What the poll results do say is that Christianity in the U.S. is suffering because it doesn’t speak to the lives of most younger Americans. Mainstream Protestant denominations are shrinking as evangelicalism takes over. Right-wing Christians have effectively told the nation that theirs is the only kind of Christianity, and that is not a selling point for would-be followers.
“Christianity has a really bad PR problem,” Liz Bucar, a religion professor at Northeastern University, told Northeastern Global News last year. “There’s a range of ways to be Christian. There are queer-friendly Christian congregations. But that’s not what people associate with Christianity. They associate the loudest voices (with it). The loudest voices don’t speak for the majority … but the loud voices do come down on one side of a lot of social issues or moral issues, and they don’t speak on behalf of the huge diversity of Christianity in the U.S.”
The upshot is that many churches aren’t reflecting the lives of Gen Z very well, with two exceptions. The ones that get a lot of attention are white evangelicals. Many remain attached to the churches in which they were raised. But many have left those churches because of their rigidity and conservative moral standards, including condemnation of LGBTQ+ people.
The other exception is among African-Americans. The media consistently ignores just how religious the Black community, which is fundamental to the Democratic Party, is and what that means for politics. About three-quarters identify as Christian, compared to 62 percent for all Americans. But even among African-Americans, religious affiliation has been declining, and Gen Z Black people are no exception.
The media, in its effort to pursue the counterfactual, keep coming up with stories about a religious revival among young Americans. Stories filled with anecdotes about packed pews have become common, particularly in light of a Gallup poll finding an uptick in religiosity among Gen Z men. After years of steady decline, the share of young men who said religion was important to them jumped from 28 percent to 42 percent. According to that survey, Gen Z men find religion more important than Gen Z women.
However, the bulk of the increase was confined to Republican men. Political scientist Ryan Burge of Washington University in St. Louis, who has his doubts about the validity of the poll results, says that young men like the patriarchal undertones of the churches.
“It’s the only place where you don’t have to apologize for being a white man,” Burge told the AP. “American religion is very white male dominated, and young men are drawn to institutions that elevate them and give them influence and power.”
In other words, they liked the churches’ politics.
So, and correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't churches basically serving as the ~~Pharisees'~~ MAGATs' safe spaces? I thought they hated the idea of "safe" spaces.
Not that trump supporters like Kat Kurr haven't compound the running away from the church.
Didn't she "deflect" a hurricane away from Florida with a stick and a prayer once only for it to hit Florida anyway?
If kids see their parents and people in their church being decent people, they're more likely to want to stay in it. That's not what they're seeing.