For years, whenever I’ve commented that generations are a useless way to talk about anything serious, I’ve heard that millennials like me don’t want to be labeled by generation.
More recently, all of us born between 1980 and 1985 have been called geriatric millennials. That clickbait term distracts from an insight that its originator, author Erica Dhawan, puts forward: those of us currently in our late thirties and early forties are often called upon to bridge the divide with use of technology in the workplace between digital natives and some* members of older generations. That is a socioeconomic reality, but it doesn’t affect people born in the same period equally, because of differences in our work lives.
A recent New Yorker article by Louis Menand dovetails with my thinking on generations. Menand was born three days after my father in January 1952. Now that it’s an older white man writing against generations as a way of understanding people, maybe we can all take it seriously.
A key point of the article is that though the concept of generations is borrowed from biology, it has no scientific basis. A century ago, sociologist Karl Mannheim named the danger in looking to generational labels rather than class to understand a person or group’s “beliefs, attitudes, and experiences.” Today’s generational thinking is connected to the rise of marketing in the late 1940s and 1950s, following the realization that corporations could “make money marketing merchandise to teen-agers.”
Yet, as Menand adds from recent writing on generations, “the most formative period for many people happens not in their school years but once they leave school and enter the workforce. That is when they confront life-determining economic and social circumstances, and where factors like their race, their gender, and their parents’ wealth make an especially pronounced difference to their chances.”
Menand makes a further point that popular conceptions about generations aren’t historically accurate. That got me thinking about how this maps onto the people of the community I’m researching, which started in 1965. Several of the core members were born between 1928 and 1945—now called the Silent Generation. Menand’s list of public figures of that era—including Muhammad Ali and Gloria Steinem—makes the same argument I could make with these members of the Community of Christ. They were active in politics and justice causes to an unusually high degree, more so than most so-called boomers were, even in the ’60s. Anyone who met Dora Koundakjian Johnson—a central person in the Community, born in 1937—would describe her as anything but silent.
Whenever they were born, Community members had a shared (but not identical) mindset centered on social justice and Christian faith, including an embrace of the liberation theology arising in Latin America in the 1960s and ’70s. Members also grouped around a median educational and income level with few outliers. There were also more than a few examples in stark contrast to the common error in generational thinking that says getting older makes people more politically or socially conservative.
Now, I’m not saying we can’t have fun with generational labels—they still have a place in joking or venting with our friends or work peers. But as I seek to write an accurate historical account of the people who made up the Community, I’m not looking to the year when someone was born to understand who they turned out to be or how they created something extraordinary together.
*It’s as foolish to think older people are averse to new technology as to think younger people crave it. My grandfather Luke Shank, who was born in 1924 and raised in an isolated Mennonite community, loved getting the latest gadget. He was one of the first people I knew to get a cell phone, and he was retired at that point.
Gathered and Scattered book update
My interviews for the book I’m writing on the Community of Christ have included older folks who left before my family joined and members of the youth group that was a huge part of my life in the 1990s. It has been fascinating to find kinship with people I’ve barely met based on this common affiliation. And it’s equally intriguing to hear other perspectives on the relationships and experiences that were formative for me.
Reading and listening
“Renewing my own vision” by Joanne Gallardo has many excellent insights for people in ministry and youngerish people (my term for us; Gallardo and I attended college together) in any vocation claiming our gifts and leadership abilities while working for established institutions.
“Many of us ministering persons bend ourselves in pretzels, trying to be all things to all people, and it can pull our focus from furthering God’s kingdom and vocalizing our prophetic edge. What if we allowed ourselves to be ourselves?”
Advent begins November 28. If you mark the season, as well as celebrating Christmas and Epiphany, but you don’t have Steve Thorngate’s album After the Longest Night, I highly recommend it.
I’ve been loving the Highwomen since a colleague introduced me to the supergroup, so I wanted to check out the new album from one of its members, Brandi Carlile. My favorite track on In These Silent Days is “This Time Tomorrow.” After I listened to Carlile on Spotify, the next artist to pop up was soul-country crossover singer Yola. “Hold On” has gotten me through some tough days lately and I wanted to share it with any of you who need its message today.