Another Look at the ‘Least Religious Generation’

Narratives of decline surround American evangelicalism and American religion more broadly. Within these narratives, a special sort of skepticism is reserved for twentysomethings. Much has been said about their flight from the pews, the rise of the “nones,” and the lack of institutional commitment among millennials. While we’ve been wringing our hands about the millennial generation, we must acknowledge that Generation Z snuck up on us. They are increasingly filling the ranks of the twentysomething cohort.

In their book, The Twentysomething Soul: Understanding the Religious and Secular Lives of American Young Adults, Clydesdale and Garces-Foley distill their work like this:

Contrary to popular opinion, the beliefs and practices of American twentysomethings reveal far more continuity than decline.  One in three twentysomethings attend worship regularly, but they cluster within young-adult friendly congregations.

The religiously unaffiliated are a diverse group, consisting of atheists, agnostics, and believers.

Today’s American twentysomethings adopt one of four approaches to faith: They prioritize it, they reject it, they sideline it, or they practice an “eclectic spirituality.”

Those American twentysomethings who prioritize religious and spiritual life are more likely to engage in a certain set of practices: marriage, parenthood, college graduation, employment, voting, community engagement, and social involvement.

American twentysomethings view institutions differently than their elders: As the authors explain, “Today’s twentysomethings experience the world less as sets of institutions prescribing standard life scripts and more as nodes on a network from which they can freely choose cultural symbols, strategies, and interpretations.”  Continue here....

-- Drew Moser

This strikes me as as highly consistent with how these groups experience all of life, not just religious life.  And, probably, how it always is—how we experience the dimensions of life is likely more consistent, than inconsistent.  So, I have to smile a bit over the notion that we can stop our hand-wringing—God isn't too freaked about it either.  He's got this—it’s life.