A recent Pew study has revealed that youth are leaving religion behind in droves, as compared with previous generations, but their spirituality remains intact. “Millennials,” or those born between 1980 and 2000, are finding church services and affiliation with particular religions less appealing than their elders.
In days gone by, being dragged to church, whether you liked it or not, was a common occurrence in black culture. That practice seemed to have ingrained an importance of maintaining allegiance to a particular religion and assembling together to cultivate it. There’s something about church now, though, that has 1 in 4 not interested in attending.
There’s been a growing emphasis on youth church in the last several years, wherein leaders pull out all the stops, just shy of becoming too worldly, to make it more appealing than “grandmama’s religion”; apparently it’s not working, some say, due to politics becoming more prominent in the way of dictating lifestyles. But what impact is this having on every day life?
Harvard professor Robert Putnam and Notre Dame professor David Campbell make the assertion that Millennials are a strongly left-leaning generation, and their “religious disaffection is largely due to discomfort with religiosity having been tied to conservative politics,” they write.
Pop culture seems to lend to the ever-increasing leftist attitudes of today’s youth. Exposure to church doctrine that challenges now commonly accepted activities such as homosexuality, increased sexual liberty in general (“sexting” included), cohabitation versus marriage, single-parent homes — some by choice, etc are all naturally making it difficult for the millenials to exist up under a rules-laden religious umbrella. They believe in God and even pray almost as much as previous generations, but they’d rather march to the beat of their own drummer — which they may not realize is really dictated by the changing tides of pop culture.
The phenomenon is challenging for religious leaders, as they feel their respective sacred texts — and the rules there-in — are essential to relationship with God and neglecting the assembling together and teaching from those texts will only lead to separation from God. The false sense of connection, according to them, that comes from self-governance leads to catastrophic consequences, membership and financial support of their organizations aside. They’ve referred to today’s youth as “sheep obliviously being led to the slaughter.”
As more and more millennials leave the teachings of their parents’ religions, will they be headed for “hell in a handbasket?” Should they be forced to attend church services against their will, as in the past? I’d be willing to bet grandmama thinks so.
