Campfire
Image courtesy of Jim Burklo
There is a crisis of loneliness in America and much of the rest of the Western world. I have seen its effects firsthand on a university campus. It's an epidemic in higher education generally, contributing mightily to the mental health crisis among students. There's no worse loneliness than the loneliness of a student surrounded day and night by thousands of peers.
Religion ought to be part of a positive response to this serious problem. But alas, on campus and beyond, it's often part of the problem.
Progressive Christians don't believe that anyone who fails to "accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior" is going to hell. Nor anyone else, for that matter. We understand that other religions – or even no religion at all – might be as good for others as our religion is good for us.
Who's Jim Burklo?
Our religion boils down to divine agape – unconditional compassion for others, whether or not they go with our religious program. For us, friendship is an end in itself. Friendship is deep connection between equals who accept each other "as-is", honoring and respecting their differences. Friendship has no agenda except friendship! And as community-builders, we're devoted to creating contexts in which real friendships can form and thrive.
But the implicit assumption of many evangelical Christians is that it is more important to save people from eternal hellfire than it is to engage in honest, open, equal friendship with them. Evangelical Christian campus ministries train their students to commodify their relationships with non-Christians into full-court-press efforts to convert them. These non-Christian students think they have been befriended, but then they realize that the primary reason they are being treated so warmly and kindly is for the purpose of evangelizing them. If they don't join the fundamentalist club, they're often ghosted. It's a bait-and-switch that is often deeply disappointing to the "evangel-ee".
Of course, evangelical Christians aren't the only ones guilty of fake-friending other people. It's a cultural problem everywhere. In order to rise in status on campus, students make nice with others whom they think can help them get more social media followers or get them admitted to sororities or fraternities. It's no wonder that loneliness is endemic.
One would think that Christianity ought to be a cure for this pernicious pattern, rather than a perpetrator of it.
And that's where progressive Christians can make a difference. It may seem strange to suggest it, but in our churches and campus ministries, we need to teach people, particularly young people, how to make and keep friends. Because of the anti-social consequences of "social" media, because of the transactional nature of so many relationships, because of the alienating nature of our culture, people are losing people-skills. Our churches and ministries need to inspire our people to think deeply about what true friendship is all about – and what it isn't about, too! It starts with asking open-ended questions – and knowing how to really listen to the answers they inspire.
Intentionally, we can create and maintain community that makes friendships more likely to form. We can structure our communities so that people engage with each other one-on-one. One way to do that is to hold "campfires." A campfire encourages people to circle up and go into a contemplative state and open up with each other in deeply personal ways. It gives the eyes a focus while letting what others say sink into the soul. Hold "virtual campfire" conversations, using a video of a campfire on participants' smart phones, placed on a table in the middle of a circle, as the focus. (If your community needs in-depth help in community-building and encouraging friendship, contact my friend and colleague, Cat Moore, for consulting.)
Progressive Christians are well-situated to help move the wider culture in the direction of true friendliness. Let's make the most of our position, and go further in doing our part to end the scourge of loneliness!