08/10: Unto the Next Generation: How Does a People Regenerate Itself from Generation to Generation?
Category: American Christianity
Posted by: an okie gardener
How does any group, from large to small, create the "world" in which its people live? A world that includes not only a world-view in the mind, but a loyalty of the heart? A world that regenerates itself in each generation? A "world" that shapes the individuals into a people, a community? If a group must explicitly discuss and decide these questions, it is in serious trouble.
I grew up Primitive Baptist: a people-group shaped by a capella congregational singing, long extemporaneous sermons, shared meals, and visitation of members between churches. Shaped by a world-view of an omnipotent God who saves sinners because He decides to save sinners, apart from any efforts on the part of the sinner. As I argued in my book, The Formation of the Primitive Baptist Movement, the "world" of the Primitive Baptists was much more self-evident in a traditional, agrarian, pre-capitalist market society. Today, the Primitive Baptist world has trouble regenerating itself in each generation.
The author of this essay grew up Covenanter, a small Scottish Presbyterian group also in danger of losing their "world" in this new and modern world. The essay is brilliant, and gives a reading to Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow that I would never have seen on my own.
Thanks, Tocq, for calling my attention to this gem.
One also can reflect on how this community called America is shaped by a "world," and whether we have lost or are losing that world in the 21st century.
I grew up Primitive Baptist: a people-group shaped by a capella congregational singing, long extemporaneous sermons, shared meals, and visitation of members between churches. Shaped by a world-view of an omnipotent God who saves sinners because He decides to save sinners, apart from any efforts on the part of the sinner. As I argued in my book, The Formation of the Primitive Baptist Movement, the "world" of the Primitive Baptists was much more self-evident in a traditional, agrarian, pre-capitalist market society. Today, the Primitive Baptist world has trouble regenerating itself in each generation.
The author of this essay grew up Covenanter, a small Scottish Presbyterian group also in danger of losing their "world" in this new and modern world. The essay is brilliant, and gives a reading to Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow that I would never have seen on my own.
Thanks, Tocq, for calling my attention to this gem.
One also can reflect on how this community called America is shaped by a "world," and whether we have lost or are losing that world in the 21st century.
photognome wrote:
Given the multiplicity of communities in the suburban life I and my family inhabit I often wonder what world or world view we are passing on to the next generation. I have my work community in which my wife and daughter are only infrequently involved (other than spending the paycheck), we have the community of the street on which we live, which is fairly well connected to the community of our daughter's school, but even so it is rare that I know much about many of my neighbors. Through our daughter's activities we interact with communities of dance, violin, soccer and swimming but some of these overlap with each other only minimally. We have always bee fairly active in church but only rarely could I say we have "lived" in a church community.
A splintered existence....
Regarding the Covenanter. Interesting - Looks like you and I should have dug deeper a decade or two ago in our discussion of words and phrases as "ritual objects" in PB worship?
I must confess I had not paid much attention to meaning or message in "Sleepy Hollow