Generations of American adults who were marked by a strong commitment to Christianity and a practical devotion to their faith are ageing and disappearing. They are being “replaced” by generations of young people who are less likely to identify with the Christian religion or become committed Christians.
While Pew Research studies show that Millennials[1] are the first generation unlikely to become more religious as they age, Barna Group studies show that Generation Z (Zoomers)[2] are even further away from religion than previous generations. If these trends continue, America, the bastion of Christianity in the civilised world, “is likely to grow less religious even if those who are adults today maintain their current levels of religious commitment.”
In 2007 there were 227 million adults in the United States and 78.4% of them identified as Christian. Over the next seven years, the adult population grew by a further 18 million. However, the percentage of adults identifying as Christian fell to 70.6%, or by about 5 million adults. At the same time, the number of religiously unaffiliated adults increased by 19 million, making them the second largest group after evangelical Protestants, and more numerous than Catholics and members of mainline Protestant churches. This means that for every person who joined a religion, there were four who left it. At the same time, the religiously unaffiliated have been found to be in the process of secularisation. In 2014, a third of them said they did not believe in God, which is 11% more than in 2007.
Researchers at Pew Research see “generational replacement” as one of the main factors behind the decline in the proportion of Christians and the rise of the unaffiliated. While religious abandonment exists among Americans of all ages, ethnicities, and educational levels, it is much more pronounced among young people. As religious groups age, the median age of the unaffiliated group continues to decline, from 38 in 2007 to 36 in 2014. And as the millennial generation matures, its members are becoming increasingly unaffiliated, Pew reports. In this context, a Barna study reports that the number of atheists among Generation Z is double that of older generations of Americans.[3]
Generation Z is the generation born between 1999 and 2015. It is the generation that follows the Millennials and precedes Generation Alpha. They are young people on the rise, unaffected by the big events that have a significant impact on character development such as moving away from home, going to college, getting their first job, having their first serious relationship, starting a family, and so on. However, studies are already trying to intuit where this generation will go and how it will shape the world we live in.
Younger and more atheist
Generation Z is unique as the first truly post-Christian generation. What does that mean? It doesn’t mean that the sky is falling on Christianity. In fact, Christianity is still growing (more so in the southern hemisphere) and is and will remain the world’s largest religion for decades to come.[4] As I’ve already mentioned, America remains the bastion of Christianity in the developed world, with nearly 71% of Americans identifying as Christian, and Pew surveys have shown a good dose of stability among religious Americans. Among the religiously affiliated population, which includes a wide variety of Christian and non-Christian religions, there was no decline in the religious commitment index from 2007 to 2014.
Nevertheless, the cultural context itself has changed profoundly. Author and theologian James Emery White calls this shift the “second fall.” If the first fall led to God’s expulsion of humanity from the Garden of Eden, in this second fall “we have returned the favour.”[5] That is, we have expelled God from our world. We live in a “functional atheism” in which it is not that we reject the idea of a God, but that our culture ignores the need to seek something outside ourselves, some transcendental truth, White explains.[6] The direct result is that religious institutions, and even the traditional family as an institution, no longer have the cultural relevance and importance they once had. And with all the advances in technology, with robotics, cloning, stem cell research, DNA modification, and transsexualism, even humanist doctrine is less able to explain what it means to be human.
This is the context in which Zoomers were born. It is the first generation of digital natives, born after the invention of the smartphone, but it is the generation with the least knowledge of the Bible (a characteristic of the post-Christian world) and the most confusion about moral values or the dilemma of the coexistence of evil and God’s goodness. From this perspective, it should be encouraging that a majority of these young people (58%) identify themselves as Christians, that 43% of them attend church[7], and that according to indices measuring the importance of Scripture, they are more traditionalist and closer to the beliefs and attitudes of Generation X (to which most Gen Z parents belong) than to those of Millennials.[8] But the Barna study points out that of this 43%, only 9% use religious principles and practices in their daily lives, compared to 14% of their grandparents.[9]
“It is possible, of course, that younger adults will become more religious with age. Analysis of the General Social Survey (GSS), for instance, shows that over the long term, people pray more regularly and report attending religious services a bit more often as they get older. And Gallup surveys conducted over several decades indicate that as people age, they become more likely to say religion is an important part of their lives,” write the experts at the Pew Research Center. But as Millennials have seen a decline in religious interest over the years, researchers fear a contagion effect among Generation Z, since these two generations share many characteristics and are closest in time. There are many things the church needs to get right and accept about this new generation—Gen Z—if it is to have the best impact on them.
Generation Z(estful)
Today’s teenagers have grown up in a post-9/11 world and in the midst of a financial crisis, witnessing the misery of the Millennials, many of whom saw their dreams shattered when they couldn’t find jobs and had to move back home with their parents. So the new generation has grown up with the reality that the American Dream isn’t easy to achieve, that studying or working isn’t enough to get what you want, and that not everyone has physical and financial security, no matter how hard they try. So many teenagers feel anxious when they think about their future, and their goals revolve around career success and financial well-being. Many define happiness as financial success.
The internet is at the heart of this generation’s development and is having a huge impact on their outlook on life, their daily routines, their sleep patterns, their relationships and even their mental health, with as yet unknown long-term effects. Coupled with the fact that their parents—after the failure of the “helicopter” model[10] practised with Millennials—have switched to the “co-pilot” model, giving their children much more freedom and decision-making power, the result is that they are more mature and responsible teenagers than Millennials, more careful with money, closer to family, less likely to smoke, drink, take drugs or have casual sex.[11] On the other hand, the freedom they have enjoyed has exposed them to a host of problems—sexting and pornography, bullying and depression. Instead of being educated and disciplined by their parents, these young people are being educated by the media, the Barna report warns.[12]
Growing up in unprecedented ethnic diversity, when an African American was leading the world and sexual minorities were fighting for rights, racial or sexual inequality became intolerable to them. So, politically and socially, this generation has more liberal views than its predecessor, not only supporting same-sex marriage but also believing that gender should be a reflection of personal feelings, not biological evidence (a third of Gen Zers say this[13]).
At the same time, having grown up in an atmosphere of “political correctness,” they expect people to have different opinions and experiences without any of them being wrong, because each person is their own judge when it comes to morality. They value social inclusion more than previous generations and are extremely reluctant to speak out on issues that would upset others. They are unaware that it is detrimental to democratic society to protect people from ideas they don’t want to hear, because freedom of speech and freedom of religion are freedoms that can only be tested in a clash of ideas. If we run away from these clashes, then these rights are merely hypothetical,[14] warns David Kinnaman, president of Barna.
In conclusion, the worldview and therefore the moral code of these young people are deeply influenced by relativism, which draws its strength from the acute need they feel to be accepted and to be part of an inclusive and diverse whole. This translates into widespread confusion about gender and sex, about moral norms (only 34% of teenagers think lying is wrong[15]) and about spiritual truths—37% think it is not possible to know for sure that God exists, and even those who think it is possible are still less convinced than the adults.[16] This is another indication that, for them, truth is, at best, relative to the extent that they have access to it.
The culture in which we live is changing very rapidly and we should not be surprised that young people today are confused. Social media keeps them superficially busy, bombarding them with information and opinions and reinventing how childhood is experienced and how personal identity is formed. Barna analysts believe that many young people are actually disconnected from society and disempowered, entertained but not inspired. They urge the Christian church to consider whether it is making disciples for Jerusalem (symbol of religious stability) rather than disciples who can live comfortably in Babylon (symbol of religious pluralism and relativism).[17]
The Church, going back to the first definition
The reality is that Generation Z is not in conflict with Christianity, but that Christianity is unfortunately lagging behind the rapid changes in the younger generations and needs to go through a process of updating without losing its identity if it wants to remain relevant in society. As James White says, we are not talking about the peculiarities of one generation, but about “the most significant cultural challenge facing the Western church, that just so happens to be reflected in a new generation.”[18] The good news, as several studies have shown, is that it is quite possible that the growing relativism of Generation Z is not rooted in a particular philosophical position, but rather in an information deficit about what truth is and how to find it.[19] If this is the case, the mission of the Church is relatively simple.
The church needs to rethink its evangelism in the case of Generation Z, because it is no longer dealing with resistance from people who have some relationship with the divine, whose level of biblical knowledge is relatively high and who just need to find a motivation strong enough to become followers, but with resistance from people with a low level of religious information. Therefore, for young people in Generation Z, the focus should no longer be on organising events that can produce that “aha” moment that can lead a person to make a decision to save their soul, but on processes that ultimately lead young people to that event. The church needs to start explaining God again, and it needs to do so in an assertive, relevant way, addressing pressing cultural issues from which it has shied away. According to White, the church needs to move from Peter’s speech to the God-fearing Jews in Acts 2 to Paul’s speech to the Athenian philosophers in Acts 17.[20]
Pizza dinners, fun games, and worship evenings may be attractive evangelistic events, but they won’t create a faith that lasts, warns Barna. The teaching of these young people must include the following basic information: There is a God. There is truth. This is the world. This is what the world is like. This is what Jesus did about it.[21] But this process must be intelligent and must work according to a two-way dynamic: “faith in the light of culture and culture in the light of faith.”[22]
Many say that in Christian churches the Gospel has not been explained in a way that can be understood by those from different cultures and with different experiences because it was not seen as necessary, says Pastor Frike Prince.[23] For much of our history, young people have been isolated by parents and the local community who have acted as gatekeepers of information,[24] but now young people are growing up to be as familiar with the cultural and social landscape of South Korea, for example, as they are with the American landscape, which means we now need to start talking about Jesus with a deeper understanding of the world at large. Today I can talk to young people about absolute truth and contextual truth and they will understand the difference because their understanding and interactions are no longer limited to the local community, which is a challenge, adds Frike.
The problem in many churches is that the good intention of older generations to train young people in obedience to God has led to a pattern of teaching in which the gospel of sin management predominates. This legalistic gospel, translated by young people into a list of “do’s” and “don’ts”, instead of facilitating real life transformation within the Christian experience, leads to an experience marked by feelings of guilt and shame, and causes them to seek out other communities that teach a holistic gospel, warns Irene Cho, director of the Fuller Institute for Youth.[25]
In the churches described above, a generational divide has emerged, separating the enthusiasm and vitality of the young from the wisdom and experience of the older. Barna president David Kinnaman even warns in his book, You Lost Me, that the idea that the church is a collection of separate generations—with some assuming the role of gatekeepers of information for the education of the young—reflects an abdication of the church’s apostolic calling,[26] since according to the Bible, the church is a partnership of generations working together to accomplish God’s will in their lifetimes. This implies shared power, not subjugated power.
That’s why perhaps more important than the message adults want to convey to young people is the tone and attitude behind it. A superior and critical attitude that comes from the minds of those who are caught up in a narrative about the negative potential of young people leaves little room for feelings of compassion and empathy, and does a great disservice to young people who say that one of the main problems with Christianity is that they cannot reconcile the idea of a loving God with the wickedness of the world.[27] A church that preaches to them in a condescending tone about a loving Father will only reinforce in them the feeling that they are not understood, that they are not safe, and that they cannot rely on anything. On the other hand, the portrayal of a kind and merciful God who understands each of us as we are and who, despite our faults, seeks the good of each of us, while respecting the diversity that comes from everyone’s freedom of choice, could help to reconcile many of the controversies that are perhaps more evident in today’s culture than in the past.
It is important to note that none of the experts’ proposals call for innovation at any cost in order to save Christianity from death. The changes that need to be made in the missionary paradigm of the Church are direct consequences of the love that God calls us to have for our fellow human beings, however different they may be from us. This love is not just an emotion that must tolerate what must not be tolerated, but a concept that encompasses the intelligence, strategy, vision, mission, and Christlike character of the Church. There is nothing new about the need for the church to show intelligence, responsiveness to social and cultural change, and the dynamism needed to be relevant to new generations.
Writing about the teachings of Jesus, John Stott observes that “if the church realistically accepted his standards and values…and lived by them, it would be the alternative society he always intended it to be, and would offer to the world an authentic Christian counter-culture.”[28] To be counter-cultural is to be like Jesus, and the Church cannot communicate the truth of Jesus without reflecting Jesus Himself. When we look back in history at the amazing transformative power of the early church, that is, those who were closest to Jesus, we see that the pagans responded to the life of the Christians, noting with wonder how these Christians seemed to love one another.[29] With a little courage, this could be translated into the idea that the hope for the future of the Church is that it becomes truly a Church. This does not require it to reinvent itself, but to rediscover the intelligent vision of love that does justice to Christianity. And everything else will come as a bonus.
Eliza Vladescu is a communications specialist and was previously part of the ST Network permanent team. She currently works as an online communications consultant.