Millennials in the United States consist of the largest population. They also happen to be the most analyzed and investigated generation (Puffer, 2017). Large corporations and companies have created marketing concepts and products suited to the liking of millennials in order to keep sales and profits up. The surprising part has been in the religious circle where millennials are being said to be causing havoc due to their mass exit from organized religion. This slow exit has elicited sharp reactions from religious bodies which seem to have only made the problem even plainer for all to see. Now that it is plain for all to see that a certain generation seems to be sidelining religion in favor of a life of making your own set of practices and only accepting what conforms to your lifestyle, it has become important to fully understand it.
It has become important to study this issue because of its potential to extend polarization in the country through a religious avenue. History reminds us of a country that seemed to have more of a similar vision and ideas because of the few difference that separated us. With changes in demographics and increased diversity among the American people in the past 30 years, it is now needful to fully understand the role that organized religion plays in our democracy and whether it is in danger as millennials continually decide to bypass it. The abandoning of organized religion while seemingly unimportant has the potential to be a deciding factor in the future of the country for the next twenty years. Religious affiliation is now a topic that does not go unnoticed and at the same time elicits sharp comments especially from unaffiliated people, who, constantly criticize religion or remain indifferent (Vaughn, 2016). While both actions seem small, the effect is that even set principles and rules can be broken to quieten the sounds made by those who criticize religion.
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Through this paper, the issue of millennials leaving organized religion will be discussed with a special focus on showing that it is deeply entrenched in society to the point that it will become an important factor in both politics and education.
Emerging Trends or Issues or Main Facts on the Problem
Organized religion has been on the decline for more than ten years in the United States. Not only has religious affiliation numbers experienced a drop, but so has religious service attendance. It was highlighted that by 2014, the number of American adults who believed in God, prayed, attended religious services or even read the bible had reduced. This has led to an interesting dynamic where millennials have taken up personal religious beliefs as opposed to following a church’s or other religious body’s doctrine (Twenge, Sherman, Exline, & Grubbs, 2016).
Causes of Millennials Leaving Organized Religion
Millennials would rather be termed to be spiritual as opposed to religious. The difference is in the nature of constrictions. Religiosity means that one accepts the creed of a Christian or a Muslim and shapes his/her life according to what the religion teaches through its sacred book. Thus the religion serves as the constriction. Being spiritual on the other hand allows for a person to be ruled only by the dictates of the kind of lifestyle he/she has chosen. This means that a person will ascribe that a person will adapt into his/her life only those beliefs and teachings that they believe will be consistent with their own way of life. Millennials conveniently choose this way as a means to avoiding the much-hated term of being “judgmental” (Vaughn, 2016).
According to a recent study, millennials put more value in helping out the needy in the community more than they do on religion. Additionally, their top priorities included being good parents and having successful marriages which scored 52% and 30% respectively. Interestingly, they have equal priorities in having high-paying jobs and having a very religious lifestyle (Vaughn, 2016). These statistics show that the millennial does not really consider religious life to be of importance as long as one remains a good citizen. The evidence then shows how millennials prefer to have their ideological beliefs align with their chosen system of belief. This is believed to help them avoid the need to explain why they take up a certain belief system and at the same time saves them from having to defend an entire belief system. Sociologists have linked this to the phenomena of religious individualization, in which studies have shown that many people who profess to attend a certain church at the same time hold varied views from what is officially known to be their church’s stand on a certain issue and sometimes, the views are almost heretical.
One of the heaviest reasons for the departure from mainstream religion is the issue of authenticity. Many millennials cite that the religious side is flawed because they simply do not practice what they preach. While interviewing millennials for research, it was noted that most millennials do not think that the churches perform the duties that they heavily advocate for on pulpit sermons (Vaughn, 2016). This and the apparent scandals that can be found in leading church figures only fuels their resort to abandon the church completely or to formulate their own road to spirituality. This authenticity also permeates into the dimensions of diversity, tolerance, and acceptance as well as well genuine sincerity. The church is being accused by millennials for being hateful, rejects certain sections of people in the community and excluding some church members from church activities due to unnecessary or rather, unscriptural bias. These acts alone make millennials to prefer to identify themselves as non-religious, a silent minority that has been noted to be on the rise in the United States.
Closely tied to authenticity is the issue of spiritual wounds. Since millennials are one of the most racially diverse age-groups in the United States, it makes sense that they would suffer most from backlashes from religious bodies and churches due to diversity problems. Most of them take offense that a person who comes to church dressed differently because of the nature of his/her upbringing or culture is immediately looked down upon or segregated by church members. Statistics have already shown that millennials are the most educated lot in the country with over 48% of those above 18 years having attained a bachelor’s degree (Vaughn, 2016). This means that they have already been exposed to culturally diverse settings and envision that their communities should follow in the same light. It also shows that millennials are aware of the diversity within its ranks and therefore will stop at nothing to see that diversity is experienced in church. When it is not, as is the case now, they chose to reject organized religion in favor of a complete exit or the taking up of individual religion.
Another major factor in causing this shift away from religion is education. Hungerman (2013) noted that although there exists no vigorous proof as the direct relationship between level of education and religious beliefs and practices, there exists data that support the fact that as Americans scale higher in education, their religiosity is gradually replaced by strong philosophies and reasoning that most the time lead to the person abandoning religion altogether or forming complicated systems of beliefs that seem to cut across many religions. The main reason behind this is the fact that educational material have in the past century turned out to be great supporters and disseminators of secularization notions and principles (Chaves, 1994). This has made millennials to view religious people in the eyes of Karl Max as a people who are greatly blinded or narrow in thought and ambition (Cnaan, Gelles, & Sinha, 2004).
Consequences Of Millennials Leaving Organized Religion
The deviation from organized religion while seeming to be a right move in the wake of the present poor state of religion, still has consequences that need attention. The consequences do, however, can be analyzed depending on the manner a millennial has left organized religion. It may be partial- choosing to be spiritual but not religious- or it may be fully- choosing to be unaffiliated with any religious group. It must be noted, however, that even the growth of a nonreligious populace is a consequence in itself.
Records show that although the majority of Americans are still decidedly religious, this number is falling. What is shocking is that it is not leading to a rise in the number of millennials referring to themselves as spiritual, but rather, the nonreligious group is the chief benefactor of the growing number of individuals who are finding reason to be dissatisfied with organized religion. The period between the early 2000s and 2014 exhibits the greatest declines in number of people with religious orientation (Chase, 2013). As an effect, nearly half of millennials are now religiously unaffiliated and secular at the same time. This has seen then rise in views such as the nonexistence of God, the Bible being a book of fables, and not praying (Twenge et al., 2016).
The millennial who chooses not to follow church or any spiritual teaching is shown by studies to be more likely to take part in risky behavior. It has been found after a study of 99,462 adolescents, that religious adolescents possessed more positive assets when it came to the exercise of restraint and decreased risk behavior such as alcohol and drug abuse (Cnaan et al., 2004). Furthermore, religious millennials were found to show a high correlation between their high levels of self-esteem and positive self-attitudes and the fact that they gave special significance to their faith and took part in religious youth groups. Thus it does suggest that a less religious millennial generation could mean that society will be plagued by stressed employees, high crime rates and high level of illegal substance abuse.
Another effect that this movement from organized religion is on the traditional doctrinal stands that churches have had. In the past twenty years, we have seen churches change their stand on many seriously contentious issues especially with regards to women and homosexuality. Mormons and evangelicals, who in the past were known for their strong stance on the subject of same-sex relationships have now embraced it. This can be linked to the forces at play caused by millennials who, are statistically proven to have a larger acceptance for same-sex relationships (Wormald, 2015). This may mean that this generation and possibly the one that follows will reshape religion and perhaps make it very unfamiliar to a Christian who died in the 70s and 80s.
Brooding the tide of religious changes in the United States has also shown in politics. According to Pew Research Center, the religiously unaffiliated have made a noticeable impact on the Democratic Party coalition. They, in fact, hold a larger presence than those who hold the Catholic, Protestant and even black protestant faith in the party (Wormald, 2015). This helps to get a view of how issues will be debated in future and perhaps how much morality will be taken into the hands of society and away from religious books. It is also noted that their numbers are gradually increasing in the Republican Party.
Levels of happiness and satisfaction have been linked to attending religious meetings. In a study done by Ross (2011), it was found that women who attended religious meetings were less subjected to the pressures of daily life. It also found that women’s happiness from 1972- 2008 was closely related to their attending of religious meetings. This means that as attendance of such events became less, women’s happiness reduced significantly. A wider application of this may finding may suggest that women would be more susceptible to suffering depression if they did not attend a religious gathering (Ross, 2011).
Possible Solutions To Stop And Turn The Trend Around
Because the problem is a generational one as demonstrated by the causes and consequences of the movement away from organized religion, the approach to solving the issues and thereby bringing back millennials into the church is a process that needs patience and tact. One practical solution is in the use of the five responses of pursuing, empathizing, validating, self-disclosing and probing (Puffer, 2017). This model is developed on the principle that when addressing a group, it is better to seek to understand them before attempting to have them understand you. Already millennials show that they are in support of initiatives that are frank and honest with while speaking directly to their needs and opinions without in any castigating them or “judging” them. Such a program would run well in a church setting. By being open about their own weaknesses and flaws, church leaders can be able to win the confidence of millennials and can follow it up by providing mentorship programs that appreciate the fact that millennials are well read and have a thirst for facts. It may be time for religious leaders to rethink their approach towards millennials and embrace their wide thinking and then use it to help then narrow it down to understanding the reason for the religious teachings in the context of the global view.
Another possible method can be in the increased practicality of religion itself. Seemingly, millennials view those who undertake to follow all the provided precepts of a certain religion to be caged. This is only supported when they witness that the lives of these persons is not transformed or does not look attractive enough to forget one’s own life ambitions for the sake of obeying set down lifestyle choices as provided by a religious book. If people who professed religion actually applied it in their lives and produced the result of a happy and healthy person, millennials would think twice on their stand. This move, just like the first suggestion, will require that serious religious people first of all be very open and sincere in their own actions and deportment. This would then lead to a witness of how they treat the needy in society or minority groups. Perhaps this would explain why despite the fact that most churches opened their doors to same-sex relationships, millennials still kept out of church (Degenaro, 2013). It could mean that they considered the move of religious groups as a forced move rather than a move done in order to calm the people’s protests.
Conclusion
The issue of decline in organized religion popularity among millennials is not an issue that will quickly disappear. It is likely to manifest itself even more boldly as events unfold especially in the political arena where the presence of millennials without religious affiliation is on the rise. This means that only a concerted effort made after honest meditation by religious affiliates will bear fruit. Millennials are looking for the practicality of the messages found in religious groups but many have found none.
References
Chase, J. (2013). An Examination Of The Influence Of Religiosity On Political Views Of The Millenial Generation.
Chaves, M. (1994). Secularization as declining religious authority. Social Forces , 72 (3), 749–774. https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/72.3.749
Cnaan, R. A., Gelles, R. J., & Sinha, J. W. (2004). Youth and religion: The Gameboy generation goes to “church.” Social Indicators Research , 68 (2), 175–200. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:SOCI.0000025592.60815.37
Degenaro, K. L. (2013). An Examination Of The Influence Of Religiosity On Political Views Of The Millenial Generation. University of Central Florida.
Puffer, K. A. (2017). Protestant Millennials, Religious Doubt, & the Local Church. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel9010008
Ross, G. A. (2011). The Impact of Church Attendance on the Decline in Female Happiness in the United States. Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion , 7 .
Twenge, J. M., Sherman, R. A., Exline, J. J., & Grubbs, J. B. (2016). Declines in American Adults’ Religious Participation and Beliefs, 1972-2014. SAGE Open , 6 (1). https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244016638133
Vaughn, S. M. (2016). Why Millennials are Leaving the Church: A qualitative study analyzing multiple factors contributing to the decline in Millennial engagement within the Church . Appalachian State University.
Wormald, B. (2015, November 03). U.S. Public Becoming Less Religious. Retrieved May 24, 2018, from http://www.pewforum.org/2015/11/03/u-s-public-becoming-less-religious/
