Pointing the Finger in the Wrong Direction: Thomas Bergler’s The Juvenilization of American Christianity

The Juvenilization of American Christianity

Thomas E. Bergler

Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012. 281 pp. $25.00

Thanks to the marketing genius of consumer culture, Americans tend to accept youthfulness as the goal to which all humans should aspire. Sociologists like Christian Smith have argued that many teenagers view adulthood as a period of stagnation and decline and embrace cultural forces that postpone it. Meanwhile, developmental psychologists, like Jeffrey Arnett, claim (not without controversy) that extended adolescence or emerging adulthood has become a life stage of its own. To quote Thomas Bergler, professor of missions and ministry at Huntington University, in his book The Juvenilization of American Christianity, “We’re all adolescent now” (1). ¹

Bergler’s book is a response not only to the cult of youthfulness, but to the mountains of data now indicating that American churches are prone to simplistic teaching and that Christian identity is not robust even among practicing Christians. In a society that explicitly cultivates and exploits a cultural desire to be young, maturity—even faith maturity—is an elusive option. In this book, Bergler argues that the feel good faith commonly practiced by teenagers has spread like pink-eye to adults throughout the church. What’s more, he believes this vapid, feel good faith may be traced to a single culprit: youth ministry.

The book’s chief contribution, a rich conversation created from archives of evangelical, black Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Methodist youth ministry, is overshadowed by an unintentionally pejorative portrayal of adolescence and the author’s decision to bracket out the power of broader cultural influences. While Bergler writes with deep sympathy for the youth organizations he believes are misshaping our ecclesial landscape (he saves his sharpest criticism for white conservative Protestants’ culpability in infantilizing Christianity), his approach tends to blame adolescence for whatever ails American churches. For all the problems of youth ministry (and they are legion), this is a significant misreading of conditions.

Bergler’s thesis hinges on a positive–negative dichotomy. When the world is divided into “good” and “bad,” we must park human experience in one slot or the other, whether or not it fits. In Bergler’s case, the dichotomy is between “mature/immature” or “adolescent/adult.” Bergler argues that since adolescence is “immature” by definition—and since adolescents experience the world through emotionalism, self-exploration, friendship, idealism, romance, and physicality—spirituality that exhibits these qualities is “immature” as well, even in adults (8–18). In that case, “immature” Christianity starts sounding a lot like faith traditions that value embodiment, emotional engagement, and participative worship, and “mature” Christian spirituality starts sounding a lot like dogmatic Calvinism.

Into this dichotomous world came a Trojan horse—youth ministry—by which adolescent practices and sensibilities were smuggled into American Christianity that had “the power to reshape Christian faith, which created a chronic immaturity among American Christians” (207). Never mind that baptizing practices and artifacts from popular culture is neither youthful nor new (Fannie Crosby’s and William Booth’s fondness for making hymns out of popular tunes come to mind). Where Bergler misses the mark is by assuming that the traits of adolescence are signs of immaturity, rather than signs of being human.

In fact, we do not outgrow the so-called “adolescent” characteristics Bergler lists; we learn to express and harness these dimensions of human nature differently as we mature. Most of the qualities portrayed as negative in the book can be reframed depending on who is making the argument. A case in point is “rebellion,” which Bergler views as an immature quality of adolescence (184). Of course, those most likely to view rebellion negatively are those being rebelled against (the “establishment,” traditional institutions, those in ecclesial or political power). But if you are one of the rebels, rebellion is a sign of courage, selflessness, and hope. Similarly, the “upbeat, emotionally expressive music” used in black churches is not just a strategy designed to connect with younger worshipers (218). Many of these songs connect worshipers to long musical traditions that emerged from shared cultural and theological histories where emotive, physicalized music served as a vehicle for sharing pain and hope, regardless of age.

In some ways, Bergler’s thesis is simply backward: if American Christianity is guilty of shallow, feel good faith, it is not because we have learned it from teenagers; it is because we have taught it to them. The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that teenagers reflect the faith of their parents more than vice versa. ² A certain tone-deafness to broader influences shaping Americans runs throughout the book (such as the media–entertainment empire, consumerist ideologies, therapeutic individualism, and the importance of social modeling)—any of which arguably has a more shaping effect on American Christianity than youth ministry. Perhaps, given many teenagers’ uncritical relationship with popular culture, youth ministry reflects some cultural trends with special clarity. Yet, while history bears out Bergler’s observation that youth ministries influence congregations, serving “as laboratories for religious innovation” (6), the leap between influencing a particular congregation and influencing American Christianity as a whole is a long one and would require a more unified agenda in youth ministry than actually exists.

All told, Begler's book raised more questions than it answered for me. Is American Christianity’s insistence on relational faith an outgrowth of an adolescent quest for intimacy, or the human longing for connection, even connection to a God who is, by definition, relational? Is idealism in American churches a function of adolescent high-mindedness or of Christian hope? Does youth ministry really have the power to influence the direction of the church, in spite of social modeling that seems to work in the opposite direction? Where Bergler gets it right is that immature faith needs an antidote—and that is a problem that clearly belongs to all of us.