My grandfather and his brother, my great uncle, were born in the late 1800’s. Both were farmers in Southern Ontario. My grandfather voted Liberal. My great uncle voted Conservative. As I paid attention to my extended family, I noticed that one’s identity was tied to a particular party and that’s how one voted—pretty much always for “the party”. For my grandfather’s generation and their children, who we affectionately call the baby boomers, partisan politics is for the most part, a way of life. For those who are Boomers and older, politics is often a “dyed-in-the-wool” expression of either/or—one political party or the other. At it’s best the debate between whatever colour of wool one wears can be animated, vigorous and illuminating. At it’s worst, the whole thing can be rancorous, single-minded and divisive. I have always been bothered by that. Which is why I never mentioned politics to either my grandfather or my great uncle.
According to demographers, I was born at the tail end of the Boomer generation—in the early sixties. But, I don’t feel like a Boomer. And I don’t quite fit with the Millennials (maybe I’m better typed as a Gen X’er). I typed my undergraduate papers on a… typewriter. I typed my graduate papers on a… keyboard. At my first job, we weren’t sure we really needed a FAX. My first cell phone was a “bag phone”—a piece of technology designed primarily for road safety while travelling across the empty prairie which, as I think of it now, didn’t have cell coverage. Technology started to profoundly impact human beings while I was a young man in my mid-twenties. On the one hand, my parents’ generation and many of the earlier Boomers are embracing technology (or not!) in their later years. On the other hand, my sons have grown up with it. They teach me about Siri, connect with their friends through XBox and in fact, don’t really check email any more. For them, voice mail is quickly becoming passé and various expressions of text, Instagram and Snapchat are in vogue. All this to say, I feel like a bridge between generations and that people my age and a little younger are best positioned to help navigate the waters of change and transition as the next generation we call Millennials begins to assume positions of leadership.
As a result, I feel free to be fascinated by this transition and buoyed by it. In a recent article by David Brubaker, published by the Congregational Consulting Group, How to Repel Millennials (those born between 1982 and 2000, although I’d probably stretch it past the year 2000), I found myself nodding in agreement because it was echoing what I was noticing in conversations around me. Millennials have a much more inclusive and fluid approach to the world around them. They are much more comfortable with diversity expressed through the vast territories of race, culture, religion, and sexuality. They are interested in conversations between science and theology. And, they are much less partisan and much more collaborative in their political approach. During a conversation this past summer in Amstelveen, The Netherlands, my young Dutch friends commented about politics being too much the domain of “old people” and not enough about working together to solve serious economic and social issues. As children of a globalized world, where they are rubbing elbows with people from diverse backgrounds, their way of moving forward is definitely not the divisive partisan way. They displayed little patience for single-mindedness and intolerance.
As a demographic “inbetweener” who happens to be a pastor theologian, I feel that the Christian community has a significant role to play that helps model a conversation that matters which includes both Boomers and Millennials in a context that is multi-generational. It’s not so much about talking, but how well we listen. What can we learn from each other? What do we need to hold on to? What do we need to let go? This does not mean that we must agree with each other, but rather create room for a deeper understanding of each other. At the very least, we can listen to each other’s views and promise to weigh them carefully. This means we may need to accept that like voice mail, political singlemindedness is fast becoming passé; that there is room for science and religion to be in conversation together; that inclusion and collaboration are already forming the foundations for decision-making and leadership practices and, that there is capacity to respect and harvest the wisdom of “experience” and welcome the innovation and creativity of the new at the same time.
I have the deepest respect for my grandfather and great uncle. They were humble and gentlemanly—salt of the earth. But since their era, times have significantly changed. There is a different conversation emerging that is defined less by the colour of our wool, and more by how we can learn from each other. I am happy to be in a congregation that welcomes a conversation like this. I am happy to be one that can help it happen.
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