Monday, October 23rd, 2006
On Friday afternoon I was part of a panel responding to Dean Hoge’s lecture on young adults in the Catholic Church.
Dean’s a Presbyterian who’s been lecturing in sociology of religion at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC for thirty years. He was part of the team that published the 1994 book, “Vanishing Boundaries: The Religion of Mainline Protestant Baby Boomers”. On Friday Dean was presenting research on Catholic young adults in the United States, to an audience consisting mostly of Catholic educators and youth ministry staff from Brisbane.
There were some eye openers for me. The top two values in a 1997 survey of Catholics 20 to 39 years old, relating to Catholic distinctiveness, were belief that God is present in the sacraments (no surprise), and a charitable efforts toward helping the poor (interesting). Fourth on the list was devotion to Mary the Mother of God. Emerging values identified in teenagers and young adults included a commitment to short-term projects and a strong will to protect the environment.
Dean took us through a national sample of American Catholics held in 2003, looking at issues of individual conscience and Catholic teaching, ethics relating to homosexual acts, abortion, pre-marital sex and birth control. It was clear that there was a strong delineation between Pre-Vatican II Catholics (63 years and older) and post-Vatican II Catholics (40-62 years of age). Young adults (18-39) were quite similar to the latter. Clearly a lot of the difference was related to generational change, particularly in the emergence of the Baby Boom generation.
Dean talked about the challenge faced by liberal denominations like the PCUSA and Uniting Church in Australia when it comes to identity. As denominations we highly value individual capacity for discernment, education and decision making. We are loathe to tell young adults what to do and believe. Some young adults stay around for that very reason. However many drift off because they perceive to be vagueness in doctrine and distinctiveness. The Uniting Church in Australia does not have much connection with the narratives told by the Methodists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists in earlier years. We focus so much on being accessible and inclusive to Christians of all varieties that we’re in danger of being a generic brand, standing for nothing much.
My response included a reference to brand loyalty among emerging generations. People like Kevin Roberts at Saatchi and Saatchi prefer to talk about love than loyalty, thus the phrase “Love Marks”. We see that at work in the emotional connection many young Australian Christians have with Hillsong. I referred to Pope John Paul II and his inclusion in the Love Marks web site, between Pop Secret (pop corn) and Porsche. We have the challenge of nurturing passion that goes beyond consumerism, modelling this capacity for love in our own lives. I pointed out that organisations like Greenpeace found a following in the Baby Boom generation when a group of people now in their late sixties committed themselves to sharing their vision with students and workers ten years younger than themselves.
Young Adult Catholics: Religion in the Culture of Choice (2001) at Amazon.com
Dean Hoge is pictured below (left) with my fellow panel members Selina Harris (Sunnybank Catholic Parish) and Paul Mergard, (right) photographer and Salvation Army church planter in West End, Brisbane.
Tags: Baby Boomers, Catholic, Church Leadership, Dean Hoge, Gen Y, Sociologists
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Sunday, January 15th, 2006
William Strauss & Neil Howe are probably the best known proponents of generational theory in the United States, if not the world. Their reputation began with the publication of their first book, Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584-2069, in 1991, fifteen years ago.
13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail? came out in 1993. The Fourth Turning was first published in 1996. Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation hit the bookshops in 2000.
Before teaming up with Howe, William Strauss co-wrote Chance and Circumstance: The Draft, the War, and the Vietnam Generation, with Lawrence Baskir in 1978. Neil Howe wrote On Borrowed Time: How the Growth in Entitlement Spending Threatens America’s Future
in 1989 with Peter Peterson.
Arthur Scheslinger Jr, a historian and political activist, is credited by Strauss and Howe as pioneering the cycle approach to American History. His work on generational cycles appeared in essays before being published together in the 1986 book, The Cycles of American History, since reprinted in 1999.
Strauss and Howe use the generation theories developed by Jos� Ortega y Gasset and Juli�n Mar�as, Spanish philosophers who wrote on history as a system. Marias died only last month at the age of 91. See Ortega’s book of essays, History as a System. They credit Anthony Esler, author of The Human Venture, with keeping generational theory alive for twenty years.
Age Bracket Fallacy
Strauss and Howe cite Gail Sheehy’s 1976 book, Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life, together with Daniel Levinson’s 1978 book, The Seasons of a Man’s Life“, as examples of a cohort-group biography - a ‘persuasive rendering of the collective personality of American men and women now in their fifties’ (read mid sixties in 2005). These authors, as Matilda Riley pointed out in an essay in Graubard’s 1978 book, Generations, were promoting the fallacy of age reification, in which one generation projects its life experience on to another. Gail Sheehy responded in 1996 by publishing New Passages, which took into account the impact of history on young adulthood in the 1990s.
Generations as Trains in Motion
Strauss and Howe attempt to follow each generation as a train in motion rather than as a station. This they do by tracing the development of cohorts from childhood through to death, marking the distinctive events which influence each group. They say that each generation has a different experience of the life cycle. For this reason the authors provide the biography of each generation from the Puritans through to the Millennials.
Social Moments
Strauss and Howe focus on the impact of social moments - critical events which could be secular crises or spiritual awakenings. A social moment is an era, typically lasting about a decade, when people perceive that historic events are radically altering their social environment. Secular crises are when society focuses on reordering the outer world of institutions and public behavior. Spiritual awakenings are when society focuses on changing the inner world of values and private behavior. During social moments dominant generations are entering rising adulthood and elderhood, while recessive generations are entering youth and midlife.
Four Generation Cycle
However, through their research into generations through history, they come to the conclusion that generations come in cycles. “Just as history produces generations, so too do generations produce history.” The authors label the four generational types Idealist, Reactive, Civic and Adaptive, always recurring in a fixed order. Strauss and Howe suggest that the passage of four generations completes a full generational cycle over four 22-year phases of life, roughly ninety years.
1. A dominant, inner-fixated IDEALIST generation grows up as increasingly indulged youths after a secular crisis. It comes of age inspiring a spiritual awakening, fragments into narcissistic rising adults, cultivates principle as moralistic midlifers, and emerges as visionary elders guiding the next secular crisis.
2. A recessive REACTIVE generation grows up as an underprotected and criticized youths during a spiritual awakening, matures into risk-taking alienated rising adults, mellows into pragmatic midlife leaders during a secular crisis, and maintains respect (but less influence) as reclusive elders.
3. A dominant, outer-fixated CIVIC generation grows up as increasingly protected youths after a spiritual awkaening, comes of age overcoming a secular crisis, unites into a heroic and achieving cadre of rising adults, sustains that image while building institutions as powerful midlifers, and emerges as busy elders attacked by the next spiritual awakening.
4. A recessive ADAPTIVE generation grows up as overprotected and suffocated youths during a secular crisis, matures into risk-averse, conformist adults, produces indecisive midlife arbitrator-leaders during a spiritual awakening, and maintains influence (but less respect) as sensitive elders.
Strauss and Howe name the four generations reading their book in 1991 as:
GI - elders, born 1901 - 1924 (now age 81-104)
SILENT - midlifers, born 1925-1942 (now age 63-80)
BOOMER - rising adults, born 1943 - 1960 (now age 45-62)
13ER - youths, born 1961 - 1981 (now age 24 - 44)
They mark the passing of the previous generations:
MISSIONARY - born 1860 - 1882
LOST - born 1883 - 1900
They anticipate the emergence of a new generation:
MILLENNIALS - children, born 1982 - 2003 (now 3-23)
Strauss and Howe Online
These web sites provide a chance to engage with the authors.
Life Course Associates
Fourth Turning
Millennials Rising
Tags: Generational Theory, Sociologists, Strauss & Howe
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