How the Church Can Help GenXers and Boomers in Culture Conflict

Barbara Nicolosi-Harrington has written an extraordinary piece for Patheos analyzing how the entertainment industry is changing as the Baby Boomers give way to the GenXers, and how the Church can minister to both generations. Nicolosi-Harrington sees a possible rediscovery of optimism and faith in Generation X films, and recommends that the Church encourage and affirm these efforts. At the same time, Baby Boomers need help taking responsibility for their mistakes:

“The rigid eradication of tradition, the gross materialism, the unbridled license, the embarrassing promiscuity — all always accompanied by shrill distortion and denial — have left our society disconnected, bloated, poorly educated, unable to trust and simmering in resentment.”

But here’s the paragraph that really got my attention:

The Church’s secondary, but equally urgent pastoral challenge, is with the younger generations. Do not think me flippant in suggesting that pastors and teachers of the faith must quickly provide substantive, moral reasons for GenXers not to euthanize the Boomers; I wish I were kidding, but I watch television, so I know that euthanasia is coming. The Entitled Generation will quickly morph into the Expensive Generation in the minds of the Millennials bent low under the weight of social programs that were strapped on their backs without their consent. It will be very easy to isolate the folks who are draining Medicare and Social Security and the health care system of most of the resources. History has a devastating way of being cyclical. It was the Boomers who made the case that they should end their marriages and abort their children for the God Expediency. Now, their children, stripped of any attachment to a moral framework, will eye the old grey hairs drooling in a corner in diapers — but certainly still sneering — and consider expedient “Death with Dignity” to be a sensible and pragmatic policy. The Church must use all media to reach these new cultural power brokers, and to penetrate the commanding subconscious voices of their parents; she must teach them that the breakdown of the Boomers will require patience, heroism, and long-suffering.

Don’t miss the rest of this insightful article.