Series: A Biblical Theology of Christian Maturity

“We’re all adolescents now.” So begins the treatise by Thomas Bergler called The Juvenilization of American Christianity. He has written extensively on this topic, essentially lamenting the lack of spiritual maturity in American Christianity due to the shift of priority toward youth ministry during a specific time in history. 

Juvenilization is the process by which the religious beliefs, practices, and developmental characteristics of adolescents become accepted as appropriate for Christians of all ages. It begins with the praiseworthy goal of adapting the faith to appeal to the young. But it sometimes ends badly, with both youth and adults embracing immature versions of the faith.[1]

Juvenilization happened quietly, according to Bergler. Between 1930 and 1950, Americans dealt with the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. Many were worried if the American way of life would survive, specifically in regards to faith and practice as Christians. “Concerned Christians launched dozens of new youth organizations in this period in the hopes of protecting young people from the evil effects of these crises and mobilizing them to make a difference in a dangerous world.”[2]

The 1940s and ‘50s saw the birth of the “teenager” designation that settled into its own cultural demographic in the ‘50s.[3] The cultural turmoil of the 1960s accelerated the process of juvenilization and expanded its influence, but the work begun in the ‘30s and ‘40s had already been firmly established in the American Christian way of life. Things have changed dramatically since the ‘60s. 

Older cultural conceptions of adulthood encouraged responsibility, self-denial, and service of others. In the first half of the 20th century, most people clearly entered adulthood in their teens or early twenties by virtue of getting married, getting a job, and having children. More recently, the passage to adulthood has been delayed and rendered more subjective for most middle-class Americans. Indeed, it is likely that the juvenilization of American Christianity and the emergence of the new immature adulthood have mutually reinforced one another.[4]

Juvenilization happened unintentionally, not as a result of a careful plan or scheme. Many of the leaders of these youth-driven movements had good intentions of extending the kingdom of God and making a gospel difference in the world around them. The unintended effect, however, was an adolescent Christianity almost universally unquestioned as the norm.[5] The life stage of adolescents cannot be blamed for the entire juvenilization process. “Adolescents have good developmental reasons for at least sometimes thinking and acting in an immature fashion.”[6] Adolescent behavior makes sense for adolescents. “But it is harder to explain why adults feel free to neglect the character traits of Christian maturity.”[7] Are the character traits of Christian maturity truly being neglected by adults, or are they even necessary? Isn’t it enough for someone to say they love Jesus? Aren’t “standards” and “character traits” simply synonyms for legalism? 

Todd Brenneman wrote a fascinating assessment of modern American Christianity in his book Homespun Gospel: The Triumph of Sentimentality in Contemporary American Evangelicalism, and in this work he demonstrates that sentimentality has overtaken modern evangelicalism to such a degree that maturity isn’t something Christians think about. Indeed, modern evangelicals don’t think much at all, according to Brenneman. “Too often scholars have paid attention to the mind of evangelicalism, not recognizing that most evangelicals have abandoned the life of the mind in favor of a religious life of emotion.”[8] In favor of the emotional life, Brenneman says evangelicals have committed themselves to sentimentalism in three primary metaphors: the fatherhood of God; the infancy of human beings; the nostalgia of home and the nuclear family. It is the fatherhood of God and the subsequent infancy of human beings that characterizes evangelical sentimentalism most clearly. 

If God is father, it makes sense that contemporary evangelicals would cast human beings as children. It is important to note, though, that the childhood of humanity is constructed as an early childhood. Human beings in the minds of evangelical sentimentalists are often little children. There is rarely a place for adult children in modern evangelicalism.[9]

Juvenilization and sentimentality have combined to assault the Christian ideal of spiritual maturity and a response is necessary. The current evangelical climate described by these insightful authors is far from the biblical picture of spiritual growth found in the Old and New Testaments. Scripture clearly demonstrates that spiritual growth is God’s will (1 Thess. 4:3), and a pursuit to be undertaken by every believer (Heb. 12:14). 

The goal of this series is to provide a biblical theology of spiritual maturity in order to demonstrate its priority in Scripture and necessary role in the life of the local church. This will be accomplished through the exploration of the theological process of sanctification through a general survey of distinctions and definitions regarding sanctification itself. In many ways, the process of sanctification is synonymous with spiritual maturity, but in other ways they are dissimilar. Secondly, the extent of sanctification will be biblically elucidated in order to demonstrate the holistic nature of spiritual maturity. Third, once the definition and extent of sanctification are known, the means of sanctification will be examined as well, in an effort to explain the manner in which spiritual maturity occurs. Put simply, sanctification must be progressing. All believers should be maturing spiritually. If we’re all truly adolescents now, we shouldn’t be.

Notes:

[1] Thomas E. Bergler, The Juvenilization of American Christianity (Grand Rapids, Mich: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co, 2012), 5.

[2] Ibid, 5.

[3] “Although it may seem that the teenagers of the 21st Century bear little resemblance to those of the ‘50s, crucial similarities remain in the structure of adolescent life and its relationship to the church. And one of the most important traits is the aversion to growing up.” From “When Are We Going to Grow Up? The Juvenilization of American Christianity,” ChristianityToday.com, accessed November 16, 2015, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/june/when-are-we-going-to-grow-up.html.

[4] Bergler, The Juvenilization of American Christianity, 6.

[5] “Adolescent Christianity is any way of understanding, experiencing, or practicing the Christian faith that conforms to the patterns of adolescence in American culture. Adolescents are people in a particular developmental life stage, who occupy particular positions in the social and economic structures of society, and whose lives provide important raw materials for creating meaning in American culture. Each of these aspects of adolescence shapes the process of juvenilization in the church.” Ibid, 8.

[6] Ibid, 18.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Todd M. Brenneman, Homespun Gospel: The Triumph of Sentimentality in Contemporary American Evangelicalism (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 4.

[9] Ibid, 6-7.