The Great Unmooring: How Cultural Upheaval Is Creating a Gospel Opportunity

In Chicago, a favorite tourist activity is to take an architectural boat tour on the Chicago River. Passengers board a boat and wind their way through the highlights of the city’s skyline while listening to the narration of the boat’s expert guide. At the end of the tour, the boat returns to the dock, and is secured through a process called mooring.

While mooring, boats are attached to fittings on the shore called “cleats,” and fastened with ropes known as “lines.” The lines of large ships are secured to large cylinders on land called “bollards.” When the next group of sight-seers boards, the ropes are cast off, and the boat is no longer moored to the pier. When a boat or ship is unmoored (or “underway”) it is disconnected from the stability of land.

Unmooring is also an accurate description of the complexities and confusion of our moment. People — even whole communities — are becoming disconnected from the realities that held previous generations together.

While this “Great Unmooring” is certainly true of American society, it can also be felt throughout the world. Its impacts are multifaceted, creating turbulent times, division and uncertainty. But it also presents tremendous opportunity for the gospel.

The Great Unmooring of Young People

The Great Unmooring has hit young people with significant force. Young men and women today (mostly young millennials and Gen Z) have moved away from many of the ideal “pathways to success” in life that were common at the same age among older generations. My father was a union iron worker and lather in New York City. This solid-paying union job gave him a stable path toward a stable life. But for many millennials and Gen Z-ers (men and women alike) such a story sounds almost fictional. The job landscape no longer looks like climbing a single ladder throughout one’s career. Instead, young people’s careers often look more like playing Chutes and Ladders, bouncing from one vocational ladder to another as they hit opportunity, and occasionally falling down a “chute” of recession, corporate downsizing or automation.

Once steady manufacturing jobs are far less available for those seeking blue-collar careers like my father (even if an increased demand for trade workers does provide some respite). While the career landscape heavily favors knowledge work, the cost of seeking a college degree has risen almost 200% since 2000, while wages have only risen 8%-14% in the same time period for jobs that require a bachelor’s degree or higher.

The old mooring of purchasing a home and starting a family at a young age is made much more difficult by a 111% increase in housing costs and a 150% increase in the cost of childcare. The average millennial or Gen Z person also delays getting married until later in adulthood than previous generations (though, once married, they divorce at much lower rates than Boomers and Gen Xers did in the same time of life).

As it pertains to matters of faith, some studies indicate that young men are engaging spiritual and religious options in new ways and with an increased fervor and consistency. That’s good news. This possible renewed interest in young men isn’t true for Gen Z women, who are leaving the church at a startling pace. This contrast may indicate that churches are providing a vision to young men that the church is a place where they can belong and thrive, but we are not doing the same for young women.

Millennials and Gen Z-ers are also increasingly unmoored from the political norms that have dominated American culture for half a century now. While previous generational cohorts have consistently trended more conservative as they age, millennials and Gen Z, as a whole, have not. In the past, political shifts have been relatively the same among both men and women, but within young people (Gen Z, in particular) there is a dramatic political bifurcation. While young men have trended more conservative, young women have trended more progressive. Even those terms “conservative” and “progressive” have taken on new meanings and new implications, as young people possess greater agreement on traditionally partisan issues like universal healthcare, student loan forgiveness, and issues of sexuality and gender.

Unmooring of the World Order

Globally, the post-World War II order is collapsing, instilling uncertainty about what the future holds for global politics and the potential for increased conflict. The recent international conflicts around a potential American annexation of Greenland have destabilized the health of NATO, and war in Europe beyond the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. China’s desire to subjugate Taiwan looms over the eastern world. Protectionism and nationalism are on the rise, impacting economies around the world in multi-faceted ways.

This explains why some Americans supported the candidacies of both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump — a contradiction at face value — because they didn’t believe the world order was working for them. Both candidates talked about how the system was rigged in favor of the wealthy and powerful. Both promised (albeit in very different ways) to reform the system for “the little guy” who had lost the cultural moorings promised in the past. When both the world and the world inside one’s own home feel unstable, many people will abandon party loyalties in favor of someone they think can fix a world adrift and provide a better mooring for the future.

Unmooring of Churches

Finally, the Great Unmooring has impacted our churches. Over the last decade, some prominent Christian leaders have changed their views in radical and strange ways. This change makes me think of Paul’s question to the Galatians, “Who has bewitched you?” (Gal. 3:1). On both the right and the left, Christian leaders are being lured away from biblical, orthodox truth because of cultural pressures and tribal norms. We see too many leaders, though once trustworthy voices, align with the political tribes and cultural capitulations more than the gospel.

As pastors and Christian leaders become obsessed with our divided political moment, they lose their focus on the mission. For more than a few, it appears that they become so obsessed with winning the “culture wars” that, for them, it becomes the mission. They are driven by their ideological tribes more than theological communities and biblical conviction. They begin to give unto Caesar the things that are God’s, as if they want God’s kingdom to look like Caesar’s palace.

Too often church leaders become entrenched in political engagement to the degree that their churches become havens of conservatism or progressivism. Such leadership often responds to pressure from Christian consumers who will pick up and leave for another church for something they find politically heretical more quickly than for something theologically heretical.

What This Means

In every sphere, the Great Unmooring is signified by confusion and detachment. Across our culture, all around us, and around the world, people are feeling the rolling motion of lives and societies floating adrift in the waters of uncertainty. We can’t escape or ignore this moment. We have to wrestle with what it means and how we should respond.

We’re in difficult times — times that are probably going to get more difficult before they get easier. I don’t foresee a resettling to a new norm on the immediate horizon. When similar unmoorings affected previous generations (such as the tumult of the late 1960s), they precipitated widespread social and physical unrest. I anticipate similar things ahead, and it will probably get worse before it gets better.

That said, history shows that when society unmoors, the gospel flourishes. The stability of a culture can blind people to the depth of their need for the Lord. Comfort is often the breeding ground for self-reliance. Feeling like everything is normal and safe can make an existential need for Jesus seem strange and unnecessary.

Cultural upheavals reveal underlying problems that only Jesus can answer and solve. In such moments, more people begin to realize that their world isn’t as stable as they thought, and they begin to seek out new sources of stability. While others beside the church offer a vision for stability and belonging, the gospel’s vision for the moorings of tomorrow offers unique hope in Jesus for our lives, families and society. Times of unrest and uncertainty also often cause Christians to be more intentional about growing in their faith.

This opportunity doesn’t mean we should be excited about things getting more tumultuous around us. That would be unnatural. But we can recognize increased opportunities to share and show the gospel to people seeking stability. My own church, Mariners Church in Southern California, has grown by 60% in the last few years. Thousands of people have come to faith in Jesus Christ.

Our students at the Talbot School of Theology are actively planting and revitalizing churches throughout the world, seeing people who used to be less open to the gospel become more open. Particularly among the next generation, people are responding to the gospel in surprising and encouraging ways. Globally, Christianity is spreading like wildfire. There is much to be thankful for and excited about.

In the midst of the Great Unmooring, we need a deeper commitment to discipleship, a greater reliance on the Holy Spirit, a deeper grounding in God’s Word, and a renewed focus on the mission of Jesus. The Great Unmooring is a great gospel opportunity. The question is, how will we seize this moment?

This post by Ed Stetzer was originally published in Outreach Magazine.