Masters Degree Awarded and Thesis Completed

Last weekend I was p;rivileged to attend the commencement ceremony for Salt Lake Theological Seminary and was awarded the Master of Arts degree with a specialization in Intercultural Studies.

The last of the critical feedback on my thesis was received and incorporated as well. The title is “Burning Man Festival as Life-Enhancing, Post-Christendom ‘Middle Way,’” and it came with the following comments by one of my readers:

This is a superbly written and well argued analysis of Burning Man—its history and the lessons its success might have for the Christian church in the United States. The argument is cogent. The use of the modernist analysis of Victor Turner along with the late modernist Peter Berger and the post-modernist Hakim Bey to theoretically frame his analysis, reflected the very cultural shifts we are currently undergoing. In such a time of transition it is probably necessary to use all three in order to fully capture the complexity of an event such as Burning Man.

The author showed great facility in his handling of the scholarly literature necessary for his analysis. The careful reader comes away with great confidence that the author has mastered the normative sources, uses them faithfully, and yet goes beyond them for his own conclusions.

Of course, using an interdisciplinary approach one always runs the danger of not being considered fully expert in any of the disciplines. Although we could add books to reference to almost any area of consideration in this thesis, none seemed essential to the argument. The author does not come across as novice in any of the areas he covers, and convinces by making pointed observations and sober judgments.

The choices of the Jesus Movement and the Rainbow Family of Living Light as comparative foils were especially appropriate. Important movements, one Christian, one not, one enduring, the other enormously influencial through the movements it birthed. It would have been interesting to have the author speculate on what the fate of Burning Man might be, in light of the two trajectories of these comparative examples.

The most difficult section of the thesis is the ecclesiological reflexivity chapter. There is nothing particularly wrong with the chapter, and the suggestions the author makes regarding what the Christian church might learn from Burning Man seem helpful. Indeed, a great deal of expertise is evident in the author’s exposition of the half dozen positive lessons we might learn from Burning Man. But in a sense the author is struggling himself when he describes the Christian church in the United States as a struggling church. Perhaps the real problem is not the specific weaknesses the very success of Burning Man exposes, but that the church does not see itself as struggling. The church does not see that it has accommodated itself to an astonishing degree to a culture that is struggling, and in so doing the church has both infected itself with the same struggles and has inoculated itself from seeing its own disease.

I think this is a brilliant study, one of the best Masters theses I have ever read. I commend both the author and his professors and advisors.

--Terry C. Muck
Professor of World Religion
Asbury Theological Seminary

I look forward to using my academic study, and the lessons that have been learned as a result of my research and writing of the thesis. I hope that new and greater opportunities open up as a result. The question is where does a young scholar with expertise in the religious landscape of America and the West, cross-cultural and missional training, and the hopes for future Ph.D. studies go in the near future?