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Exodus:  Evangelical Young Adults Are Leaving the Churches
(03-08-11)

 

Fordrena Griffith grew up Catholic but as a college freshman became a “conservative, fundamentalist Christian.”

 

For the next thirteen years she was a committed believer. “I was against abortion, divorce and homosexuality because God’s word said they were wrong. I was a Republican because I believed Christianity to be an active part of that party’s position. I was in a church a minimum of twice weekly, read the Bible daily, worked in ministry, witnessed regularly.”

 

But slowly she realized that she spent most of her energies “judging and renouncing the world” around her. The more she tried to stand up for the truth and live out her faith, the more she hurt people she cared about. Fordrena recalled how one of her closest college friends had an abortion. She tried to stop her by using all the arguments she could think of. Instead of showing compassion, she judged her and ended up losing a friend and “any future opportunity to be a positive influence.”  In many other ways, she became disillusioned with how her beliefs were impacting others. So Fordrena decided to quit her church and renounce her faith: “I’m grateful that I found an exit door and no longer choose—in the name of God—the hypocrisy of my former faith” (Denver Post, March 6, 2011, D2).

 

And she’s not the only one.

 

For some time now, pollsters have followed an undeniable trend in American religious life: young adults are leaving organized religion in significant numbers. These are the “ex-Christians,” “the leavers,” the “de-churched” and “de-converted,” the “nones” and “unaffiliated,” and the “unChristians.” According to Rainer Research, seven in ten evangelical and mainline Protestants between 18 and 30 who attended church regularly in high school stop attending by age 23. Only one-third of them return by age 30.

 

This comes as a big shock to church folks who have counted on special youth ministries like Youth for Christ, Young Life, Youth with a Mission, Campus Crusade, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and countless denominational and congregation-based youth programs. Youth ministers have seen the trends themselves; and they are worried. They argue about how bad things are and what they can do to reverse the tide.

 

Why are young adults leaving? The reasons are legion. Many youth workers say that their kids are simply being overwhelmed by popular culture. Every where they look there is cynicism about religion; sexually permissive hip-hop, rap, and rock music; Internet porn; explicit movies and TV; the pressure to “hook up;” alcohol; drugs; and the instability that comes from divorce and dysfunctional families. Christian young people find it harder and harder to resist such influences and finally give up during their teens and twenties.

 

But other reasons are deeply rooted in the churches themselves. A number of insightful and sobering books have analyzed the problem in hopes of solving it.

 

• Julia Duin, Quitting Church: Why the Faithful Are Fleeing and What to Do About It
• Drew Dyck, Generation Ex-Christian: Why Young Adults are Leaving the Faith . . . And How to Bring Them Back  
• David Kinnaman, UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity . . . And Why It Matters  
• Gabe Lyons, The Next Christians: How a New Generation is Restoring the Faith

 

Each book takes its own tack, but they all point to similar problems. Young adults are leaving because they find churches hyper-critical, insensitive, judgmental, and lacking in compassion. They are irrelevant, devoid of real community, indifferent to singles and demeaning to women, spiritually superficial, and have untrustworthy leaders who teach a distorted gospel.

 

Ouch. And this is what grown up church kids think. According to Drew Dyck, “Most believing outsiders are old friends, yesterday’s worshipers, children who once prayed to Jesus.”

 

There is another reason for their leaving, one that is bound to infuriate many church leaders and laypeople: the overemphasis on politics.

 

This was one of the findings of Robert Putnam and David Campbell’s recent book Amazing Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. In the late 70s and 80s evangelical religion became increasingly aligned with right-wing politics. Evangelicals enlisted in the culture-war against abortionists, homosexuals, pornographers, and those who wanted to push religion out of the public square. Such efforts had only limited results and produced a strong backlash among many church-goers, especially evangelical young adults.

 

Putnam and Campbell cite statistics: throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the percentage of 18 to 29 year olds who self-identified as Evangelicals rose from 20 to 25%. But since the 1990s, the percentage has dipped to 17%. During the same period, the percentage of young Americans with no religious affiliation increased dramatically from 10% in 1990 to 27% today.

 

Numerous studies show that such a decline is based on the conviction that churches have become intolerant and mean-spirited, especially of homosexuals. The issue for many is not the question of whether homosexual relationships are right or wrong, but how Christian leaders have singled out gays and lesbians for special treatment.

 

As David Kinnaman argues in UnChristian, “The gay issue has become the ‘big one,’ the negative image most likely to be intertwined with Christianity’s reputation. It is also the dimension that most clearly demonstrates the unChristian faith to young people today, surfacing a spate of negative perceptions: judgmental, bigoted, sheltered, right-wingers, hypocritical, insincere, and uncaring. Outsiders say our hostility toward gays—not just opposition to homosexual politics and behaviors but disdain for gay individuals—has become virtually synonymous with the Christian faith.”

 

“It is one thing to be against homosexuality, to affirm that the Bible rejects the practice of same-sex lifestyles, but it is another to be against homosexuals, to let your disagreement with their behavior spill out in your feelings and words toward them as people.” Many young adult “leavers” say that they can’t stand other Christians attacking their gay friends.

 

Is there anything that church leaders can or should to do about this? Some leaders will advise these young adults to let the Bible be their guide and realize that the best thing they can do for their gay friends is tell them the truth and reject their behavior. Other leaders will consider toning down their rhetoric in response to the negative backlash in order to keep from losing their own children.

 

What if the present trends continue? In the 1970s mainline Protestantism experienced a departure of young adults who rejected its close identification with the political and cultural establishment. That departure started a ripple effect. Once young people left, the church nursery was the first program to feel the effects, then the Sunday school, then the youth group, and so on. Once lost, a generation is hard to recover, as four decades of decline among mainline Protestants prove.

 

Now it’s American evangelicals’ turn. The evangelical resurgence of the 1970s and 1980s peaked in the early 1990s. While evangelicals barely remain the largest religious cohort in America, they won’t be for long if they continue to lose their young adults.

 

Many analysts resist such a doom and gloom forecast. They point out that such dips are common and that after starting a family, many young adults return to the faith. Sometimes that’s true, but such has not been the case among Protestant mainliners, who are in their fifth decade of decline.

 

Even the critics show some guarded optimism. Kinnaman thinks recovery is possible if the churches face up to their failings and make adjustments. So does Gabe Lyons in The Next Christians. He thinks young adults will lead the way to a new kind of Christianity that is much more attuned to Jesus’ style and concerns than present expressions are. For him the end of “Christian America” is good news if the churches stop trying to be in charge and become more counter-cultural.  

 

However one feels about the current situation, the implications are extremely important. According to Robert Wuthnow, Princeton sociologist of religion, “Unless religious leaders take younger adults more seriously, the future of American religion is in doubt” (After the Baby Boomers).  

 

We owe that much to people like Fordrena Griffith.

Last updated: 8/6/2011 9:19:34 AM