In this post we begin to discuss sociologist Ray Oldenburg's book The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community.

Oldenburg begins The Great Good Place with a few quotes. I'd like to share two of them to start us off:

But aside from friends, there must also be a Place. I suppose that this is the Great Good Place that every man carries in his heart...
--Pete Hamill

A community life exists when one can go daily to a given location at a given time and see many of the people one knows.
--Philip Slater

Oldenburg begins his book by discussing the Problem of Place in America today. The Problem of Place is the result of rapid changes that have occurred in American living arrangements after World War II. Specifically, after WWII America witnessed the rise of the automotive suburb. War veterans, seeking a peaceful existence, began to seek out quiet enclaves, a patch of grass and a cul de sac. Although there is nothing wrong with quiet neighborhoods, many things were sacrificed in how Americans built their suburbs. Specifically, the following places began to vanish from American lives:

Pedestrian-heavy sidewalks on Main Street
Main Street hangouts (barbershops, soda fountains, diners)
The front porch (the back porch with a fenced in backyard predominates in suburbs)
Corner stores
Corner taverns and pubs
Local parks

According to Oldenburg, the loss of these places have dramatically affected American community. Without places to mix, converse, and connect American social life has grown thin. And it's mainly a problem of place. We've lost the locations where social connections are made and maintained. Why did Americans trade in vibrant communities for quiet suburbs? Oldenburg gives Dolores Hayden's answer: Americans have "substituted the vision of the ideal home for that of the ideal city."

With the loss of these places Americans have been reduced to commuting between two locations: Home and work. A person leaves home in the morning and heads to work. After work we drive back home. Thus, Americans are largely reduced to living in two places. But for a fuller social existence Oldenburg argues that we need a "third place" in our lives. Oldenburg notes that all vibrant communities have third places, places other than home or work, where community and fellowship can be found. In America it was the shops, parks, soda fountains, diners, barbershops and taverns along Main Street. In England it is the local pub. In France it is the coffeehouse. In Germany, the beer garden. Europe has largely kept its third places while Americans have gradually lost theirs. Thus, many Europeans struggle with living in American suburbs. One can't take a quick walk around the corner to grab a pint and chat up the gang about news and events. Of course, one can drive somewhere to get a pint but it's hard to build up a regular clientele if people have to drive miles to get to the establishment. Thus, many Americans might go to pubs or coffee shops but they tend to do so sporadically and often alone. As a consequence, very little social mixing occurs.

Oldenburg summarizes:

"A two-stop model of daily routine is becoming fixed in our habits as the urban environment affords less opportunity for public relaxation. Our familiar gathering centers are disappearing rapidly...The new kinds of places emphasize fast service, not slow and easy relaxation.

In the absence of an informal public life, people's expectations toward work and family life have escalated beyond the capacity of those institutions to meet them. Domestic and work relationships are pressed to supply all that is wanting and much that is missing in the constricted life-styles of those without community." (p. 9)

"The problem of place in America manifests itself in a sorely deficient informal public life. The structure of shared experience beyond what is offered by family, job, and passive consumerism is small and dwindling. The essential group experience is being replaced by the exaggerated self-consciousness of individuals. American life-styles, for all their material acquisition and the seeking after comforts and pleasures, are plagued by boredom, loneliness, alienation, and a high price tag. America can point to many areas where she has made progress, but in the area of informal public life she has lost ground and continues to lose it." (p. 13)

"The examples set by societies that have solved the problem of place and those set by the small towns and vital neighborhoods of our past suggest that daily life, in order to be relaxed and fulfilling, must find its balance in three realms of experience. One is domestic, a second is gainful and productive, and the third is inclusively sociable, offering both the basis of community and the celebration of it. Each of these realms of experience is built on associations and relationships appropriate to it; each has its own physically separate and distinct places; each must have its measure of autonomy from the others...In the the United States, the middle classes particularly are attempting a balancing act on a bipod consisting of home and work. That alienation, boredom, and stress are endemic among us is not surprising. For most of us, a third of life is either deficient or absent altogether, and the other two-thirds cannot be successfully integrated into a whole." (p. 14, 15)

"For want of a suitable existing term, we introduce our own: the third place will hereafter be used to signify what we have called 'the core settings of informal public life.' The third place is a generic designation for a great variety of public places that host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work...[The term] underscores the significance of the tripod and the relative importance of its three legs." (p. 16)

I want to dwell on third places as these observations converge upon the trends noted in the earlier posts. That is, Americans are socially disengaged, sorted into communities of like-mindedness, and have largely lost their third places. But I also wanted to end this series with the third place as I think the third place might allow us to reverse or mitigate some of the trends we have been discussing. If third places can be cultivated, if the Problem of Place is addressed, much of what we have been discussing (disengagement, sorted communities) might be overcome (locally and to some small degree). If so, then it is worth the effort to explore the characteristics of third places in a little more detail.

Final Post: Where Everybody Knows Your Name

In this post I want to start moving from the analyses in The Big Sort to the final book in this series, The Great Good Place.

The object of this series thus far has been to highlight trends in America over the last 30 years that have profoundly affected our common life. Specifically, I want to highlight one major facet of contemporary life in America: We rarely encounter difference in any meaningful way. For two reasons noted thus far. First, we are alone. Our civic disengagement, particularly our lack of bridging connections, gives us fewer opportunities to encounter people who are different from us. Second, we are sorted. The migration patterns of Americans over the last 30 years have sorted us into communities of like-mindedness. Thus, even if I do mix with people in my community they are likely to be people very much like myself. People who share my voting preferences, my religious beliefs, and my skin color. Again, we fail to encounter difference in these homogeneous communities.

My concern with these trends is that we rarely get to practice the skills of welcome, debate, listening, inclusion and hospitality. We begin to find difference shocking, deviant, weird and effortful to live with. Worse, as the research on group polarization showed us, separated from difference we grow more extreme in our views, demonizing difference rather than listening and learning to make room for strangers.

As it happens, a wonderful example of the kind of conversation America needs arrived on our campus this week. A few days ago ACU hosted filmmaker Craig Detweiler and author John Marks on campus as Craig and Mark, across a variety of forums, shared their documentary film A Purple State of Mind. Craig and Mark were college roommates 25 years ago at Davidson College. It was Craig's first year in the Christian faith and Mark's last.

In A Purple State of Mind these former college roommates reconnect over the course of four dialogues, each filmed in a different city. Craig is a Christian and Mark is an agnostic. And across the four conversations these two college friends try to find common ground, searching for a place of purple between the red/blue divide running through America. The conversations are poignant, funny, honest and difficult. Through it all these two friends, each with very different worldviews, model honest conversation and the hard work of listening to difference.

Here are the first nine minutes of A Purple State of Mind:



The power of A Purple State of Mind is how it models what is needed in America today: The practices of honest conversation, principled but civil disagreement and the hard work of listening.

But I left watching A Purple State of Mind with some questions. First, where, exactly, are we to find these conversations? In our disengaged and sorted world these conversations are difficult to find. Second, Craig and Mark were friends and their friendship and common history helped them persist when the conversation got very difficult and confrontational. In short, purple conversations require a backdrop of relationality and trust. Two strangers could not do what Craig and Mark did. Thus, we are left with the familiar question: In a disengaged and sorted society where am I both to encounter difference and build relationship with difference? The answer, as I'll discuss next week, revolves around the issue of place.

Next Post: The Third Place

If you are a regular reader here you know I like the Liberty Mutual Responsibility videos. The first video appeared in 2006:



That video was followed up with this one:



This summer a third 30-second commercial aired during the Summer Olympics:



Well, apparently, the public reaction to these commercials has prompted Liberty Mutual to launch the The Responsibility Project website. The goal of the website is to prompt discussion about what "responsibility" means and looks like. A core feature of the dialogue at the website are video shorts that meditate on the issue of responsibility. Below is one of my favorites. I love the video's analysis of intra-office pettiness and how simple gestures of kindness and responsibility can humanize an inhuman workplace environment:



Of course, Liberty Mutual might be a totally corrupt company, but I like the sentiments of the commercials and the ideas behind many of the videos at the The Responsibility Project.

(Note: For regular readers, TIIII stands for the Things I'm Interested In Installment series. This TIIII is #10 in the ongoing series.)

As discussed in the book The Big Sort Americans have been sorting themselves into communities of like-mindedness. Red communities are growing redder. And blue communities are growing bluer.

But as mentioned in the last post, the migration patterns of Americans are broader than political affiliation. In The Big Sort Bishop and Cushing discuss how Americans are also sorting along racial, educational, religious and immigration lines. White communities grow whiter. Religious communities grow more religious. And so on.

Why should any of this matter?

To answer this question Bishop and Cushing delve into the psychology of group polarization. Group polarization is a well documented psychological phenomenon. Specifically, group polarization is the tendency of groups to act more extreme than individuals. Basically, groups radicalize. This is particularly the case when groups are homogenous, ideologically speaking. As Bishop and Cushing summarize (p. 68, 69):

"Mixed company moderates; like-minded company polarizes. Heterogeneous communities restrain group excesses; homogeneous communities march toward the extremes...Like-minded groups create a kind of self-propelled, self-reinforcing loop."

Once the process of group polarization begins gaining momentum within a community the minority group begins to withdraw from public life and discourse. As the voices around the minority group grow more extreme, shrill and radicalized they opt for silence over getting into fights. And this withdrawal fuels more sorting migration. The minority leaves and the majority group, with nary a dissenting voice to be heard, radicalizes ever further. Bishop and Cushing again summarize (p. 77):

"Nearly sixty years of social psychological research confirms that as political majorities grow within communities, minorities retreat from public life. Majorities have their beliefs reinforced by seeing and hearing their inclinations locally repeated and enhanced. Self-reinforcing majorities grow larger, while isolated and dispirited minorities shrink. Majorities gain confidence in their opinions, which grow more extreme over time. As a result, misunderstanding between Republicans and Democrats grows as they seclude themselves."

Living in West Texas, one of the reddest parts of one of the reddest states, I see this all the time. The Democrats here are almost a shadow community. Political ghosts drifting undetected through their workplaces and churches and neighborhoods. They maintain silence because it's just not worth getting into a fight with a boss, co-worker, family member, or church friend. And, thus, the group polarization dynamic rolls on.

The point of all this is that The Big Sort has consequences. Communities of sameness across America are radicalizing due to living in self-selected echo chambers. As a consequence, political discourse is growing more and more extreme. Listening stops and shouting begins. Just watch TV, this is what American civic discourse has been reduced to. Two communities, in self-imposed exile from each other, are finding each other increasingly alien, strange, and hostile. And as the views polarize in our communities of sameness civic discourse gets reduced to one common tactic:

Who can shout the loudest.

Next Post: A Purple State of Mind

In the first three posts of this series we discussed declines in American social engagement, focusing on the word "alone." We now move to the second adjective describing trends in American society:

Sorted.

In their book The Big Sort Bill Bishop and Robert Cushing discuss a trend they discovered in American migration patterns, a trend that they call "The Big Sort."

Bishop and Cushing stumbled upon The Big Sort after having examined national election trends at both the national and county levels. The striking trend they uncovered was this (p. 6):

"In 1976, less than a quarter of Americans lived in places where the presidential election was a landslide. By 2004, nearly half of all voters lived in landslide counties."

Think about that. At the national level presidential races are as tight as ever. Yet half of the American population experiences landslides at the local level. Over thirty years ago less than one out of four Americans experienced landslides at the local level. (To see this shift you can look at the election maps at The Big Sort website.)

The explanation for this trend is that over the last 30 years Americans have been sorting themselves into communities of sameness. Four to five percent of the American population moves each year. That is 100 million over the last ten years. And as Americans have migrated across the country they have located themselves among the like-minded. Choosing neighbors that look and think like they do. The consequence has been that, rather than Democrats and Republicans living among each other, they have been moving away from each other. Creating local pockets of partisanship and ideology at the neighborhood level which are offset at the national level. As Bishop and Cushing summarize (p. 11), "Americans were engaged in a thirty year movement toward more homogeneous ways of living."

And The Big Sort isn't only about political affiliation. "[T]he Big Sort isn't primarily a political phenomenon. It is the way Americans have chosen to live, an unconscious decision to cluster in communities of likemindedness. " (p. 15) Bishop and Cushing go on to describe how The Big Sort is affecting all facets of American life (p. 6):

"[U]noticed, people had been reshaping the way they lived. Americans were forming tribes, not only in their neighborhoods but also in churches and volunteer groups. That's not the way people would describe what they were doing, but in every corner of society, people were creating new, more homogeneous relations. Churches were filled with people who looked alike and, more important, thought alike. So were clubs, civic organizations, and volunteer groups...What had happened over three decades wasn't a simple increase in political partisanship, but a more fundamental kind of self-perpetuating, self-reinforcing social division. The like-minded neighborhood supported the like-minded church and both confirmed the image and beliefs of the tribe that lived and worshiped there. Americans were busy creating social resonators, and the hum that filled the air was the reverberated and amplified sound of their own voices and beliefs."

Next Post: Sameness and Shouting

In this post we will start transitioning from the analyses in Bowling Alone to the trends discussed in The Big Sort.

In the last few posts we've been throwing around the term "alone" to describe the trends of American social disengagement. But before we leave Bowling Alone we need to make some clarifications. There are various forms of social isolation and the term "alone" is too messy to precisely capture what is happening in American culture.

In Chapter 1 of Bowling Alone Putnam discusses the distinction sociologists make between bonding and bridging. Bonding relationships tend to be exclusive, a family or friendship-based group of "insiders." By contrast, bridging relationships, being more casual and informal, are inclusive and broad. The sociologist Mark Granovetter characterizes bonding relationships as "strong ties" and bridging relationships as "weak ties." Bonding relationships are "deep" and bridging relationships are "wide."

With this distinction in hand we can now revisit the diagnosis of "alone." Specifically, I know of no data to suggest that America's bonding relationships are suffering. People, generally speaking, seem to maintain networks of close friends and family.

By contrast, what has been suffering in America are bridging relationships. We are alone in the sense that we are mixing less and less with people outside of our inner circle. Our life might be very full, we might not feel alone at all, but our world might be very small and homogeneous. By "bowling alone" we don't get to interact with people who look differently from us, vote differently from us, or worship differently from us. What is broken is not our bonding but our bridging.

If we have wonderful bonding relationships why care about the lack of bridging? If I'm socially fulfilled why care about meeting people outside of my small inner circle? Let me outline four problems associated with our "broken bridges":

1. Civic Decay
In Bowling Alone Putnam computes measures of "social capital" and correlates that measure with a variety of social variables. Social capital is like physical capital (a physical resource) or human capital (a college education) in that it is something a community can draw upon to affect our shared productivity and prosperity. As Putnam writes, if human capital is a property of individuals then social capital is the product of the connections between those individuals. Communities with lots of bridging relationships, filled with norms of good will, cooperation and reciprocity, have more social capital than communities fractured into small gated communities with norms of cynicism, unhelpfulness and distrust toward one's neighbors.

In the later chapters of Bowling Alone Putnam provides evidence that high social capital in American communities is associated with a variety of public goods: Better schools, happy children, lower crime and better physical health. In short, a well connected community--lots of bridges between people--is a well functioning and happy community.

2. Cynicism
Bridging relationships foster generalized reciprocity. Specific reciprocity is the classic "You scratch my back and I'll scratch your back." Generalized reciprocity is "You scratch my back and I'll scratch someone else's back." Generalized reciprocity is the "pay it forward" dynamic and is, basically, the sociological term for The Golden Rule.

Lots of bridging is necessary for generalized reciprocity to become the norm for a community. Generalized reciprocity is based upon trust and trust can only emerge through regular and repeated contact. If bridging declines people start clustering into communities of sameness. As clusters become cliques and gated communities trust declines and a general cynicism sets in.

This is, in fact, precisely what is happening in America. Take, as one measure Putnam suggests, the virtual disappearance of hitchhiking on America's highways and byways. More precisely, in the early 50s Americans were split on the question if our society was just as morally upright as in past generations. In the 90s that split decision broke in favor of three to every one Americans now thinking we are less morally upright now than in the past.

Supporting that trend, I just glanced at the "Trust" data from the GSS General Social Survey. In 1972 50% of Americans said you "Cannot Trust" people. In 2006 that number was at 62.4% with the trend going up a couple of percentage points every year.

In short, the demise of bridging in America has paralleled if not caused a growing cynicism and distrust toward our neighbors. And this cynicism affects the church. People don't trust churches or the people who approach them on behalf of churches.

3. Loss of Hospitality Skills
Bridging is a skill. To mix and mingle in informal social gatherings requires practice. When we bond with close associates we rarely practice these skills of welcome and conversation. We just slip into the comfortable grooves of talk about shared interests. Further, with close associates we rarely have to practice the skills of civic disagreement as our close associates tend to vote like us and worship like us. We see the world the same way.

With the demise of these social skills our churches begin to suffer. Finding conversation with strangers to be awkward and effortful we simply ignore them and seek out our clique. This behavior tends to hide the great damage being done. That is. although I've found fun and stimulating conversation at church I fail to notice that my church is fracturing into insular cliques. By going for bonding over bridging the church loses social capital and intra-church distrust grows.

4. Excluding Communities of Like-Mindedness
A final problem with a lack of bridging is that bonding creates excluding communities of like-mindedness. As I've heard Pat Kiefert say, a church that describes itself as a family is a church that excludes people. Translated into the language of this post a church that goes in for bonding will tend to sacrifice bridging.

Next Post: The Big Sort

In Part 1 of Alone, Suburban & Sorted we noted that Americans are entertaining less and less in their own homes. In addition, Americans are withdrawing from informal recreational and social activities in their communities (e.g., bowling leagues). In this post we return to Bowling Alone to talk about trends affecting more formal social affiliations: Church and politics.

The big point I want to highlight from Putnam's analysis is the "hollowing out" of political and religious life. On the surface one can measure religious and political participation by watching the simplest of barometers, voting and church attendance. Both of those numbers have been declining. Since the 1960s, voter turnout has been steadily dropping. Zeroing in, this decline has been the steepest for local elections, primaries, and non-presidential election cycles. That is, interest in local politics--the politics of my town, schools and neighborhood--has seen the steepest declines in voter engagement. Again, this is a sign of social impoverishment at the neighborhood level.

Moving from voting to church attendance we see a similar decline in participation. From the 1930s to the 1960s church membership was rising. Membership leveled off in the 60s and 70s and then began to fall. Between the 50s and the 90s church attendance declined by about 1/3.

But Putnam's analysis goes deeper. It's not just that Americans are participating less in church and politics. Patterns of involvement are also changing.

For example, Putnam reviews many surveys that assess the various political activities that Americans might engage in. From the 60s to the late 90s political activities that employ the words "serve," "work," and "attend" have experienced the steepest declines. Solitary political activities have also declined but less so when compared to group activities. For example, the activity "working for a political party" declined by 42% from the 70s to the 90s. By contrast, "wrote a letter to the paper" declined by only 14%. The point here is that when Americans do participate in the political process they are tending to do this more and more often as individuals. We write letters, donate online, participate in political blogs, and put out a campaign sign in our front yard. That is, there may be a great deal of political activity in a person's life but much of that activity has been hollowed out, socially speaking.

Similar trends are seen in American churches. We've noted the declines in church attendance, but church members are also participating less and less in church social activities (e.g., attending bible class, being involved in church ministries). That is, although formal church membership has declined only about 10% over the last few decades the decline in participating in church ministries and groups has been very steep, a decline around 25%-30%. Again, it's a process of hollowing out. Church attendance and membership are issues of individual participation. But what is most rapidly declining in American churches is the degree of social engagement. This trend is exacerbated by the rise of church "surfing" and "shopping" where people drift from church to church. In sum, although Americans might be just as religious as they have been in the past, they are slowly withdrawing from church life. Americans might believe in God but they don't belong anywhere, religiously speaking. Faith has become a solo activity.

I'm guessing none of this is news to you. These trends have been well documented in the media. Also, just ask your children's minister if it is becoming harder and harder to find people to volunteer to teach Sunday School classes.

My point in talking about these trends isn't to sing a sad song of lament. Mainly I'm just trying to illustrate how alone we are. Americans are disengaged informally (less entertaining in the home, fewer bowling leagues), civically (less engagement in local politics) and religiously (less church participation). Across the board we are "bowling alone" more and more often.

Next Post: Broken Bridges

As a research psychologist I spend a great deal of my life teaching undergraduate and graduate statistics courses. Which I love. I rarely discuss statistics on this blog but there is so much I'd love to share with you about factor analysis, multiple regression, and One-Way Analysis of Variance.

But since it is Saint Patrick's Day I thought I'd share a story about statistics and Guinness beer and how my telling this story in class one day revealed an intriguing link between Guinness and Christianity.

If you don't know anything about Guinness beer know this: A lot of it is being consumed today. Guinness is, perhaps, the most recognizable beer in the world. And as the quintessentially Irish beer it is the drink of choice on St. Patrick's Day.

The connection between Guinness and statistics is this. In 1899 Young Lord Guinness wanted to bring scientific principles into the brewing business. Toward that end he hired a recent Oxford graduate, William Gosset. Gosset had a degree in chemistry and mathematics.

Now you might think that a mathematics degree would be wasted working at a brewery. But while working at Guinness Gosset developed one of the most frequently used statistical tools in use today: The t-test. I use t-tests all the time. My thesis students this year are using t-tests. It's a wonderful statistical tool.

The problem the t-test solved was this. To make beer you need yeast. Yeast, as a living and growing thing, was stored in jars in the Guinness brewery. Given that yeast is dynamically growing one never new how much yeast was in a given jar. Thus, the brewmasters would have to take a sample of yeast from a given jar and examine it under the microscope. Based upon this sample the brewmaster would try to estimate how much yeast was in the full jar. The problem Gosset solved was this: Just how accurate were the samples in estimating the contents of the jar? The t-test is the tool he developed that can help answer that question.

(The application in the social sciences is fairly straightforward. We want to study "the jar", otherwise known as the human species. But we only ever get to study a small sample of the human species, the people who visit our laboratories. Thus, once we study the behavior of this sample of people we are faced with Gosset's Guinness problem: How well does this sample estimate what is going on in the larger population/jar?)

Whenever I get to t-tests in a semester I tell Gosset's story. It helps break up the monotony of a statistics lecture. Well, one day I was telling this story in a class out on Dyess Airforce Base here in Abilene, TX. (I used to teach night classes out there.) After I told the Gosset story one of the airmen who had spent time in England and Ireland told the class this story:

Arthur Guinness was a Christian. And he was appalled and saddened about the toll Irish whiskey was having upon his countrymen. Thus, Mr. Guinness set about making a drink that was so heavy and filling (Guinness is a thick, stout beer) that his countrymen would drink less and more slowly and, thus, reduce drunkenness, intoxication and addiction.

I have no idea if this story is true (it is true that Guinness was a Christian). But I like it.

Guinness beer: One of the lesser known spiritual formation efforts Christianity has offered the world.

Happy St. Patrick's Day.

In this series we are going to be dipping into some sociological research asking how trends in America, from the 1950s to the present day, are affecting both the church and the larger American society. For my non-North American readers I think you'll still find interest in the conversation. At points where trends converge you'll find parallels in your own country. Where trends diverge you'll be able to speak of civic practices in your country that have either been lost in America or never acquired in the first place. That is, we can learn from you. Also, in many of these posts we'll be comparing the European pedestrian lifestyle with the American automotive lifestyle. We'll also be speaking about English pubs, French coffeehouses, and German beer gardens.

This series is going to follow the analyses and arguments presented in three books. These books are:

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart

The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community

Each book examines trends in American life and comes up with a major diagnosis about what is happening in American culture. Specifically, Americans today are:

Alone.
Suburban.
Sorted.

Taking my cue from the book Hot, Flat and Crowded, this series is thus entitled Alone, Suburban & Sorted.

(One quick note. The descriptions "alone" and "sorted" are pretty accurate. I've struggled with the third term and have settled on "suburban." But that term is not quite as accurate as the other two. Obviously, we aren't all living in suburbs. However, the rise of the automotive suburb post-WW2 helps peg a trend concerning the loss of "third places" in America. More about "third places" as the series continues.)

In this post we are going to begin our reflections by focusing on alone, digging into Robert Putnam's much discussed book Bowling Alone.

Bowling Alone was published in 2000. Thus, it is badly in need of some updating. For example, although Putnam makes a nod late in the book about the advent of Internet "chat rooms," he failed to guess at the explosion of social computing and networking, all the blogs, Facebooking, and Twittering. It still is to be determined if online social networking creates a form of community and to what degree these online communities and connections mitigate the great losses of face-to-face interactions Americans have experienced over the last fifty years. On a different but related note, we have yet to determine if Barack Obama is truly a transitional figure. Putnam tracks growing civic and political disengagement in America, particularly among young people. However, the youth voter turnout during the 2008 election might have signaled a change in this long decent toward disenchantment and disengagement. Or it might not. Time will tell.

But with these disclaimers in mind, Putnam's book remains a powerful document in detailing the decline of social life in America. In the 1960s civic and community engagement was at an all time high in America. The future of participatory democracy and local activism (through churches or civic organizations) seemed bright. But then the bottom fell out. And over the last few decades civic cohesion, specifically at the local and neighborhood level, gradually disintegrated. We went from knowing and regularly interacting with our neighbors to virtual anonymity. We now live among strangers.

The title of Bowling Alone comes from analyses in Chapter 6 where Putnam analyzes changes in informal social connections among Americans. For example, the number of bowlers in American has increased by 10% from 1980 to 1993. But this rise is largely due to general population increases. There are more of us and many of us like to bowl.

However, during this same period league bowling in America has declined by more that 40%. This trend is just one of many documented in Bowling Alone showing how Americans have been retreating from locations and activities involving social mixing. Places where people from all over town mix and interact, practicing the civic virtues of welcome, inclusion, conversation, listening, debate, and accommodation. With fewer bowling leagues, and places like them, Americans have fewer locations and opportunities to practice these skills.

The trend that most caught my attention in Bowling Alone was the decline in card playing in America. Through the 40s, 50s and 60s card playing in America (getting together with friends for games of Bridge or Spades) was rapidly increasing. By the 70s 40% of Americans played cards at least once a month. But since the 80s, card playing has been rapidly declining.

(Incidentally, this is one of Putnam's analyses that I'd like to see revisited. With the advent of the World Poker Tour on ESPN poker is all the rage now. So I wonder if card playing is going back up. My take is that it has, but only among a select demographic: Men. Plus, many of the young guns on the WPT gain much of their experience playing online poker. Regardless, I'd like to see a fresh analysis of all this.)

The decline in card playing struck me as my parents tell stories of the hours and hours they played cards with friends when they were college students and as a young married couple. Movies were rare treat and people ate at home a lot. Thus, a great source of entertainment was having people over to play cards. When I was young I glimpsed this dying world. The card game that dominated by family was Nerts. Nerts, if you don't know, is the greatest group card game ever invented. It is a competitive solitaire-style game on amphetamines. Particularly if you play doubles. Then the action gets violent. As a child I witnessed epic Nerts battles. But these scenes have practically vanished from American homes.

But it's not really about card games. It's about welcoming people into your home. The cards were just an excuse and something to do while you talked. But this trend is also going down. In the 1970s Americans entertained people in their homes 14-15 times a year, a little over once a month. In the late 1990s that number had dropped to eight times a year, a decline of 45% in less than two decades.

One might ask, "So what?" Have these trends really had an affect on the quality and richness of our lives? Who cares if bowling leagues are declining? To frame his response, Putnam ends Chapter 1 of Bowling Along with this story:

Before October 29, 1997, John Lambert and Andy Boschma knew each other only through their local bowling league at the Ypsi-Arbor Lanes in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Lambert, a sixty-four-year-old retired employee of the University of Michigan hospital, had been on a kidney transplant waiting list for three years when Boschma, a thirty-three-year-old accountant, learned casually of Lambert's need and unexpectedly approached him to offer to donate one of his own kidneys.

"Andy saw something in me that other's didn't," said Lambert. "When we were in the hospital Andy said to me, 'John, I really like you and have a lot of respect for you. I wouldn't hesitate to do this all over again.' I got choked up." Boschma returned the feeling: "I obviously feel a kinship [with Lambert]. I cared about him before, but now I'm really rooting for him." This moving story speaks for itself, but the photograph that accompanied this report in the Ann Arbor News reveals that in addition to their differences in profession and generation, Boschma is white and Lambert is African American. That they bowled together made all the difference.

Next Post: Hollowed Out

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about biblical hermeneutics. Well, to be honest, I pretty much always think about biblical interpretation. The bible is a thorn in my side.

But my most recent ruminations started soon after Election Day when I stumbled across a humorous but sharp social commentary in the form of a viral video that came out after the passing of Proposition 8 in California. You've probably seen it. It stars Jack Black as Jesus in "Proposition 8: The Musical." If you haven't seen it, here it is for your viewing pleasure:

"Prop 8 - The Musical" starring Jack Black, John C. Reilly, and many more... from Jack Black

The part the struck me in the video was Black's/Jesus's lines about "picking and choosing." Those lines brought to mind a famous scene from the show The West Wing.

For those who need a bit more context for this next clip, this scene from The West Wing was a commentary about then radio sensation Dr. Laura Schlessinger. At the time, "Dr. Laura" was gaining a lot of press for dispensing therapeutic advice on the radio. This despite her PhD being in physiology. Many thought her use of the title "Dr." was a bit misleading. Regardless, relevant to The West Wing clip Schlessinger had been in the news for calling homosexuality "an abomination," citing biblical warrant. That cultural backdrop set up this response from The West Wing writers:



The point of showing this clip is that it basically makes the same argument as the Proposition 8 video: People are picking and choosing from the Bible. People are not interpreting the bible consistently.

These thoughts congealed in my head having just finished the book The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A.J. Jacobs. In the book, Jacobs, as a personal and journalistic adventure, sets himself the task of living by the Bible's rules and commands as literally as possible for one full year. I'd highly recommend the book. It is entertaining, educational, and thought provoking. (Thanks to Craig for lending me his copy.)

Having finished The Year of Living Biblically I was struck by the same issues I noted above in the two videos. Specifically, if you know anything about the bible, both Old and New Testament, you know that Jacobs's task was impossible. First, what does it mean to follow the bible literally? That issue hits Jacobs immediately in the book and dominates much of his task. One must make interpretations and decisions. Second, to follow the bible literally would quickly land you in jail (if not the nuthouse). One of the highlights in the book is when Jacobs attempts to stone an adulterer. Fantastically funny scene.

At the end of the book Jacobs reflects back on the lessons he learned from a full year's worth of literal commandment keeping. Here is the lesson that struck me (pp. 327-328):

There's a phrase called "Cafeteria Christianity." It's a derisive term used by fundamentalist Christians to describe moderate Christians. The idea is that moderates pick and choose the parts of the Bible they want to follow. They take a nice helping of mercy and compassion. But the ban on homosexuality? They leave that on the countertop.

Fundamentalist Jews don't use the phrase "Cafeteria Judaism," but they have the same critique. You must follow all of the Torah, not just the parts that are palatable.

Their point is, religious moderates are inconsistent. They're just making the bible conform to their own values.

The year showed me beyond a doubt that everyone practices cafeteria religion. It's not just moderates. Fundamentalists do it too. They can't heap everything on their plate...

But the more important lesson was this: there's nothing wrong with choosing. Cafeterias aren't bad per se. I've had some great meals at cafeterias...

Now, this does bring up the problem of authority. Once you acknowledge that we pick and choose from the Bible, doesn't that destroy its credibility? Doesn't that knock the legs out from under it? Why should we put stock in any of the Bible?

"That's the big question," says one of my rabbis...

The theological richness of monsters comes from the fact that monsters allow us to reflect upon notions of otherness, alienness, strangeness, and alterity. More specifically, monsters ask us to confront and analyze our fears of the Other to determine if those fears are misdirected.

To review, many of things feared in monsters are aspects of the self. As Richard Kearney writes in his book Strangers, Gods and Monsters: Ideas of Otherness monsters remind us that the "ego is never wholly sovereign...Each monster narrative recalls that the self is never secure in itself." Monsters are "tokens of fracture within the human psyche."

Feeling this fracture, we've noted how we project the transgressive aspects of the self onto the Other. Kearney writes that "we often project onto others those unconscious fears from which we recoil in ourselves." We handle our own evil by attempting "to repudiate it by projecting it exclusively onto outsiders." This creates "the polarization between Us and Them" resulting in the Monster/Hero duality we discussed in a prior post, a duality where I am Good and the Other is Bad. Kearney summarizes, "all too often, humans have [allowed] paranoid delusions to serve the purpose of making sense of our confused emotions by externalizing them into black-and-white scenarios."

This process of externalizing the evil aspects of the self creates the religious impulse known as scapegoating. The Other, the stranger, the alien, and the alter are selected for sacrifice or expulsion. As David Gilmore writes, a monster is "the demonization of the 'Other' in the image of the monster as a political device for scapegoating those whom the rules of society deem impure or unworthy--the transgressors and deviants." These deviants are considered to be "[d]eformed, amoral, [and] unsocialized to the point of inhumanness." But we should also note that these scapegoats, as objects of aggression, are also means of expelling collective guilt. Recall the whole point of the scapegoat ritual in Leviticus 16: The removal of communal guilt. As Gilmore summarizes: monsters "serve also as vehicles for the expiation of guilt as well as aggression: there is a strong sense in which the monster is an incarnation of the urge for self-punishment and a unified metaphor for both sadism and victimization (after all, the horrible monster is always killed off, usually in the most gruesome manner imaginable, by humans). We have to address this issue of dualism, of emotive ambivalence, in which the monster stands for both the victim and the victimizer."

In sum, the processes of projection and scapegoating create the notion that evil is exterior. As Kearney notes, "the experience of evil has often been linked with notions of exteriority." Once this move has been made Otherness becomes demonized. "Evil was alienation and the evil one was the alien...the other is an adversary, the stranger a scapegoat, the dissenter a devil."

I'm reviewing all this to raise, in the last post of this series, the most important question concerning monsters: Should we extend hospitality to monsters? The notions of hospitality, embrace, and welcome are central concepts in the missional church conversations. But if hospitality sits at one pole then monsters sit at the exact opposite pole. The issue of the monster is the issue of the Other and, thus, the issue of hospitality and the mission of the church in the world. The Problem of Hospitality is the Problem of the Monster.

Should we extend hospitality to monsters? Based upon all that we have been discussing the answer seems to be a clear "Yes." As Kearney writes, "friendship begins by welcoming difference." We must "de-alienate" the alien. Further, "[p]eace requires nothing less than the decoupling of the stranger and the scapegoat." This doesn't mean we eliminate all difference. We need difference. As Kearney notes, "Otherness is a horizon of selfhood." We need Others, capital O. So, we must "let the other be the other...acknowledging difference between self and other without separating them so schismatically that no relation at all is possible."

In short, yes, we must extend hospitality to the alien, the stranger, the Other. To welcome the other is to bring peace and to become a complete Self.

This much seems easy, but Kearney's discussion raises an important issue. He asks, "How can we tell the difference between benign and malign others? How do we know...when the other is truly an enemy who seeks to destroy us or an innocent scapegoat projected by our phobias?"

This, I think, is a question often unasked in conversations about hospitality. Is hospitality to be relative or absolute? We are sent out into the world to give and receive acts of welcome. But we are called to do this while being "shrewd as snakes" and being wary of "wolves in sheep's clothing." Phrased in the language of monster stories, a vampire has no power over you in your own home. That is, unless, you invite the vampire into your home. That act of hospitality leads to your destruction.

The point being, hospitality is a difficult practice. It involves discernment. Should we extend hospitality to monsters?

Let me be concrete by giving three examples. One social, one political, and one involving the church:

Social:
Should sexual offenders be nationally registered and tracked? Should you, personally, go to the National Sex Offender Registry and locate which of your neighbors are sexual offenders?

Political:
Should the prisoners at the Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp be brought to US soil and given due process?

Church:
Should churches practice closed or open communion? For example, how should your church deal with gay members who wish to join and journey with your community?

I bring up these issues simply to raise the problem of extending hospitality to monsters. It's a complicated issue, one that I think is getting overlooked in the missional church conversation. In this, I've found monsters to be an important location for theological and missional reflection.

My reflections will end here (for now). May your theological adventures with monsters continue. And may your acts of hospitality toward monsters be filled with wisdom and grace.

And, finally, I hope your church let's you do a Bible class about all this...

To this point in the series we've been talking about monsters classically understood: A beastly creature that intrudes upon our world and brings chaos. We still see this classic take on monsters in film. A recent example I liked was Cloverfield. And I still think the greatest monster movie ever was Jaws.

But in addition to this classic form of monster movie we have seen the rise of the "horror film," bloody slasher movies where an implacable killer systematically eliminates a group of people, mainly screaming young women (a combination that seems like a Freudian death/sex thing, to me at least).

Why are people attracted to these horror films? Why do people seek out films that are filled with blood, gore, and decapitations?

A similar genre, somewhat between the monster and horror film, is the zombie movie, where the dead come back to life to feed on the living. Although the zombie movie is relatively new the fear of the reanimated dead is not, as witnessed in the classic mummy movies. Why this fascination with movies about the dead?

There are lots of answers to these questions. I'd just like to share one. But before we go there, I'd just like, for the sake of cultural nostalgia and fun, for you to view this clip of the greatest pop music video ever recorded.

I still get a kick out of that video. Okay, back to work.

Thanatologists, those scholars who study how cultures deal with death, call our current era "the pornography of death." That is, modern life in America is typified by systematic cultural death repression. That is, death is systematically pushed out of consciousness. Consequently, to discuss death in the public sphere is inappropriate. Like pornography, talk of death is illicit.

How did this cultural stance toward death come about? There were two primary causes. First, the Industrial Revolution changed how Americans obtained their food. The movement from rural to urban living meant that American families became dislocated from food processing. Farm children lived with death on a daily basis. City kids got their meat from a store. And, as generations passed, the meat began to look less and less like the animal it came from. A Chicken McNugget looks nothing like a chicken leg. Boneless meat fosters a kind of death repression.

A second influence was the rise of the modern hospital. Before the advent of the germ theory of disease hospitals were killing fields. The last place you wanted to be if you were sick was a hospital. You had a much better chance of surviving childbirth or surgery at home. But with the rise of modern medicine hospitals became the location of childbirth, medical treatment, and death. Before the rise of the modern hospital we died at home in our own beds. After death, the body was prepared and displayed in the home. The wake was in the home. In short, death and dead bodies were common features in every American household.

But when we began to die in hospitals a need arose to process and display the body outside the home. This need created the funeral industry. Rather than having the viewing in the parlor of the home the body was taken from the hospital to a "funeral home" that specialized in the funeral arts. This change also affected the location of cemeteries. Rather than being buried in the family plot close to the homestead or next to the church, we are buried in "memorial gardens" set apart from the home and the church. This was no small change. The church and homestead gravesites meant that one's whole life was lived in close proximity and communion with the dead. In modern America, one never comes into contact with the dead. This lack of contact fosters death repression.

My analysis is that this massive and systemic death repression is implicated in the attraction to horror and zombie movies. There is no place to encounter death in modern American culture other than in the media. True, this particular avenue in confronting death is likely to be unhealthy and counterproductive. But I'm only diagnosing motives. I'm not commenting on the relative moral or psychological issues involved in frequenting horror films.

A few years ago I was asked to give a chapel meditation on October 31. I was asked, if I could, to make the meditation connect with Halloween. This talk is on my sidebar but I'd like to post it again here as I think it nicely captures the existential issues involved in modern horror movies:

I like talking to dead people.

The trouble is, in today’s world the dead aren’t around much. It’s hard to find them.

This is why I visit cemeteries. I enjoy visiting cemeteries because I feel like I need to converse with the dead. I find it an important part of my spiritual life. The dead tell you things the living do not.

But in modern America it is harder and harder to find the dead.

Why is this? Thanatologists say that the modern era is characterized by “the pornography of death.” That is, the subject of death is considered to be morbid and inappropriate talk for polite company. Death is risqué and not for public viewing.

But it wasn’t always this way. We used to live with the dead. We were born in our homes and we died in our homes. Our dead bodies were viewed in the parlor of the home. The wake was in the home. We were buried next to the church or on the homestead property, in a family cemetery. And our cemeteries were next to our church, a building which also functioned as our school and the town hall. In those days, children played among the dead, church assembled with the dead, and the body politic deliberated with the dead.

But eventually the funeral industry took over. We began to die in hospitals. Our bodies were not taken home but to the “funeral home.” Cemeteries began to be displaced from the center of spiritual and public life, planted not at the center but on the edges of town. Tombstones were replaced with markers level with the ground so you could drive by and not know, not see, that the dead were close. Eventually, homemaker magazines noted that the parlor was no longer being occupied by the dead. So they reclaimed it from the dead by calling it the “living room.”

And so the dead were finally forced out of our homes, out of our lives.

And it began to be harder and harder and harder to find and talk to the dead.

But there has remained one lone failure in the communal hushing of the dead. There remains one exception to the hegemony of the living.

For there remains one public ceremony, one night a year, where the dead can walk the night and ring your doorbell.

Tonight I get to talk to the dead. And I look forward to it every year.

To invite the dead I'll decorate my frontyard to look like a graveyard, complete with tombstones that say RIP. This will make the dead feel comfortable to approach. And I'll decorate with caskets, not coffins. Modern coffins, during this era of the pornography of death, look like rounded, spaceage capsules. Coffins don't conform to the contours of the body, thus hiding, euphemizing, its contents. The dead prefer caskets, those elongated hexagons. Narrow at the top, wide at the shoulders, and tapering down toward the feet. Caskets take the shape of bodies. They know what they contain. So, only caskets, no coffins, for me and the dead.

Ready now, I'll welcome the parade of the dead to my door.

And the dead will come to my door as ghosts, spirits, and skeletons.

I’ll welcome the mythic dead, those vampires and zombies and mummies.

I’ll welcome the newly, gory dead with their blood and gore and detached limbs and misplaced eyeballs.

And I’ll welcome Death himself coming in the shape of movie murderers, those Hollywood incarnations of the Grim Reaper, the cold killer who cannot be escaped in slasher movies...or in life.

The dead will walk tonight. And it’s the only time we get to see them in modern America.

Which is why I consider tonight to be one of the most spiritual nights of the year.

Happy Halloween.

--ACU Honor's Chapel, All Hallows Eve, 2007

Next Post: Hospitality & Monsters

One of the consistent themes in monsters is hybridization. That is, monsters are often ontological mixtures, blends, and composites. A quick tour through the world of mythology and legend shows us this:

Minotaurs: Half human & half bull
Centaurs: Half human & half horse
Fauns: Half human & half goat
Mermaids: Half human & half fish

Some blends are fun and fanciful. For example, Pegasus is a horse with wings (horse/bird blend) and a Unicorn is a horse with a horn.

But some blends are scary. For example, Medusa had snakes for hair. Freaky.

Fans of the X-Men see lots of these hybrids. For example, Archangel is a man who has wings. Wolverine is a man/wolverine hybrid. And Beast is a man/beast hybrid (which is kind of funny as "beast" isn't an animal but is a kind of generic atavistic category).

Past the X-Men, lots of superheros get their powers through hybridization. Spiderman is a man/spider mix and the Thing from the Fantastic Four is an odd man/rock mix.

Now, reflecting on all this, it should be clear that hybridization is a source for the monstrous. Even if we identify with and cheer for the superhero, comic book lovers know that persecution of the hybrid (as a freak, mutant, or monster) is a constant source of material. The X-Men movies were built around that theme.

But many of these hybrids are monsters-lite. They are freaky, otherworldly, and uncanny (in fact, the X-Men were initially "The Uncanny X-Men") but don't seem to be "monsters," strongly understood. Pegasus, despite being a hybrid, doesn't seem like a prototypical monster.

In short, monsters are not simply hybrids. They are a certain kind of hybrid. If so, what kind?

Well, I'm new to this literature, but based upon my reading I'm going to offer up a little theory. The basic insight, which I'm borrowing from my ACU colleague Kenny who spoke about monstrous hybrids at our Bible class, is that the hybrid must be experienced as transgressive. That is, we must be offended or repulsed by the mixture found in the hybrid. The mixture must be illicit.

That is a good start, but it tends to put off the deeper question. What makes a mixture illicit or not? Why am I not repulsed by angels but find a man with a bug-head monstrous?

(And let's pause a bit to note that when I say "angels" I'm talking about glowing people with wings. Which, strangely, has little to do with biblical descriptions of heavenly creatures. Take this example from Ezekiel:

...and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance their form was that of a man, but each of them had four faces and four wings. Their legs were straight; their feet were like those of a calf and gleamed like burnished bronze. Under their wings on their four sides they had the hands of a man. All four of them had faces and wings...Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a man, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle...

I've never seen a Living Creature figurine at my local Bible Bookstore...)

So what makes a hybrid transgressive? Let me offer one hypothesis.

The psychologist Jonathan Haidt has suggested that as we move through social space one of the dimensions we move through is a Divinity space. That is, when I hear a beautiful symphony, enter a magnificent cathedral, engage in acts of charity, or watch a glorious sunset we tend to move "up" on the Divinity dimension. We feel, to use Haidt's term, "elevated." Transcendence is a movement upward on the Divinity dimension. By contrast, we can also come into contact with behaviors, people, or experiences that move us downward on the Divinity dimension. There is an experience of feeling degraded, debased, polluted, dehumanized, or profaned. Charles Taylor in his book The Secular Age has argued that in Western cultures we've lost an acute experience of the Divinity dimension. We think in terms of justice and harm rather than pollution or purity. Regardless, even in Western cultures we retain notions of degradation and "appropriateness." Civic and public space are protected from vulgar, profane, indecent, or illicit material. Our civic spaces are not religious but they retain a notion of decorum and dignity. These are symptoms of the Divinity dimension still at work.

My argument about transgressive hybrids is that the hybrid becomes monstrous when the mixture combines the two poles of the Divinity dimension. What maps onto these two poles will, obviously, be culturally relative with lots of room for individual differences. But, broadly speaking, within a culture there is some general agreement about how facets of existence map onto the Divinity dimension. For example, in the West wings are high on the Divinity dimension. Perhaps because flying is a symbol of transcendence. Thus, attaching wings to a human isn't illicit. It fact, it might be elevating (e.g., angels). By contrast, bugs, rats, and reptiles are lower on the Divinity dimension (in Western cultures). Thus, combining these features with humans seems more illicit and, thus, moves us closer to monsters.

Now you might be asking, "This is all very interesting, but does it have any practical implications?" I think so. Consider this:

Religious traditions and persons tend to vary in how much they emphasize the Divinity dimension. Religious traditions/persons who do strongly emphasize the Divinity dimension will see their religious existence as the pursuit of "holiness" and "purity." This means that they will have strong notions of pollution and defilement. These notions of pollution or defilement can be applied to the Self or to Others. These religious persons will have a kind of obsessive-compulsive faith, a faith aimed at staying "clean."

This means that, if these reflections about monsters are correct, that a purity-based faith will create more monsters. By emphasizing the Divinity dimension these persons are more offended by what they regard as "illicit mixtures," the clean and the unclean coming together.

This perspective allows us to come at the argument between Jesus and the Pharisees regarding contact with the "unclean" at table fellowship from a new angle. For the Pharisees, the "unclean" at table was a transgressive mixture, an illicit hybrid, a "monster." Jesus, by contrast, saw the mixture as holy, as being high rather than low on the Divinity dimension.

In short, hybridization in monsters allows us to approach the issue of mixing or blending in our world. When is the blend illicit? When is it holy? What is or is not a monster? And this connects with the issues raised in the last post: Is the Devil on the side of the monster or the hero?

On such questions rests the fate of the church in the world.

Next Post: Monsters & Death

I saw this video over at Tony Jones's blog The New Christians.

I've been asking the business faculty to take some time and educate the rest of the faculty about what the heck is going on in the economy. Self-educating, I pieced together most of the puzzle. But this video really ties the pieces together. After my wife watched the video she said,"Now I know why someone bought our mortgage a few years back." A couple of years ago we got a notice in the mail that our lender had sold our mortgage to a bank. No big deal, we just had to pay a different institution. It's clear now that a bank bought our mortgage and bundled it with others to sell to investors.


The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.