{"id":35600,"date":"2024-02-07T21:06:16","date_gmt":"2024-02-08T05:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=35600"},"modified":"2024-02-07T21:10:18","modified_gmt":"2024-02-08T05:10:18","slug":"faith-data-and-the-human-story-navigating-the-world-through-a-christian-lens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/faith-data-and-the-human-story-navigating-the-world-through-a-christian-lens\/","title":{"rendered":"Faith, Data, and the Human Story: Navigating the World through a Christian Lens"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had been listening carefully to my spiritual directee for most of the last half hour. Let\u2019s call her Paula.<\/span><\/p>\n

Paula had had a lot of challenges in her adult life. Because of this, she was struggling to think of God as a Father she could trust. She felt like it was always \u201cme, myself, and I\u201d as she worked diligently to solve her own issues.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I finally asked her a question my own spiritual director had just asked me: \u201cThose are all \u2018channels\u2019 and they are important. But when you put them all together, what is Life with a capital L? What\u2019s the bottom line, or trump card, when you zoom out and look at the big picture?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWell,\u201d Paula quickly replied. \u201cI know what it\u2019s not\u2026\u201d and before she could dive into a laundry list of what Life is NOT, I stopped her. \u201cLet me push you on that, just a little. What IS it? Don\u2019t think about what it\u2019s not.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Only then did she tell me the story of a father who loved her and cared about her. He had some major faults, but she had formed a secure attachment to him. Paula began to see how she could use that experience to begin to form a secure attachment to her heavenly Father as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

In his book, <\/span>How to Make the World Add Up<\/span><\/i>, Tim Harford quotes Daniel Kahneman in <\/span>Thinking, Fast and Slow<\/span><\/i>: \u201cWhen faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.\u201d [1]<\/span><\/p>\n

Paula was certainly choosing to answer an easier question. And while we weren\u2019t talking about statistics, we were definitely talking about data; the data of Paula\u2019s life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This conversation with Paula illustrated at least several of Harford\u2019s \u201crules\u201d:<\/span><\/p>\n

Rule 1: Search your feelings<\/strong><\/p>\n

Paula\u2019s heart was full of feelings, many of them based in fear, anger, and frustration. We can validate those feelings while still doing our best to turn to God to ask, \u201cAre these feelings worth paying attention to all the time, some of the time, or not at all?\u201d We know from the Spiritual Exercises that God speaks to us through our feelings; it can be valuable data. But our feelings are also sometimes distractions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Rule 2: Ponder your personal experience<\/strong><\/p>\n

Paula has had experiences that have been life-giving. Those are critical data points that she needs to return to. In the Old Testament we are always told to \u201cremember\u2026\u201d God shows up. We need to remember that God follows through on his promises.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rule 5: Get the back story<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sometimes as a spiritual director it is necessary to get the back story. Again, it\u2019s all data. It\u2019s information that can help us determine our relationship to God, to ourselves, and to others. Paula\u2019s back story isn\u2019t all doom and gloom; She needed to see what life-giving elements from her past are also relevant to her current situation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now having shared all this, I am sure you\u2019re saying, \u201cBut that\u2019s not about statistics! We\u2019re reading and writing about statistics this week.\u201d Yes, that\u2019s true. AND\u2026 I believe stats are important data points to consider. But there are many other data points to consider too, as we live life and grow in our relationships.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I do, however, also have comments about statistics. I follow a Substack writer named Ryan Burge who comes out with statistical analyses about church issues every week. Sometimes more often than that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Take, for instance, his post titled, \u201cAre Non-Denominationals Just Evangelicals Without the Institutional Baggage?\u201d [2]<\/span><\/p>\n

Burge points out that in a book titled, <\/span>The Churching of America<\/span><\/i>, \u201ca thorough, data-driven exploration of American religious history\u201d the term \u201cnondenominational\u201d doesn\u2019t appear until page 209 and only appears four times in the entire book.<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, like Burge, I was curious to learn more. So I read on.<\/span><\/p>\n

He uses the General Social Survey for his data for this article and compares nondenoms to Southern Baptists (to represent the Evangelicals). He compares the two groups by demographics, religious beliefs and behaviors, and politics.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My personal experience has shown me that nondenom churches tend to have younger congregations. I\u2019ve also noticed that they tend to be more conservative than mainline churches. I say this because our three young adult children have been struggling to find a church – any church – where women are allowed to be in positions of leadership AND the congregation has young families. They\u2019ve all looked at both mainline churches and nondenoms. The mainline churches meet their progressive values, but don\u2019t have very many young people attending. In the Northeast, it\u2019s VERY hard to find a slightly more progressive church that also has younger members and attendees.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Burge\u2019s data bears all this out.<\/span><\/p>\n

He concludes the article by demonstrating that Southern Baptists have always voted Republican – for the most part – but the nondenoms have been swinging more and more Republican over the last couple of decades. Burge concludes,<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI could write a dozen posts about non-denominationals and only scratch the surface. To reiterate a point that I made in a prior post – they are the future of American Christianity. They are growing rapidly in every part of the United States. They will drive some of the key cultural and political changes in the country for decades to come. We need to understand them better.\u201d [3]<\/span><\/p>\n

On p. 282 Harford writes, \u201c<\/span>Be curious<\/span><\/i>. Look deeper and ask questions.\u201d [4] He later adds, \u201cOne thing that provokes curiosity is a sense of a gap in our knowledge to be filled\u201d. [5] There is certainly a big gap in knowing what\u2019s going on with young people and nondenominational churches.<\/span><\/p>\n

So understanding these churches means getting curious about them. Why do they attract the people they do? And what happens to young people, like our three children and daughter-in-law, who reject such conservative values, but still long for community? Where do they go? Do they find other ways of surviving and thriving as Christians?<\/span><\/p>\n

In his book <\/span>Seek; How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life and Change the World<\/span><\/i>, Scott Shigeoka writes,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAs far back as African hominids two million years ago, curiosity has been the tool that has assisted us with staying alive. It helped us explore uncharted territories, find new food sources, and discover the best methods to communicate with each other. In these ways, curiosity became a critical skill for our survival, something that\u2019s been passed down to us by our ancestors that is now encoded into our brain\u2019s architecture. Today, we are all born curious, and scientists learned this by pulling back the curtain and examining what\u2019s actually going on in our brains\u201d [5].<\/span><\/p>\n

Shigeoka then explains how curiosity triggers the release of dopamine. \u201cThis means that, at a chemical level, we\u2019re being rewarded for our exploration and information-seeking behavior. Researchers generally believe this is because it reduces uncertainty.\u201d [6]<\/span><\/p>\n

I am very curious about what causes young people to continue to attend churches where women – and the LGBTQ+ community – are not permitted to be in positions of leadership. I am concerned that they are not curious enough themselves, to ask the questions that would lead to their own explorations of this topic. Such questions as,<\/span><\/p>\n