Defiant Hope, Active Love: What Young Adults Are Seeking in Places of Work, Faith, and Community
By Jeffrey F. Keuss
Eerdmans, 176 pages
Published July 30, 2024
Various iterations of this question have been asked by local congregations and denominational bodies for decades, with numerous revival movements and focused campaigns seeking the answer. Jeffrey Keuss and his research team argue that this is the wrong question, and they call for a dynamic shift in perspective, one that takes seriously the social and spiritual realities of young adults. Rooted in qualitative and quantitative research, Defiant Hope, Active Love offers church and denominational leaders crucial insight into social realities, religious and spiritual trends, and direct feedback from young adults. This accessible book offers practical tools such as insightful chapter review questions, and it is written to encourage curiosity, reflection and assessment — all leading to a different way of ministering to young adults.
One argument this book makes, which I would argue is its greatest innovation, is that we need a more expansive awareness of poverty that includes “loss of hope, lack of support, and gross marginality of people groups.” Given the realities of young adults, from economic crises to geopolitical wars, young adults can be understood as impoverished; to better serve them is, therefore, to enact justice in this world. The theological implications of such an argument should wake up the church — however, this innovation is also a shortcoming.
Seeing the oppressive weight of student loan/medical/credit card/all debt as a justice issue compels the church to defiantly fight the oppressive systems of this world, yet Defiant Hope relegates poverty to the individual level. Poverty has systemic causes and requires systemic change. Yes, churches need to expand their caring ministries to address the context of young adults, but they must reckon with the ways church and denominational systems are complicit.
Similarly, I felt Defiant Hope doesn’t take seriously the deep harm Christianity has inflicted upon young adults and the world. The church needs to reckon with the ways it has traumatized congregants and the broader public: support for chattel slavery, mass genocide of Indigenous peoples, complicity in climate change, silence in the face of settler-colonial genocide, destruction to the mental health of LGBTQIA+ folx, and more. Young adults are aware of the church’s complicity and active participation in inflicting deep wounds. There are cracks in the foundations of the church — young adults are falling through them now and will continue to do so unless something fundamentally changes. Rebranding will not heal the wounds. Justice will.
The defiant hope that is found today lies in the young adults who still fight for the soul of the church. They show up on Sunday, serve on committees and task forces, and even leave when they feel like there’s no way forward, pushing the church toward healing and justice. Yes, the question as to why young adults have left and how to bring them back is indeed the wrong question. Maybe a better question is: how can I love, empower, and support the young adults in my church, trusting in their vision of the new way of being church?
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