You Lost Me

Young Americans are checking out of the church like never before. In effort to explore this a bit, I picked up David Kinnaman's You Lost Me, in which he investigates the reasons so many in the Millennial generation are struggling with the faith in which they were raised.
Kinnaman, the head of the evangelical Christian research firm the Barna Group, approaches the book as both a social scientist and a Christian.  I appreciate his openness in stating his beliefs and perspectives, something scientists often shy from in effort to appear objective (supposed objectivity is driving force in scientific bias, but this is a discussion we can have another day).  Kinnaman is unashamedly evangelical, and while his research addresses some Catholic and mainline protestant trends, white evangelicals are at the heart of his discussion.  While some of the language he uses has undoubtedly contributed to the departure of burned out Christians, on the whole he works hard to foster thoughtful discussion.
Kinnaman generalizes wandering Millenial Christians into three categories: nomads, who have departed from local churches but who continue to identify with the faith; prodigals, who have departed from Church altogether; and exiles, who remain consistent church-goers but with strong frustrations about American Christianity.  He employs examples of folks who have walked through periods such as these, from Stephen Colbert to Katy Perry.  Collecting a wealth of surveys from folks under 30 who were raised in the church, Kinnaman dispels some myths as to why young Christians are checking out, instead offering six major reasons the Millennial generation is dissatisfied with the faith.

1. The Church is overprotective: Young Christians live in a world consumed with safety, and find the Church has fallen in line by prioritizing protection over the call of the gospel.
2. The Church is shallow: Young Christians are frustrated with the tension between the gospel's call to death and the clean, comfortable lives of their congregations.
3. The Church is antiscience: In a world rapidly changing due to science-driven technological innovation, young Christians struggle with world views offered by their denominations that seem incompatible with science.
4. The Church is missing the mark on sexuality: Raised in the wake of the feminist and gay rights movements, young Christians wrestle with harsh views of the Church pertaining to gender equality and homosexuality.
5. The Church is exclusive: Young Christians, exposed to a wealth of different beliefs and cultures in a rapidly globalizing world, struggle with the Church's teachings on the exclusiveness of salvation.
6. The Church is hostile to doubt: In the period of life where self searching and experimentation thrive, young Christians find the Church has little room for doubt.

While the list is not comprehensive, I think it lays an excellent foundation for discussion.  I imagine for most Millennials raised in the Church, some if not all the points echo to some degree.  Kinnaman approaches his solutions section with a Millennial value: collaboration.  He incorporates fifty varied voices to speak towards how the Church can re-engage the generation, with a range of insightful suggestions and perspectives.
In the first emphatically evangelical book I have read in years, some of Kinnaman's assumptions and wording recollected memories of my early disillusion with the Church. Overall, it is informative, and I recommend it to someone curious about the issue, particularly those spending time with white evangelical Millennials. Otherwise, you can get the gist here.

What about you? Do any of Kinnaman's assessments resonate with struggles in faith for you?

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Apparently I am on a president kick.  For the second time in a few months, I picked up a biography of an American president that challenged the depictions offered in mainstream history.  For the second time, I was not disappointed.

Image Credit: amazon.com

Growing up in the Deep South, the circumstances and saga of the American Civil war presented to me were occasionally in conflict with the "official" record.  In Alabama, those imparting the story like to emphasize the infringement of government on states' rights, and the travesty that is a federal government taking up arms against those who choose liberty over federal control.  In contrast, most textbooks (which we were taught to read with much skepticism) contest that the war was over the moral issue of slavery.  Monuments have been erected to Abraham Lincoln for preserving the Union and freeing the slaves.  I had thus found a skeptic's middle ground: the South hid the detestable practice of chattel slavery behind cries against federal infringement (a tried and true argument used to defend almost any morally repugnant practice we choose to employ; see segregation and, most recently, immigration), while Lincoln was an opportunist that seized on "freeing the slaves" to justify the violence of a war aimed at preserving the southern agricultural engine essential for sustaining the industrializing North.

According to Seth Grahame-Smith, I am way off.  In fact, the Civil War was contested for one purpose: the eradication of vampires from North America.  In Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Grahame-Smith presents a detailed account of Lincoln's life, based upon Abraham's never-before published journals.


As a child, Lincoln watched his mother succumb to a rapidly-progressing illness, only later to learn that what had been diagnosed as typhoid was actually the workings of a vampire to whom his father had defaulted on a loan.   "Henceforth," declared Abe, "my life shall be one of rigorous study and devotion. I shall become a master of mind and body. And this mastery shall have but one purpose..."
Possessed of legendary strength, stature and ax skills, Lincoln engaged in a lifelong pursuit of eradicating vampires from the burgeoning country.  Grahame-Smith relates the story with consistency and detail, exposing the very real presence of death throughout Lincoln's life, as he lost mother, sister, fiance and children to untimely ends.  He depicts Lincoln as a complex character, filled with the wisdom and drive commonly attributed him, as well as an undying disdain for vampires.  This unique look at American history, and the role played by vampires in that history, provides a fun read.  Should you not have time to pick it up, a movie based on the book is set to release next summer.  If you are not convinced by this review, take a moment to watch the book trailer below.  Recommended.

JFK and the Unspeakable

I've never been big on conspiracy theories.  In college, I picked up Holy Blood, Holy Grail, the book on which Dan Brown based The Da Vinci Code, and knocked it out in a matter of days.  However, after a brief enchantment, I began to note the wide gaps and assumptions made by the authors and easily dismissed them, just as the scholarly community had decades before.  I don't believe in aliens and I think Bin Laden is dead.  So the grassy knoll JFK stuff was not really up my ally.  However, given that I had gotten to know the author's wife, and given that he'd spent 12 years on the book, and given that Jim is a Ph.D. and former university professor, I thought I would give the book a try.  It didn't hurt that names like Oliver Stone had given strong reviews.

JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by James W. Douglass quickly drew me in.  However, in contrast to the medieval lore and mystery of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Douglass captured my attention with thoughtful reflections on Christianity and the military-industrial complex.  The book is told through the lens of Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk from Kentucky, who as a poet and writer championed peace and faith.  In 1962, not long before the Cuban Missile Crisis and only a year and half before Kennedy's assassination, Merton wrote these haunting lines regarding nuclear war:

"What is needed is really not shrewdness or craft, but what the politicians don't have; depth, humanity and a certain totality of self-forgetfulness and compassion, not just for individuals but for man as a whole; a deeper kind of dedication. Maybe Kennedy will break through into that some day by miracle. But such people are before long marked out for assassination..."

Douglass writes with tireless consistency, and provides a feasible rationale as to how Kennedy would have beeen marked for death.  Using the resources that have been made available in the last decades, Douglass also provides a coherent and detailed narrative for how the event occurred.  Striking contradictions are neglected by the Warren Report, the government's official investigation of the case, which involved Allen Dulles, the former CIA director who was fired by Kennedy.  From Lee Harvey Oswald's intelligence connections to the remarkably similar plot uncovered by Chicago investigators only a few weeks before the assassination, Douglass brings to light numerous loose ends worth considering.


More than the how of the story, the why of the narrative is where Douglass invests most of his time.  He chronicles Kennedy's conversion from a hawkish presidential candidate running on the platform of "closing the missile gap with the Soviets" to, at times, the lone voice against preemption in his cabinet.  In the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, perhaps the moment nearest to apocalypse in the history of the world, Kennedy turned from his cold-warrior mentality in pursuit of lasting peace.  He engaged in secret correspondence with his chief "enemy," Nikita Khrushchev.  He stood against leaders in his government advocating for deceit and violence as a means of winning the Cold War.  He championed Third World liberation, and was ultimately marked as a traitor by those who could not see peace as a viable option.

Can I say for sure that Douglass's postulate is the absolute truth?  No.  But the theory he unfolds is remarkably thorough and consistent.  Even with the critical eye that quickly dismissed previous theories, I have a tough time refuting much of his information.  It has re-shaped the way I comprehend national defense, intelligence and the workings of the military-industrial complex.  The book is certainly worth your consideration.  Highly recommended.

By the way, if you have some time, check out this interview.

The Souls of Black Folk

"HEREIN lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line." - W.E.B. Du Bois

A cornerstone of African-American studies, The Souls of Black Folk is a series of essays spanning from religion to economics, and from politics to music.  W.E.B. Du Bois had a unique perspective of the meaning of being black in America at the turn of the century.  Raised as the lone black child in a New England town, Du Bois claims he didn't realize the significance of his skin color until he was an elementary student barred from a playmate's home.  His higher-education opportunities were limited by that same skin color, and thus he headed south to study at Fisk University in Nashville.  He spent time teaching in rural schools for a time before moving back north to become the first African-American to graduate from Harvard.  He studied at the University of Berlin and held teaching positions at Wilberforce and UPenn before returning to the South to teach at Atlanta University.

Du Bois writes in a style that will strike today's reader as remarkably humble regarding his race.  His ideas at the time, however, were far from mild.  Booker T. Washington was the leading black voice of his day, and he advocated social policies of "separate but equal" standing among the races, working to ensure blacks had access to trade schools and agricultural policies that would provide the race an opportunity to accrew financial and social standing before moving towards integration.  Du Bois, however, was adamantly opposed to Jim Crow and segregation, challenging that equal rights are essential to the progression of African-American, and ultimately American, society.  The Souls of Black Folk laid the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement that ensued a half-century later.

The book is well-written, and provides insight into the challenges afflicting African-Americans in the South over a century ago.  Sadly, many of the same issues remain.  While legislated racism fell during the civil rights movement (Though some are pointedly calling the wave of Arizona-style immigration legislation "Juan Crowe"), racism and disparities still remain a blight on our country.   The overt, explicit racism of a generation ago is slowly dying away, but it is being replaced with a much more insidious implicit racism that is often imperceptible by its perpetrators.  Implicit racism occurs in subconcious attitudes that we hold that affect the way we treat other races.  For instance, while I would never use an ethnic slur (I am far too P.C. for that), I will (unconsciously) apply an unfair stereotype to an obese, slightly unkempt African-American patient with a chief complaint of "abdominal pain."  While I may not perceive my racism, the patient suredly will.

Du Bois's topics range from reconstruction to education, and he does a masterful job of using story to convey injustice.  The book also details some history I find interesting, none more than the last chapter which provides an anthropological history of the "Negro Spiritual."  Another essay details the conflicted grief he suffers in the death of his child, whom was denied entry to an all-white hospital before succumbing to illness.  Importantly, Du Bois introduces the concept of "the Veil" through which blacks separated from the general population and a common symbol employed in African-American discourse.

The End of Poverty

One of my winter reads was Jeffrey Sachs The End of Poverty, a book promoting a worldwide plan to end extreme poverty by 2025.  The head of Columbia University's Earth Institute, Sachs is an economist who stumbled somewhat backwardly into the realm of international economic development.  He has since become a leading voice calling for debt forgiveness and other policies aimed at freeing the poorest countries from the cycle of poverty.  Sachs plays an interesting role: on the one hand, he is a harsh critic of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the wealthy countries that use foreign aid to accomplish their political ambitions, and on the other hand he is an unashamed capitalist singing the praises of industrialization and free-trade.  He is a firm believer in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (he helped draft them), and much of the book is dedicated to calling rich countries to fulfill their promises to the rest of the world.


Most Americans believe that upwards of 20% of our federal budget is dedicated to foreign aid.  With disasters like we've seen in the Haiti earthquake and Indonesian tsunami, the US is on the forefront in promising emergency relief.  However, Sachs points out that despite all of our promises, the US gives only approximately 0.2% of our Gross Domestic Product to international economic development.  In fact, the US agreed in 1993 to raise expenditures in foreign aid to 0.7% of GDP, a standard that the rest of developed nations agreed to in the 1970s.  Since pledging that number, foreign aid has actually declined, and much of that which is given funds "consultants" from the World Bank or IMF.  For those of you who prefer visual aids, the budget office provides a lovely pie chart here.


Sachs also does a brilliant job of outlining the need for economists who think like physicians.  Economic emergencies require experts that can examine a country, develop a diagnosis and apply a specific treatment plan for the country.  He outlines how this model was used with success during the Bolivian tin crisis and in Poland during the fall of the Soviet Union.


While my optimistic/pragmatic side agrees with many of Sachs' assertions and his overall plan, I must confess that his relentless industrial capitalism is a bit concerning.  My thoughts immediately return to the voice of Wendell Berry:

"We must see that the standardless aims of industrial communism and industrial capitalism equally have failed. The aims of productivity, profitability, efficiency, limitless growth, limitless wealth, limitless power, limitless mechanization and automation can enrich and the empower the few (for a while), but they will sooner or later ruin us all. The gross national product and the corporate bottom line are utterly meaningless measures of the prosperity or health of the country."

Despite my fondest affections for philosophy of Berry, I will admit that his calls to agrarianism are, unfortunately, unrealistic.  But I do believe his call to reflection is a critical component of any plan for development.  Sachs' unashamed cry that capitalism holds the answers left me uncomfortable throughout the book.  Over the years, he has been a voice crying for justice, fighting against the structures and powers of oppression.  And while his plans couple the words development and sustainable, I question whether the marriage between the two are realistic.  I think the fundamental question lies at how one defines development in the first place.


All in all, the book is challenging and encouraging, and despite my mistrust of some of his underlying premises, I believe he raises important issues and calls for movement in a necessary direction.  What say you?

Irrational Economics

One of my favorite professors in undergrad was Bryant Shaw, chairman of the Troy Department of History.  I gleaned numerous nuggets of wisdom from Dr. Shaw ("read broadly"), but perhaps my favorite was his take on knowledge: "Information is gathered within a discipline; knowledge occurs at the intersection of disciplines."

Thus, perhaps my favorite thing about classes at UAB's School of Public Health is the breadth of disciplines that cross over in my curriculum.  I have been lectured by physicians and psychologists, by statisticians and economists, by chemists and engineers, by sociologists and epidemiologists.  This semester we've been assigned a pair of behavioral economics readings, one of which I recently finished.  Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational is a fun, quick read that explains behavioral economic theory in simple terms.

From the days of Adam Smith, economic theory has assumed one simple idea - that humans make rational decisions.  For some reason it took centuries for economists to come to a different realization: we don't.  Humans are irrational.  This is why trans-disciplinary collaboration is so important.  Psychologists have long realized that people are irrational (it is why the field exists).  Anyway, Ariely provides some great insight into irrational decisions we make, and offers some solutions to how we can protect against them.

Ariely does an outstanding job of translating scientific experiments into easy to understand anecdotes, all the while preserving the meat of the research (A quick glance at a scientific journal reveals this is no easy task).  His experiments range from the fallacies of supply and demand to alterations in our decision-making depending on our level of sexual excitement.  His precepts could be quickly adapted to enhance a business's bottom line, but more importantly, they outline some important considerations when planning public policy.  Ariely does an excellent job of weaving his story through the book, and I quickly saw myself in some of the examples he lays out.  I highly recommend the book.

Jesus and the Revolution

Rachel and I have been reading through Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas, a compilation of daily readings offered by various voices, from Thomas Aquinas to C.S. Lewis and from Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Philip Yancey.  Below is a quote from Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder on The Original Revolution, which met me where I was:

"But for Jesus in his time, and for increasing numbers of us in our time, the basic human problem is seen in less individualistic terms.  The priority agenda for Jesus, and for many of us, is not morality or anxiety, but unrighteousness, injustice.  The need is not for consolation or acceptance but for a new order in which men may live together in love.  In his time, therefore, as in ours, the question of revolution, the judgement of God upon the present order and the imminent promise of another one, is the language in which the gospel must speak.  What most people mean by "revolution," the answer they want, is not the gospel; but the gospel, if it be authentic, must so speak as to answer the question of revolution.  This Jesus did."

From the library...

Currently off of the shelf and into my hands, a pair of books:

The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois is one of the seminal works on African-American Studies.  Written in the early years of the previous century, Du Bois focuses on the problems of the "color line" in the US, with particular attention to the South.  Many of the issues that existed at that time have built the foundation for modern racial disparities; Du Bois's famous "Veil" has yet to lift.


Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus by Ched Meyers is my first venture into Liberation Theology.  Meyer's book, a Catholic Book Award winner, demands a socio-political reading of the gospel, with particular attention to who was writing (a Jew oppressed by Roman colonialization during the Jewish revolt in 66 A.D), to whom he was writing (other oppressed Jews and Christians) and about whom he was writing (a non-violent, and thus unwelcome, Messiah who demanded a new social order).  The book is heavy and academic, but with a penchant for history and revolution, I have eaten it up thus far.  Reading it as part of a book club, I am eager to discuss it with a group with a variety of theological and political backgrounds.

As the semester's end approaches quickly, I am looking for another book or two to help me through December.  I am considering some writings of Martin Luther King, Jr., and perhaps a long-overdue reunion with my good friend Wendell Berry.  Your suggestions are welcome.