Among young adults in the U.S., sociologists are seeing a major shift taking place away from Christianity. A faithful response requires that we examine the exodus and ask ourselves some honest questions about why.
Recent studies have brought the trend to light. Among the findings released in 2009 from the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), one stood out. The percentage of Americans claiming “no religion” almost doubled in about two decades, climbing from 8.1 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2008. The trend wasn’t confined to one region. Those marking “no religion,” called the “Nones,” made up the only group to have grown in every state, from the secular Northeast to the conservative Bible Belt. The Nones were most numerous among the young: a whopping 22 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds claimed no religion, up from 11 percent in 1990. The study also found that 73 percent of Nones came from religious homes; 66 percent were described by the study as “de-converts.”
Other survey results have been grimmer. At the May 2009 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, top political scientists Robert Putnam and David Campbell presented research from their book American Grace, released last month. They reported that “young Americans are dropping out of religion at an alarming rate of five to six times the historic rate (30 to 40 percent have no religion today, versus 5 to 10 percent a generation ago).”
Wasn’t garage bands in the sanctuary suppose to stop this?
The “moral compromise” reason applies equally well to the age groups older than twenty-something. The unchurched and de-churched want to do what they want to do, without the still, small voice telling them that it’s not right.
I wonder if anyone has tried to ascertain what effect the hostility against religion that has been forced on public schools has on this trend? At one time those who taught our children shared our values and did not fear to express this. I don’t doubt there are still many teachers who continue to do so. But they have been intimidated into silence. This gives students the impression that religion is solely a private affair that has not rightful place in the wider world.
But views hostile to religious values, especially sexual morality is given free rein in schools these days. If both parents are working and their child is in a secular day care this means even less time being exposed to the values of the parents and more time being wrapped in the mantle of secular truths.
I believe the elites do have a goal of separating young people from religious beliefs and the values that come from them. You can not build a utopia of progress and equality and inclusion if people are convinced they need salvation. Humbled sinners just know too much of human nature to trust their ‘betters.”
When you have a dramatic loss of ‘believers’ such discussed in this article, then there must be a cause or several causes. And they do not all have to be of ‘outside origin.’ Waving a finger of accusation at our increasing secular and materialistic society is not enough to ‘pin down and solve the problem.’
When you continue to lose significant numbers of people who have expressed Christian belief and commitment its time to take stock in the church’s culpability in this situation.
It is my theory that the church’s in general have not adequately catechisized people seeking full membership in the Body of Christ. By adequate catechization, I mean imparting to an individual an adequate understanding, in terms that he/she can understand and which are relevant to him/her, what Christianity is all about, along with a deep spiritual comprehension of the incredible gift that God has made to mortals through Jesus Christ.
This is an achievable goal, but it isn’t achieved through inadequate teaching on the part of those who think that they are spreading the Gospel but in fact are often boring, uninformative, poorly formed in their own Christianity, uninspiring, and unconvincing representatives of the Faith..
I believe that such teachers can be held responsible for the apostasy that we are witnessing today.
Unfortunately, these same teachers are either leaders in their congregations or are “haloed’ individuals in the eyes of church leadership and are therefore held above scrutiny and above reproach.
So, in my opinion, we had better take a very close look at the message that has or has not been taught to those who are leaving the Faith. If the teachers are not achieving the goal of imparting the Faith through their teaching/preaching, then they must be called to account for their part in this debacle. Doing nothing will only permit things to become worse.
As a final note. I have heard many fine sermons, but I have also heard many sermons that could have been written and preached by adolescents. If the person preaching to and leading a congregation is seen as simplistic and unconvincing by the young adults in his/her congregation, then that preacher’s ability to ‘keep congregants in the Faith’ and to bring new people into the Faith has been damaged by his/her own style of preaching.
I read this article when it came out in CT, and the discrepancy idea (between what the culture allows and what the Christian position is) makes a good deal of sense. But AnglicanFirst has an excellent point as well: American Christianity has often been described as “3,000 miles wide and an inch deep.” Huge numbers of professing Christians who would identify as “conservative” do not know the teachings of Scripture about sin and salvation, and so cannot defend these teachings. It is all too easy to descend into moralism – and mere moralism is easy to leave.
Terrific article; thank you for posting it. The Bible is a very difficult book. I still stumble. But it is over 2,000 years of experience of the faithful, and I don’t think human nature has changed. We should probably use it more to shape the discussion. Israel had so much in its favor, but still underwent a staggering amount of corruption. E.g. 2 Kings 23. I think all we can do is to strive to do what is right, to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:8)–but God will ultimately call the shots. E.g. 1 Kings 19, Matt 26:38-39.
Maybe we got away from teaching that to be in communion with Christ is our very life and to be disconnected from him is the same as death. When Christianity becomes some kind of option among other equally valid options, the sacrifices it requires becomes a hard sell. If someone can find theraputic comfort just as good elsewhere, what is the point of coming to church for it.
Christ is life. To reject him is death. If churches teach that to our young once again, outside influences to the contrary will lose their power. A return to a sacramental understanding of our faith, or else a strengthening will, I think produce a faith in young people strong enough to last a lifetime.
Oh and it won’t be about numbers, or raising the ASA quickly. The cure is to settle for fewer but stronger young Christians who will stick to the faith and pass on that strong faith to their children.
Yikes. Need to ungarble the following sentence.
“A return to a sacramental understanding of our faith, or else a strengthening of that understanding, will, I think, produce a faith in young people strong enough to last a lifetime.
“It is my theory that the church’s in general have not adequately catechisized people seeking full membership in the Body of Christ. By adequate catechization, I mean imparting to an individual an adequate understanding, in terms that he/she can understand and which are relevant to him/her, what Christianity is all about, along with a deep spiritual comprehension of the incredible gift that God has made to mortals through Jesus Christ.”
I agree with the above but I also believe that the ones most responsible for doing the above is not the Church but the parents. One way to make stronger Christians of our children is showing and teaching them that our faith is not a Sunday only faith. If we leave catechizing up to the Church alone it will reinforce the view that religion should be excluded from other parts of our lives.
Sometimes you can do all that and still end up with a child who insists on breaking their mama’s heart by declaring their agnosticism with almost perverse delight. When that happens just remember you gave them a foundation to return to when they come to their senses and quit all that foolishness. Not that I know from personal experience, mind you. Ha!
I really believe that this is not difficult among the young. Ask them what they want out of life – and i have done this often when i was teaching – and salvation doesn’t occur save among the already-churched. The churches offer nothing they they want or need. If they have money enough, and the customary pleasures – alcohol, electronics, modern medicine and dental care, a good car, a bunch of friends – what’s more to want? Why face guilt, shame, remorse, penance, Sunday services, homilies that extol self denial, crucifixion, death and another world that no sensible person would believe in?
Science is their salvation (good health and long life) and civil rights is the Holy Ghost (so to speak).
Science and Technology, Civil rights, promise and they produce
on their promises. You can see the results in front of your eyes. What does the church do equally demonstrable? And you don’t have to JOIN anything, commit yourself to anything. In short, God is unnecessary for the Good Life, and Christ is so not relevant.
Until the Boomers and their childrens’ children have to face genuine suffering which no technology can assuage, then this life contains all that anyone could want. Larry
I suppose that some people leave the church because they want to be adulterers, thieves, drunkards, practice sorcery, molest children, blaspheme against God or simply because they value self-indulgence over salvation. Only thing is, from what I read in [i]your own blogs and news sources[/i], one doesn’t need to leave the church to do any of these things … though one might have to switch congregations in some cases.
Did any of you notice that two of the leavers in the article were said to have been molested by members of their congregation? Or maybe they were just lying so they could sleep in on Sunday morning.
I don’t doubt that some people leave because of some flaw in themselves, but I can also imagine some who leave [i]because[/i] they take the matter seriously, if not in the same way you do.
It’s been a while since anyone called me young, and I’m lifelong unchurched, not a leaver. About this time last year I actually went to an enquirer’s class, taught by a senior leader of that church’s congregation. The presentation was somewhat slipshod and boring, but it was at the end of the day and I was willing to believe that the presenter was tired after a long day of ministering to their congregation and doing good works (I’m not being sarcastic about that, btw). Then the presenter told the story of Jesus and the centurion’s servant … you know the one, where the centurion asks Jesus to come and cure his servant, but Jesus says he doesn’t need to come, he can do it just by giving the word (cf. Mt 8:5-13). I am not lying, that’s how it was told. Ten minutes later the presenter mentioned that they had taught RCIA for ten years.
I didn’t go back.
Please note that I am not saying that every church everywhere is corrupt, lackadaisical, or flawed in any other particular way … any more than all the unchurched are any one good or bad thing. Nevertheless, as [b]AnglicanFirst[/b] [url=http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/34029/#431287] (4)[/url] suggests, it may not [i]all[/i] be about the leavers’ lack of moral fiber or the evils of secular society.
regards,
JPB
Old Guy, post 6: I agree that the “Bible is a very difficult book“ and as you know, earlier generations did give children a foundation for reading and understanding the Bible that this generation of young people seems to have missed out on.
I can’t help but wonder if many of this generation of young people have ever been taught the foundations of studying the Bible by learning the books of the Bible so they can look up chapters and verses and I also wonder if many of this generation have even heard of the parables of Jesus or of His Sermon on the Mount.
It seems to me that they might be rejecting Christianity because they know so little about the faith they have inherited and I pray that these lost sheep will receive God’s grace and return to the welcoming arms of their shepherd Jesus Christ.
bettcee, post 12. Thank you for your comments. From my perspective, I think my limited appreciation for the Bible while growing up was a gap that God had to fill. For me, communion was the core of my faith (and I still appreciate its importance). However, in my 20’s work made it difficult to be a part of a church, so somehow I drifted into Bible reading as a way of nourishing my faith. Wow! It’s an amazing tool, both for working out personal issues and for working out differences with others that share the faith (and an appreciation of the Bible)–especially if you only use the Bible. When Jesus dueled with Satan, he reached for Scripture. I think when I was growing up, Bible quotes were often just a way to show that you were educated and were interchangeable with other quotes (sigh, even Marx and Sartre). At one time, Americans had a high Bible literacy (Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address is amazing). Now it seems like a dwindling art, even among Protestants. But based on the Bible, I trust that even if I am right, God will have mercy and renew us–we may just really hate what we have to go through. Again, thanks for your comments.
Hey Just Passing By . . . thanks for offering a very interesting and refreshingly non-bitter perspective from a non-Christian. It really is very interesting.
Paula, I would tend to agree with you that the responsibility for catechizing the children should fall on the parents and not the church (a scary thing for me as a relatively new parent). This, in fact was part of Cranmer’s design in the prayer book – that families practice morning and evening prayer together. Part of the problem that the church IS very responsible for is that often the parents are not catechized and so it makes sense that parents would just drop their kids off and expect the Church to do the work.
I might add that one reason for leaving or staying out is the persistent belief that the only way to salvation is through Christ. This familiar phrase i commonly taken literally. The very notion that all non- Christians are shut out of salvation violates in a fundamental way one of the central tenets of contemporary American society: pluralismdiversitymulticulturalism. The young simply do not believe “the only way…”; indeed, they regard it as the narrowest of bigotries. C.S> Lewis had his own sensible translation of this phrase, but precious few of the young are likely to have come across “Mere Christianity.” Even though Schori is peddling this fad, she is “Church” and that horse won’t pull. Larry
Mr. Morse:
Are you certain that [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emeth]C.S. Lewis[/url] is the person you want to cite on this point? Or perhaps I have misunderstood you?
regards,
JPB
C. S. Lewis advocated a position (both fictionally in The Last Battle, in the character of Emeth, and explicitly in Mere Christianity) also known as the Anonymous Christian and attributed to Catholic theologian Karl Rahner. The idea is a way of holding on to the doctrine that salvation comes only through Christ, while simultaneously refusing to believe that God will automatically condemn all the vast numbers of non-Christians to hell.
In other words, if I understand Larry Morse correctly, he is accurately citing C. S. Lewis to show that you can believe in salvation-through-Christ-alone without also believing that Christianity is the only way to be saved.
I didn’t know that the position was associated with a particular (professional) theologian. Thanks.
JPB
It seems to me that Christ has opened the door to salvation and we as Christians can lead others to this door. The door is NOT shut, it is always open but we as Christians have a responsibility to lead others to Christ.
I am sorry to say that I have great difficulty leading others to Christ and I have failed to live up to my responsibility as a Christian, but that failure is my fault, not the fault of the Christian religion.
Jesus has sacrificed much to open this door and He has told us that He is the way, if anyone is lost they can find their way through Him. Christians have no right to shut His door to salvation to anyone simply because they come from a different religious background.
Isn’t this old news? “another generation grew up who did not acknowledge the Lord or remember the mighty things he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did what was evil in the Lord’s sight and worshiped the images of Baal. They abandoned the Lord, the God of their ancestors . . . . They chased after other gods, worshiping the gods of the people around them. And they angered the Lord.” Judges 2:10-12
You are correct #18. Lewis said (in Mere Christianity) something to the effect that God simply did not tell us how He intended to bring non-Christians home through Christ. His tone suggested to me that he was implying that we were, perhaps arrogantly, assuming that God had told us ALL his plans for everyone. How could God be so careless as not to inform us of EVERYTHING? Incidentally I believe in Lewis’s position, that God and His Son, for whom time is a meaningless process, have opened ways for all mankind to be brought to Christ. What ways? How would I know? He failed to tell me too. This is supposition, but it at least leaves God’s justice and mercy unqualified and undiminished. I take this latter proposition to be fundamental.Did Christ die for all mankind or just for some? Larry
Re: people not self-identifying as Christian being brought to salvation – see Romans 2:9-12. Certainly salvation is only through Jesus Christ. Lewis’ example of Emeth is meant to illustrate the point in Romans. Many are familiar with the reports of dreams of people when their culture is first reached with the Gospel. Many report dreaming that there would be a Mediator between God and man. They recognized Jesus as that Mediator immediately upon being told the Gospel.
But take care neither to shirk our responsibility given by Jesus in the Great Commission to evangelize (go, preach, baptize, make disciples) nor to distort the sufficiency for all humanity of Jesus’ sacrifice into universalism. Jesus Himself clearly states in the Gospels that while all are offered the grace necessary to make the right choice and the price paid for sin by His sacrifice, many would choose self-will and self-justification and with it the eternal separation that we call Hell, “where the worm dieth not and the fire is never quenched”.