Views From the Edge: Three Books for Your Christmas List
by Craig Kennet Miller, director of evangelism and new congregational development

We commonly describe our society as "secular." Most people in the church use this word to describe the world outside the church. However, to describe American society outside the church as "secular" is to miss the increase of interest in the supernatural and spiritual dimensions of our culture. Three new books illustrate this point.

The first book is Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X by Tom Beaudoin (Jossey-Bass, 1998). (In an ironic twist, the famous writer of The Secular City, Harvey Cox, provides the foreword.) Beaudoin, who studied at Harvard and Boston College, says his generation (Generation X) finds more spiritual content outside the church than within it. Raised on the cultures of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, Generation X finds religious meaning in the stories and images provided by movies, music, fashion, and television. As a generation fully immersed in the electronic arts, Generation X finds meaning in the moment and longs for that which can help them make the connection between the culture they live in and with the God they pursue. Rather than waiting for religious experts and professionals to tell them the meaning of life, the members of Generation X have taken religion into their own hands. For Generation X, religion has to be experiential. What is exciting about spirituality for members of Generation X is discovering truths for themselves and living in a sea of doubt that expects the unexpected.

The second book, Techgnosis: Myth, Magic & Mysticism in the Age of Information by Erik Davis (Harmony Books, 1998), pushes the idea even further. Davis, who has written for Wired, Rolling Stone, and Spin, shares his exhaustive study of the way people have communicated through the centuries. As postmodern culture jumps into cyberspace, Davis points out that what seems to be culmination of scientific rationalism is really the fulfillment of the religious imagination. While the modern age focused on the building of machines, today we focus on the pursuit of information technologies that -- in of themselves -- are the extensions of our beliefs, dreams, hopes, and fears.

A third book, God, The Evidence: The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World by Patrick Glynn (Prima Publishing, 1997), pushes the discussion one step further. Science, which was seen as the enemy of religious belief in the modern age, has discovered God in the postmodern age. Glynn, a confirmed atheist, found himself doubting his own anti-God beliefs as he encountered the newest scientific evidence that points to an intelligence that runs through the whole creation. Instead of viewing life as an accident, Glynn found scientists who were stating the opposite. The only logical explanation for life was that the whole creation's purpose was to produce it. Too many things had to go just right for life to have come about.

All three authors indicate a turning point in our culture's understanding of God and the supernatural. We no longer live in a "secular" universe. Postmodern culture increasingly views the world through a supernatural lens. There is something beyond the material world the modern age sought to conquer and make in its own image. As we seek to communicate in the flourishing cyberspace that grows around us, let us not forget that, in Jesus, the Word became flesh. Let us not forget that through the Word, God created all that we know today and hope for in the world to come.