Brand Loyalty  

Richard LintsMarch 02, 2010 

A Colin Hansen article in CT (“Mobile No More” May 4, 2009) referenced Stephen’s Gospel Coalition talk which in turn tried neither to romanticize contemporary urban mobility nor simply decry it.   Stephen wisely thought about both the dangers (idolatries) and the opportunities (blessings) of urban mobility. The primary opportunity is that urban dwellers are more open to new churches and to new religious encounters. Looking at the dangers, Stephen pointed at the well known suspects of autonomy and escapism. Mobility introduces a certain quality of life that reinforces a willingness to new encounters but not necessarily encounters that have a deep impact. At least not necessarily. 

This led me to recall the massive survey of religion in American life by the Pew Forum on Religion (Landscape Survey, Feb-June 2008). It looked at church mobility and its primary conclusion was that church commitment sits lightly on those who attend church. The study told us that Americans shop for church as they might shop for groceries. This is the very reason Stephen was right to point at the often unseen opportunity for new churches in urban contexts where “choices” are not defined by prior religious commitments. People are not constrained in looking around for a church by their prior church attendance elsewhere. The danger is that their choices take on a life of their own and become more dominant than the churches chosen. This is the downside of urban mobility. Peter Berger introduced us to this phenomena nearly thirty years ago and called it the “heretical imperative”. He said that when religious conviction is chosen as one might choose any other commodity, it generally ceases to have much traction in people’s lives. It ceases to be an integrating center for them and increasingly notions of orthodoxy prove problematic. This is the “heretical” part of Berger’s “Heretical Imperative”. And most of us can well attest that notions of “orthodoxy” run against the grain of the experience of even many church going folk today. They may “like” their church experience, but they are loath to speak of that experience in terms of “right and wrong”. I’m often amazed in addition that “church choosers” have very strong opinions about church, but these strong opinions do not translate into notions of orthodoxy. One may have strong opinions about the kind of yogurt one likes, but it would seem odd to them to speak of orthodox yogurts. 

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