In chapter 2, he begins to unpack the emergence of adolescence in the United States and how modernistic ideas of relationships supported this emergence. Here is what he says on pages 42-44:
The common use of technical rationality and the slow decay of community and kinship structures of the family led to new emphasis on the self-chosen relationship to proivde individual feelings of intimacy. In a modernized world that undercuts tradition by allowing individuals to chose their own destinies, preexisting social units (like families, communities, tribes, ethnic groups, etc.) no longer have the power to determine social interactions and therefore provide intimacy. Rather, in a modernized world the individual must negotiate all meaningful relationships on his or her own terms. Where in the past people could not escape such social units, in modernized world mobility and diversification allow people the freedom to individually choose friends and lovers.... Relationships are individually negotiated zones of shared intimacy.... In a modernized world, then, the self-chosen relationship the relationship cut free from all social obligations, became the road to intimacy. Only in a modernized world can direct attention be given to self-chosen relationships, because only here is relational interconnection optional and open to selection. Therefore, we could define the self-chosen relationship as the frightening freedom to individually negotiate and sustain all your significant relationships of meaning and identity.... The turn toward the self-chosen relationship in the middle decades of the twentieth century would have extensive ramifications on the adolescent population.
After WWII, society expected adolescents to participate in secondary education. But the high schol functioned as much more than an educational institution, becoming rather a common institution for all citizens in a particular community. Football games, plays and homecoming queens were of community-wide interest, providing a distinct identity in cookie-cutter suburbs throughout the country. The influence of the high school also meant the expansion of teenage life. No longer did adolescents enter into an exclusive peer culture only during the school hours; now the distinct world of the teenager was a twenty-four-hour commitment. Sports practices, weekend dances and community hangouts made leaving the teen world impossible. Adolescents became more than a stage of life, it was a way of life.
Here are some initial thoughts on my part: 1) If Christianity is also a way of life, then are there aspects of the "church", "baptism", and "eucharist" that challenge this adolescent way of life and the way of life of the modern self-chosen relationship? 2) If we are truly being incarnational, how will our pitching our tent among adolescents and this culture shift the way that we are "church" and minister? 3) What aspects of the old world of family and institutions do we need to push for a re-emergence and what aspects of this modern world do we just need to accept as a part of our current situation that won't change?
