Faith Formation in a Secular Age: Responding to the Church’s Obsession with Youthfulness (Ministry in a Secular Age)

by Andrew Root

Publisher:

Baker Academic

, 2017

Overview

The loss or disaffiliation of young adults is a much-discussed topic in the church today. Many faith-formation programs focus on keeping the young, believing the youthful spirit will save the church. But do these programs have more to do with an obsession with youthfulness than with helping young people encounter the living God?

Questioning the search for new or improved faith-formation programs, leading practical theologian Andrew Root offers an alternative take on the issue of youth drifting away from the church and articulates how faith can be formed in our secular age. He offers a theology of faith constructed from a rich cultural conversation, providing a deeper understanding of the phenomena of the “nones” and “moralistic therapeutic deism.” Root helps readers understand why forming faith is so hard in our context and shows that what we have lost is not the ability to keep people connected to our churches but an imagination for how and where God could be present in their lives. He considers what faith is and what steps we can take to move into it, exploring a Pauline concept of faith as encounter with divine action.

Key Features

• Articulates how faith can be formed in our secular age
• Offers a theology of faith constructed from a rich cultural conversation
• Considers what faith is and what steps we can take to move into it

Contents

• Introduction: Bonhoeffer Thinks We’re Drunk

Part 1: A History of the Age of Authenticity: The Challenge of Forming Faith

• 1. The Boring Church and the Pursuit of Authenticity
• 2. The History of Youthfulness
• 3. The Perceived Scam of the Mass Society
• 4. The Rise of the Hippie and the Obsession with Youthfulness
• 5. The Rise of Hip
• 6. Churches Filled with Bobos—the Beasts of Authenticity

Part 2: A Secular Age Meets Paul, and the Youthful Spirit Meets the Spirit of Ministry

• 7. Faith and Its Formation in a Secular Age
• 8. What Is Faith?
• 9. From Membership to a Mystical Union
• 10. The Music of Formation
• 11. Is God a Favor Bestower or Gift Giver?
• Conclusion: Practical Steps to Consider as the Household of Ministry

Praise for the Print Edition

This is not a ‘youth ministry’ book. This is a book that holds up a mirror to the contemporary church to help us see how we’ve come to reflect the culture around us and how that has changed our approach to faith formation. While this shift has had significant impact on youth, none of us are immune. With his typical combination of careful scholarship, pastoral wisdom, and lively prose, Andrew Root not only diagnoses the problem but also constructively charts a way forward. If we care about the future of faith formation, every seminarian should be reading this book.

—James K. A. Smith, Calvin University; author of You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit

Andrew Root has become an iconic figure in youth ministry globally. In him, youth ministry has reached a pinnacle of scholarship, finding its sociocultural identity and theological hope. In this book, he leads readers into the thorny brambles of Charles Taylor’s ponderous philosophical account of secularity, through which youth ministry may be viewed as a fetishized site of authenticity, a front for the modern self—a construction of Deism and Freudian libidinal liberation. With a little help from Taylor’s notion of transcendence, Root offers a corrective to mere ‘authenticity’ in a kenotic theology that views Christian formation not as affiliation but as union vin Christ’ in ministry. More than any living writer, Root has sparked the theological imagination of a generation of youth ministers. In a field of practice notorious for ‘tips, tricks, and techniques,’ this book promises not an easy way forward but one that is faithful nonetheless.

—David F. White, C. Ellis Nelson Professor of Christian Education, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary

Product Details

• Title: Faith Formation in a Secular Age: Responding to the Church’s Obsession with Youthfulness
• Author: Andrew Root
• Series: Ministry in a Secular Age
• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Print Publication Date: 2017
• Logos Release Date: 2023
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• Subjects: Church work with youth; Faith development; Youth › Religious life
• ISBNs: 9781493410316, 1493410318
• Resource ID: LLS:FTHFRMTYTHFLNSS
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-01-05T20:35:44Z

About Andrew Root

Andrew Root (PhD, Princeton Theological Seminary) is Carrie Olson Baalson Professor of Youth and Family Ministry at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, and has written extensively about youth ministry. He is the author of numerous books, including Faith Formation in a Secular Age, The Pastor in a Secular Age, Bonhoeffer as Youth Worker, The Children of Divorce, Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry, and Relationships Unfiltered, and the coauthor (with Kenda Creasy Dean) of The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry.