Millennials. . .

 

 Okay.   That's NOT a millennial.

But. . .

(from The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in Palmer, Alaska.  His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net)
  ". . . Joel Stein, a writer for Time Magazine, has recently written a lengthy article about the Millennials.  As I read it, I realized he was talking about my grandkids’ generation.  To the descriptions I just shared about my grandkids, Stein adds additional notable qualities of Millennials.  Race, sexual orientation, and gender do not matter much.  Some observers see Millennials as self-centered, selfish and narcissistic.  Their voting record (turnout) is disappointing.  They seem to be too busy with “me.”  They are able to live with a high level of chaos and are not motivated to “straighten things out.”
    I confess my German heritage pushes me to make things orderly.  I am clearly out of step with my grandkids, but I am pleased they accept me without hesitation. 
    In Stein’s article he did not burden the reader with a lot of statistics.  He simply states “I have the facts.”  Gallop, the Pew Foundation, universities, and news bureaus are getting the same numbers.  Millennials are not challenging our culture.  They are creating a new one and have not asked permission from anyone over 30. 
    Prior to the Stein article in Time, the Barna Group, a research organization that specializes in religious subjects, published the results of a massive study of Millennials with church backgrounds.  The phenomenon of the cultural changes fostered by the Millennials is hitting churches big time. 
    Researchers have verified the “rise of the Nones.”  The Pew Foundation research found that one in every five American is religiously unaffiliated.  The Barna Group wanted to know  specifically who made up the swelling tide of nones.  Over one-third of all Millennials are nones.  The Barna research became even more specific. Among Millennials who were raised in a church tradition over 50 percent are now nones. 
    The Barna studies show Millennials to be socially mobile, intellectually adventuresome, detached from institutions, and frustrated with churches.  Many Millennials are still interested in religion and want a personal faith.  Christian churches and institutions do not fit in the picture. 
    In the Barna Group research, they introduced new categories for understanding those leaving churches.  They identified sub-groups they called “nomads,” “prodigals,” and “exiles.”  I noted that the categories all indicate significant movement.  With Millennials there is no “status quo.”  They are on the move.
    What is behind all this?  Just now few are venturing a guess.  However, Joel Stein is correct.  We have the facts.  The numbers are not lying.  The patterns that are being described are reality. 
    Are Millennials a case of arrested maturation?  Has mobility produced a new kind of rootless generation?  Is this a product of the flat world dominated by computers that do not need human contacts?  Has Facebook replaced family and primary social groupings?  How does this relate to the emergence churches?
    I do not know how to explain the emerging patterns.  I do know that my grandkids are great young people.  I do not believe the Millennials will let us down.  However, I observe the chaos and get a bit nervous.  I am tempted to join Maxwell Smart and fight the evil of chaos.  Then I am reminded of the first law of chaos.  Chaos increases the possibilities.  Millennials may be the best hope for the future of humankind. . ."
               

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Outspokenly denounce. . .

 (from IT'S EVEN WORSE THAN IT LOOKS by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, Copyright ©2012 by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein)
 ". . . The country needs the remaining (if dwindling) opinion leaders from institutions like the military, churches, universities, foundations, business, the media, and public life to outspokenly denounce those who profit from bombast and lies and to denounce equally the television and radio networks and the print outlets that gave them airtime and web and print space, with the legitimacy that flows from them.  There's no better place to start than with the outrageous rhetoric of Stephen Schwarzman, billionaire chairman of the Blackstone Group, who responded to a proposal from the Obama administration to treat  the "carried interest" of private equity managers as ordinary income, taxable at a rate of 35 percent, instead of the same as capital gains and dividends, at 15 percent.  Schwarzman characterized the proposal as being "like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939."  Scores of such examples litter the landscape.  In another particularly egregious example, the Speaker of the Kansas House of Representatives, Republican Mike O'Neal, referred to First Lady Michelle Obama as "Mrs. YoMama" and called her the Grinch, and then forwarded widely an e-mail that asked for Psalm 109 to be applied to the president-- a verse which says "Let his days be few in number" and "May his children be orphaned and his wife a widow."  Then there was Republican Representative Allen West of Florida who told President Obama to "get the hell out of the United States of America" in a January 2012 speech captured on videotape.  People like Colin Powell, Robert Gates, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Tom Brokaw, George Shultz, and Oprah WInfrey, ideally through some collective effort, should have the goal of recreating in society some sense of shame for distortions, lies, and other efforts to coarsen the culture and discourse.  That means calling out miscreants like Schwarzmand, O'Neal and West. . . "

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Funny or sad? . . .

. . . a couple-a  things. . .

 1.  I try not to dwell on politics in this blog, but this being a presidential election year and the existence of some tremendously and unbelievably entertaining characteristics of the republican party's candidates make it very difficult to resist.  Nevertheless, I continue to strive to relate EVERYTHING to music, or a least involve a little music SOMEWHERE.

2.  Watching the 'Colbear Repporr' recently, I'm not sure which made me laugh more, Colbert or his footage of Romney talking about the trees being the right height in Michigan and the little lakes in all the 'parts' of Michigan and Santorum's rant from 2008 about Satan attacking the U.S.

(from By Eric Marrapodi, CNN Belief Blog Co-Editor)
". . . A 2008 speech by Rick Santorum at Ave Maria University is making waves this week, in large part because Santorum said Satan had his sights set on America and the country was facing spiritual warfare. The speech came at the beginning of the academic year at the Catholic university in Florida.  At that point, the 2008 presidential campaign was in full swing.  Then-candidate Barack Obama had recently made a statement about abortion and the issue of deciding when life began, which he said was above his pay grade.

"This is not a political war at all, this is not a culture war at all, this is a spiritual war," Santorum said, according to a recording of the speech on the university's website. "And the father of lies has his sights on what you think the father of lies, Satan, would have his sights on.  A good, decent, powerful, influential country, the United States of America.". . . "

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