c. 1998 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Thomas More Beaudoin describes seeing “Rent” and playing bass in a rock band as two of his most meaningful spiritual experiences.

He is not kidding. The hyperkinetic, red-haired scholar is author of “Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X”(Jossey-Bass). A passionate Roman Catholic, Beaudoin argues in his new book that those elders wringing their hands over a coarsening American culture are looking for God in all the wrong places.

“My experiences playing rock were usually more religious than I had found in most churches,” he said. “I discovered a sense of spirituality `in the pocket,’ playing tightly with the drummer. As a bass guitarist, when I am traversing the deep rhythm, riding the low notes or stomping through a syncopated rumble, something happens. …

“We move our bodies and souls in harmony with the music, which is in harmony with the spirit, with God.”

At age 29, Beaudoin is at the midpoint of Generation X, those born from the mid-1960s through the late 1970s.

At least one elder thinks Beaudoin is on to something.

“Here is a generation that stays away from most churches in droves but loves songs about God and Jesus, a generation that would score very low on any standard piety scale but at times seems almost obsessed with saints, visions and icons of all shapes and sizes,” said Harvard Divinity School theologian Harvey Cox.

Take a peek at MTV, Beaudoin suggested. Even better, stop and deconstruct some of the videos of Madonna and REM.

Cox said Beaudoin provoked the “row of the semester” at Harvard by presenting a class with his idea that Generation X is engaged in a serious spiritual quest.

About half the class agreed with Beaudoin that 1 million youth converging on Paris two summers ago to see Pope John Paul II signifies spiritual longing. The other camp was more inclined to dismiss these same kids wearing crucifixes as fashion accessories as heretics or idiots. They argued Beaudoin read way too much meaning into the dross of pop culture.

But one of Beaudoin’s central arguments is that Generation X is so marinated in popular culture it practices religion at least partly in and through that medium. He describes his cohorts growing up in the backwash of baby boomers, amid latchkeys, divorce and economic setbacks.

“These influences led to an immersion in popular culture as both substitute parent and surrogate minister,” writes Beaudoin, who grew up in a Kansas City suburb eating subsidized school lunches and consuming TV and video games alone each afternoon at home.

“In fact, as churches ostracized the divorced mothers of many of my friends, these women frequently left their church communities,” he notes. “This situation made many of my peers further alienated from religious institutions.”

Today, Beaudoin is newly married and lives with his wife and 5,000 books and CDs in a Boston-area apartment. Irrepressible and possessed of what Cox called “a voracious intellectual appetite,” Beaudoin munched corn bran one recent morning and mulled reactions to his work.

“Many people experience the book as freeing,” he said. “It can give people a different sense and a different lens to make spiritual judgments about pop culture.”

During a stretch of alienation from Catholicism, Beaudoin took to preaching in a Baptist church. He is co-founder of Xairos, a ministry to Gen-Xers at the Paulist Center in downtown Boston. When Beaudoin isn’t playing bass or working on his doctoral thesis or his next three books, he leads a weekly group studying the formation of Christian conscience.

“Members of our generation expressed their cynicism about religion by assuming one of two stances: either playfully ironic or completely dismissive,” Beaudoin said. “I found these two postures appropriate, as churches seemed laughably out of touch. They had hopelessly droll music, antediluvian technology, retrograde social teaching and hostile or indifferent attitudes toward popular culture.”

But while irony or dismissal might be appropriate toward creaky religious institutions, Beaudoin finds them unacceptable attitudes toward God. He uses his book to call on Gen-Xers “to kick-start their spiritual lives.”

Professor Jeffrey Arnett of the University of Missouri-Columbia has studied members of the 45 million-strong Generation X and reports only 15 percent to 20 percent attend conventional faith communities with any regularity.

“Even for people raised in a religious tradition, whose families took them to church every Sunday, they still reach their 20s and make up their own minds,” Arnett said. “In my studies, I’m finding very little correlation between their families’ religious affiliations and what they eventually come to believe.”

Beaudoin said Gen-Xers are steeped in ambiguity, which makes their attraction to the moral clarity of John Paul II complex and interesting.

“The pope has a very compelling presence in the media,” Beaudoin said. “He has kept the Catholic Church in the popular culture. To see him sitting in his chair, resting his forehead against his staff, that image is absolutely riveting. The pope represents someone who is very clear about what he should do morally and doesn’t hesitate.

“Many Gen-Xers wouldn’t come to his conclusions, necessarily, but they wish they had that clarity. People are able to separate what he says from what he represents about one’s relationship to God and one’s ability to lead a holy and sacramental life.”

John Paul II represents a moral community that is more than 10 minutes old, a resource that Gen-Xers could use more of, Beaudoin said. He also argues that Christian churches could learn from the youthful sense of “irreverence as a spiritual gift,” just as the prophets were irreverent, just as Jesus was irreverent in the temple overturning tables.

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