Explorations in Ecclesiology and Ethnography by Scharen Christian B.;

Author:Scharen, Christian B.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Analysis: Secular Liturgies, Congregational Practices, and Geographical Habits

A key finding here is that when suburban evangelicals discuss the city, they do so without theological reference. In contrast, urban evangelicals tend to reference the city in positive theological terms — in some ways, they actually sound like they have more in common with urban mainline attenders than their fellow evangelicals. And it is also important to remember that on a national scale, urban evangelicals are a significant minority: less than 20 percent of all white evangelicals. In other words, urban evangelicals often talk like “converts”: they have had to reflect on place and their relation to cities in ways that have forced articulation. In contrast, suburban evangelicals have tended to “go with the flow,” as it were; they have not thought about place and thus are more easily shaped and directed by status quo habit-forming practices.

From our ethnographic case study, it seems plausible to assume that at least part of the white evangelical proclivity for the suburbs has roots in theological nonreflection. That is, choices about geographic habits are rarely brought under any type of theological interrogation; in other words, they might not be “choices” at all, but rather the sort of automatic outcomes of habits acquired through practices that operate below the radar of reflection. In short, many evangelicals — like many Americans more generally — fail to think critically about geography and location. In an echo of Emerson and Smith’s argument regarding race, we see from these interviews that evangelical spirituality also has deep ramifications for attitudes regarding the city and geographical choices and habits.

This is instructive for the larger issue we are considering, namely, the adequacy of certain sociological methodologies for making sense of congregations and American religion. If actions are shaped and directed by rather “automated” habits and practices, then we might have lower expectations about what typical social-scientific instruments can tell us. There will be distinct limits to surveys and interviews precisely because they expect articulation, whereas the practices that significantly drive behavior carry implicit, unarticulated orientations to place. Further research on these themes, then, would have to pioneer an ethnography that carefully “reads” the practices of evangelical worship, as well as other suburban “secular liturgies,” in order to determine how our orientation to place, especially cities, is shaped and primed. And such work would require important partnerships between ecclesiology and ethnography to properly understand contemporary religious phenomena.

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