The so-called vibe shift may show cracks in the so-called ‘buffered self’. (Pic: Jackie Kido via Unsplash).
There’s been a lot of discussion this year about a vibe shift away from secularity and a quiet revival of interest in religion. Sociological information shows that cultural expectations have indeed changed.
In his recent review of Thom Rainer’s book, The Anxious Generation Goes to Church, Nick Harsh summarises this change as a rejection of secularism and hedonism. Precisely because “the culture is in free fall,” Harsh believes “the gospel is on the move, especially among Gen Z,” who are a “spiritually hungry generation… increasingly open to spiritual things” and also to the earthly benefits of church, namely, “hope, embodied connection, and stability in a tumultuous time.”
I think Rainer and Harsh are correct. Charles Taylor coined the term ‘buffered self’ to describe how recent Western cultural atheism made people indifferent, apathetic, towards God and the supernatural realm in general. Decades of atheist influence upon the culture have ‘disenchanted’ people. As a culture, the west no longer instinctively believes that any higher, supernatural power stands behind the events of this universe. Instead, people assess their experience through ‘the immanent frame’: literally everything can be explained through natural, material processes. Even personal feelings, like love and existential yearnings for meaning and purpose, are at core nothing more than biochemical and bioelectrical operations in our brains. Richard Dawkins famously concluded that “[t]he universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference”—The Blind Watchmaker, page 133.
In such a universe it’s no surprise that people, especially young people, end up indifferent not merely towards God but towards everyone and everything, including themselves. They’re not only an anxious generation; they’re a nihilistic one, occasionally expressing that nihilism in aggressive, angry ways, destructive to themselves and/or others.
Nihilism makes people miserable. But because God exists, we are rational, purposeful beings living in an ordered, rational, purposeful universe. Rainer and Harsh describe how young people work their way up the logic chain: they discover they need meaning and purpose, and in seeking that meaning and purpose, turn to the divine, supernatural realm.
Harsh interprets this search for meaning and purpose as “an incredible openness to the gospel.” He urges churches to use a variety of methods, online and in person, to “embrace the anxious generation’s spiritual interest, anticipate the mess, and do the work to make disciples.” He also encourages churches to be “prepared for… rapid growth through” “a rapid influx of new,” “first-generation believers [from] a post-Christian culture.”
I’m delighted that the secularised ‘buffer’ is cracking, and I’m all for reaching the seekers that come from such a breakdown. If we rightly discern people’s frames of mind, we can engage with their existing beliefs and aspirations to point them to Christ. The question remains, though—what are people shifting towards? What are they quietly reviving their interest in?
[This is the first in a series of three blog posts on what has been termed the “Vibe Shift” in our culture. The second post will caution us against prematurely presuming the shift is a revival of interest in Christianity properly understood. Because, as we’ll show in the third post, an interest in the supernatural is not the same as openness to the gospel of Jesus Christ.]