Are Millennials leaving the faith? If so, why and what can be done about it?

Are young people, Millenials leaving the church/faith in droves?  According to polling data analyzed by Focus on the Family that's not necessarily true though the numbers are high.  18% did leave their faith while another 20% simply switched churches.  Of the 18% who did leave the faith, it turns out 89% of them never had a strong faith to begin with.  Only 11% said they strongly believed.

Pew Research recently found that 18% of young adults leaving their faith altogether and another 20% are switching from one faith to another. This latter cohort, while leaving individual churches, are not leaving their individual faith. They might be switching to a church across town or to one near their college campus. With more young adults switching than leaving, it's odd very few are talking about those switching. In fact, many, we suspect, have been counting them along with those who are leaving....

Perhaps most interesting is what Pew learned about those leaving their faith. Pew asked those leaving if they ever had a strong faith as a child. Only 11% said they did. The other 89% said they never had a strong faith in the first place. As our report says:

Not surprisingly, homes modeling lukewarm faith do not create enduring faith in children. Homes modeling vibrant faith do. So these young adults are leaving something they never had a good grasp of in the first place. This is not a crisis of faith, per se, but of parenting.

Mainline Protestant churches took a bigger hit than evangelical churches.

Also interesting is the huge difference between conservative, Bible-teaching churches and mainline Protestant churches. The General Social Survey, perhaps the most academically-trusted source for demographic data back through 1972, recently noted a 2.2% decline in mainline churches and a slight 0.6% increase among conservative churches (from 1991 to 2012).

The key factor in development of faith in youth are their parents.  Increasingly these parents are failing to pass on their faith.

Young adults are not developing a strong faith as children and walking away as they enter adulthood. Instead, the majority are failing to develop strong faith in the first place and then walking away. As Notre Dame Sociology Professor Christian Smith writes,

Religious outcomes in emerging adulthood ... flow quite predictably from formative religious influences that shape persons' lives in early years ... religious commitments, practices and investments made during childhood and the teenage years, by parents and others in families and religious communities, matter - they make a difference.

What do parents need to do to pass on their faith to their children?

This has huge implications for those working to instill faith in our children. First, it's encouraging that those children who develop a deep faith early on will likely hold onto that faith throughout their lives. But secondly, this shows being in and around church is simply insufficient to develop strong faith for many children. Taking children to church and Sunday school, while important, should not be seen as the only, or even best, way to instill strong faith in our children.

Parents should be intentional about creating homes where their children learn a vibrant faith from God-fearing parents, relatives and other adults. Parents should teach personal habits of prayer and Bible reading in their children, which makes them much more likely to hold onto their faith.

Christian Smith doesn't mince words: "Parents are huge, absolutely huge, nearly a necessary condition" for a child to remain strong in their faith into young adulthood. He concludes "without question, the most important pastor a child will ever have in their life is a parent."

There are many reasons why young adults leave their faith, but perhaps the most significant is that they never developed a strong faith in the first place. Instead of trying to appeal to those with lukewarm faith, perhaps we should back up and consider how we can teach parents to cultivate strong, lasting faith long before our children enter adulthood.

Are Americans less religious?

A Pew Research poll released last week found 19.6% of Americans now have no religious affiliation up from around 15% in 2007.  I think this reflects the growing secularism of society.

The number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public - and a third of adults under 30 - are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling.

In the last five years alone, the unaffiliated have increased from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults. Their ranks now include more than 13 million self-described atheists and agnostics (nearly 6% of the U.S. public), as well as nearly 33 million people who say they have no particular religious affiliation (14%).

This large and growing group of Americans is less religious than the public at large on many conventional measures, including frequency of attendance at religious services and the degree of importance they attach to religion in their lives.

However, a new survey by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life, conducted jointly with the PBS television program Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, finds that many of the country's 46 million unaffiliated adults are religious or spiritual in some way. Two-thirds of them say they believe in God (68%). More than half say they often feel a deep connection with nature and the earth (58%), while more than a third classify themselves as "spiritual" but not "religious" (37%), and one-in-five (21%) say they pray every day. In addition, most religiously unaffiliated Americans think that churches and other religious institutions benefit society by strengthening community bonds and aiding the poor.

 A couple of things I saw in the polling.  First, the number of atheists and agnostics did not grow dramatically; they are still a small share of the population in general.  

And second, a characteristic of the "unaffiliateds" is they're decidedly more liberal than the general public.

The religiously unaffiliated are heavily Democratic in their partisanship and liberal in their political ideology. More than six-in-ten describe themselves as Democrats or say they lean toward the Democratic Party (compared with 48% of all registered voters). And there are roughly twice as many self-described liberals (38%) as conservatives (20%) among the religiously unaffiliated. Among voters overall, this balance is reversed.

This trend is a wake up call for the church.  Both for liberal churches which have embraced the secular values of the culture and resulted in a significant decline in their numbers.  They stand for little to nothing.  On the other hand, conservative churches which hunker down and further withdraw from cultural engagement will also decline.  Both segments are making the wrong response.

Am I concerrned for the church?  Concerned for its declining influence in society.  And for our society.  The less our culture is shaped by Christians values means the more social, cultural and economic breakdown will occur.  The founders saw religion, e.g. Christianity and morals which flow from faith, as indispensable for society and our government.  With that diminishing influence expect more social chaos and unrest.

I'm reminded of the words of Thomas Jefferson, inscribed on the Jefferson memorial:

God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever.

Ultimately, the church will get its act together and respond to the challenges of secularism and even paganism.  It's done so in the past.  All one has to do is read the pages of the book of Acts in the Bible.

Who is Barack Obama and what does he believe?

The controversy over the proposed Mosque in New York City and President Obama's ambiguous, vaguely supportive comments on it have only reinforced people's confusion about the President religious beliefs.

One story says:

A new poll showed that nearly one in five people, or 18 percent, believe Obama
is Muslim. That was up from 11 percent who said so in March 2009. The survey
also showed that just 34 percent said Obama is Christian, down from 48 percent
who said so last year. The largest share of people, 43 percent, said they don't
know his religion. A new poll showed that nearly one in five people, or 18
percent, believe Obama is Muslim. That was up from 11 percent who said so in
March 2009. The survey also showed that just 34 percent said Obama is Christian,
down from 48 percent who said so last year. The largest share of people, 43
percent, said they don't know his religion.

While there's a bump in the number of people who believe he's a Muslim, there's also a significant drop in the number of people who believe he's a Christian. In other words, his actions and words don't communicate the idea that he's a Christian man. This is not surprising given the secular sensitivities that emanate from those on the left. Faith is at best a purely private matter that has no impact on one's public life. That seems to be the impression President Obama is leaving with people.

Obama is "helping" the pro-life movement?

President Obama is arguably the most pro-abortion president in our nation's history. Yet ironically he maybe helping move our nation in the pro-life direction.

Two polls out in May and August note a significant movement in the American public's identifical with pro-life positions and views.

A newly released Pew Research Center Poll found:

For most of the last two decades, a clear majority of Americans has supported the right to abortion. A new poll, though, suggests that support for abortion may have declined, with the public almost evenly divided over the issue.

The apparent shift, which contradicts some other recent polls, appears in a poll by the Pew Research Center released on Thursday. A 2008 poll by Pew researchers had found that those in favor of keeping abortion legal outnumbered opponents, 54 percent to 40 percent. In the new Pew poll, the gap has narrowed: 47 percent of those surveyed said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and 45 percent said it should be illegal in all or most cases — a difference within the poll’s margin of sampling error.

The reason for the shift is? President Obama in the opinion of the Pew researchers.

The new survey did not find the reasons for the shift in opinion. But Pew researchers pointed out that the shift has occurred since the election of President Obama, a Democrat who supports abortion rights but has often spoken about the need to reduce the number of abortions. New York Times/CBS News polls, as well as others, found no such shift after Bill Clinton — also a Democrat who supports abortion rights — took office. Pew has no comparable data on the issue dating back that far.

Add in a Gallup poll and the shift is even more striking. Gallup found a significant shift in the number of people who identify themselves as pro-life v. pro-choice. And 60% of respondents believe abortion should be either illegal under all circumstances or legal under a few circumstances versus 37% who believe it should be legal under all circumstances or legal under many circumstances. Up from 57% to 41% in May of 2008.

A new Gallup Poll, conducted May 7-10, finds 51% of Americans calling themselves "pro-life" on the issue of abortion and 42% "pro-choice." This is the first time a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995.

The new results, obtained from Gallup's annual Values and Beliefs survey, represent a significant shift from a year ago, when 50% were pro-choice and 44% pro-life. Prior to now, the highest percentage identifying as pro-life was 46%, in both August 2001 and May 2002.

The May 2009 survey documents comparable changes in public views about the legality of abortion. In answer to a question providing three options for the extent to which abortion should be legal, about as many Americans now say the procedure should be illegal in all circumstances (23%) as say it should be legal under any circumstances (22%). This contrasts with the last four years, when Gallup found a strong tilt of public attitudes in favor of unrestricted abortion.

Though I think Obama's policies are awful in regards to abortion, I guess we can thank him for his "help" in moving overall public sentiment in the pro-life direction.

Support for Homosexual marriage drops significantly in major polls. Is the public understanding now what's at stake?

It's interesting that since the Left's social agenda is now the agenda in Washington, DC, the public is turning against homosexual marriage. At least that's what several major public opinion polls show.

According to the Pew Research poll,

...the issue of same-sex marriage has occupied center stage politically for the past several years. Maine recently became the fifth state to legalize same-sex marriage, and legislative efforts to pass similar laws are underway in other states as well. But a majority of the public (54%) remains opposed to same-sex marriage, reflecting a small but significant increase in opposition since November 2007, when 49% opposed it. Just 35% favor it.

In a CBS/New York Times poll finds,

The poll found 33 percent favor marriage for same-sex couples, down somewhat from a high of 42 percent in April, and another 30 percent support civil unions. A third of Americans think there should be no legal recognition of a same-sex couple’s relationship. Views in this poll are similar to those found back in March of this year.

In a May Gallup poll, support didn't change from 40% while opposition grew from 56% to 57%.

Polls go up and down but in this time when liberalism is on the ascendancy, the support for homosexual marriage is actually going down, not up. I find it also interesting how some of these pollsters analyze the results. One can find liberal bias again. CBS says support for same sex couples is "down somewhat" from 42% to 33%. That doesn't sound like a "somewhat" to me. That sounds like "a lot" to me.