Generational syncopation

Covering familiar materials in an unfamiliar way, some cool things came out. The readings were Diana Eck's classic "'Is our God listening?': Exclusivism, Inclusivism, Pluralism" (1993) and How We Gather (2015), a proposal for finding religion-like benefits in non-religious organizations and practices both volunteer and for profit. I usually assign these on different days - the former with some Karl Barth, the latter with Pew surveys on the religiously unaffiliated - but in this year's syllabus they wound up together. Interesting issues arose from the juxtaposition, perhaps most pointedly when we considered the affront of millennials told they were were being religious without knowing it, and, on the other hand, how someone identified with a world religion might feel take to being described in the religion-less terms of How We Gather ("that's what inclusivism feels like on the receiving end!").

But the really fun part came as a result of my introducing the two texts as representing the experiences of different generations. Eck reports on the changed religious landscapes of boomer pluralists, largely raised in monolithic religious worlds progressively enriched and complicated by America's growing religious diversity. Angie Thurston and Casper ter Kuile, authors of How We Gather, speak to and for the millennial "nones" living in the aftermath of this pluralizing transformation, largely raised without affective bonds to any religion at all. Really fun, though, was realizing that none of us quite resonated with either. Not surprising, perhaps, since two of us are Gen X and the rest are Gen Z!