The eCrozier

Looking for love in all the wrong places
Johnny Lee on the soundtrack of the film, Urban Cowboy

David Brooks, writing in the New York Times this week, reports on growing religious practices that aren’t part of what’s been “the mainstream” in the U.S. He quotes a recent Pew survey showing that 29 percent of Americans claim a belief in astrology. As Brooks points out, “that’s more than are members of mainline Protestant churches.” My hunch is there’s some overlap with people coming to church for the Eucharist while also trusting in their daily horoscope (covering their bets, as it were). Brooks documents similar growth in Wicca practices as well as quasi-Buddhist “mindfulness” exercises.

This trend, that Brooks is just now discovering, is hardly new. It’s been going on for more than a generation. Over 30 years ago, Robert Bellah and his team published Habits of the Heart, Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Back in 1985, Bellah’s team documented what they saw happening with people’s religious practices. The trend was and is a type of “utilitarian individualism,” which seeks a connection to the divine (some form of religion), while being unencumbered by institutions or any dependency outside oneself. It’s an effort to have “religion” without all the messy relationships present when people are in community. The most telling section of Bellah’s book was about “Sheilaism.” It was the religion practiced, not surprisingly, by a woman named Sheila. She claimed she’d been so hurt and wounded by her relationships in “organized religion” that she now saw her religion as being good and kind to herself, a religion she called “Sheilaism.”

I hope we avoid snarky reactions to Sheila or to those who follow their zodiac signs or make magic potions or who are just trying to be more “mindful.” They’re just trying to make sense of their lives. They’re grasping for the transcendent while being most human (AKA, sinners like us), that is, seeking to control their lives and the world around them. Each of these religious practices promises adherents some connection to the divine (or something spiritual) while also providing a sense of agency over their lives, or so they believe. They see what we see: A world becoming more anonymous and less neighborly, and they’re responding in a way that makes sense to them. But it’s a fool’s errand. Left to our own devices, we can’t have a connection to the divine (if you think about it, it’s pretty arrogant and presumptuous of us to think we can do so by our own power).

We should be compassionate toward such folk for they’re just like us in the longing of their hearts. Like them, we get religion wrong when we try to turn Christianity into our means to reach our desired end. Christianity isn’t about us finding God. It’s actually about God finding us, most particularly when God opened his eyes in Bethlehem. He finished (“It is finished,” Jesus said) finding us on the Cross. None of this was our doing. Like our astrological, wiccan, and mindfulness neighbors, we’re just as susceptible to “looking for love in all the wrong places.” We should stop looking for what we can’t on our own find and trust that God has found us in Jesus Christ.

+Scott