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July 27th, 2013
08:33 AM ET
Why millennials are leaving the church
(CNN) - At 32, I barely qualify as a millennial. I wrote my first essay with a pen and paper, but by the time I graduated from college, I owned a cell phone and used Google as a verb. I still remember the home phone numbers of my old high school friends, but don’t ask me to recite my husband’s without checking my contacts first. I own mix tapes that include selections from Nirvana and Pearl Jam, but I’ve never planned a trip without Travelocity. Despite having one foot in Generation X, I tend to identify most strongly with the attitudes and the ethos of the millennial generation, and because of this, I’m often asked to speak to my fellow evangelical leaders about why millennials are leaving the church. Armed with the latest surveys, along with personal testimonies from friends and readers, I explain how young adults perceive evangelical Christianity to be too political, too exclusive, old-fashioned, unconcerned with social justice and hostile to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. I point to research that shows young evangelicals often feel they have to choose between their intellectual integrity and their faith, between science and Christianity, between compassion and holiness. I talk about how the evangelical obsession with sex can make Christian living seem like little more than sticking to a list of rules, and how millennials long for faith communities in which they are safe asking tough questions and wrestling with doubt. Invariably, after I’ve finished my presentation and opened the floor to questions, a pastor raises his hand and says, “So what you’re saying is we need hipper worship bands. …” And I proceed to bang my head against the podium. Time and again, the assumption among Christian leaders, and evangelical leaders in particular, is that the key to drawing twenty-somethings back to church is simply to make a few style updates - edgier music, more casual services, a coffee shop in the fellowship hall, a pastor who wears skinny jeans, an updated Web site that includes online giving. But here’s the thing: Having been advertised to our whole lives, we millennials have highly sensitive BS meters, and we’re not easily impressed with consumerism or performances. In fact, I would argue that church-as-performance is just one more thing driving us away from the church, and evangelicalism in particular. Many of us, myself included, are finding ourselves increasingly drawn to high church traditions - Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, the Episcopal Church, etc. - precisely because the ancient forms of liturgy seem so unpretentious, so unconcerned with being “cool,” and we find that refreshingly authentic. What millennials really want from the church is not a change in style but a change in substance. We want an end to the culture wars. We want a truce between science and faith. We want to be known for what we stand for, not what we are against. We want to ask questions that don’t have predetermined answers. We want churches that emphasize an allegiance to the kingdom of God over an allegiance to a single political party or a single nation. We want our LGBT friends to feel truly welcome in our faith communities. We want to be challenged to live lives of holiness, not only when it comes to sex, but also when it comes to living simply, caring for the poor and oppressed, pursuing reconciliation, engaging in creation care and becoming peacemakers. You can’t hand us a latte and then go about business as usual and expect us to stick around. We’re not leaving the church because we don’t find the cool factor there; we’re leaving the church because we don’t find Jesus there. Like every generation before ours and every generation after, deep down, we long for Jesus. Now these trends are obviously true not only for millennials but also for many folks from other generations. Whenever I write about this topic, I hear from forty-somethings and grandmothers, Generation Xers and retirees, who send me messages in all caps that read “ME TOO!” So I don’t want to portray the divide as wider than it is. But I would encourage church leaders eager to win millennials back to sit down and really talk with them about what they’re looking for and what they would like to contribute to a faith community. Their answers might surprise you. Rachel Held Evans is the author of "Evolving in Monkey Town" and "A Year of Biblical Womanhood." She blogs at rachelheldevans.com. The views expressed in this column belong to Rachel Held Evans. soundoff (9,864 Responses)« Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 Next »
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Opinion by Rachel Held Evans, Special to CNN
Excellent observations, Rachel.
Obvious from the comments, however, not everyone is looking for Jesus. A vocal number have discounted Him up front. Not surprising, since He wasn't popular with everyone during His ministry years either.
That said, those who ARE looking for something apart from empiricism and existentialism, those who are looking for some purpose and meaning to existence, need to see authenticity and integrity in the church i.e holiness. They need to see Jesus embodied in His followers. And they need us to be honest about our failures and struggles in implementing this integrity.
One of our greatest failures, it seems to me, is in our apparent disability to show acceptance of people even if we (and the Bible) disapprove of their behavior. If we cannot effectively make this distinction, how can they?
" They need to see Jesus embodied in His followers. "
Good luck with that. Contemporary evangelical Christianity is characterized by arrogance, condescension, and hatred.
I think your error is in assuming that making that distinction will help. When you are talking about something as fundamentally important as who a person loves and wants to spend their life with, rejecting their actions is the same as rejecting the person.
Apparently there have always been those who wanted more than reality could give them, which is why so many people are willing to believe fairytales for which there is no supporting evidence.
skytag
"Apparently there have always been those who wanted more than reality could give them, which is why so many people are willing to believe fairytales for which there is no supporting evidence."
I guess it depends on what you mean by "fairytale." Of course you are making a positive claim that religion is a "fairytale," but I did not see any "supporting evidence" of your claim. BTW...what would be the required "evidence?"
A fairy tale is a story that never happened. So, by definition, evidence to show it really happened cannot exist. And therefore you can't provide evidence that a fairy tale really happened. You MIGHT be able to prove a "supposed fairy tale" really happened, but I'm too exhausted to get into that right now.
"Of course you are making a positive claim that religion is a "fairytale," but I did not see any "supporting evidence" of your claim. "
Probably because I didn't try to present any. Do you believe the Norse gods were real, or fairytales? How about the Greek gods? Or the ancient Egyptian gods? Throughout history men have made up gods to explain phenomenon they couldn't explain based on their understanding of the world around them. Many of those gods have been discarded for newer ones, and the religious beliefs based on them have been discarded as fairytales, or myths, or legends, I don't much care what you want to call them.
So unless you believe Thor is real and his hammer is what causes lightning you agree with me.
The religions of today are more sophisticated, more carefully constructed in such a way that they have managed to survive the increased knowledge we have of the world, but they are just as much fairytales as the stories of Thor or Zeus, and with no more evidence to support them.
"BTW...what would be the required "evidence?""
I'm not picky, but claims supported by nothing more than someone telling me he's really, really sure it's true won't cut it.
It just seems to me the claims and rationalizations behind any religion with which I'm familiar — and mostly that would be Christianity — don't make sense when viewed objectively. Every religion has its narrative, a belief system built around one or more gods postulated to exist. I'll be the first to admit those narratives, once mature, are complete enough to have answers to most objections and are internally consistent, but there is no reason be they have any basis in fact or reality.
So while a well-studied Christian has a lot of answers, they just seem like a lot of rationalizing to me.
It also seems to me that if the claims made by Christians were true, claims that God is powerful enough to create a universe with a trillion trillion stars in it, that he knows everything all seven billion of us are doing, answers prayers and so on, there would be something to show for it, and there wouldn't be so many things that didn't make sense.
lol??
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lol??
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lol??
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Old lady Rachel Held Evans should roll up her sleeves and get busy with God's work instead of indulging her fantasies and tickling people's ears, that is, if she is a Christian, and not a KOMMIE KILLER MOMMIE. At 32, she should know better. She must know some 15 or 16 year old pregnant girls that need guidance in loving their own children and hubbies.
"Tts 2:3-4 The aged women likewise, that [they be] in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children,"!!......
A 15 year old girl with a husband ? What century are you living in ?
That is so true... If any of my 9 daughters isn't married off by 13, I kick her ass out of the house!
"....................Every year 14 million girls are married worldwide. One in seven girls in the developing world is married before her 15th birthday – some as young as eight or nine. In 2010, over 67 million women ages 20-24 had been married as girls, and, if the trend continues, 142 million will be married by 2020..............."
reliefweb.
You need a chasti*ty belt for your mouth.
On the 15 year old girls thing ... please see:
http://compassionforafrica.org/aboutus.html
and
http://compassionforafrica.org/projects.html
particularly The Wilbur Project.
1 in 7 world wide....how many in the U.S. ? You need a stronger B.S. meter for your "bwain".
1 in 7 in the DEVELOPING world.
lol?? – do you even understand what you write?
There would be fewer underage pregnancies if little girls (and boys) weren't allowed in confessionals alone.
Speaking of moderators, is the moderator an atheist or a member of a fundamentalist Christian group? It matters. It reminds me of a movie that included a wresting match between a midget and Andre the giant. When the midget was declared the winner, the camera panned around to the score-keeper who, it turns out, was also a midget. A "little person," sorry.
Mother Theresa and I have something in common, we both doubt the existence of God. Read this: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1655720,00.html
This almost totally mystified me; to read of churches like this at all; so little I had seen or heard or read of this (one or two exceptions were on my sphere of concern; few others something like this, I'd heard or read a bit of; are there really so many now? is this the same planet? what country is Rachel Held Evans in please?). I wondered, is this real observation, of someone who has begun to live in Jesus Christ, but still has some obvious and public and temporary disagreements with the Bible, still some things not resolved in faith, which the intense total process of discipleship personal learning will sooner or later weed out and discard, so Rachel will no longer be troubled by so-called love where hatred is expressed, so-called science where the truth is selectively ignored (still encourage the study of science! you might see big bang and evolution things for what they are), and compassion which shows sinners love (agapao) those who love them? Or is this perhaps another group, whose main characteristic is unholiness, who seemed inaccessible if someone wanted to warn them if God set out to put to death about half their number (about one-third, about two-thirds) now?
With some work you can probably turn this into something coherent.
Yeah, it looks like the writer here as something interesting to say but I couldn't figure out quite what.
Harsh!
Francis is calling Rachel an immature or unformed Christian. He or she is expressing incredulity at the poor discipleship she has received. I don't disagree.
You have it in one sentence (it seems to me) – "Like every generation before ours and every generation after, deep down, we long for Jesus." This seems like the perfect focus for any faith community and the Church.
"we long for Jesus"
Who are these "we" to whom she refers? Is it a tautology, in that she's referring to people who "long for Jesus?" I don't long for Jesus. I don't think many people Saudi Arabia or India long for Jesus. Most of the world doesn't long for Jesus. You folks need to come out of the bubble and look around.
I had the same reaction when I read that. I might have bought "Like most people in every generation born into Christian families we long for meaning and feel that in the concept of Jesus".
Given her premises I might even have taken
"Like all people we long for the meaning and love that Jesus can provide" (I wouldn't think it true, but it would make sense given what I assume are her premises)
However, the way she worded it came off presumptuous and more than a little ethnocentric. It may just be poor writing, but she'd do well to be more careful.
You long for Him if you long for truth, for love, for justice, for beauty. And He longs for you.
These people live in a bubble that insulates them from reality. They think everyone longs for Jesus, that God will protect the faithful, that atheists are all miserable, that truth is what you really, really believe, not what can be verified by observation and valid logic.
You shouldn't trust your eyes because they can be deceived. Trust your heart instead, because as we all know, the heart is much better at leading people to make good decisions than the brain.
Sky,
I don't think atheist are miserable, there is a lot of fun to be had under the sun. I like your paragraph about the heart, faith begins in the heart.
@Robert Brown: "I like your paragraph about the heart, faith begins in the heart."
I was being facetious. Faith of the religious type begins in the desire to believe something whether it's true or not.
Another way to say that is, "Faith is believing something without proof." Because if you had proof, there would be no need for faith. I have faith... yup, I do. I have faith my dog will come back when I accidentally leave the backdoor open. Will he come back? I have no idea, but I have faith he will.
@Mark Dyar: "You long for Him if you long for truth, for love, for justice, for beauty. And He longs for you."
Rubbish. You long for him if you want to avoid dealing with the harsh realities of life.
Christ's atonement was a very clever invention of the authors of Christianity. A main purpose of almost all religions is to encourage their followers to be better members of the societies in which they live. Primarily they do this with promises of rewards for good behavior and punishments for bad behavior.
In simplest terms, the atonement transforms the selfish desire to avoid punishment into the selfless desire to spare Christ from having to endure additional punishment for more of your sins.
When you avoid doing something wrong to avoid punishment it does nothing to make you feel good about yourself and can even produce feelings of resentment. However, choosing to not do something because it reduces someone else's suffering makes you feel noble and can be an ever more powerful incentive.
It's a well known tactic for keeping a group of people in line. You tell them that if anyone breaks the rules you're going punish innocent people in the group in retaliation. Unwilling to see an innocent person suffer for their actions, people follow the rules.
It's the same with the atonement, except in that case the innocent person who will suffer for your sin is a fictitious character you've been taught is the epitome of good and innocent. If you sin, Christ suffers, so don't sin. It's nothing more than a clever story to control you.
@photografr7: "Another way to say that is, "Faith is believing something without proof." Because if you had proof, there would be no need for faith. I have faith... yup, I do. I have faith my dog will come back when I accidentally leave the backdoor open. Will he come back? I have no idea, but I have faith he will."
There are two distinct kinds of faith. The faith you have in your dog is an extension of past experience. I have faith the sun will rise tomorrow, that the light will come on when I flip the switch, that people I know will act in a manner consistent with past behavior and so on. This kind of faith is reasonable and even necessary.
The other kind is when you just believe something because you want it to be true. A Christian has faith he'll continue to exist in some form after he dies. This is not based on any evidence, logic, or past experience whatsoever. There is no reason to believe it other than a desire to believe it.
This kind of is unreasonable, not necessary, and even dangerous, because it's the kind of faith that convinces people they're doing God's will when they persecute people who are different or make laws to impose their beliefs about God's will on the rest of us.
It's the kind of faith that has people believing God will ensure victory in war and leads to the death of people who rely on faith healing instead modern medicine. It's the kind of faith that justifies believing something even when evidence, history, facts and reason say it's false. It's a form of faith anyone seeking truth should reject wholesale.
I'm the wrong person to represent the faithful, but I have a feeling they would disagree with your definition of faith. When they have faith in God, I assume it's more complicated than they just feel like it. They would probably say their faith has gotten them through the sickness of their child, or how they managed to escape that fire in the nick of time, or even, He chose the right lottery numbers for me.... MORE THAN ONCE! So their faith may be based on experience too, like knowing my dog will NEVER come home although I know he loves me. Even so-called "blind faith" works that way. They believe not because the priest or minister told them to have faith but rather because it helped their elderly grandmother avoid a long and agonizing death by taking her to heaven at the age of 51. God have mercy on her soul.
@photografr7: "I'm the wrong person to represent the faithful, but I have a feeling they would disagree with your definition of faith."
Of course they would. Doesn't make me wrong. 😉 Here's what the Bible tells them:
Hebrews 11:1
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
In other words, hoping something is true is evidence it's true. That is: Faith = Evidence. This is why they always claim they have evidence. Giving words a special meaning within the context of a belief system is a propaganda technique. "Faith" is evidence; "truth" is what the Bible teaches; do this enough and it doesn't take long before they're living in a world that has little connection to reality.
"When they have faith in God, I assume it's more complicated than they just feel like it."
It's belief in things hoped for, according to the Bible, and in practice that's a pretty good definition.
"They would probably say their faith has gotten them through the sickness of their child"
And that could very well be true. The notion that faith can affect you internally is perfectly reasonable. Faith your wife is waiting faithfully for you to return from the war may keep you going, even if in reality she's sleeping with every man she meets. The placebo effect is well recognized.
Ah, "tautology." Haven't discussed that word since I was working on my B.A. in Philosophy. As I recall, I even took a class called The Philosophy of Religion, so I could snicker. Taking a class on the Philosophy of Religion is like taking a class on the Philosophy of Mathematics to learn the origin of an ancient math system that teaches its followers that 1+1 =2 and 2 + 1 = "more."
Saying "People who long for Jesus long for Jesus" is a tautology like saying "God is the truth because God is the truth." Science uses a tad more evidence than that. Just a tad, I say!
Exactly. "We all all long for Jesus" where "we" = all the people who long for Jesus. People say stuff like this and actually believe they're speaking some profound truth.
"The father, the son and the holy ghost is one." What could be more profound than that, and dead wrong at the same time?
@photografr7: "I'm the wrong person to represent the faithful, but I have a feeling they would disagree with your definition of faith."
Of course they would. Doesn't make me wrong. 😉 Here's what the Bible tells them:
Hebrews 11:1
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
In other words, hoping something is true is evidence it's true. That is: Faith = evidence. This is why they always claim they have evidence. Giving words a special meaning within the context of a belief system is a propaganda technique. "Faith" is evidence; "truth" is what the Bible teaches; do this enough and it doesn't take long before they're living in a world that has little connection to reality.
"When they have faith in God, I assume it's more complicated than they just feel like it."
It's belief in things hoped for, according to the Bible, and in practice that's a pretty good definition.
"They would probably say their faith has gotten them through the sickness of their child"
And that could very well be true. The notion that faith can affect you internally is perfectly reasonable. Faith your wife is waiting faithfully for you to return from the war may keep you going, even if in reality she's sleeping with every man she meets. The placebo effect is well documented.
Sorry about the double post. I posted this in the wrong place and didn't think it went through.
I just thought you were trying to make your point stronger by posting it twice.
As my kids used to say, "That's retarded." (their definition of "faith," not your answer)
We?
someone tell me from whence did the theories of cross pollination, accounting procedures, study of and naming galaxies-just to name a few, get their beginnings? okay, i'll tell you monastaries which kept western civilization alive. monks studied nature and taught others what they found. the monasaries were schools of learning, scientific and religious. so the theory science and religion are in conflict fails in light of history. one will have to find another reason to be an atheist if the idea that religion poo poos science happens to be one.
How about simply not believing in God? I find that to be the primary (only) reason someone identifies as atheist.
Precisely!! So there's really only ONE kind of atheist. How they choose to act (or not act) on their non-belief is their own business, and not subject to labeling.
No one with any sense believes religion poo poos science. What is pretty clear, however, is thay it creates blinders in very specific areas of science. We have seen this in many places, from Hindu fundamentalists fighting with national geologists to Christians who can't accept modern findings on hom.ose.xuality or the physical determinism of our brains. We see it in Mormons who produce almost nonsensical anthroplogy to Taoists who can't distinguish determinism from fatalism. That's not to say that great work cannot still be done, but at a certain point the blinders need to go or progress is halted.
More evidence religion makes people stupid.
– First and foremost, atheists are atheists because we simply see no objective reason to believe anything one could reasonably call a god exists.
– The things you listed were the work of people who believed in God working outside the bounds of their religious beliefs. None of them are religious teachings.
– Over the millennia science has debunked countless claims put forth by believers. Not all, obviously, but a lot. We no longer believe disease is caused by evil spirits, that seizures are the result of demonic possession, or than lightning is caused by Thor's hammer. The list of phenomenon attributed to the supernatural at one time or another eventually debunked by science is fairly long, especially if you consider the whole of all the world's religions.
That's becuase as a social caste, shamans are largely exempted from having to do any real work, in the sweaty, laborious sense. They were one of the only groups to have the time to learn to be literate in a society largely composed of subsistence farmers.
Good point.
Aren't you discounting the work of missionaries who left family and forsook more lucrative futures, traveled to distant continents, braved hostile societies, climates and disease to build churches, schools, hospitals and other infrastructure, all while sharing the Gospel?
I don't see how that's germane to the original topic, which was about monasteries being schools of learning.
There is an old saying among countries visited by missionaries:
“When the white man arrived, he had the Bible and we had the land; now, we have the Bible and he has the land."
The general working theory for Christian missionaries was first formalized in St. Augustine's doctrine of "cognite intrare", or "compel them to enter", but was perhaps best summed up by J. C. Warner some 1500 years later:
“... the sword must first—not exterminate them, but—break them up as tribes, and destroy their political existence; after which, when thus set free from the shackles by which they are bound, civilisation and Christianity will no doubt make rapid progress among them.”
Historically, Christian missioniaries have not travelled to hostile, foreign lands to spread a message of love, pacifism, tolerance and humility. Instead, they have been the harbingers of conquering armies, providing the holiest of rationalizations for all manner of atrocities from exploitation of natural resources to theft and/or destruction of national treasures to outright genocide.
It's time to leave the Church, and follow Jesus, in Truth!
http://www.holy-19-harvest.com
UNIVERSAL MAGNIFICENT MIRACLES
What a load of malarkey.