Boomers and Generalizations
Some of the Founding Fathers of Contemporary Worship. So much boomer!
“So much boomer hatred. Even the church looks for someone to blame. I am a boomer, a conservative evangelical Lutheran boomer. You all have become offensive, goodbye.”
“On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews...”
The expression “the Jews” appears 77 times in the Gospels. Of course, the Holy Spirit is engaging in a generalization. Jesus often refers to “the Jews” even as He is speaking to His disciples, who are nearly all Jewish. This is one reason why some critics - both within and outside of Christianity - have labeled the New Testament - especially John’s Gospel - as Anti-Semitic. Some modern versions of Scripture even change the translation to say “the Jewish leaders” to soften the expression and try to make the Bible less “racist” sounding. It is only stating the obvious that “the Jews” is a generalization - something that we’re not allowed to do any more under the canons of woke, political correctness.
The same is true with boomers. Hence the accusation of “boomer hatred” in the above-quoted piece of love-mail. Obviously, just as not every Jew attacked Jesus and the Church, so it is true that not every boomer is part of the problem - and those who are dissidents against the decay will often join in the criticism of Boomerism. But it is undeniable that there is a demographic culture in which the exception proves the rule. And this is the kind of generalization that we are “not allowed” to observe and speak out loud. And this is yet another reason to do just that by saying, “OK boomer.”
As the baby-boomer generation rides off into the sunset, a lot of younger (and not so younger) folks are seeing the generational decay that happened to our church and society under the general stewardship of that generational cohort - including, but not limited to, those born after WW2.
Two or three decades ago, this demographic ruled church and society with an iron fist. It was under their watch that our connections to the past were frayed, and in some cases, severed. Of course, the groundwork for the Great Rebellion was laid over the course of decades and centuries, from the Jacobins, to the Bolsheviks, to the Lost Generation, to the flappers and feminists and prohibitionists. It’s the “progress” of Progressivism, and its war against that which has been received from past generations (i.e. tradition). But it was the generation that gathered together, dropping acid, at Woodstock that brought the Revolution to its fruition. And the fruit is rotten, now producing rotten seeds and multiplying like a rotten plague in our land. In the LCMS, our hippies tend toward wingtips and pants-suits rather than ponytails and bell bottoms. An example of this Missouri Synod Boomerism of the hippies-in-suits was the assertion that “this is not your grandfathers’ church.” It isn’t Woodstock, but the same anti-traditionalism and “chronological snobbery” (Progressivism) is baked in.
In the church, nearly every deviant, irreverent, and antitraditional practice can be laid at the boomers’ feet, whether clad in nasty sandals or polished oxfords. Nearly every troublemaker in the church today is also of this demographic. And like their millennial grandchildren, they know everything. And they will spend an hour pontificating on how much they know. But they seldom cite Scripture or the confessions to back up their defense of un-Lutheran practices, their attacks on authentic Lutheranism, and their false accusation that this or that is “too Catholic.” Their frame of reference is their own experience that is informed more by their friend Norma than the “norming norm” of the Bible and the “normed norm” of the Book of Concord. Their contribution to the life of the church, especially as pastors, has been largely a legacy of feminism, anticlericalism, the downplaying of liturgical forms, the admixture of the casual and the sacred, folksy storytelling in the pulpit, and outright entertainment schlock in the Divine Service. Perhaps a neologistic portmanteau is called for: “excretainment.” There is something quite Lutheran about the sound of that!
And again, the exceptions prove the rule (like my own beloved boomer pastor who suggested with tongue in cheek that “all boomers” should be, shall we say, subjected to be on the receiving end of small lead projectiles). Needless to say, he is a dissident, a counter to the dominant but dying boomer counterculture, and a boomer with an actual sense of humor. Many of our editors at Gottesdienst are DBs (dissident boomers), and a concerted effort was made to bring younger editors and bloggers onboard in addition to our editors’ longtime status as flies in the ointment at district and synod headquarters in decades past. Fortunately, even at the top of our church’s hierarchy, the winds of change - and change back to our grandfathers’ church - are moving right along with the sands of time (not to mention the bottles of Grecian Formula and prescriptions for Viagra). One of my colleagues in the ministry referred to his predecessor as “Boomer Supreme.” I like the designation, and it makes me think of a regular boomer, only with diced tomatoes and sour cream. And if you did not laugh at that, dear reader, to paraphrase the comedian Jeff Foxworthy, “You might be a boomer.”
Having been under their ruthless tyranny for decades, having had to endure their being in power over us (I got a taste of this up close and personal), having to endure their lording over us like the Gentiles in their arrogance, and now that they are doddering out of the pulpits and out of positions of power, younger generations are rolling back all of their nonsense, layer by layer. And in spite of their smiling and assertions that they are virtuous and “nice,” they were, and are, anything but. Their methodology calls to mind the little yellow happy-face with a toothbrush mustache. And we’ve all just about had enough of their works and their ways. Indeed, as C.S. Lewis observed,
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
And every time a children’s sermon is abolished, every time pop music in the Mass is kicked to the curb, every time historic vestments and chalices and every Sunday communion re-emerge, every time sacramental preaching replaces cringe soliloquies about pizza and fried chicken, every time another study on the Confessions is engaged, every time a pastor chants instead of speaks, every time lay readers and girl acolytes and “everyone a minister” is you-know-what-canned in a Lutheran church, every Polka service disposed of, every time reverence is restored and the language of the Book of Concord is heard again in our classrooms and pulpits, every time a pastor corrects those of a certain age who gaslight and bully those who uphold authentic Lutheranism, every time a young pastor stands up to those who refuse to recognize him as an elder by virtue of his presbyterial office - an angel gets his wings. Of course, I’m being satirical. Boomers often get their spirituality from Hollywood. We need to nip that in the bud too.
One objection is that we should not criticize boomers, because it was the Silent Generation that raised them. Too bad. Boomers are not children now. They took control of society and church decades ago. They live in an age where information is easily acquirable, and where their chronologically younger pastors are well-versed and willing to teach them if they are willing to be taught. And there’s the rub. You can always tell a boomer, but you can’t tell him much. Besides, we can always play the regression blame game all the way back to Adam and Eve.
The issue is not really about blame, but about fixing the problem. And when younger pastors do their duty and their due diligence to preach and teach and move the Divine Service back to its earlier reverence and traditional celebration, it is not Adam and Eve or eighteenth century Pietists who are the impediments in their congregations. It is not the boomers’ long-dead parents and grandparents who are attempting to undermine the current pastors’ godly work. It is not those former generations that held various presidencies and bureaucratic seats that contributed to the decay in real time, nor are they the ones desperately clinging to the levers of power.
The good news is that as boomers retire and go off to the great bingo hall in heaven (just kidding), younger pastors and laity can continue to clean up their mess and fix the damage. And what should have been a simple appeal to the immediate past generation has now become a matter of research. Thank God for books written by people who were too old to roll around in the mud at Max Yasger’s farm in upstate New York. Thank God for the millennia of faithful pastors, confessors, and presiders over the Divine Services of the church. Our younger leaders of the church can indeed restore the broken tradition and re-establish a sense of godly continuity to our Reformation fathers, their forbears, the apostles, and Christ Himself. This is not to say that subsequent generations don’t have their own problems and blindspots. But restoring reverence, sacramental piety, and the norms of Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions to our faith and life is something that is necessary at this point in time - especially given the Progressive challenges of Wokism and Postmodernistic deconstruction that hang in the air like the smell of a chicken farm with the winds blowing in our direction.
Younger pastors and laity should look to pre-boomer authors like Charles Porterfield Krauth in his masterwork The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology to guide them back to authentic Evangelical Catholic doctrine, practice, and life. We must understand that our fathers and mothers of the Fourth Commandment include those of generations past who have largely been removed from our dialogue. We must understand that the church is a Chestertonian “democracy of the dead” rather than a tyranny of that “small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.”
We are, after all, the heirs to the Reformation. We are here to fix that which has been corrupted. We are neither Progressive nor Revolutionary. We are indeed the “conservative reformation.” And by “conservative” - we mean “traditional” - not the “conservatism” of modern political conservatives (so-called) who embrace deviant anthropology so long as the deviants are good Republicans.
I believe that this situation is summed up succinctly in an anonymous post on social media: “Boomers are so pagan that we younger generations had to ignore them and turn to the old writings to see what Christianity actually looks like. And they are outraged when they are confronted with this.”
And if they don’t like this piece, well, “OK…”