Posted by Helen on: 09.27.2007 /
The Barna Group has a new article up called A New Generation Expresses its Skepticism and Frustration with Christianity. It begins
As the nation’s culture changes in diverse ways, one of the most significant shifts is the declining reputation of Christianity, especially among young Americans. A new study by The Barna Group conducted among 16- to 29-year-olds shows that a new generation is more skeptical of and resistant to Christianity than were people of the same age just a decade ago.
I thought it was very interesting – thanks Jim and Ben for e-mailing it to me!
Comment by: joe
1I’ve not yet read the blurb – but I’m wondering if the young people were churchy or not. Mind you, I’m guessing it wouldn’t make a whole lot of difference.
Comment by: Helen
2Joe, I don’t know if they were churchy; the article delineates some of the people as ‘non-Christians’:
Presumably these may or may not have been brought up in church. I’m guessing the Barna test for Christian is something like “is Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior?” Maybe accompanied by a few follow-up questions to see if that’s just words or also affects the way that person lives i.e. is their commitment to Jesus serious?
Comment by: joe
3hahahaha
Sorry, I just love the idea of asking people if their commitment to Jesus is serious.
I can just imagine a multiple choice question like this:
Question 13: How serious is your commitment to Jesus?
a) I attend church every sunday
b) I regularly eat locusts and honey and fast for weeks
c) I have sold my house and have given all the money to the poor…
Comment by: Helen
4Joe, you’re quite right of course – in my experience, each follower of Jesus seems to have their own idea of what ‘serious commitment to Jesus’ means.
My sense is that Barna cares about c) as well as a), which has been encouraging to me.
In fact maybe he cares more about c) than a, since he recently wrote a book about, if church doesn’t work for you, quit and follow Jesus in a way that does – which has been quite controversial and caused various Christians to lament that he’s turned to the ‘dark side’. (Just google something like George Barna Revolution to see what I mean). I think last year’s Off The Map Live event, the Revolution Conference, was named after this book, Revolution.
About b), I would say, each to his own :). Those certainly do imply some sort of commitment to something although it seems more like that’s closer to following John the Baptist than Jesus :)
Comment by: Eliza
5Helen, I was confused about why you titled this post “Unchristian”, until I read the article you linked above.
It’s a very interesting article.
“UnChristian” is the title of a new book by the Barna Group (more info at the link above). (Actually, the whole title is: “unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity … and Why It Matters”.) At the end of the article, the author describes the book this way:
I found some of the similarities between views of young Christians and young non-Christians particularly interesting:
and
(Though it seems like the last sentence is ambiguous – “applying the biblical teaching on homosexuality” could mean a wide range of approaches, I’d guess.)
Comment by: Karen
6Thanks for getting that, Eliza. I didn’t have time to look at it, but it confirms what I suspected in re homosexuality being the main issue here. Interesting.
It makes me wonder if the conservative church will eventually change its official position, or continue to lose younger members over the next few decades?
Comment by: Steve S.
7Guess that depends on how you define the term…
I always thought of my church as conservative, but apparently it has a reputation around town for being liberal. (We actually let gay people come to church without rennouncing their sexual identity at the door, or berating them if they won’t).
I would say, Karen, that the conservative Church is changing, but then it tends not to get defined as conservative any more. Of course I think the Church as a whole is changing. We had a conversation about this just the other night in our small group.
Of course, our church has some unique characters in it, the coke-addict buddhist/Native American, the schitzophrenic end-times prophet, the ex-ex-Christian, the zen-existentialist/ex-Catholic megalomaniac writer/new Christian, the gay sometimes-Christian, the completely-irreligious-yet-spiritually-awakening, and a host of others…
So just by virtue of us all being in the same room, talking about Jesus together, we are violating a few dozen state laws, and tweaking a lot of people’s assumptions about what it means to be a ‘Church.’ (Don’t even begin to add to the fact that we ‘don’t have a building,’ etc.) …but the deal is, what we are doing isn’t new, or even unique. It is what the Church has been for 2,000 years. Just not in much America for the past couple of generations.
Comment by: inWorship
8I actually ordered this book yesterday and I am looking forward to reading it!
Comment by: Elaine
9What struck me about this post was
the age group this study looked at was 16-29 year olds and the last 10 years of their lives.
This means these young people were ages 6-19 when the period began.
Very formative years for these young people – and very turbulent times for the USA and the world.
How well did Christians model the life of Jesus during these hard times?
Many high profile “christians” did not do so well. And if the young person did not have a personal relationship with followers of Jesus – I can see how their opinions and perceptions of Christianity would have slipped.
Comment by: hoverFrog
10Interesting! The anti-gay attitude seems to be working against the church. As we’ve been discussing over on friendly christian the attitude of sticking to absolutes does a lot of damage to how Christianity is perceived.
Comment by: Eliza
11Elaine, you’re right that the public face of Christianity in the US in the past 10 yrs has prominently featured some people who created or reinforced negative stereotypes of Christians. I was interested to see, though, that this study did ask whether non-Christians had personal contact with Christians and Christianity:
I also thought this part about the greater admixture of C’s and nonC’s was interesting:
(Not to mention co-discussants on sites like this!)
Comment by: Doreen
12Joe wrote
Last night in class the professor said, “I would never ask this, but what if I asked the whole class to stay until midnight to pray? What would your response be?”
Now, we’re learning about your personal relationship with the holy, so we’re learning about personal prayer time. This was not an invite to pray in public, all pray together, etc.
I was shocked when there were not many people who would stay. I just could not understand this.
The prof’s question seems like a pretty good “How serious is your commitment to Jesus” question.
Comment by: Karen
13Well, in the conservative churches I attended, your church would definitely qualify as liberal. That’s probably the nice way we would have put it. :-)
Comment by: Helen
14Eliza, thanks for explaining what I failed to, namely, why I titled this post ‘unChristian’. Thank you for unconfusing everyone for me!
Steve, yes, people often regard how a church deals with the issue of homosexuality/BLGT people as a litmus test of whether the church is ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’.
Doreen, yes, I find it fascinating to observe how peoples’ stated commitment to Jesus lines up, or doesn’t, with how they are willing to spend their time. If Jesus isn’t Lord of someone’s time and money, just what IS he Lord of? (Wow, that has to be a quote from a sermon I once heard…am I allowed to do that? :))
Comment by: Will Hinton
15Helen: thought you might like to check out this interview I did with UnChristian co-author Gabe Lyons.
Comment by: Helen
16Thanks Will!