theopraxis

Coffeehouse Theology: A Great Intro to Contextual Theology

2008-10-15T23:18:21-05:00

A few years ago, I met a guy named Ed Cyzewski in an etrek course at Biblical. Ed was just starting work on a book that he hoped would take the emerging / missional church conversation and make it presentable and digestible to the people who would arguably most benefit from it but who were most certainly least represented: average churchgoing Christians. Now, almost four years later, I'm holding in my hands the fruits of his labor: Coffeehouse Theology.

Ed posted a few comments of his own in this article on the emergent village website:

Having participated in the broader emerging church conversation on reimagining faith, culture, and practice in today's context, I noticed a need during my seminary days for a book that provided a synthesis of mission, culture, theology, and Christian living accessible for just about everyone in the church. Not only did I want to bring the ideas of various thinkers together in one place, showing how they related to one another, I also wanted this book to be accessible for a reader who wouldn't know a metanarrative if it hit him in the face-or marginalized his perspective for that matter.

As you may know, if you've been reading this site for any length of time - do I still have any regular readers out there? ;) - I have a deep interest in contextual theology and a driving conviction that all theology is contextual. That's a contentious statement for some, but for me it's incontrovertible. However, contextual theology isn't exactly a household term, even if it's getting a certain degree of buzz lately. So, if one is convinced both that everyone does theology and that all theology is contextual, what's the best approach to taking this conversation to the next level with the people with whom we serve and worship and live?

Early in the book, Ed has this to say:

In Coffeehouse Theology, I want us to think about culture in the broadest of terms: the values, language, and customs of a nation or people group. Within each nation, culture evolves over time, customs change, and people adopt different values...While subcultures exist, examining the larger features of our times will help us most as we seek to understand God in a particular time and place. (p. 55)

I could say a lot of things about this book, but perhaps the thing I like most about it is that it takes a conversation that began largely within a protest movement and reframes it so that it becomes inviting rather than threatening. Let's be honest - as someone who's been around the emerging church movement for quite some time now, it can be intimidating, particularly for folks who are a part of the movements being protested. Let me put it this way - if one's understanding of the gospel is something along the lines of the four spiritual laws and another comes along and critiques that, the natural reaction is going to be to assume that the gospel is being attacked - even if the critiques are valid. Contextual theology provides a framework for discussing the difference between our understanding of the gospel and the gospel itself. When done properly, it can be an invitation - both to understand one's own perspective better, and to be open to constructive critique of that perspective. And Coffeehouse Theology does just that - invites the reader into a conversation about context and culture, and how they shape and frame our theology. It's unassuming, it's warm, it's personal, and it's full of stuff that opens the door to discussions that I think are hugely important.

Mic Check

2008-10-15T20:11:38-05:00

...Is this thing still on?

Trying to get back into the swing of things - it's been good to take time off. In honesty, I can't say I missed the blogosphere - not sure if the feeling's mutual. ;) I think I have over 2500 unread posts in my reader - if I missed a meme or two, it wasn't because I was avoiding anyone specifically. So why get back in the saddle? A few reasons - one, I've run across a few good resources that I want to discuss, and two, my appetite for theology is picking up again, largely due to a recent event at Biblical Seminary, details of which I'll share in the next few days. And what have I been doing with myself in the meantime? House hunting, gaming, family vacation, soccer, keeping up with maintenance at home, you know - life in general, nothing flashy or spectacular, just familiar and normal - and that's ok with me.

Blog Hiatus

2008-07-17T19:59:50-05:00

The blog isn't dead, just really low on the priority list at the moment. We're in the process of selling our home (again) and a major project just wrapped up at work. I'm going to officially declare theopraxis on hiatus until October 1 - I'll be back then, hopefully with renewed energy and new thoughts brewing. (I'm also not reading blogs in the interim - I need a break anyway.) See you in October!

Bridging Connections and Suburban Isolation

2008-06-03T20:11:00-05:00

It's been two months since I've posted anything about Bowling Alone, so let me point you to my previous posts which can all be found here. To get back into the groove, I want to reflect on an underlying dynamic that Putnam discusses at length - the distinction and relationship between bonding and bridging social capital:

Of all the dimensions along which forms of social capital vary, perhaps the most important is the distinction between bridging (or inclusive) and bonding (or exclusive). Some forms of social capital are, by choice or necessity, inward looking and tend to reinforce exclusive identities and homogeneous groups. Examples of bonding social capital include ethnic fraternal organizations, church-based women's reading groups, and fashionable country clubs. Other networks are outward looking and encompass people across divers social cleavages. Examples of bridging social capital include the civil rights movement, many youth service groups, and ecumenical religious organizations...Moreover, bridging social capital can generate broader identities and reciprocity, whereas bonding social capital bolsters our narrower selves...Bonding social capital provides a sort of sociological superglue, whereas bridging social capital provides a sociological WD-40. Bonding social capital, by creating strong in-group loyalty, may also create strong out-group antagonism, as Thomas Greene and his neighbors in New Bedford knew, and for that reason we might expect negative external effects to be more common with this form of social capital. Nevertheless, under many circumstances both bridging and bonding social capital can have powerfully positive social effects. (p. 22-23)

Putnam points out that it isn't necessarily easy to reconstruct data on these two types of social capital, that we can only really make inferences from the data that are available. Still, one is left with the impression that it is bridging capital that has suffered the most in recent years. And, in truth, that's intuitive - it makes a certain amount of sense that the social connections more easily lost are those that are more challenging to maintain. In addition, the venues for bridging connections in today's culture are most often those that are most transient - affiliation with a political party, for example.

I think that this loss of bridging connections is connected to the decline of geography as a defining characteristic of a community. Think about it this way - my neighbors are the people in my social sphere with whom I am least likely to have commonality - the only thing that connects us is geography, and to a certain extent socioeconomic status. In my neighborhood are people of varying ethnicities, political persuasions, religious beliefs, interests, and life history. What do we have in common? Primarily that we live in a particular community (and to some extent that we can afford to live in a certain community). And, out of all of those neighbors, I know maybe half a dozen, and of those we are really connected with only one family in any real sense.

Our relationships have shifted to become more of a social network connected by shared interests or identity. In other words, the connections that I think most of us in suburban contexts hold are primarily bonding relationships - connections that are a result of commonality. I know and interact with people with whom I have much in common. And I rarely encounter those with whom I don't in any meaningful way.

What does this mean for a missional faith in suburbia? It means, primarily, that the most radical of missional imperatives - things like loving the enemy, showing hospitality to the stranger, and demonstrating unity in the cruciform love of Christ - are precisely the imperatives that are most difficult to practice in a suburban context.

Technorati Tags: Bowling Alone, suburbs

The Church & Suburbia Seminar w/ Al Hsu

2008-05-30T20:14:44-05:00

Time to get off my duff and post something. My friend Todd is hosting a seminar with Al Hsu, author of The Suburban Christian as well as a thoughtful and interesting blog. The Suburban Christian is an excellent book that I recommend heartily - I'm very much looking forward to this event. More info and registration details can be found here.

Risk: Black Ops - Why Mine Won't Hit eBay

2008-04-24T00:57:05-05:00

On a (thankfully) lighter note, I mentioned a while back that I'd scored a copy of Risk: Black Ops, a game that just oozes cool out of every one of its tiny cardboard pores. I had a chance to play it a few weeks ago, and I was suitably impressed. This game is engaging, fast, light, and fun. It still maintains the general mechanics of Risk that will be familiar to anyone who's ever turtled in Australia, but it puts some significant spins on those mechanics and adds a few new tweaks. The result is - well, frankly, it's excellent. What I've found interesting, though, is the small number of copies that have started to hit eBay. I've been following the auctions, mostly out of a sense of curiosity but perhaps with an eye towards persuasion - what price would copies of this command, given that there are a mere 1,000 in existence? And would it be enough to convincer me to part with mine? Well, I wasn't disappointed - the first round of auctions closed over the weekend, with each one ending over $500. Two months ago, if you'd have told me that I'd be holding in my hands a copy of Risk valued at over $500, I'd have probably laughed at you, but here we are.

Still, mine won't hit the auction block, at least not yet. I'm enough of a collector to know that if I dump this copy, then I can forget about ever getting my hands on one again. And I do think it's worth keeping, even if Risk has been long surpassed by others on my list of favorite games. This version is simply stunning visually - it has an ultra-modern, minimalist approach that just works.

Ok, so it looks fantastic - how does it play? As I've already mentioned, it's an overwhelming improvement over original recipe Risk. If you've ever played the game, you're probably familiar with some of Risk's characteristic problems - it's too random, it's too dependent on dropping cards for a big army, it's too easy to get eliminated, and overall, it's just too long. I'm happy to report that the new version fixes many of these flaws. The big changes:

Objectives: Objectives are probably the biggest change. There are eight objectives available for each game, ranging from things like "Conquer North America" to "Control two of your opponent's capitals" to "Capture at least ten territories in one turn". Completing an objective will award you with a bonus, such as an extra die for attack or defense or a free movement during your turn. Also, completing three objectives wins the game.
Capitals and Cities: Cities are placed randomly at the start of the game. When determining the number of troops that are drafted at the beginning of a turn, each city counts towards the total territories controlled (in other words, it's now territories plus cities instead of just territories). This essentially doubles the strategic value of territories with a city. Also, each capital adds one to your total (in other words, capitals count as three territories for determining number of troops). This means that every game will be different because the map changes by virtue of city and capital placement.
Cards: Cards now show either one or two stars. No more collecting sets - you can trade cards in at any time, receiving an amount of troops proportional to the number of stars on the cards. This means that there's no longer a strategic advantage to being the last player to turn in cards.

The net effect of these changes is to make the game much more aggressive. Players will have to attack and take territories, and the rewards for doing so are significant. More aggressive play, plus the addition of the objectives, results in a much tighter, fast-paced game that can realistically be played in 60-90 minutes.

A new retail version will be published this summer using these same rules. If you're at all a fan of Risk, and especially if you've played and enjoyed any of the variants (2210, Star Wars, etc), then I recommend giving this one a try - even if you can't get your hands on the uber-cool Black Ops version. For my buddies and I, it's transformed Risk from a game that would always get preempted by something more meaty to something that can serve as a quite satisfying warmup to, say, War of the Ring. Risk is finally back in my rotation.

Technorati Tags: games, risk black ops

2008-04-23T20:44:28-05:00

I'm back - what an insane couple of weeks. Thanks to everyone who shared thoughts and prayers - it was appreciated, even if I haven't been in the frame of mind to say so. We're starting to get back to normal, or at least a semblance thereof. I don't think that we'll ever quite be the same after this. Two weeks ago I had one of the worst experiences of my life, and I suppose that what's starting to happen is that I'm adapting my perception of normal.

Well, anyway - enough about that. We still have questions that need to be answered; we don't even know the baby's gender yet. Hopefully we'll have those in the next few weeks and gain at least some sense of closure around this whole mess. It's been utterly surreal - two weeks ago we were still trying to decide on names.

2008-04-10T09:52:17-05:00

It's been a long week. We learned Tuesday that we lost the baby. We're in complete shock - there was no indication that anything was wrong. I'll be away from the blog for a bit - please pray for us in this difficult time.

Entertainment and the Suburban Condition

2008-04-01T12:01:06-05:00

Finally (!) delving back into Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, I want to dig into a phenomenon that Putnam argues is the most significant shaping influence in terms of social capital in modern American life - namely, electronic forms of entertainment and, specifically, television. This particular chapter of the book is both enlightening and depressing, if not entirely surprising. Putnam offers devastating analysis and commentary that relentlessly links television with civic disengagement in measure after measure. In conclusion, he writes:

Americans at the end of the twentieth century were watching more TV, watching it more habitually, more pervasively, and more often alone, and watching more programs that were associated specifically with civic disengagement (entertainment, as distinct from news). The onset of these trends coincided exactly with the national decline in social connectedness, and the trends are most marked among the younger generations that are...distinctively disengaged. Moreover, it is precisely those Americans most marked by this dependence on televised entertainment who were most likely to have dropped out of civic and social life - who spent less time with friends, were less involved in community organizations, and were less likely to participate in public affairs. (p. 246)

I suppose I should be clear that what Putnam is discussing here -and in the book generally speaking - is not in any way isolated to suburbanites. Obviously the influence of electronic media pervades all demographics and communities in our society. Putnam, in fact, relates a story from a town in northern Canada where, due to a topological anomaly, television signals were unavailable until the mid-1970's. This community was studied alongside two neighboring communities that had ready access to television signals. Once television became available, this community demonstrated an immediate, measurable decline in residents' participation in community activities. The other two communities were used as a control to demonstrate that the only variable in play was, in fact, television.

But my concern is specifically with the way in which electronic media interact with suburban culture. I'm convinced that there is a reciprocal relationship between the isolating effects of suburban geography, the counter-competent effects of chronic outsourcing, and the demotivating effects of electronic entertainment. Put simply - these three elements of suburban life reduce the ability, desire, and personal connections needed to make meaningful change in ourselves and our communities. An example perhaps will help to clarify what I mean - take sports, basketball for instance, something that I used to play regularly with friends in high school and college. I haven't played basketball in years, and if I thought of starting again, I'd face three hurdles: it's easier to get my basketball "fix" by flipping over to ESPN, lack of play has atrophied my skills (such as they were), and I don't know anyone else in my neighborhood who would like to get together for a few hoops. There it is - isolation, outsourcing, and entertainment all combine to keep me off the courts. And if I wanted to translate this into the area of Christian faith - well, I don't think I'd have much difficulty, would I?

But here's what I'm currently starting to wonder - would a change in one of these categories be enough to overcome the inertia that keeps me in a rut (in any particular area of my life, but faith in particular) and push me forward towards action? That's the question that I want to take up next.

Technorati Tags: Bowling Alone, suburbs, entertainment

News Update

2008-03-26T13:01:42-05:00

What a crazy couple of weeks! As you can no doubt guess from my news last week, we're scrambling to get things in order. We've put our house on the market, so most of my spare time has been spent either preparing our home for prospective buyers or searching for a new home with my wife. It's not the best time to sell, but it's a good time to buy, so we're feeling perhaps less nervous than we were a few months ago. Also, most of the work is done on our place, so we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. As is probably obvious, our home search has taken on a new sense of urgency - our little two bedroom townhouse is tight with three boys; I can't imagine packing a fourth child into the mix.

More updates of course as we get them - we do want to find out the gender, since at this point its less a novelty for us and more a question of how much stuff we'll need to buy. A girl would be completely new territory for us. Please, if you would, pray that our house search goes well, that our current place sells in a timely manner, and that the pregnancy continues to be smooth.

News

2008-03-18T13:19:40-05:00

Cocoa and Compassion

2008-03-03T23:29:05-05:00

I wanted to post this for Valentine's Day but didn't get an opportunity. Fortune recently ran a fantastic article on the economics of chocolate - fantastic, not in the sense of a good-news story, but rather as a multifaceted look at the complexities of improving the lives of those in the developing world that provide us with many of our resources, in this case, the farmers in the Ivory Coast who produce cocoa. It's a sobering look into the realities that govern how hard it is to actually affect real change. Some excerpts:

Outside Sinikosson, El Hadj Madi Sankara cultivates 27 acres of cocoa, from which he usually harvests ten tons of beans, earning about $9,000 a year but remaining deeply in debt. Sankara and his 11-year-old son, Ibrahim, are preparing a large mound of cocoa pods for processing. "I want to help my father," says Ibrahim, standing on a pile of pods, toying with his machete. "I need to learn how to be a farmer." His sentiment captures the complexity of the child-labor issue here: Typically it is poverty that compels child labor, not greedy overseers.

Soon a group of young men and boys join the work. Among them are 8-year-old twins Hassan and Hussein. The boys, the children of a neighbor, are helping Sankara make his harvest on time. Their payment won't be in cash, but in reciprocal help from Sankara's family to their father. Not one of the kids goes to school. "We're all doing a hard job," says Sankara, "but we do not get a just price."

The farmers in Sinikosson do not know that Cargill buys their beans, but other farmers in the area are on painfully intimate terms with the Minnesota company. In the town of Thoui, members of a local farmers' cooperative say that borrowing money from Cargill has trapped them in debt and forced some of them to take their kids out of school and put them to work. "There is no other way we can buy fertilizer or feed our families throughout the year," says N'guessan Norbert Walle, a former president of the cooperative.

If farmers can't pay back their debts, they risk arrest. When Walle ran the co-op, his manager was jailed, he says, on orders from Cargill. The arrested manager, Lucien Adje, a former accounting student, says he was taken to the port city of San Pedro and put in a small cell. "You had to do everything in one place - you know, urinate, defecate. I couldn't eat much, it was so filthy."

Farmers describe these efforts [to eliminate child labor] as more akin to intimidation than to education. "People are worried that America will not buy our cocoa anymore," says Julien Kra Yau, director of a farmers' cooperative in Thoui. "That would be very bad." Adds the co-op's treasurer, Raymond Kouasse Kouadio: "It would be a total catastrophe!"

There is fair-trade chocolate on the market, but it accounts for no more than 1 percent of global supply - and the movement has little traction in Ivory Coast. A more effective way to combat child labor would be for the government of Ivory Coast to invest some of the revenue it gets from high taxes on cocoa exporters in education and social services to help poor farmers. But the government of Ivory Coast is ranked among the most corrupt in the world by Transparency International, a nongovernmental watchdog group. And it seems happier making excuses than changes.

I don't have much in the way of commentary on this. I think it's a view that perhaps those of us who are interested in economic justice need to hear. There simply isn't an easy solution - I was particularly struck by the worry that we will stop purchasing their products. Do we at times do more damage than good by refusing to purchase certain products? I simply don't know. The bottom line is that the farmers need a fair price, but the corruption between them and the end market makes such an arrangement difficult at best.

I like the way forward offered by such businesses as One Village Coffee. Here's a quote from their website:

Not only do we strive to create an exceptional cup of coffee in every roast, but we also believe our coffee is only as good as the communities we support. And so as a growing coffee company, we’re committed to helping communities both locally and internationally.

And it begins with raising our standard for coffee beyond just taste. It means supporting and partnering with organizations doing unique community development projects around the world.

I'm also a big fan of Kiva. In case you've been living under a rock, Kiva is a microfinance organization that connects lenders in the developed world with entrepreneurs in the developing world. The theory is that small loans, often $25 or so, spread out among many people can change the environment for business owners who just need a little help. It's a great way of connecting people who can afford to spare a bit of cash with those who need it in a way that offers dignity to both. That kind of creative imagination, pairing a business opportunity with compassion and integrity, is what is needed to move past our current, often destructive, models.

Technorati Tags: economics, justice, chocolate

Surprise Package

2008-02-28T23:30:14-05:00

Well, ok, not entirely a surprise - I did some digging and turned up a fantastic little gimme. The surprise was that it actually showed up today - I didn't really think this was going to work.

Let me take a step back for a second. Regular readers will probably know that I'm a fairly hardcore gamer - board games, that is, and not your momma's board games either. But I cut my teeth on stuff you've probably played, stuff like Risk. My buddies and I used to sink hours and hours of time into Risk, and for a long time I thought it was a fantastic game - that is, until I discovered more complex fare. Risk hasn't been in regular rotation around here for quite some time.

That may be about to change - I got my hands on a preview copy of the new version of Risk that's coming out this summer. The preview version is called Black Ops, and it's seriously one of the most beautifully designed games I've ever seen. The whole board is done in black and gray, with just enough color to make all of the territories really pop. The graphic design on the cards and box is fantastic. It's simply stunning. And the gameplay has been completely revamped as well; it now centers on completing objectives, such as conquering a certain amount of territories or a particular continent. It looks quite promising, and it's been garnering its share of good reviews thus far as well. I can't wait to get this one on the table.

But the best part is this (from the card that came attached to the box):

Technorati Tags: Risk Black Ops

Professionalization and the Suburban Condition

2008-02-23T19:11:25-05:00

I mentioned in my last post on Putnam's Bowling Alone that I wanted to discuss a phenomenon that I'm calling professionalization. This isn't something that Putnam necessarily addresses directly, but rather I think it's tangentially related to both isolation and entertainment, which I plan to discuss next. This particular concern fits nicely at this point because I think it both follows from and reinforces the trend towards isolation that I discussed previously. By "professionalization", I'm referring in a general sense to what seems to be an increasing trend away from doing things for oneself and instead toward hiring a third party to do things for us or in our stead.

What put me onto this particular train of thought was Putnam's discussion of lawyers and the shift from informal to formal means of conflict resolution and reinforcement of norms. My thought is that we are becoming a society that is less able to disagree respectfully and resolve conflict amicably, primarily because we have outsourced our disagreement and conflict resolution to a professional class of persons who do these things for us. In other words, as we lean more and more heavily on lawyers and other formal means for resolving differences, we as a society gradually lose the ability to do so for ourselves, much like a muscle that atrophies due to lack of use. This prompted me to think of other ways in which professionalization has crept into our lives - and I'm surprised that, the more I think about this, the more confident I am that this is in fact occurring in many ways.

Think, for example, of the decline of the home cook. Gone are the days when a meal was a labor of love, or at least a labor of craft and skill. Go into any supermarket and you'll be confronted, not with aisle upon aisle of fresh ingredients, but with mountains of prepared and packaged foods, waiting merely to be reconstituted into insipid piles of carbohydrates with chemically enhanced flavors. Cooking is more and more a hobby instead of a necessity - we've outsourced our food preparation in the interests of expedience. And, I would wager that this trend is more pronounced among younger folks. According to Food Technology magazine, fewer than one third of all meals in America are still prepared from scratch:

While three-quarters of all adults ate last night’s meal at home, the number of meals prepared at home continues to decline, falling from 64% in 2003 to 58% in 2005 (MSI, 2005). “Scratch” dinners prepared at home dropped another 7% over the past two years and now account for only 32% of all evening meals. One quarter (26%) of last night’s dinners used convenience foods and 17% used restaurant/supermarket take-out, while 23% were eaten at a restaurant.

Think of it this way - for how many people does the process of making cookies begin with opening a box of premixed dry goods? Does tomato sauce begin with a tomato, or a can opener? When was the last time that you took your bread from an oven instead of from a bag? Even our salad comes in convenient packages - we can't even be bothered to cut our own lettuce anymore. But I think we lose something of ourselves when we outsource even our most basic of necessities, something that makes us human. We become disconnected from our very selves, unable to even participate in sustaining ourselves from one day to the next, passive recipients of whatever lowest common denominator has made it through the assembly line and onto our plates. We cede power over our day to day existence to a faceless corporate entity that is most concerned with market share and protecting a brand.

I know there are reasons for this - I know them myself. I am the primary cook in our house, so I bear most of the burden of meal preparation. And there are nights when a pizza just fits the bill. But I try to resist, and I try to do as much from scratch as possible - it's almost a spiritual practice for me, one that I try to maintain as I'm able. But this shift towards professionalization is bigger than just cooking. We could discuss the same trend in any of a dozen different spheres of life. Besides the discussion of lawyers, Putnam also discusses it in the context of social engagement - meaning that, for most people, social action has become more about writing a check than about actually working to implement change. We are chronic outsourcers - we want someone else to do our stuff, and we'll pay good money for them to do so. And people of faith should absolutely recognize this trend - we see it every day as folks outsource spiritual development.

That's a tangent that I'm dying to engage right now - but I want to place a few more pieces in the puzzle before I go there. It's part of a bigger picture that frames where we are, and I want to resist making it the whole scene.

Technorati Tags: Bowling Alone, suburbs

Isolation and the Suburban Condition

2008-02-12T11:16:55-05:00

Continuing our discussion of Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, I want to reflect for a bit on the connection between suburban isolation and the loss of social capital that Putnam describes. While Putnam is clear that this phenomenon is by no means limited to suburban communities, he also discusses in detail the ways in which the suburban condition participates in the decline of social capital through mobility and sprawl. He concludes that suburbanization is a factor in three ways:

Time - Sprawl associated with suburbanization results in valuable time consumed in commuting, primarily alone.
Social homogeneity - Suburbanization creates isolation between persons and families of different backgrounds. In other words, when we choose our neighbors, we are more likely to choose neighbors that are much like ourselves. Suburbanization represents in large part the end result of such self-selection.
Community "boundedness" - This is Putnam's way of discussing what I have elsewhere called the sense of "place" that a community has, its sense of itself as a community. In a vague sense, it describes the sense of commitment and "neighborliness" that a group of geographically located people feel towards one another. It's hard to put into words - but I know exactly what he's talking about here. Suburban living is designed primarily for the pursuit of privatized, personal self-fulfillment and contentment, often in opposition to community well-being.

In short - the suburban ethos drips with isolation. The interconnectedness that characterizes a community with robust social capital finds no purchase in the craggy heights of suburbia, each home a castle surrounded by a moat and walls.

As my wife and I are currently attempting to move to a larger house, I've become cognizant of how even the architecture of the suburban home is oriented towards isolation. Others have remarked on the demise of the front porch and its significance for American social interactions. I'm particularly intrigued by a further move: the emphasis on private spaces in the current market, particularly kitchens, bathrooms, and bedrooms. The elements of a home that are most in demand and most upgraded are also those elements that are most private. In spite of the fact that we Americans seem to be doing less actual cooking, a well-apportioned kitchen is at the top of most buyers' lists. Increasingly, a master suite is also viewed as a necessity, including a private bathroom that is distinct from that used by the rest of the family. In other words, the center of the home - the places in which we invest time, money, and emotion - is increasingly moving farther and farther to the interior, to the extent of even introducing isolation from members of our own families. This is, of course, to say nothing of the desire to have a yard that is hidden from the view of the neighbors, or the prominence of the television in our spatial arrangements. Simply put - the suburban experience is oriented towards privatization, even down to the way in which we position our furniture.

The corresponding trend, then, is most certainly disconnectedness from one's neighbors. Not only do we no longer know our neighbors on any level more than a first-name greeting, we most certainly do not interact with them in any meaningful sense. And, in truth, it is becoming increasingly likely that we no longer even know our neighbors' first names. In the cul-de-sac where we live, my wife and I know the names of six of our roughly sixteen or so neighbors - and we've lived in our home for nearly ten years. Only four of those six have actually been inside of our home. In truth, nearly all of our original neighbors have since moved, leaving us as one of the longest-tenured resident families in our part of the development. This only serves to complicate matters further. Suburban culture lives by the words of the Robert Frost poem, "Good fences make good neighbors."

What has happened in parallel with these trends is a corresponding movement from informal to formal enforcement of norms in suburban life. (Whether this relationship is causative or not is unclear.) Things that were once accomplished through relationships and networks are now accomplished through rules and legalities. If my neighbor's property begins to deteriorate, I can do several things to encourage him or her to pick up the slack: I can approach him or her directly and mention my concern (informal), or I can invoke some sort of authority, such as a homeowner's association, to do so in my stead (formal). Informal ties are reflections of strong social capital - they grease the wheels of society, so to speak. Formal mechanisms reflect a lack of trust and neighborliness and serve in some sense as a substitute for relationships and connection. The shift from informal to formal in our society is not an encouraging sign, and is evidenced by our increasing reliance on lawyers to serve as our intermediaries. Putnam has this to say:

Throughout the American society and economy, beginning around 1970, informal understandings no longer seemed adequate or prudent. The suddenness of this change and its timing seem uncannily similar to trends in other measures of social capital that we have examined. Spouses, neighbors, business partners and would-be partners, parents and children, pastors and parishoners, donors and recipients - all of us abruptly began to demand to "get it in writing." (p. 147)

The problem is that most quality of life endeavors work best when supported by informal, not formal, ties. Formal mechanisms carry significant overhead, as they rely on external structure. In addition, they create less of a reciprocal effect - there simply isn't the sense of shared well-being and neighborliness that undergirds informal ties. They lack the intrinsic motivation that comes with trusting relationships. In other words - I am more likely to do the right thing when I view that thing as a reflection of my relationship with another person, as opposed to a mandate from a faceless entity. Conversely, I am more likely to ignore a request or mandate when it comes from an impersonal representative or group. Deterioration of social capital directly results in a deterioration in the quality of life of a neighborhood, as Putnam demonstrates excellently (and relentlessly).

I'll return to this shortly - I think this has direct and massive implications for the task of communities of faith in suburbia. First, though, I want to comment on a related trend, something I describe as the increasing professionalization of American culture.

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