The Wind of Change

Dear Editor,

Many people believe that if you weren't raised "religious," you'll never become so. Your chance was in childhood or adolescence and if you missed it, you missed it. When invited to church, these adults frequently say things like, "I don't know anything. I wouldn't know where to start."

The truth is that people are much more spiritually malleable than they often realize. In America especially, what sociologists call "religious switching" is extremely common (the term includes those who grew up unaffiliated and now belong to a religious faith, and vice versa, as well as those who switch from one branch of Christianity to another). The Pew Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life found in a 2011 report that nearly half of US adults have changed their religious identification at some point in their lives.

While there is clearly a correlation between religious switching and youth—the large majority of switchers say they joined their current religion (or absence thereof) before age 36—there is no reason to concede to determinism at any age with so much evidence of flux.

What may look from a human angle like individuals in a free society "seeking their own path" may, in truth, be evidence of that power Christians name as the Holy Spirit. As Jesus said, "The wind blows when and where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit" (John 3:8).

Have your circumstances changed as you've grown up or grown older? Are you asking different questions today than you were "back then"? Have former certainties been thrown up in the air or has the life you've been leading felt mysteriously incomplete or uncentered?

At Grace Lutheran Church, we have a ministry of hospitality called "The Way" for anyone in this place of searching. On seven Wednesday evenings from 7:10-8pm starting October 29, in a group setting with a guide, we provide a safe and nonjudgmental space to ask open-ended questions about the nature of faith, God, the world, the Bible, and the church.

Even if "you don't know anything"...except that the wind is blowing.

Have your doubts? Why not come and see?

Mark Williamson

Pastor, Grace Lutheran Church

Dodgeville, WI