Over the past seventy years teenagers and youth ministers have made the churches in America more adolescent in their beliefs and practices. This juvenilization of American Christianity has both revitalized the church and fostered spiritual immaturity. The necessity of appealing to young people by adapting the faith to their preferences opens up the possibility that Christians will stay stuck in adolescent modes of relating to God. It does not help that most new youth ministers are emerging adults who are groping their way through an ambivalent transition to adulthood. Meanwhile, the very nature of adulthood is changing in ways that make the adult journey more similar to the adolescent search for identity, belonging, and emotional comfort. As a result of these factors, Christians of all ages are tempted to engage in life-long, individualistic self-definition projects in which the church is just one more product to consume and spiritual maturity is optional.

To meet the challenges of juvenilization and the new immature adulthood, youth ministry educators need to equip youth ministers to be discerning cultural gatekeepers for the church. They need to develop a more sophisticated, realistic theology of culture that sees the church as of intrinsic value. Youth ministers need to be practical theologians who can use a well-developed theology of spiritual maturity to evaluate and reform their ministry practices.

Creator

• Bergler, Thomas E.

Language

• English

Keyword

• spiritual formation

• spiritual maturity

Date created

• 2021

Related URL

•  https://www.theologymatters.com/articles/church-and-culture/2021/the-juvenilization-of-american-christianity/

Resource type

• Article

Source

• Theology Matters, vol. 27, no. 3, Summer 2021, pp 1-9.

Rights statement

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Bibliographic citation

• Bergler, Thomas E. “The Juvenilization of American Christianity.” Theology Matters, vol. 27, no. 3, Summer 2021, pp 1-9.