussion of urban life lacks complexity, a result, perhaps, of his almost exclusive reliance on examples from Missoula, Montana and Seattle, Washington, the two cities in which he has lived. There is little in these books to suggest that Jacobsen grasps the varying dynamics faced by US cities in other parts of the country. For example (and this is just one example), he barely mentions racism as a dynamic that shapes urban life—an oversight that seems rather enormous to a reader who lives in the country’s most segregated city. Jacobsen’s theological discussion is equally limited; because he tries to offer a theological overview what results is superficial and simplistic, lacking in any in-depth reflection that might take a reader deeper into questions of faith and life.
Those of us who are engaged in urban ministry need to do the sort of work that Jacobsen begins in these books. We need to put our faith into conversation with urban practice, theory, and place. The fact that Jacobsen does not go as far as I might have liked makes me realize how important a task this is.
Christmas
Gustavo Gutierrez on Christmas:
“It is often said at Christmas that Jesus is born into every family and every heart. But these ‘births’ must not make us forget the primordial, massive fact that Jesus was born of Mary among a people that at the time were dominated by the greatest empire of the age. If we forget that fact, the birth of Jesus becomes an abstraction, a symbol, a cipher. Apart from its historical coordinates the event loses its meaning. To the eyes of Christians the incarnation is the irruption of God into human history: an incarnation into littleness and service in the midst of overbearing power exercised by the mighty of this world; an irruption that smells of the stable.”
Source: The God of Life
The first part of this quote graced my church’s worship bulletin last Sunday, December 23. The fuller citation, and a few additional thoughts by Gutierrez, can be found on Inward/Outward, a project of the Church of the Savior.
May God erupt in your lives this Christmas and in the coming year.
