Ministries:
Books Seeking a faith that lies beyond religion
LOSING YOUR RELIGION,
FINDING YOUR FAITH By Brett Hoover Paulist Press, 149 pages,
$9.95 |
By TOM BEAUDOIN
There is something quite daring and slightly ironic about a
Catholic writer encouraging others to embrace their faith and
reject their religion. After all, this was a common theme in some
of the classic Protestant theologians of our century. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
summed up a sentiment common to Karl Barth, Emil Brunner and other
neo-orthodox theologians of his day when he speculated from prison
in Nazi Germany that religion was only a garment of
Christianity.
While Brett Hoover uses a similar notion of religion
to give access to the faith of Catholic Christianity, readers will not find
attention to this sort of deep theological reflection in his new book,
Losing Your Religion, Finding Your Faith (Paulist Press, 1998). This lack
of real attention to the riches of Christian and Catholic theological tradition
is both the books greatest strength and its signal weakness.
Losing Your Religion, of course, has no need to dwell on
theological topics that might only alienate inquirers, as its intended audience
is primarily spiritually curious born after the Baby Boom, the under-35 cohorts
(Generation X and beyond) who are, by almost any measure, not
theologically literate -- although if the Lilith Fair and much of popular
culture are indications, they are perhaps quite spiritual.
The books main task is to help young seekers realize that if
they are to foster a lively faith, they need to lose -- that is,
gain a critical distance from -- their religion. As Hoover puts it,
Spiritual growth is always a process of learning and then letting go, of
losing our religion and finding our faith again.
What does Hoover mean by religion? It sounds much like
Bonhoeffers idea of a mere garment worn by faith: The
religion that must be let go is our humanly invented way of looking at
God and the world and a system of practices and institutions that
goes along with our response to God in faith.
The books strategy is to take the road trip as a
metaphor for emergence into spiritual maturity, from a chapter on commitment
(Getting Out of the Garage) to a chapter on discernment
(Mapping My Road of Faith). Gods plan for each life is
interpreted by Hoover as a divine trip-tik, prayer is a cell
phone to the most high, community, tradition, and scripture, are
company on the road and the Holy Spirit is
navigator.
Here Hoover is updating an image from deep within Christian
tradition: the journey as metaphor for finding a way to God. Psalm 84
celebrates, Happy are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are
the highways to Zion. But perhaps even more apposite and closer to
Hoovers own background is not the psalmist but Paul, who told the
pagans at the Areopagus What therefore you worship as
unknown, I will make known to you (Acts 17:23).
In an analogous way, as Hoovers book shows, all of the
spiritual, psychological, even sexual road-tripping of young adulthood (real
and metaphorical) can be oriented toward a fuller life of faith.
The book exudes the authenticity of a common conversation, with a
light and often humorous inflection throughout. It includes observations and
quotations from various young people with whom Hoover, a Paulist priest born in
1967, has worked. The voices of those he quotes and Hoovers own voice
sound real in a way that someone from another generation could not feign.
And we are definitely post-Vatican II here: Doctrine is not the
first concern in the spiritual road trip of life. The bulk of Losing Your
Religion is about being able to live a holy and whole life, avoiding the
psychospiritual addictions and imbalances that plague the younger generations
today (and Im certain will find resonance with older generations as
well): fear of commitment, overcommitment, workaholism, individualism and
codependence.
In carrying forward this message of wholeness as holiness, Hoover
has a gift for reaching his audience with contemporary metaphors, such as
editing God in to our lives and going to the repair
shop when the potholes in ones road trip render one in need of
professional help. Indeed, the prevalence of the repair
shop-as-psychological approach abounds more than metaphorically in this
book. That this road trip of faith is rendered frequently in psychological
language will appeal to many readers.
The absence of any critical distancing of the life of faith from
this psychological language is disappointing but perhaps necessary in order to
reach a generation (such as the one to which Hoover and I belong) that is
immersed in psychological self-understandings. The books commitment to
Catholic sensibilities interpreted in contemporary psychological language makes
it similar to the ubiquitous Chicken Soup for the Soul series that has
grasped the publics attention. But Losing Your Religion is more
cautious and even more demanding than much of the Chicken Soup
approach, due to Hoovers emphases on the importance of community and
tradition.
All the same, the nearly complete absence of regular references to
tradition -- allusion to ideas, rituals, images and so on from the
great panorama of Catholic Christianity -- keeps the book from being as daring
as it might have been. I say nearly complete, because Hoover does
often weave in scripture in his invitation to adult faith. But because
faith, for Hoover, clearly involves life in a community of seekers,
past and present, some access to some of the real richness of the Catholic
tradition would have been appropriate, not only as information but as challenge
to the young spiritual inquirers who will take up this book.
The few real dips into the tradition, such as a quotation from
Thomas Merton here and a snippet from Isaac Hecker there, will leave more than
just the theologically literate reader wanting more substance.
At the same time, painting the Catholic tradition in an accessible
way, attentive to the signs of the times, is itself an ancient
task. In this sense, Hoovers book is quite traditional. My own feeling
was that more explicit discussion of the richness and the ugliness of the
Catholic tradition would end up giving readers a better sense of the
religious garment they will be wearing (and responsible for helping
to mend!) if they choose to take up the Catholic faith.
Tom Beaudoin is working on a PhD in Religion and Education at
Boston College. He is the author of Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual
Quest of Generation X (Jossey-Bass / Simon and Schuster).
National Catholic Reporter, September 25,
1998
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