How are we learning?

I am one of those people who always has a book open in the house that I read from every day (in addition to Scripture studies, I mean). Some days I might read 30 pages or more, other days only a few pages.

For the past few weeks I have been reading the Oxford History of Christianity (alternating, I must confess, with an action novel by Clive Cussler of no socially redeeming value whatever).

The Oxford history is a collection of sections of various times and places of Christian history, arranged in chronological order, starting with the apostolic churches. I’ve just finished the section on the Protestant Reformation.

And it occurred to me that American Christians are returning to a pre-Reformation type of worship life. Not necessarily quickly, but surely nonetheless.

Here’s why I say this: For a few hundred years before the Reformation, religious life for church people (but not for monks or the church’s hierarchy) was oriented around high holy days, festivals and pageants. All of these were religious events. As Christianity had spread through Europe, it had glossed existing festival days with a Christian patina so that festivals originating in pagan times took on a Christian character, usually around a saint.

Like modern parades, the people built floats according to the theme of the pageant, often supervised by local monks. Parish priests would preach about the saints concerned.

All of this was done because most ordinary people could not read or were only barely literate. The floats, stained-glass windows in churches, religious statuary and icons, even the crucifix itself, were all teaching aids.

They were visual means of teaching the faith, accompanied by audio – religious music and preaching. That was how people learned.

The Reformation de-emphasized the audiovisual and made the Word, especially the written Word, the focus. Universal literacy was literally invented by the Reformers.
What has happened in America since the dawn of the television age, accelerated by the invention of home computers, is a return to audiovisual learning. The younger one is, the more s/he absorbs information through pictures, movies and sound. For the under-25 cohort, the Internet is a primary means of learning, while books and newspapers are secondary.

So how shall we teach Christian faith to children, teens and young adults? Probably not very successfully by emphasizing primarily reading and writing. Those more than 50, like me, should contemplate that our children don’t learn like we did and moreover, don’t want to. Successful teaching will mean adapting to how people learn today.