Are you baffled and repelled by Bill Clinton’s and Monica Lewinsky’s outlook and experiences? By contrast, are you more at home in the vanished world of your parents and great-grandparents? 

Something regrettable happened in the 1960s. Something colossal shifted then in America and Europe. Almost an entire generation moved through teens to twenties with no experience of living on farms or ranches or in small towns. People came of age in the 60s without memories of the Great Depression and without a need to work to help support their families.They were weaned on TV, and exhorted by the PLAYBOY philosophy to taste an ever expanding range of instruments of self-gratification and self-destruction. Yes, something hard to grasp happened in the 1960s. It became much tougher for people to be good in the old ways. Monica Lewinsky came of age well after that shift in values. Bill Clinton acts as if he did as well.

The Monica Generation, Generation “X,” Gen-X, (it has many names) largely rejects the assumptions and behavior of our parents and grandparents. What, then, are more traditional and disapproving people to do about Generation X? Shall we withdraw into gated communities? Revitalize the Shakers? Join the River Brethren? Do we, that is, withdraw from a world increasingly Lewinskyesque? Or do we rather stay in touch with and engage Monica and Bill and their cohorts of Generation X and Gen-X wannabees?  Should we love them or hate them? Despise them? Pity them? Write them off as beyond redemption? 

If we were saints, what would we do about Generation X? G.K. Chesterton tells us that saints are people who hate the world so much the way it is that they want to change it. Saints also love the world so much, Chesterton says, that they think changing the world is worth the effort. 

Before we offer our hand to Generation X, we do well first to understand it, where it is coming from and where it likes to hang out. We must be grateful to any Xers of good will who explain themselves to us and hint to us how we might be of service.

We can make a start with the April 1999 issue of U.S. CATHOLIC (on the internet at http://www.uscatholic.org). Its cover shows a communion wafer being placed on a young woman’s tongue which is pierced by a  metal body ornament. The corresponding article (pp.10 -15) is entitled, “Irreverently Yours: A Message from Generation X.” The author is Tom Beaudoin. Tom is a 20-something who, having learned mainly from Protestant Evangelicals, has developed a bold  kind of Catholic ministry in Boston. He is also the author of a 1998 book published by Jossey-Bass, VIRTUAL FAITH: THE IRREVERENT SPIRITUAL QUEST OF GENERATION X. 

Selected insights from Tom’s article in U.S. CATHOLIC may make you want to read more. Although the author serves his congregation in more than one “traditional” way, he regretfully acknowledges that 

“I am constantly fighting the feeling that I am serving a church that is in the process of failing a generation, that is largely unconcerned about unchurched young adults” (p.10) 

If an older generation wants to minister to Tom and generation, then we  need to know more  about it. Its pop culture revolves around television: FRIENDS and SEINFELD and the musical RENT. To an Xer a favorite singer is at least as dear as liturgy or an hour in church. Rock Star Courtney Love recently told SPIN magazine, 

“Ninety-five percent of all popular culture is pornography, [and] 5 percent creates inspiration, new aesthetic, and grace in people” (p.11). 

Gen-X will not abide a God who limits his presence narrowly to one favored, orthodox community. Gen-X is not a generation given to great causes or crusades. It will volunteer for small-scale local projects where individuals can make a perceived difference. Gen-X is suspicious of institutions. It prefers prophets to establishments. Beaudoin cites approvingly the Jewish philosopher Emanuel Levinas who said, 

“the prophet (is) the person least capable of becoming an institution.”

Gen-X is therefore especially attracted to Jesus the prophet. It thinks that Jesus also got the idea of family right. For He did not spend his ministry cultivating or promoting the interest of his blood relatives. Jesus’s sisters and brothers were said to be those who “hear the Word of God and do it.” Gen-X longs for such a family in the sense of like-minded friends, a small face-to-face community with a spiritual purpose.

Tom Beaudoin has heard more than one priest lazily invoke a defeatist theology of Gen-X.: why worry about them? “They’ll come back to us once they get married and want their kids baptized” (p.15). Gen-X, however, let’s face it, is in no hurry  to rush back to institutional churches. The institutions, therefore, have to search for and dialog with Gen-X in the strange places where Gen-X hangs out. 

“Evangelicals are much better than Catholics at recognizing these generational needs and preaching and practicing the gospel in generation-specific language and media” (p.15).

If a lamb gets lost, the Good Shepherd does not sit back and wait for it to find its way back to the flock. Gen-X wants prophets. If we decide that helping Gen-X find God is worth the effort, we must remake ourselves in the image of both  the Best Shepherd and the Greatest Prophet. 
 

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for Asheville TRIBUNE