So, I was at home unpacking things after my recent move and catching up on podcasts, when I listened to an old episode of NPR's Speaking of Faith, which featured the Secular Humanist chaplain at Harvard, Greg Epstein, discussing how he ministers to people in that community from outside a faith perspective.
The interview was fascinating to listen to, but the biggest tidbit I took away from all of it was a comment he made saying something like one out of every five 18 to 26 year olds didn't believe in God.
I was startled by that number, for several reasons. First, he didn't say that twenty percent didn't follow any type of organized religion, he said that this number didn't believe in God at all. I first thought that this was surprisingly high, and I wondered if this was simply a product of the time in their life they were experiencing- being away from home and exposed to so many different ideas.
It's not at all trendy to be a Christian and a young person today. In a recent discussion with Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts-Schori and some young adutls in Seattle (read about it in the Seattle PI here), we found this comment interspersed in some very frank dialogue:
Katrina Hamilton, a University of Washington student, talked about how many of her friends are removed from and ignorant of religion, and noted "an increase in the stereotyping of Christians."
"It is much more acceptable in my circle to be gay than to be Christian," said Hamilton.
When I hear things like that, and I speak with all of the 20- and 30-somethings I bump into in my social circle, I'm convinced that Greg Epstein isn't that far off with his numbers. Some young people might be dabbling a bit in "spirituality", but they have very little interest in organized religion.
One of my closest friends, who describes himself as a "militant agnostic" and pretty much believes that Christianity is not only annoying but actively brings about a lot of evil in the world, once met me for lunch one Saturday when I was working at my church. There was some type of meeting or conference going on that day where he saw a bunch of people around. As we were heading out the door, his immediate comment was, "they're all old people." His stereotype of church being for old people was confirmed.
When I think about most of the mainline protestant churches I've visited, it's very rare that I see older teens or people under 40 who don't have kids in tow. It's almost as if the adults don't really care much about church, but they think it's good for their kids to be exposed to, since it was a positive influence on their lives. Maybe church is supposed to be something akin to school - part of your formation as a child, but pretty much irrelevant after you get old enough to think for yourself.
Really, we sometimes have to ask ourselves why we need organized religion when we can turn on the television and watch TV preacher, download a podcast of a sermon, pick up a CD of Praise and Worship hits from the store, or visit BeliefNet online.
The reason why you have organized religion is simply to be a part of a community - it's more about the community than it is about the religion, and Boomers, the Silent Generation, and especially "the Greatest Generation" before them were far more civicially engaged than any of us Xers and Yers are. (Think service organizations like Kiwanis, Rotary, Lions Club, etc - how many young people do you know who are involved with those things? It's not a part of the culture.)
This again goes back to my whole question about churches being more social and service organizations first, with any kind of real religion being soft-pedaled. The protestant megachurches do things differently, offering a lot of religion (and a lot of rules) along with striving to be "casual" and "relevant", and therefore attract a lot of Boomers - who seem to be into that kind of thing.
Does this happen in every generation until people start to want to reach kids that have been forgotten about up until that point? (I think of the Jesus Freak movement of the 1960s, Ralph Carmichael, and all of that . . .) Maybe that's what's going on now with the whole PoMo crowd - Brian McClaren and the evangelicals in the emergent church, and people like Diana Butler Bass out of the more liberal perspective. They're following a particular path that seems to be resonating with mostly younger people . . .
Will it result in Christianity becoming trendy? Is that a good thing? I'm not sure - but I know there's a ton of indifference and hostility out there now towards Christianity, and we all have to actively engage that if we take evangelism seriously.
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