Bowling Alone, Jesus and Me

Why the American Church Can’t Fix Loneliness

“I don’t know how to say, ‘I’m lonely,’ without sounding like I’m saying, ‘I’m a loser,’” a middle-aged man said to me not long ago. “And I don’t know how to say it without sounding like I’m an ungrateful Christian.”

After all, this man said, he’s at church every week—not just there, but active. His life is a blur of activities. But he feels alone. In that, at least, he’s not alone.

Repeatedly, almost all of the data show us the same thing: that the so-called “loneliness epidemic” experts warned about is real. We all know it’s bad, and we sometimes have a vague sense of why it’s happening. The answers that some come up with are often too big to actually affect any individual person’s life. Smartphones aren’t going away. We aren’t all moving back to our hometowns. We see a kind of resigned powerlessness to change society’s lonely condition. So why can’t the church fix this?

The answer lies partly in a book published a near quarter-century ago: political scientist Robert Putnam’s famous Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Earlier this summer, The New York Times interviewed Putnam, asking him whether, since he saw the loneliness crisis coming, he saw any hope of it ending.

Putnam reiterated that the answer is what he calls “social capital,” those networks of relationships needed to keep people together. Social capital comes in two forms, Putnam insists, and both are necessary. Bonding social capital is made up of the ties that link people to other people like themselves. Bridging social capital consists of the ties that link people to those unlike themselves.

The first time I was on set with a television talk-show host who, like me, grew up Southern Baptist, he turned to me before we went on the air and said, “Pop quiz: What should always be the first song in a hymnal?” I immediately responded with the right answer (“Holy, Holy, Holy”), and we high-fived. No one else on that set knew what we were talking about. The secularist in the producer’s chair might have thought, “What’s ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’?” The churchgoing evangelical behind the camera might well have thought, “What’s a hymnal?”

That little detail of shared tribal memory, though, represented more than trivia. It was a way of recognizing one another—the same sort of church background, from the same sort of time period, the same sort of shared experience. We knew in that moment that, even if no one else in New York City knew the names of Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong, we did, and, even if no one in that television network building could say what words would follow “I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag,” we would. All of us experience equivalent moments of bonding social capital.

Putnam makes it clear that one form of social capital is not “good” and the other “bad.” When you’re sick and need to be taken care of, usually that comes from relationships made with bonding capital. That’s good, but—when taken too far—really dangerous. Putnam notes that the Ku Klux Klan is “pure social capital” of the bonding sort. Bridging capital, Putnam argues, is much harder, but both are needed for a person or a society to escape isolation.

We know the statistics on religious decline in the United States, especially when it comes to actual weekly church attendance. Some (though not all) of that decline is driven by the same factors that wiped away bowling leagues and Lions Clubs and neighborhood watch programs.

But maybe we ought to flip the question around. We live in a country with churches everywhere, and the vast majority of people—at least for a long time in the 20th century—belonged or currently belong to some sort of church. So why weren’t the factors that eroded social capital not arrested long before we arrived at this point?

One factor is what Putnam’s getting at with the necessity of bridging and bonding. The Bible holds both sorts of social capital together.

In the Old Testament, Israel is distinct from the nations, with the highest bonding capital imaginable employed to keep them together. At the same time, they were reminded constantly that they were to be a “light to the nations,” bridging the divides that had sundered humanity since Babel.

In the New Testament, the pioneer church was to be bonded—serving each other at the Lord’s Table, equipping each other with spiritual gifts, uniting voices together in worship. That’s why the imagery of the family is applied constantly in the epistles to the church. Simultaneously, the Great Commission—to disciple all nations—requires bridging capital, often of the sort we see Paul employ at Mars Hill in Athens or with Gentile audiences of all sorts.

In fact, the bonding of people who were bridged to one another is one of the primary themes of book after book of the New Testament (Acts, Romans, Galatians, etc.).

A church that is evangelistic (seeking to share Christ with one’s neighbors and with the nations of the world) relies on bridging social capital. A church that considers its members as brothers and sisters, as one body with many members, counts on bonding social capital.

What we have long seen in the American church—almost without reference to theological distinctives or denominational identity—is a severing of bridging social capital from bonding social capital.

Many of the more “missional” congregations—especially the larger ones—did bridging social capital very well. They taught married couples how to relate to single young adults, how to talk to the Buddhist down the street, how to anticipate the way a secularist might think about why a good God would let bad things happen to good people, and so on. But many of these churches now admit they did so without a lot of bonding social capital. The people didn’t know each other. They weren’t deeply discipled.

On the other hand, lots of other churches did bonding without bridging. Some of these churches were ingrown, of the sort we’ve all seen, where two or three families are the inner circle and no one else can ever really belong. Some of them thought themselves to be “evangelistic,” but without teaching their people any real bridging social capital: a church of white, college-educated, suburban young professionals with children, for instance, devoted to reaching white, college-educated, suburban young professionals with children.

Once the bridging and bonding forms of social capital are broken, then, something must take their place. What that’s turned out to be is imaginary social capital. A number of people turn to imaginary bridging capital. Some who’ve fled what they considered the smothering conformity of the church think they are now bridging people unlike themselves, but just end up with other people who’ve fled what they considered to be the smothering conformity of the church. That’s imaginary bridging capital—not the real thing.

And some people turn to the imaginary bonding capital of Christian nationalism or ethnic Kinism. Why is almost every neo-Confederate I know a Yankee from Minnesota or Ohio or Idaho? It’s because it’s a way to pretend to have bonds with “one’s own kind.” But hating the same people does not a community make. What’s the end result? More loneliness, and then resentment at the being lonely, and the finding someone to blame for being lonely. As Dwight Schrute from The Office once put it, “They say that no man is an island. False! I am an island, and this island is volcanic.”

All around us, we see archipelagoes of lonely islands, with volcanoes spewing hot, molten lava on many of them.

In his interview with the Times, Putnam makes a point that too many of us miss. We need something like bowling leagues to save democracy, he said, but it doesn’t work if people are joining the bowling leagues to save democracy. They have to bowl because it’s fun. Along the way, communities get healthier, but that’s a byproduct.

Churches combat loneliness not by telling people, “Come to church so you won’t be lonely; it’s good for you.” People should come to church because it’s true—Jesus is alive and seated at the right hand of the Father, forgiving our sins and coming again. Those of us convinced of this should then remind ourselves that we belong to one another, that we are not our own. We should remind ourselves that the great congregation in heaven is made up of every tribe, language, people, and nation (Rev. 5:9).

On mission together to bridge the outside world to the God who loves them, we bond along the way. In fellowship to bond as a family whose commonality is Christ, we stir ourselves up to love the people he loves, so we become bridges along the way.

Social capital is not the most important thing. The kingdom of God is (Matt. 6:33). But the brokenness of social capital—inside and outside the church—might prompt us to retrace our steps. We might see some burned bridges, some broken bonds—all of which Jesus knows how to piece back together again.

Are You Wandering to Rivendell?

I subscribe to the YouTube channel of the poet Malcolm Guite. Whenever one of his videos—usually him talking in his study, pipe in one hand and a book in the other—pops up, I save it to watch at night when I have time. A couple of weeks ago, though, his video prompted me to stop right there and watch immediately. That’s because Guite’s setting was one of my favorite places on the planet, a place where I once felt a sense of overwhelming awe at the creative work of God. He was in the Lauterbrunnen Valley of Switzerland.

Guite pointed out that those of us who found ourselves at some point or other moved by this place are hardly alone. J. R. R. Tolkien—walking through there as a 19-year-old—later modeled Rivendell, the mythical spot of respite and safety in the Lord of the Rings books, after that very setting.

After the video, I picked up my copy of The Fellowship of the Ring to read the section set there, the one that Guite read aloud from a bench at the bottom of the Lauterbrunnen waterfall. I noticed how many highlights I’ve made in that part of the book over the years, even though I don’t remember what I was thinking when I did so. One especially caught my eye.

Speaking of Bilbo Baggins’s journeys, Tolkien wrote: “When he had left Hobbiton he had wandered off aimlessly, along the Road or in the country on either side; but somehow he had steered all the time towards Rivendell.”

I wonder if you’ve found that to be true in your life. I have in mine. Knowing that we are, as Scripture tells us, pilgrims in this time-between-the-times, we sometimes expect that we should be marching forward to Zion with a detailed map, knowing exactly what route we are taking. We are surprised, then, when the roads veer off in ways we did not expect. Sometimes, we might even feel lost, and so lost that nobody will even know how to find us.

Only later do we realize that we were—usually completely beyond our own noticing—steering the whole time toward the truer and greater Rivendell. That’s because we are pilgrims, yes, but also sheep. We think we are steering when, often, we are being steered, toward green pastures and still waters.

Maybe that’s where you are right now—what seems to be the valley of the shadow of death. Look behind you, though. Maybe what’s been chasing you has been goodness and mercy, the whole way.

Re-Upping a Question: Where to Start with Wendell Berry

A reader sent a note this week, after last week’s link to my essay on Wendell Berry’s 90th birthday: “Dr. Moore, I know you’ve answered this before—because I vaguely remember it—but I can’t find where it is and I don’t remember what you said. Could you answer, one more time, where a complete newbie to Wendell Berry should start? Thanks.”

Glad to. Berry is different from some authors because he writes novels, short stories, non-fiction essays, and poems. Start maybe with whatever of those you tend to find most comfortable.

For the novels, I’d start with Jayber Crow or Hannah Coulter.

For the essays, my favorites are A Continuous Harmony and Standing by Words, but I’d recommend you start with a sort of “best of” collection called The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry.

For the poetry, look up online some of the most famous Berry poems—“The Peace of Wild Things” or “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” or “A Standing Ground” or “A Warning to My Readers” or, my favorite, “Do Not Be Ashamed.”

Every other week, I share a list of books that one of you says you’d want to have on hand if you were stranded on a deserted island. This week’s submission comes from reader Walt Lindberg from Crofton, Maryland. Here’s his list:

The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien: I don’t know how many times I’ve read this work. It is … dare I say … precious to me. Tolkien has definitely shaped the way I see the world. (And I know it’s actually three books, but Tolkien conceived them as one epic book, and so in the words of movie Gimli, “That still only counts as one!”)

The Real Book: For those who are not musicians, The Real Book is a licensed version of the classic Fake Book, which contains the melodies and chord progressions of jazz standards. If I don’t have recorded music with me on the island, I can hopefully fashion a crude guitar or flute or something and play all the jazz standards I could ever need, right?

The Worship Hymnal (Lifeway, 2008): Again, I can use my homemade instrument to play some worship music. I like that this particular hymnal has all the great old hymns, plus a nice selection of cringy but loveable early CCM worship songs and plenty of modern classics.

The Knowledge of the Holy by A. W. Tozer: I was raised in the Christian and Missionary Alliance, so Tozer is part of my spiritual DNA. This is my favorite of his books; it focuses on attributes of God.

The Revenge of the Baby-Sat by Bill Watterson: I need something visual on my shelf, so out of dozens of graphic novels / comics, I went with a favorite from my childhood. Calvin and Hobbes are endlessly enjoyable.

The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes: I first read Langston Hughes in high school. His body of work is so broad—from blues lyrics to devotional poems and everything in between. This book was one of the first gifts my wife ever gave to me, way back when we were dating.

Candy Is Dandy: The Best of Ogden Nash: My second-favorite poet is Ogden Nash. When I need a good chuckle or want a ridiculous rhyme, nothing beats Nash.

Essays of E. B. White: I think E. B. White is one of the most polished writers in American literature. The clarity of his prose is breathtaking (you never have to read a sentence twice to get his meaning). Whenever I read these essays, I feel like we are having a chat at the dining room table.

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles: I’ve only known this book for a few years, but I love it. It is a celebration of life, art, music, literature, history, cuisine, but especially friendship.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson: Robinson is simply brilliant in this novel. Reverend Ames’s wise, humble, patient voice is beautifully written. Without spoiling the ending, the blessing at the bus stop gets me every time.

The Code of the Woosters by P. G. Wodehouse: I could have chosen any one of a handful of Wodehouse novels. I went with his greatest Jeeves & Wooster story. Wodehouse is hilarious, and Code of the Woosters has him in mid-season form. Wodehouse’s prose sparkles with similes, classical and biblical allusions, and terrific British slang. Bertie Wooster and Jeeves are one of the great comic pairings of all time.

The Baseball Encyclopedia: Pictured here is an older edition, so I guess I’ll need to update my copy before venturing off on my ill-fated cruise. I could get lost in this thing, just browsing around comparing stats from every player to ever step on a Major League ballfield.

Thank you, Walt!

Readers, what do y’all think? If you were stranded on a desert island for the rest of your life and could have only one playlist or one bookshelf with you, what songs or books would you choose?

For a Desert Island Playlist, send me a list of up to 12 songs, excluding hymns and worship songs. (We’ll cover those later.)

For a Desert Island Bookshelf, send me a list of up to 12 books. If possible, include one photo of all the books together.

Send your list (or both lists!) to questions@russellmoore.com, and include as much or as little explanation of your choices as you would like, along with the city and state from which you’re writing.

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Onward,
Russell Moore