Stackhouse on Jacobs
#What Jacobs doesn’t happen to mention, however, is the attitude of most Baby Boomers toward Christianity as One of the Things We Definitely Aren’t. That whole generation has defined themselves against their parents, and most of their parents were at least nominally Christian. So who wants to hear more from that quarter? Everybody knows what Christianity is, and says, and does. It’s boring and outmoded at best; oppressive and retrograde at worst. Buddhism or Hinduism? Exotically interesting. Judaism? Well, if it’s Kabbalah, at least, it’s cool. Islam? Dangerous, and so it leads the evening news. Christianity, though? Yesterday’s news and good riddance.
— Waiting Our Turn To Speak Again. Thanks to my friend John Stackhouse for this response to my essay — please read it all. John is explicitly writing out of the Canadian context, and I’m inclined to think that Canada is a generation ahead of the U.S. in this respect. If in Canada the Boomers are firmly against the Christianity of their parents, in the U.S. the Boomers tend to be identified with that Christianity, and it’s their children who rebel in the way noted above. A rough generalization, to be sure, but I think a sound one.