The Juvenilization of American Christianity

Bergler, a professor at Huntington University, calls the current state of American Christianity consumerist, self-centered, and theologically ignorant. He attributes these characteristics to an excessive focus on the needs of adolescents that eventually leads to congregations filled with spiritually immature adults. The book primarily details the history of church youth programs in the African-American, evangelical Protestant, Methodist, and Roman Catholic traditions, showing similarities and contrasts, such as how and why Catholics and Methodists failed to hold on to youth, while evangelical Protestants retained youth at the cost of restructuring the entire church community and culture to accommodate them. Bergler’s hypothesis about the juvenile nature of contemporary American Christianity and its roots in youth programs beginning in the 1930s is only weakly supported, as he ignores other cultural trends that may contribute to today’s church culture. Yet the book is still a fascinating exploration of the places where Christianity and youth culture have intersected, and will certainly be provocative both for the casual reader and for clergy, who may also appreciate the book’s practical suggestions toward a solution for this problem. (May)