Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites...and Other Lies You've Been Told

by Bradley R. E. Ph. D. Wright

  Ironically, many of the Founding Fathers revered by today’s Christians would not be defined or accepted as Christians if they were alive today.[45] While George Washington and John Adams had Christian convictions, Thomas Jefferson, if he were taking a survey, would have probably checked the box “higher power.” Ben Franklin? He went from atheist to polytheist.[46] Historian Mark Noll writes that evangelical Christianity, as we understand it today, only became important in the United States after 1800. The religious faith during the colonial era, though Protestant, was not what we currently refer to as evangelical. Many of the Founding Fathers were either deists or simply supporters of their European-based denominations, which did not stress the need for conversion or personal piety as do modern Evangelicals.[47]

  Is God Dead?

  Religion’s continued prominence in America counters the predictions of many high-profile social thinkers. In 1882, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche declared, “God is dead.”[48] He didn’t mean that God had suffered a physical death, like slipping on an icy planet or something, but rather that humans had lost their ability to believe in God; therefore religions, like Christianity, had lost their moral basis and would not last long. Nietzsche wasn’t the first or the last person to predict the decline of organized religion. Here are a few other predictions by famous people:

  In 1710, English thinker Thomas Woolston said Christianity would be gone by 1900.

  Voltaire said religion would crumble within fifty years.

  Famous dead-white-guys Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Sigmund Freud each predicted that religion soon would disappear.

  Renowned sociologist Peter Berger wrote in 1968 that in “the 21st century, religious believers are likely to be found only in small sects, huddled together to resist a worldwide secular culture.”

  Sociologists have referred to this general idea as “secularization”—that societies irreversibly transition from sacred to secular principles. Certainly there have been meaningful changes in both the form and nature of religion in America, but these changes have not fit the expectation that American Christianity would die. Peter Berger has recognized the error of his prediction, and he has written since:

  The assumption that we live in a secularized world is false. The world today, with some exceptions . . . is as furiously religious as it ever was, and in some places more so than ever. This means that a whole body of literature by historians and social scientists loosely labeled “secularization theory” is essentially mistaken.[49]

  To paraphrase Mark Twain: “The reports of God’s death are greatly exaggerated.”

  Are Recent Changes Bad?

  The continued vitality of religion in the United States does not obscure the fact that the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans has increased substantially in recent years. This raises an interesting question—is this disaffiliation a bad thing for the church? Many would answer yes, viewing it as the beginning of the end of Christianity. For example, Newsweek magazine, in writing about the religiously unaffiliated, put on its cover: “The End of Christian America.”

  Another approach, however, comes from Mark Driscoll—a controversial pastor in the Seattle area.[50] Driscoll distinguishes active, practicing Christians from those who simply profess Christianity without any deeper engagement. Presumably, it is the second category of “cultural” Christians who are redefining themselves as unaffiliated. If so, Driscoll argues, then there is little drop-off in active, committed Christians, and the church doesn’t suffer much from the loss of less-committed members. As a result, the remaining Christians are more likely to live in accord with Christian principles and thus better represent the church.[51] Driscoll concludes that recent changes “are not discouraging, but rather clarifying.” Driscoll’s argument makes a larger point: Numerical declines are not necessarily negative.[52] We need to critically evaluate what is happening and think through its implications for the church.

  CHAPTER 3

  Are We Losing Our Young

  People? What Will Happen

  in the Future?

  It is clear that we have all but lost our young people to a godless culture.

  —Josh McDowell, Christian apologist

  Eighty-eight percent of evangelical children are leaving the church shortly after they graduate from high school.

  —Southern Baptist Convention Council on Family Life

  Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink.

  —John Lennon

  Now for a subject that causes great fear and anxiety for Christians: What is happening to our young people? This subject, probably more than any other covered in this book, generates overheated hyperbole. Listen to what church leaders and commentators have said. A well-known apologist for the Christian faith claims that “between sixty-nine and ninety-four percent of their young people are leaving the traditional church after high school . . . and very few are returning.”[1] Wanting to make sure that we all understand the significance of these statistics, he writes to the reader: “I sincerely believe that unless something is done now to change the spiritual state of our young people—you will become the last Christian generation!”[2]

  An article in a Christian magazine asks, “Are We Losing Our Young People?” and it claims that only 1 in 4 members of youth groups will stay in the Christian community after they graduate.[3] Other commentators warn that a great majority of Christian youth will “disengage,” “stop attending,” “leave the foundations of their faith,” and “forsake their faith.”[4]

  Let me give an extended example, told by sociologist Christian Smith, of how badly Christians can mangle statistics when it comes to discussions of our youth.[5] A four-page advertisement in evangelical Christianity’s flagship magazine boldly states: “Christianity in America won’t survive another decade unless we do something now.” Why? “This generation of teens is the largest in history—and current trends show that only 4% will be evangelical believers by the time they become adults. . . . We are on the verge of a catastrophe.”

  Where did this 4% figure come from? Ten years ago a seminary professor did an informal survey of 211 young people interviewed in three states. The question was poorly worded, and the study probably used a convenience sample. In terms of quality, this statistic is about as valid as someone putting a survey question on their Facebook page and then having their friends and acquaintances answer it. There’s nothing wrong with doing it, it’s just not very trustworthy. Motivated by this questionable statistic, a Christian organization was asking tens of thousands of youth pastors around the country to spend $39 to attend a conference on how to avoid this coming catastrophe. The advertisement featuring the statistic had pictures of some of the best-known evangelical leaders in the country, implying that they endorsed the message of this conference.[6]

  This raises an interesting question: Why would the organization sponsoring the conference highlight such a problematic statistic when there are plenty of reliable statistics about Christian youth available? I don’t presume to know the motivations of the conference organizers, but it’s entirely possible that they chose the “4% statistic” for its shock value—as a way of drawing people to their conference—rather than for its accuracy.

  Just for a moment, let’s stop and think about what it would look like if these dire warnings were to come true. There are around 80 million kids under the age of eighteen in America. About two-thirds of them have been raised in a Christian tradition. This means that for current adults to be the last Christian generation, somewhere around 50 million young people have to leave the faith. How would this happen? Will millions of them just decide that “I was going to believe in God, but I sure like that cool new video game that just came out”? Or will they think, “I just met a non-Christian, and I think I’ll be one too”? Trying to envision this massive, abrupt social change points to its absurdity.

  Without even looking at data, we can find problems with these dire predictions. They assume that something has gone wrong with tod
ay’s youth, but in contrast, previous generations of young people got things right, so that they, unlike today’s kids, were able to adhere to their faith through the turmoil of growing up. Here’s what I want to know: Who were these young spiritual giants of yesteryear? I was actually a young person myself once, graduating from high school in 1980, and I sure didn’t see many spiritual giants hanging around. In fact, let me offer you proof-positive of the brokenness and depravity of my generation—a picture of me and my best friend Hobby. There I am on the right, with a scowl, longish hair, and a disco-print shirt. Now look closely at the picture—do you think the adults of that generation had any faith in the future based on teens like us? No way. And, it wasn’t just my generation. The generation after me survived the Yuppie era—a time of rampant greed and selfishness. The generation before mine was a bunch of hippies—I think they were all stoned. Now, if ever there was a generation of young people that would undo Christianity, it was young people in the 1960s—they rejected everything conventional. Now, however, they are writing books and giving sermons about the problems of today’s youth.

  The problem with these predictions is that every generation frets about the morals of their youth—it’s what adults do. For example:

  In 1976, a divinity professor published a book expressing the same worries about the youth then. Its title: Will Our Children Have Faith?

  In the 1920s, sociologists conducted an in-depth community study of Muncie, Indiana. They found that parents routinely complained about how their teenagers have too much freedom and get into trouble.

  In 2800 BC, an Assyrian stone tablet lamented that “our earth is degenerate in these latter days . . . children no longer obey their parents.”

  As long as I’m on the topic of predictions, let me make my own. In 100 years, our great-great-grandchildren will be worried about the morals and religious behavior of our great-great-great-grandchildren.

  It’s actually rather complex to interpret data about young people. If older people are different than young people, it could reflect generational differences rather than age differences. Maybe people born in a particular generation will always be different than those born in other generations. For example, we talk about Baby-Boomers versus Generation X-ers. What factors shaped these generations? Perhaps older people lived through a given event that younger people did not, and this event changed them. Those who lived through the Great Depression or World War II may always have a different outlook than those who did not.

  On the other hand, differences between the young and the old could be due to their ages. For example, older people tend to have more gray hair than the young, but some day the young will get old and gray themselves. Likewise, it’s common for generations to get more politically conservative as they age.

  What does all this mean for studying young people in the church? Well, if young people have different religious attitudes and behaviors than older people, it can be difficult to know exactly why these differences exist. Maybe each generation is becoming progressively less religious, and so eventually religion will die out. But perhaps young people are less religious in every generation, and they grow up to be more religious as they get older. Viewed this way, religious changes are part of the normal life cycle of aging. Or maybe, as a third option, some event has made a particular generation less religious than previous generations, but future generations will return to the previously high levels.[7]

  With this caution in mind, let’s look at data to find out what’s really happening to our young people. Let’s start by comparing people of different ages. If, in fact, we’re losing the young, then we would expect to see a much greater increase in religious non-affiliation among them than other age groups. Figure 3.1 plots the percentage of Americans who were religiously unaffiliated in recent decades, breaking the numbers down by age. Sure enough, we see an increase in non-affiliation among young people. Only about 12% of young adults (ages 18–29) in the 1970s and 1980s did not affiliate with a religion. Since the 1990s, that number has doubled to 25%. However, we also see the same pattern with the other age groups. In fact, the percentage of the religiously unaffiliated just about tripled among people in their thirties, forties, fifties, and sixties. For example, only 3.4% of people in their fifties were unaffiliated in the 1970s, but now it’s about 14%. The increase in religious non-affiliation is happening in all age groups—not just among the young. Maybe we should be writing articles about how we’re “losing” the middle-aged.

  We can also look at young people’s religious affiliation over time. Are fewer and fewer of them affiliating with Christianity? Figure 3.2 plots the religious affiliation of 18 to 29-year-olds in the last four decades. As shown, religious affiliation trends among young people are similar to those of the general adult population, as described in the previous chapter. Since the 1970s, between 20 and 25% of young people have been affiliated with evangelical Christianity. Currently, 22% of young adults affiliate with evangelical churches, down from 25% in the 1990s, but up from 21% in the 1970s. There has been a substantial drop of young Mainline Protestants, and Catholics have remained steady, perhaps showing a slight drop. The number of youth in Black Protestant churches and other religions has remained mostly stable. Religious non-affiliation has increased substantially.

  Let’s ask a more general question: Are American young people becoming less religious over time? We can address this question using data from the Monitoring the Future Study. This study interviews about 15,000 high school seniors a year, and it has done so since 1975. It asks them about a variety of topics, including three about their religious values and practices: “What is your religious preference?” “How important is religion in your life?” and “How often do you attend religious services?” The percentage of seniors who reported having any religious affiliation reached a high point in the 1980s, when it was about 90%, and it has since dropped to just above 80%. The percentage of seniors who viewed religion as either “pretty important” or “very important” dropped in the early 1980s, but it remained mostly stable for the next twenty years at between 55 and 60%. Likewise, the number of seniors who attended church on a weekly or monthly basis dropped through the 1980s, but it has held steady since then at about 45 to 50%.

  Figure 3.1: Percentage of Religious Unaffiliation Over Time by Age

  Figure 3.2: Percentage of Religious Affiliation of Young Adults (18-29) by Decade

  Figure 3.3: What Do Young Adults Believe about God?

  We can also look at measures of religious beliefs. The General Social Survey asks respondents about their beliefs about God, and the responses can be organized into four separate categories: (1) believing in a God (albeit with varying levels of certainty), (2) believing in a higher power, (3) not believing in a God (i.e., atheists), and (4) not knowing whether there is a God (i.e., agnostics). Figure 3.3 presents young people’s answers to this question since the late 1980s, and, as shown, currently about 8 in 10 young adults believe in God. This number dropped through the early 1990s, but it has remained rather stable since. About 10% or less of young people believe in a higher power or are agnostic, and less than 5% are atheists.

  So back to our original question: Is the church really losing the young? On the negative side, the number of young people who do not affiliate with any religion has increased in recent decades, just as it has for the whole population. Furthermore, to the extent that religiousness has changed, it has trended slightly toward less religion. On the positive side, the percentage of young people who attend church or who think that religion is important has remained mostly stable. Also, the percentage that affiliate with Catholicism, evangelical Christianity, and Black protestantism are at or near 1970 levels. What I don’t see in the data are evidence of a cataclysmic loss of young people. Have we lost the young? No. Sure, terrible things could happen in the future, but so could great things.

  The Relationship Between Age and Religion

  Beyond asking if we are losing the young, we can explore more gene
rally the relationship between age and religion. In doing this, we can start with the observation that different religious groups have different age distributions—some have overall older members, others have younger. This age difference is seen in Figure 3.4, which uses data from the 2008 Pew U.S. Religious Landscape Survey. Because this study is so large, with 35,000 respondents, it allows us to compare many of the smaller religious groups in the United States. Using these data, we can see how many members of various religious groups are age fifty or older. As shown, there is some variation across religious groups. In the general population, 41% of all adults are over age fifty. Among Mainline Protestants and Jews, however, over half of adults are over fifty. Evangelicals and Orthodox Christians are slightly older than the population average, Catholics, and Black Protestants. The youngest religious groups are Muslims and Hindus. This is because many U.S. members of these religions are immigrants from other countries, and generally speaking, immigrants tend to be younger than their host population.[8] Mormons are, overall, also younger than average.

  Figure 3.4: Percentage of Adults Age 50 and Older, by Religion

  Among the youngest religious groups are the religiously unaffiliated. Barely 1 in 4 religiously unaffiliated adults are over fifty in contrast to 1 in 3 (if not 1 in 2) of the various religions. We should be cautious, however, in predicting the future of religions using solely these age data, for various factors come into play. A religion having many young people could reflect that it is growing rapidly, perhaps through high fertility rates. It could also indicate high rates of immigration, or it could mean that its young people are more likely to leave their faith when they get older. We’ll look at religious transitions and predictions for the future later in this book, but for now we should be careful not to over-interpret the data in this figure.