Ranting On...Christianty and Millennials

I attended religious services every Sunday growing up like clockwork.  Every week, there were 2-3 services at our local church (two traditional, one contemporary), but my parents, in a move to both get my brother and I out of bed and also to have us visit our grandparents after church since they also attended this service, picked the earliest one.  I remember actually quite liking church-I was really fascinated by the sermon, as it was like a lecture that grown-ups got to listen to (as a young kid, who doesn't want to know what adults get to learn?), and though I got bored with the sacraments (it was the same thing every week, without change), I liked the actual church and the ritual of it.  What I didn't like, I recall, was Sunday School.  Sunday School was more focused on pageantry and random lessons-unlike regular school you rarely got to learn anything and I was a vociferous learner (still am!), so it was a bit of a drag just sitting there, after the heartiness of a proper sermon, and coloring a picture of Jonah and the Whale or watching a video about the importance of sharing.

It wasn't until I was 14-15, though, that I started to wonder if I would be a regular attendee of church services when I became an adult, and that was a result of my Confirmation classes.  Here, I thought, I would finally get to have robust discussions about different religious philosophies.  I was becoming an adult in the eyes of the church, and I was fully prepared.  I had read the Bible twice, I had that entire Catechism memorized verbatim, and I was ready with my meaningful theological queries.  "What about people who don't know about Christianity?" and "How can we have belief in Christianity but not assume the same of Muslims and Hindus, who also base their devotion on blind faith?" and "If Adam-and-Eve only had three sons, how exactly did the world survive?"  Instead what I got from Confirmation was more pageantry-our youth director and occasionally the associate pastor was more concerned with keeping 25 teenagers in the chapel for an hour than with actually instructing us on the ways of the church.  As a result I was taught meaningless memorizations from a Catechism that I and the other teens never got to interact with and question and got put through multiple viewings of The Ten Commandments.

I say these things because the Pew Research poll that recently came out showing Christianity has declined in total numbers and percentage of the population, and saw particularly decreased numbers amongst Millennials has been parceled through by countless media outlets and they haven't nailed on the head one of the principle reasons that I think that Millennials have abandoned organized religion in such droves.  They are correct in stating that the church's political inclinations in the past few decades, watching people like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Mike Huckabee move Christianity into something that is a "Republican" thing focused on women's health, gay marriage, and other issues even more speciously related to the faith, has turned off a generation in a major way.  The reality is that when you have to choose between a random preacher on television or a pastor that you don't know at all and your best friend or cousin or uncle or professor, it's not a fair fight.  The gay person is still preaching tolerance for the most part about the Christian and the Christian is giving a no-holds barred answer-those are things that are easy for Millennials to suss out, and should be for most people.

And it's certainly not because Millennials are against traditionalism.  This is a crew that got enamored with the London Olympics and that worships their own nostalgia.  If anything, they can smell through the disingenuousness of having a rock band at service and trying to have a chill service and all that.  I'm not saying this is a totally bad thing to try to reach Millennials through their level (an app of saint days from the Catholic Church or having the Pope on Twitter-these are not the worst ideas in the world and inserts religion into your daily routine), but don't pretend to be something you're not-phonies don't sell here.

But I think that these are just surface-level issues that Millennials would be able to suss out about Christianity.  There are faiths that still find a way to meaningfully reach out to younger people, and who don't view Catholic or Protestant as a political party.  And it's not like Millennials don't follow certain tenets of the Christian belief.  Despite what older generations may say scoffing Millennials, the Gen Y-ers volunteer more than Baby Boomers or Generation X did at the same respective age.  This is a firm belief in most Christian doctrines (do onto others as others would do onto you), and something that even the Pope has recognized in his robust messages regarding helping the poor and fixing climate change.  What organized religion needs, though, is less talking points and more personalized and interactive leaders.  Millennials live in a world where you get to talk with celebrities, where every answer is just a Google search away, and where they get to discuss, parcel through, and personalize every experience they have.  The church doesn't need to get comfier seats in order to address this issue, but it does need to find a way to really talk about God and faith in terms that aren't just "you do it because" style lectures.  The Bible itself frequently contradicts itself, and why do we follow specific passages and not others?  Having more people get involved with religion, teaching young people when you actually have them in Church about larger issues and not just viewing religious education as a pomp-and-circumstance babysitting technique, and having discussions that might make elder parishioners uncomfortable as well-that's how the Church can grow its base.  For people like me, atheism doesn't seem like the answer, but I want a Church that's willing to have a discussion about the tougher aspects of the faith in order to feel like that slide in Pew support isn't a sign of a failed church, and not just a disinterested generation.