I believe that this article first appeared in 2013. I think it reflects an article that bears reflection.
Why Millennials are
Leaving the Church
By Rachel Held Evans,
Special to CNN
(CNN) – At
32, I barely qualify as a millennial.
I wrote my first essay with a pen
and paper, but by the time I graduated from college, I owned a cell phone and
used Google as a verb.
I still remember the home phone
numbers of my old high school friends, but don’t ask me to recite my husband’s
without checking my contacts first.
I own mix tapes that include
selections from Nirvana and Pearl Jam, but I’ve never planned a trip without
Travelocity.
Despite having one foot in
Generation X, I tend to identify most strongly with the attitudes and the ethos
of the millennial generation, and because of this, I’m often asked to speak to
my fellow evangelical leaders about why millennials are leaving the church.
Armed with the latest surveys, along with personal testimonies
from friends and readers, I explain how young adults perceive evangelical
Christianity to be too political, too exclusive, old-fashioned, unconcerned
with social justice and hostile to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
people.
I point to research that shows
young evangelicals often feel they have to choose between their intellectual
integrity and their faith, between science and Christianity, between compassion
and holiness.
I talk about how the evangelical
obsession with sex can make Christian living seem like little more than
sticking to a list of rules, and how millennials long for faith communities in
which they are safe asking tough questions and wrestling with doubt.
Invariably, after I’ve finished my
presentation and opened the floor to questions, a pastor raises his hand and
says, “So what you’re saying is we need hipper worship bands. …”
And I proceed to bang my head
against the podium.
Time and again, the assumption among Christian
leaders, and evangelical leaders in particular, is that the key to drawing
twenty-somethings back to church is simply to make a few style updates – edgier music, more casual
services, a coffee shop in the fellowship hall, a pastor who wears skinny
jeans, an updated Web site that includes online giving.
But here’s the thing: Having been
advertised to our whole lives, we millennials have highly sensitive BS meters,
and we’re not easily impressed with consumerism or performances.
In fact, I would argue that
church-as-performance is just one more thing driving us away from the church,
and evangelicalism in particular.
Many of us, myself included, are finding
ourselves increasingly drawn to high church traditions – Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy,
the Episcopal Church, etc. –precisely
because the ancient forms of liturgy seem so unpretentious, so unconcerned with
being “cool,” and we find that refreshingly authentic.
What millennials really want from
the church is not a change in style but a change in substance.
We want an end to the culture wars.
We want a truce between science and faith. We want to be known for what we
stand for, not what we are against.
We want to ask questions that don’t
have predetermined answers.
We want churches that emphasize an
allegiance to the kingdom of God over an allegiance to a single political party
or a single nation.
We want our LGBT friends to feel
truly welcome in our faith communities.
We want to be challenged to live
lives of holiness, not only when it comes to sex, but also when it comes to
living simply, caring for the poor and oppressed, pursuing reconciliation,
engaging in creation care and becoming peacemakers.
You can’t hand us a latte and then
go about business as usual and expect us to stick around. We’re not leaving the
church because we don’t find the cool factor there; we’re leaving the church
because we don’t find Jesus there.
Like every generation before ours
and every generation after, deep down, we long for Jesus.
Now these trends are obviously true
not only for millennials but also for many folks from other generations.
Whenever I write about this topic, I hear from forty-somethings and
grandmothers, Generation Xers and retirees, who send me messages in all caps
that read “ME TOO!” So I don’t want to portray the divide as wider than it
is.
But I would encourage church
leaders eager to win millennials back to sit down and really talk with them
about what they’re looking for and what they would like to contribute to a
faith community.
Their answers might surprise you.
Rachel Held Evans is the author of
"Evolving in Monkey Town" and "A Year of Biblical
Womanhood." She blogs at rachelheldevans.com. The views expressed in
this column belong to Rachel Held Evans.
