There are some generalizations from the survey that are useful in the sense that they offer solid social reasons why pastors should be in touch with today's unmarried parents, in order to provide services for them outside their attendance for Sunday sermons: one, unmarried parents are "twice as likely to live below the poverty line as married parents"; two, unmarried parents are "twice as likely to have dropped out of school as married parents"; three, unmarried parents are "twice as likely" to have reported being in some degree of trouble with alcohol or with illegal drugs; four, unmarried parents "are younger than married parents" by an average of 7 years; and five, forty-three percent of unmarried mothers "have children with at least two men," while just 15% of married mothers "have children with different fathers."
In conclusion, Parke writes that the data from the research helps to dispel the myth that the "children of unmarried parents" are "the products of casual sexual liaisons." On the contrary, she asserts - and this is germane to pastors training for the roles as spiritual leaders - "at the time of birth, many unmarried parents think highly of marriage..." And further, the birth of a child provides a "magic moment" for intervention with unmarried parents, and that "policies and programs should build upon the commitment that unmarried fathers articulate at that time." Those policies and programs could very well be spearheaded by pastors, as a tool to encourage the unmarried couples to become part of the community of church activities.
Martin P. Copenhaver - Growing Up Liberal (Good News in Exile)
In his essay, Martin P. Copenhaver - a minister's son born into a liberal community in 1954, the year "under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance - remembers sermons he heard growing up that were "sprinkled with quotes from virtually every human endeavor" (Copenhaver 8-9). His dad, and other preachers he heard, quoted poets, sociologists, scientists, journalists, to "support the sermon's point." And yes, there was Scripture, but "often these references were made as if they were a summary...the gospel was treated as the capstone of human experience," and he remembers thinking, "how could we not listen to Jesus when other authorities from a variety of disciplines seemed to be saying the same thing in their own ways?"
That approach to the gospel - more philosophical than theological - "was always rather thin," Copenhaver writes, "lulling us into the notion that the world would somehow do our work for us."
But now he says there has been a "seismic shift" in how the church functions; and today's "secular culture makes not the slightest apology for defying or simply ignoring the challenges of the gospel." So, "we need to take up the job that was always ours, the job of becoming a community in which Christian lives can be formed."
What Copenhaver is offering to readers is simple: his experience as a youth taught him the philosophical stance that he carried into adulthood and his own ministry; but today, churches must gather their strongest leaders together, roll up sleeves, and do the work in the community that ties Christianity together with real-world needs by real-world citizens. In other words, we should use what we once believed (our idealism) to build on what we must now believe in - a more worldly, less ethereal, approach to Christianity.
Anthony B. Robinson - Making of a Post-Liberal (Good News in Exile)
Robinson (16) explains in his essay that he once advocated a "civic faith" policy for churches: "civic faith" fellowship meant to Robinson that the church is "the center of civic life," and that the mission of the church is "to ameliorate the human suffering of the city," and moreover, the church should become "the moral conscience of the community." However, Robinson began to see that "the world for which [civic faith] was an appropriate model no longer exists." Christianity, he continues, has been "disestablished" and now exists in a social environment "that is somewhere between indifferent and hostile to it."
The church can no longer think of itself as "the conscience of the community" Robinson asserts, nor can it think it is "the carrier and embodiment of
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