The Problem with Christian Practice

So in a way, this episode is going to invite you in to where I (John) have been wandering the past few years in my doctoral research, armed with a question that I can’t seem to shape:

“Why do some Christian practices, which have the power to form us so deeply, sometimes fail in what they are intending to do?”

This question first surfaced for me a few years back when I was reading James K. A. Smith, the popular and academic author who was immensely influential in introducing me to the power of liturgical worship (and for that matter to the importance of St. Augustine). But for all the strength of his argument that what we really need, as a church, is a return to embodied, liturgical worship, he had this one glaring problem with his proposal that he was willing to confess: he called it “The Godfather Dilemma”.

In the third Godfather film, Al Pacino’s character has this scene that cuts back and forth between a Catholic baptismal rite and all the brutalities (violent murders) being enacted by the mafia under Al Pacino’s orders. And there he sits, participating in the practice of a baptism, which clearly is having little effect on his own “new birth” in Jesus Christ. Smith acknowledges that for all the power of Christian practice to reform our desires, there seems to be this gaping problem: more often than not, simply doing the practices themselves doesn’t actually accomplish the formative intention we hoped it would.

The more I’ve pondered it the more concerned I’ve become. Practices, by themselves, don’t always accomplish what they say they will. Christians, who participate their whole lives in Christian communities, doing Christian practices, don’t always end up with deeper or strengthened Christian identities. If that’s true, then where are we supposed to turn to strengthen our identities (which episode 01 argued are so vulnerable and easily shaped by culture)? What is the point of Christian practices if they’re not actually working? Do we need to radically rethink how we’re speaking and teaching Christian practices to our communities?

It can almost begin to feel like a house of cards.

I, therefore, want to spend one last preparatory episode before we get into the heart of what St. Augustine has to say to the crisis of identity each of us faces. We’re going to explore some of the best cutting-edge research being done by Practical Theologians today, and by the end of our survey, I think you’ll agree: there is in fact a problem with Christian practice. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some hopeful signs of how, with a few key adjustments, we can recover the vitality and power of practices in forming our identities again.

So join us as we continue this in-between series on Augustine and the Crisis of Identity.