Moving Beyond the Shock Absorber - Part 3
The Industrial Revolution
Part three of a 10-part series from an article by Stuart Crawshaw that appeared in The Briefing in 2008 titled: Moving beyond the shock absorber: The place of youth ministry—past, present and future
The secular age
The Industrial Revolution did not end with the invention of steam; it sparked an era of scientific and technical inventiveness that continues to this day. In this sense, the Industrial Revolution not only continues, but is gaining pace. As a result, it continues to create an ever-changing society. In fact, change is the only constant in what we call the modern era: new inventions give people fresh new options for life and work. New ways of living, in turn, create new values. This Industrial Revolution spread around the world, changing every premodern society it came in contact with.
The story of modernism, then, is the replacement of one type of society with another—pre-modern with modern, and then, as we shall see later, modern with a postmodern society. Machines created a new economic reality. In the pre-modern era, the generations needed one another. The old ones knew the traditions—when to plant and when to reap. The young, who had the strength to plant and bring in the crops, needed the knowledge and wisdom of their elders. The generations were interdependent because of economic realities. The philosophers of this age had ideas that were more individualistic, but they could not be put into practice fully while economics demanded interdependence in community.
The Enlightenment had begun a century before steam. Beginning with Descartes, thinkers even explored new ways of organizing society that were not derived from religion. Kant made great attempts to define society based on the individual, rather than beginning with the group. But Enlightenment ideas created revolutions in Europe and America.
These nations were prominent in their attempt to write constitutions for their government that were not based on religion, but on a non-religious or secular system. Over time, secular forms of government would be adopted by modernizing countries around the world. But the ideas of a society made up of individuals needed another type of revolution.
The Industrial Revolution would eventually give people of means more economic independence and a far greater range of choice. The other change was that, for the first time in human history, new ideas were now demonstrably more powerful than old ideas. Modern society would become more and more individualistic, and successive generations would grow up more and more separated from each other. Pre-modern communities were becoming extinct.
In the emerging society where technology changed lifestyles (which in turn led to changed values, with generations drifting apart and a lack of trust in old ideas), youth ministry would become the major strategy relied upon for passing on biblical values from one generation to the next.