What the Younger Ones Believe

I might be a sucker for survey results and those kinds of overview of complex issues.  A recent report I have read offered the intriguing title, “How We Gather Digitally.”  The study by sociologists Robert Putnam and David Campbell looks at millennials, generally those younger folks up to their forties now.  I am aware of a number of studies that matches what all of us know: younger folks are not as interested in religions and churches as earlier generations.  Scholars and analysts have given a variety of answers why this is the case.  And so, I looked forward to what these two authors were going to say.

Figures vary from study to study, but generally two-thirds of Americans don’t actively participate in organized religious life.  On the other hand, a huge proportion of these disaffiliated folks still believe in God and have, what might called, still some religious view of the world and life.  This becomes a key focus of inquiry. I like the way Putnam and Campbell put it.  These people “reject conventional religious affiliation, while not entirely giving up their religious feelings.”

From this we get their initial conclusion.  They contend, “This looks less like a process of secularization and more like a paradigmatic shift from an institutional to a personal understanding of spirituality.”  Another couple of scholars, Richard Flory and Donald Miller discovered that “millennials are not ‘the spiritual consumers of their parents’ generation, rather they are seeking a deep spiritual experience and a community experience, each of which provides them meaning in their lives, and is meaningless without the other.’”

I can attest this squares with many of the college-age folks who sit in my classroom every semester.  Not very many are active in any church.  And yet the big majority believe in God or the Universal Spirit or something like that.  And my experience is they do long for community, although they might not use that language.  Deeper than the word, community, is the human search for belonging.  I am very confident that part of being truly human is belonging to someone or something.  And this belonging is not ultimately satisfied by things like the local golf club or Rotary, even though these are often important.

The authors begin to cite examples of places that are trying to meet the needs of this group in their twenties and thirties.  The first thing that is obvious is this group is used to and, often, prefers the internet to the personal encounter.  Taking this seriously means our website is crucial to the engagement of younger folks.  That is where we “meet.”  The normal building where people used to congregate may be pretty irrelevant.  The advice is to spruce up the website!

Given my age, I am intrigued by the possibilities of online ministry.  Of course, it is not new.  I remember as a boy catching a glimpse of Oral Roberts on tv.  He was a pioneer of that generation.  We need new pioneers---new explorers.  Maybe we just call the innovators today!  I was interested to read that successful pioneers today tend to the those offering “positive and practical advice.”  They extend what the authors call an “ethos of care.”

I was not surprised to hear the authors talk a great deal about language.  For example, they contend that successful ventures more normally use secular language, as opposed to religious language---which might sound like jargon to younger ears.  Fascinatingly, the authors say that this secular language mirrors “many of the functions fulfilled by religious community.  I wanted to know what kind of language they were referencing.  And so they offered examples of this older language: fellowship, personal reflection, pilgrimage, aesthetic discipline, liturgy,” etc.  The goal is to find and use language more appropriate to the folks we want to address.

Finally, the authors offer six themes of groups promising much of the same effect as church usually assume they provide.  These themes are “community, personal transformation, social transformation, purpose finding, creativity and accountability.”  What grabbed me was the extent the authors went to identify some of the contemporary groups offering today what many of us older folks thought churches did in our younger age.  Many of these groups don’t seem religious at all.  And that’s the point: they aren’t!  Instead they offer what religious institutions apparently can no longer successfully offer.

I will briefly cite one example with the promise to delve more deeply into this at a later time.  The example is what was called “The Dinner Party,” which I did not know.  This is a group of people in their 20s and 30s who have experienced a significant loss.  They gather over dinner to talk about their experience, offer solace and healing and so forth.  Ah, I thought, this is what I used to do in the groups I led on grieving and bereavement.  But the Dinner Party does not have anything directly to do with God, although I am sure if God came up, that person would not be judged.

The authors say this example is what they mean by a group offering its participants community and personal transformation, two of the six previously mentioned themes.  They have no need to go to a church to attend a bereavement group.  They have formed their own with more appropriate language and potential.  

I appreciate my ongoing education.  I have so much to learn about what the younger ones believe.