OK, boomer.

Examining the data from the General Social Survey, it turns out it's not the baby boomers who were the last vestige of a highly religious, very Christian era of American history.

Instead, Generation X — born between 1965 and the early '80s — is the last to come of age and even perpetuate an overwhelmingly Christian and largely devout religious landscape in terms of church attendance and beliefs about God.

The GSS has been asking people about their belief in God since 1988, when the oldest members of Gen X were moving into adulthood.

The Silent Generation, the baby boomers and Generation X show up in its findings as just as likely (if not more) to have a certain belief in God in 2018 compared to 1988.

Share believing in God without doubt. (Right-click and open in new Tab to see full-size image.)

That's clearly not the case for millennials, who dropped about 10 percentage points in 20 years in reporting their certainty about a supreme being.

It's still very early to come to any firm conclusions about Generation Z, but there's ample reason to believe that they are half as likely as Gen X to express a certain belief — leaving millennials as the generation that was the great divide.

That also comes through when looking at a different question about religious belief: How do you compare your current belief in God with what you used to believe about the divine.

Eighty per cent of Gen X say that they have always believed — 14 percentage points higher than millennials and Generation Z.

Which best describes your beliefs about God?

In fact, it may be the case that Generation X has had a more consistent belief in God than the baby boomers have.

This divergence also appears when religiosity is seen through the prism of disaffiliation.

As they moved through adulthood, Gen X represents an interesting trend line: In the late 1980s, only about 11% said that they had no religious affiliation.

That increased to around 20% by the mid-2000s, but it has been largely unmoved since that point.

Millennials, however, have a completely different trajectory.

When the oldest members of that generation moved into adulthood, 22% were nones, and in 2018 the share of millennials who had no affiliation was closer to 33%.

The Share of Each Generation That Is Religiously Unaffiliated

The gap between boomers and Gen X was less than five percentage points in 2018, but between Gen X and millennials it's more than 13 points.

The gap in religious behaviour among Generation X and millennials is also stark when it comes to church attendance. To compare the two, I calculated the church attendance of each generation when they entered their early 20s through their mid-30s.

This allows for a direct comparison as each generation went through the typical life stages in which young adults marry, have children and gravitate toward faith — or not.

In 1991, when the oldest Gen Xers were in their mid-20s, less than 15% said that they never attended church.

During the same period for millennials, the share who never went to church was nearly 30%. In fact, there's a consistent 10 to 15 percentage-point gap in the never attenders when comparing these two generations.

Religious Attendance Over Time

It's worth pointing out, however, that the share of each generation that attends church weekly is very similar; the change seems to have come among those millennials who once occupied the middle of the attendance spectrum who now say they never go to church.

As I wrote in my book, "The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going," the early 1990s was an inflection point for American religion.

Between the early 1970s and 1990s, the share of Americans who had no religious affiliation had only risen two points. But from that point forward, the nones would grow by a percentage point or two nearly every year through the following three decades.

For the oldest members of Gen X, this meteoric rise hit after many of them had moved into young adulthood and didn't seem to lead to a broad secularization of their cohort.

By the time millennials came of age, though, the wave of secularism was washing across the United States. They walked away from religion in ways that prior generations never considered.

I think it's entirely fair to say that Generation X represents the last generation raised with traditional American religion.

• Ryan Burge is an author at Religion News Service.
• First published by RNS. Republished with permission.

Previous research highlights not only the sheer size of the Millennial generation, which now surpasses Baby Boomers as the largest, but also its racial and ethnic diversity and high rates of educational attainment.

This research also notes that Millennials have been slower than previous generations to establish their own households.

A new analysis of government data by Pew Research Center shows that Millennials are taking a different path in forming - or not forming - families. Millennials trail previous generations at the same age across three typical measures of family life: living in a family unit, marriage rates and birth rates.

Millennials lag furthest behind in the share living with a spouse and child. Only three-in-ten Millennials fell into this category in 2019, compared with 40% of Gen Xers, 46% of Boomers and 70% of Silents when they were the age Millennials are now.

At the same time, the share of Millennials who live with a spouse and no child is comparable to previous generations (13%), while the share living with a child but no spouse (12%) is the same as Gen X but higher than Boomers and Silents.

Among Millennials, there are significant differences in the share living in a family of their own by race, ethnicity and educational attainment.

Black Millennials are the least likely to live in a family - 46% do, compared with 57% of white and Hispanic Millennials and 54% of Asians.

Black Millennials are more likely than other groups to live with a child and no spouse (22%, compared with 16% of Hispanic, 9% of white and 4% of Asian Millennials).

Overall, Millennials with less than a high school diploma are more likely than those with more education to live in a family (63% compared with 55% each of high school graduates, those with some college education and college graduates).

Millennials with a bachelor's degree or more education are more likely than those with less education to live with a spouse and no child (18% compared with 11% of those with some college education, 10% of high school graduates, and 7% of those with less than a high school diploma).

College-educated Millennials are the least likely to live with a child and no spouse (4%), while those with less than a high school education are the most likely to fall into this category (21%).

A look at Millennials who aren't living with a family of their own reveals that most live in other family arrangements: 14% of Millennials live with their parents, and another 14% live with other family members. In both cases, these shares are higher than for other generations when they were in their 20s and 30s.

Previous research has shown that, even after the economy started to recover from the Great Recession, the share of Millennials living in their parents' homes continued to rise.

Millennial men are much more likely than Millennial women to live with their parents (18% of men compared with 10% of women).

Millennial men without a college degree are especially likely to fall into this category (21%, compared with 12% of Millennial men with a bachelor's or higher degree).

About one-in-ten Millennials (9%) live alone. This is similar to the share of Gen Xers and Boomers who did so at a comparable age but higher than the share of Silents. Some 7% of Millennials live in a household with non-family members.

A majority of Millennials are not currently married, marking a significant change from past generations. Only 44% of Millennials were married in 2019, compared with 53% of Gen Xers, 61% of Boomers and 81% of Silents at a comparable age.

What does marriage look like for Millennials who have tied the knot?

They are getting married later in life than previous generations. The median age at first marriage has edged up gradually in recent decades.

In 2019, the average man first got married at age 30, and the average woman was 28 when she first wed. This is three years later - for both men and women - than in 2003, four years later than in 1987 and seven years later than in 1968. Continue reading

• The analysis or comments in this article do not necessarily reflect the view of CathNews.

In fact, something more nuanced is happening: we remain "religious" but spirituality is both personal and elusive - and outside the institutional status quo.

We live in a godless age. Don't we?

The dominant cultural narrative holds, of course, that we do.

Once upon a time, this prevailing narrative goes, we - at least, we in the modern West - lived in a religious age; moreover, we lived in a specifically Christian age.

For centuries - indeed, millennia - people were united by their shared beliefs, their shared values, their shared investment in a community suffused with an appreciation for, and with the influence of, the transcendent.

People lived their lives in dialogue with the sacred.

• They structured their days, their weeks, their months, their years, around religious rituals and liturgical calendars.
• They lit candles in churches.
• They prayed for deliverance from sickness and sometimes tried to effect healing with folk magic or herb-based spells.
• They believed that material objects - the relics of saints, say - could be charged with spiritual energy and that just touching them could transform your body and your health.

For these believers, the world was what German political and economic theorist Max Weber described as an "enchanted garden": a world in which the boundaries between the sacred and the profane are often porous, slippery, and ill-defined.

Changes

Then, everything changed.

Be it the dawn of the European Enlightenment, or the rise of capitalism and industrialism, or developments in modern science, or the college campus wars of the 1950s and 1960s - different versions of the narrative place the turning point at different places in history - somewhere, somehow, we in the West became a fundamentally, foundationally secular people. Somehow or other, God died.

In some, often progressive, tellings of this narrative, we have freed ourselves from the shackles of outmoded superstition and outdated servitude, liberating our lives from the auspices of oppressive institutions in order to celebrate the fullness of human potential in the absence of a divine overseer.

In other, more reactionary versions, we have fallen into spiritual acedia and decay, drifting listlessly across a disenchanted world, festering in our own moral decadence.

Both narratives are wrong

It's true that, at first glance, we are far less religious than we were 50 or 100 years ago. In the United States, at least, the numbers are striking.

• About a quarter of Americans now say that they're "religiously unaffiliated."
• Among young millennials and Generation Z - roughly, those born after 1985 - those numbers rise to a staggering 36 per cent.
• Among queer Americans, that percentage goes up to nearly half.
• In a full 20 US states, religious "nones" - as this group is often known - make up the single largest religious bloc.
• Just 22 per cent of Americans have their weddings in a religious house of worship as of 2017 - down from 41 per cent in 2009. And about 30 per cent say they don't want a religious funeral when they die.

But look a little closer and the numbers tell a far more complicated story.

The "religiously unaffiliated" may not be religious in the organised or formal sense, but - in the US at least - they're nevertheless deeply spiritually engaged.

• Seventy-two per cent of them say they believe in some form of a higher power, however nebulously described, and almost 20 per cent say they believe in the God of the Bible.
• Forty-six per cent of them talk to the higher power regularly.
• Thirteen per cent say it talks back.
• Almost half believe they've been protected by a higher power.
• Thirty-eight per cent say they believe in reincarnation.
• The religiously unaffiliated - whatever they are - aren't outright atheists or denizens of some disenchanted world.

Rather, they're spiritually interested and engaged - just doing so outside of the traditional religious channels.

Yet the story of our shifting contemporary religious landscape isn't just the story of the self-proclaimed "nones."

It's also a story of those who do identify as belonging to an established religious tradition, but whose beliefs, practices, and rituals suggest a more eclectic approach to faith.

As many as 30 percent of self-identified Christians, for example, say they believe in reincarnation - something nearly any orthodox Christian theologian would say is incompatible with even the most liberally construed iteration of church doctrine.

Of the self-proclaimed "spiritual but not religious" - as distinct from the "nones" - 37 percent identify as Protestant, and 14 per cent as Catholic. Simply looking at who ticks the "Christian" or "Jewish" box on a census form isn't enough: rather, many people may still affiliate with a tradition even as their internal theology and sense of self lie elsewhere.

The broader story of our shifting "enchanted" world, therefore, isn't just a story about secularism, disbelief and disaffiliation. Rather, it's a story of shifts in religious attitudes. Continue reading

• Tara Isabella Burton is a writer of fiction and non-fiction. Winner of the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize for Travel Writing, she completed her doctorate in 19th century French literature and theology.
• Her latest book is "Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World.

On the one hand, they're disillusioned with their parents' religious traditions, which have failed to provide them with a coherent account of meaning and purpose in the world.

On the other hand, they're alienated from the conservatism of more hard-line denominations with stances on LGBTQ issues or sexuality that an increasingly progressive generation sees as at odds with millennials' core values.

These values hold that the self is an autonomous being, the self's desires are fundamentally good, and societal and sexual repression as not just undesirable but actively evil.

These millennials, which in my new book I called "Remixed Millennials," are at once attracted to moral and theological certainty — accounts of the human condition that claim totalizing truth or demand difficult adherence because the challenge is ultimately rewarding — and repulsed by traditions that set hard limits on personal, and particularly sexual or romantic, desire.

That, for better or for worse, is where corporations come in.

Increasingly, companies have recognized that there is a gap in the needs of today's Remixed: institutions, activities, philosophies and rituals that manage to be challenging and totalizing while also preserving millennials' need for personal freedom.

It's the dot-com bubble for spirituality, a free marketplace of innovation and religious disruption.

No sooner does something become a viral movement than an ingenious startup finds a way to re-create it at a more profitable price point.

Consumer-capitalist culture offers us not merely necessities but identities. Meaning, purpose, community and ritual can all — separately or together — be purchased on Amazon Prime.

As journalist Amanda Hess wrote in The New York Times, "Shopping, decorating, grooming and sculpting are now jumping with meaning. And a purchase need not have any explicit social byproduct — the materials eco-friendly, or the proceeds donated to charity — to be weighted with significance. Pampering itself has taken on a spiritual urgency."

Seeking to capitalize on the spiritual gap in the market, more and more brands are packaging and marketing religious and spiritual products. In 2019, you could buy witch-branded candles at Urban Outfitters, download Headspace or another meditation app to practice mindfulness on your morning commute, then pop in to SoulCycle, or CrossFit, or an Ashtanga yoga class on your lunch hour.

A 2018 study by Virtue, the branding-partnership arm of Vice Media, argued that spirituality was the "next big thing" in millennial-focused marketing. "We now think brands should take a step further," Vice's chief creative and commercial officer Tom Punch told attendees at a marketing festival, "thinking more broadly about what their role is in society and how they can truly be a force for good in people's lives."

In the early stages of its development, Facebook set up internal "compassion research days," during which the company brought in academics from Harvard and Yale to teach the benefits of Buddhist compassion, to employees working on the site's harassment-reporting tools.

Companies are also using political advocacy to sell themselves as moral arbitrators: See Nike's advertisements celebrating Colin Kaepernick's decision to "take a knee" in support of the Black Lives Matter movement or Chick-fil-A's donations to anti-LGBT-marriage groups (a practice the company ceased in 2019 after backlash from progressives).

These brands are selling not just products but values.

In so doing, they are creating moral universes, selling meaning as an implicit product and reframing capitalist consumption as a religious ritual — a repeated and intentional activity that connects the individual to divine purpose in a values-driven framework.

The rise of "woke capitalism" and its reactionary converse is endemic of the way today's new religions interface with the brands that so powerfully promote, reify and profit off them.

Of course, the rise of spiritual branding would be impossible without the third phenomenon that sets this Great Awakening apart from its predecessors: the dizzying transformations effected by internet culture.

The internet has also encouraged us, as consumers with a cornucopia of options demand a creative role in designing our spiritual experiences.

For a whole generation it has provided alternative communities, allowing people to find friends or partners who aren't merely like-minded, but almost identically minded. It disincentivizes compromise and conformity, even as it promises the bespoke ideal: people who think and feel and act just like you.

Long before the advent of the World Wide Web, Marshall McLuhan, often considered the father of media studies, envisioned a technological future characterized by what he called "retribalization."

New forms of electronic media — television, for example — were being touted as ushering in the "global village": a world in which disparate peoples would be united by the ideas and images newly available to them. McLuhan predicted that instead, we'd splinter into new, technology-driven "tribes."

As McLuhan rather bombastically (and somewhat offensively) told a Playboy interviewer in 1969, "The compressional, implosive nature of the new electric technology is retrogressing Western man back from the open plateaus of literate values and into the heart of tribal darkness."

McLuhan was prophetic.

From Harry Potter fans to Wiccans, skincare fanatics to political activists, we're increasingly able to use the power of both social media (Facebook) and public forums (Twitter, Reddit, 4chan) to find people with similar interests, philosophies and even sexual kinks.

But that's just one side of the coin.

The internet has also made us hungrier for individualization: for products, information and groups that reflect more exactly our personal sense of self.

There is a natural irony to all this.

The very qualities that most characterize modern technology — speed and ease of reproducibility — have also kindled a cultural backlash. Our spiritual profiles, like our Facebook profiles, need to be individualized.

Just look at the Ritual Design Lab, founded by designers Kursat Ozenc and Margaret Hagan.

Callers into the "ritual design hotline" (past clients have included big brands like Microsoft) tell the lab a bit about their community and needs, and the lab, in turn, designs a custom, nontheistic ritual.

"The new generation," Ozenc told The Atlantic's Sigal Samuel, "want(s) bite-size spirituality instead of a whole menu of courses."

In Ozenc's view, this is a good thing. "Design thinking can offer this," he continued on, "because the whole premise of design is human-centeredness. It can help people shape their spirituality based on their needs. Institutionalized religions somehow forget this — that at the center of any religion should be the person."

• Tara Isabella Burton is a writer of fiction and non-fiction. Winner of the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize for Travel Writing, she completed her doctorate in 19th century French literature and theology.
• This article has been adapted from "Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World"

Tracking them down, sans Google or social media, was at least somewhat difficult.

Today, that has changed.

An ex may be far from one's mind, until a photo of their wedding, or baby, or recent vacation pops up in a social media feed.

That could spell trouble for current relationships, according to a new report on relationship happiness and online behaviors.

In a survey that included 2,000 married, cohabiting and single people spanning multiple generations in the United States, as well as data from the General Social Survey, researchers found that couples who flirted with online boundaries and relationships were less happy than those who kept strong online boundaries.

The analysis of the survey, entitled "iFidelity: The State of Our Unions 2019," was a research project from the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University.

"Those currently married or cohabiting who blur those boundaries are significantly less happy, less committed, and more likely to break up while, conversely, those taking a more careful stance online are happier, more committed, and less likely to separate," the study states.

"For example, those who did not follow a former girlfriend/boyfriend online had a 62% likelihood of reporting that they were ‘very happy' in their cohabiting or marital relationship.

"Only 46% of those who did follow an old flame online reported being very happy."

The survey asked about nine online behaviors, and whether or not participants considered them to be "unfaithful" or "cheating."

According to the survey, most Americans (70% or more) rated six behaviors as cheating or unfaithful, including "having a secret emotional relationship or sexting with someone other than a partner/spouse without the partner's/spouse's knowledge and consent."

Three behaviors were the exception - most Americans did not find flirting with someone in real life, following a former love interest online, and consuming pornography to be cheating or unfaithful behaviors.

The results also varied by age.

Millennials were the most likely group to have permissive attitudes about online behaviors, and were also the most likely group to admit engaging in online behaviors ranked as "unfaithful" or "cheating."

W. Brad Wilcox, editor of the survey and director of the National Marriage Project, told CNA that he thought there were at least three possible reasons for this discrepancy. Continue reading

• Image: The Nile

"The values that Americans say define the national character are changing, as younger generations rate patriotism, religion and having children as less important to them than did young people two decades ago," Wall Street Journal reporter Chad Day wrote about the results.

Cartretta Dada, a 62-year-old Birmingham, Ala., resident, rated patriotism, religion and having children as very important to her.

She said her views have been heavily influenced by the religious commitment of the generation before her and her own experience as a parent.

"Because I had three black sons, then I had to be really particular in how I raised them so that they could succeed in a society that sometimes does not consider them human," she said.

"It was important to me to give them the best that I could give them so that they can succeed in America."

Megan Clark, a 31-year-old from Austin, Texas, said her experience as a child living overseas due to her father's military career influenced her views on patriotism.

"Patriotism for the sake of patriotism means nothing to me,'' she said.

"If you believe in the values that your country is expressing and following and you want to support those, then, sure. But just as a blind association with wherever you happen to be from, that just doesn't seem logical."

The survey, conducted by Wall Street Journal/NBC News, began 21 years ago when Americans were asked which values were most important to them and the majority responded that "principles of hard work, patriotism, commitment to religion and the goal of having children" were critical.

"Today, hard work remains atop the list, but the shares of Americans listing the other three values have fallen substantially," Day wrote.

Patriotism being "very important" fell 9 percent, religion dropped 12 percent and having children fell a whopping 16 percent. Older participants still feel that patriotism is a priority, but younger people aren't as enthusiastic.

"Among people 55 and older, for example, nearly 80 percent said patriotism was very important, compared with 42 percent of those ages 18-38 — the millennial generation and older members of Gen-Z," Day noted before adding that the survey did find a few points of unity. Continue reading

• Image: The Stream

A Pentecostal turned Unitarian, the 28-year-old Graffagnino said he's had his fill with "stale and dead expressions of faith that I saw really doing nothing to better the people around me or the world around me."

Discovering the Christian mystical tradition through the work of Franciscan friar Richard Rohr helped change that.

"Father Richard's work allowed an entryway into Christianity when I didn't think there was any," said Graffagnino, who is studying to be an interfaith chaplain at Starr King School for the Ministry, a Unitarian Universalist seminary in Berkeley, Calif.

Graffagnino was one of a number of millennials drawn to The Universal Christ — a four-day conference in New Mexico's capital last month led by Rohr, one of the preeminent Christian contemplatives of the last century.

Pentecostal in his early childhood, Unitarian through his teen years and then spiritually unaffiliated until he began "flirting with the Quakers" in his late 20s, Graffagnino also has explored Vedic Hinduism, spiritual Taoism, mystical Judaism, and Sufism.

Rohr's work has been a bridge between those spiritual traditions and his native Christianity, where they have "found a resting place in my own backyard," he said.

While many younger Americans today are spiritually unaffiliated, aka "nones" — a quarter of all adults under the age of 30 in the United States say they don't identify with any religion or spiritual tradition, according to the Pew Center for Religion and Public Life — millennials are increasingly finding contemplative spirituality appealing.

"One of my publishers says (younger Christians) are my biggest demographic — not Catholics but post-evangelicals," Rohr told Religion News Service in an interview a few days before The Universal Christ conference began in late March.

"The collectives are emerging outside of formal religion, for the most part, because we became too insular," the 76-year-old Catholic mystic said. "They've imbibed this kind of universal sacred, and we're seeing this especially in the millennials. They just put us to shame."

Whether it's in the stillness of silent meditation, walking a labyrinth, or centering prayer; the practice of engaging with scripture through Lectio Divina, the Ignatian tradition's Daily Examen; or a combination of Buddhist mindfulness, Kundalini breath work and Taizé prayer, many young adults are happy (to borrow a line from Van Morrison) to sail into the mystic.

"My heart speaks to me in the silence," said Laurie Wevers, 35, a mental health therapist and spiritual director in San Diego.

Laurie Wevers, left, 35, a mental health therapist and spiritual director from San Diego, and Tracy Bindel, 30, a law student and anti-racism activist from Boston, stand with a cardboard cutout of Richard Rohr while holding table stanchions looking for "young-er" and "under 40" contemplatives.

Growing up as an evangelical Christian in the Midwest, Wevers wasn't exposed to contemplative practice or mystical tradition. Then, a professor at her Christian college in Minnesota suggested she meet with a spiritual director.

While similar in practice to psychological talk therapy, spiritual direction's aim is different. In the Christian tradition, a spiritual director is a person of faith who is trained to help guide other people of faith into a deeper relationship with God.

Like all contemplative traditions, it places a high value on personal experience with the divine.

In the dozen or more years since Wevers found contemplative spirituality through spiritual direction, she has become a spiritual director herself and earned a master's degree in marriage and family therapy.

Most recently she enrolled in The Living School, an intensive two-year program of study in contemplative practice and mystical tradition at The Center for Action and Contemplation, founded by Rohr in Albuquerque 32 years ago.

"Being contemplative and being quiet did something to my heart and brought peace — it brought change without me having words (for) how that happened," said Wever, adding that other contemplatives, including Christians Parker Palmer, Meister Ekhart and St. John of the Cross and the Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron, also have influenced her faith and practice.

"I can't imagine doing a non-contemplative spirituality," she said.

Presently, about half of the Center for Action and Contemplation's four-dozen staff members are millennials — including Executive Director Michael Poffenberger.

"Richard's definition of mysticism is experiential knowledge of God, and in evangelical-speak you could call that the ‘personal relationship with Jesus Christ,'" said Poffenberger, 36, who grew up in Washington state, the son of an Irish Catholic mother and a Protestant father.

While he was reared largely as a Roman Catholic, Poffenberger, who joined Rohr's staff in 2014, spent a few years in evangelical Protestant communities as a teenager.

"I had more of what I would call mystical experiences through evangelical worship than I ever did through my Catholic formation experience," he said.

Poffenberger's first exposure to Christian mysticism came during his college years at the University of Notre Dame, where he became involved in social justice efforts.

One spring break, he spent a week at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky (the Trappist community where Thomas Merton was a member) reading Dorothy Day's autobiography, "The Long Loneliness."

"I was radicalized by that experience," he said.

Later, during a summer spent volunteering alongside Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India, Poffenberger had a life-changing mystical experience.

In the evenings, after working with the Missionaries of Charity sisters as they tended to the poorest of the poor in their Home for the Dying, the community gathered in the chapel for the eucharistic adoration, where they would sit in silent meditation.

"Serving dying people throughout the day and then just sitting in total silence for an hour in the evening alongside these women who are just such symbols of love and courage in the world… It's hard to then go on with life after that as if something hasn't changed," he said.

After graduating from Notre Dame, Poffenberger relocated to Washington, D.C., where he worked for a decade on various anti-violence efforts in Central Africa.

At a men's retreat during his tenure there, he became acquainted with Rohr's contemplative work.

"A lot of struggles I had were around power-privilege questions for me as somebody working in D.C.," he said. "What I experienced in Richard was an access point into the spirituality that actually gave meaning to those deeper questions and spoke to the reality of suffering that I was seeing and engaging with, and trying to make sense out of it."

Tracy Bindel, an anti-racism activist, attends law school in Boston and runs Freedom Beyond Whiteness, a nationwide network of contemplative action circles. For her, the Center for Action and Contemplation has been a spiritual community where she doesn't have to hide any part of herself.

Bindel grew up in an evangelical Christian community where she learned about the power of prayer. But as a young adult coming to terms with her sexuality, she felt she no longer fit in that tradition.

"When I realized that it didn't welcome my queerness, I kind of pulled that string and many other things fell apart in the world for me," Bindel said.

"Once I knew very clearly that I was a beloved child of God, it just became a matter of how do I actually live into that truth? The church that I grew up in didn't affirm that."

Eventually, with the help of Rohr, who teaches that "everything belongs," she found a home in completive practice.

Wes Lambert's unlikely path toward mysticism began a decade ago when he was a Southern Baptist teenager.

Some friends asked if they could lay hands on him and pray over him, something that to a very "hands-off" Baptist was an uncomfortable proposition. But Lambert relented, and when he did, something happened that changed his faith and life.

"This white light kind of overcame me and I ended up—the best way to describe it is in a trance—and I saw this vision of Jesus," said Lambert, 27, who works in the fashion industry in New York City. "For me, my whole faith was in my head… This is what God had to do to get me out of my box."

Years later, after a relationship breakup sparked a period of questioning everything—including his faith—Lambert turned to meditation, which eventually led to a five-month stay in 2017 at the Trappist-run Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Ga.

"The silence and contemplation has really kept me grounded, holding the paradoxical questions of faith," Lambert said.

The contemplative tradition is "expansive enough… that it leaves room as you grow," he said. "To be Christian is to see Christ in everything."

• Cathleen Falsani is a veteran religion journalist and author, specializing in the intersection of spirituality and culture. She lives in Southern California.
• Image: Twitter @godgrrl

The report gave me an idea: Why not ask millennials that I know what attracts — or repels — them from parish life?

If my focus group ruled the world, here are the dos and don'ts of parish life that they would probably enforce.

First: Don't schedule daily parish Masses only for retirees.

"My generation hates when churches cater to the elderly and retired only," said one millennial. She cited Masses scheduled at 8 a.m. or later instead of before or after work hours.

Millennials told me that a parish with an 8 a.m. or later daily Mass is saying, loud and clear: "We don't want working people to attend our Masses."

Meanwhile, a recent Gallup poll that said membership in churches is continuing its 20-year drop (though religious sentiment is still strong). That is a natural consequence of church schedules that exclude working people.

Do schedule Mass such that working people can attend

On the other hand, when a parish is willing to have an early or afternoon daily Mass, it sends its own message: "We will sacrifice to meet your needs, rather than demand you sacrifice for ours."

A bonus tip for parishes from my focus group: Please, please, put your Mass times on your parish website, and make them "sticky" at the top of your Facebook page, particularly during special times like Holy Week.

Don't make service opportunities the fiefdoms of previous generations

Millennials also called out service opportunities at parishes. They tend to be run by older people who can't imagine doing something different from what was done before.

That means that young people who don't want to sell baked goods or can't sew or can't meet on Wednesday afternoons have no way to participate — and the parish has no intention of changing this, because of who is in charge.

Do make the Church a place where millennials can serve their communities

Meanwhile, one of the great benefits of church membership is that it serves as a kind of antidote to the self-centered and isolating social media culture. Religion not only bonds you to God, it bonds you to your community through service to others.

If churches want to keep millennials, they need to "give them the keys to the car" and allow them to create parish service opportunities that suit their abilities and availability.

Don't only offer confessions one hour a week

Millennials tell me that the sacrament of confession feels like a sacrament built for them. It allows them to focus on their unique personal life story and how it intersects with God and the world, and get personalized help in making it better.

But working people have a hard time getting to confession on a Saturday, the day when all their errands have to happen also. Those with children find it even harder. Continue reading

A study conducted by the Barna Group found Christian millennials think it is especially wrong to share their personal beliefs with someone of a different faith "in hopes they will share the same faith." Read more

For many churches and leaders, however, Millennials are (to borrow from Winston Churchill) "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."

I would agree with Churchill's statement on some levels, but the riddle can be solved.

Once you find out what makes Millennials tick, they are not that puzzling.

They simply have a unique set of passions, interests, and viewpoints on the culture and the world.

But the church has largely failed to take stock in this generation because they are different.

This is a problem.

A lack of knowledge breeds fear, and this is true of the church in relation to Millennials.

Many churches do not take the time to know the next generation, so they are stuck with attaching stigmas (many untrue) to them.

There are churches, however, that are thriving with Millennials, and if you did some investigation I believe you would find similar results, regardless of the church locale.

So, what differentiates a church culture that attracts Millennials from one that repels them?

There are many factors, but I want to highlight ten really important ones.

If your church wonders why reaching the next generation is difficult, the following points might shed some light on your struggle.

1. There is a strong resistance to change

The next generation doesn't understand why churches refuse to change a program, activity, or even an entire culture if they aren't effective.

Millennials don't hold traditions close to their heart.

In fact, for many (myself included) traditions are often the enemy because many churches allow traditions to hinder them from moving forward.

Is this right? Maybe. Maybe not. But it is a reality nonetheless. One that must be understood.

Millennials are tired of hearing the phrase "this is how we have always done it."

That answer is no longer acceptable.

Millennials want to change the world.

Many times traditions hold them back from this.

Change is necessary to remain focused on the vision and being externally focused, among many other things.

The next generation understands this.

2. A compelling vision is lacking or non-existent

If creating an environment totally void of the next generation is your goal, especially those with any initiative and talent, refuse to cast vision in your church.

That will drive Millennials away faster than the time I saw a rattlesnake in the woods and screamed like a girl.

Don't judge me. I hate snakes…and cats.

It baffles me when a church doesn't value vision and planning.

In no other arena of life do we refuse to vision and plan, but for some reason the church is different.

Millennials will not invest in a church that refuses to dream big because they see example after example of an infinitely powerful God doing amazing things through normal people.

You might think they are naive, but most Millennials don't believe they have to wait until they receive a certain degree or reach a certain age to start non-profits, plant churches, or lead businesses.

So, go ahead and believe "the Spirit is supposed to guide us, not a man-made vision" or just allow sheer laziness to lead the way, but your church will continue to be void of the next generation.

3. Mediocrity is the expectation

Quite simply…the next generation is not content with mediocrity.

They believe they can (and will) change the world. Good or bad, they have a strong desire for the extraordinary.

Failure is not going to drive the train.

This also seems like a foreign concept to many in previous generations, but Millennials aren't scared to fail. And they believe churches should operate with a similar mindset.

Failing and being a failure are mutually exclusive.

They dream often and dream big because they understand they serve a God who works beyond their abilities.

Millennials have a collective concern for making the world a better place, and mediocrity fits nowhere in those plans.

4. There is a paternalistic approach to leading Millennials

This is one I have experienced personally.

If you want to push the next generation away from your church, don't release them to lead.

Simply giving them a title means nothing.

Titles are largely irrelevant to the next generation.

They want to be trusted to fulfill the task given to them.

If you micro-manage them, treat them like a child, or refuse to believe they are capable of being leaders because of their age and lack of experience, wisdom, etc., they will be at your church for a short season.

Millennials will not allow age to keep them from leading…and leading well.

If you refuse to release them to lead, the next generation will quickly find another church or context where they can use their talents and gifts to their full capacity.

5. There is a pervasive insider-focused mentality

Traditional or contemporary worship?

High church or low church?

A plurality of elders, board of directors, or staff-led church?

While past generations invested a lot of time in these discussions, most Millennials see these conversations as sideways energy.

There might be a time and place for talking about acapella versus instrumental or high church versus low church, but the time is very rarely and the place is not from a pulpit or in a small group.

What is important to Millennials?

How a church responds to the lost in the world, both locally and globally.

How a church responds to the poor, homeless, needy, and widowed.

If you want to ensure your church has very few Millennials, answer the questions nobody is asking, spend most of your resources on your building, and have programs that do little to impact anybody outside the church walls.

The next generation is pessimistic towards institutions…the church included.

Millennials are not going to give their time and resources to a church that spends massive amounts of money on inefficient and ineffective programs.

Church leaders can get mad or frustrated about this, or they can consider changing things.

Churches who value reaching the next generation emphasize the latter.

6. Transparency and authenticity are not high values

Despite what I often hear, most Millennials value transparency and authenticity.

If your church portrays a "holier than thou" mentality and most of the sermons leave everyone feeling like terrible people, your church will be largely devoid of the next generation.

Why?

Because the next generation knows something the church has largely denied for a long time…church leaders are not in their position because they are absent of sin, temptations, or failures.

Millennials have seen too many scandals in the church (i.e. Catholic church scandal) and witnessed too many instances of moral failures among prominent Christian leaders.

Millennials are not looking for perfect people… Jesus already handled that.

Millennials are looking for people to be real and honest about struggles and temptations.

7 Mentoring is not important

This is a common misconception about Millennials.

While they do not like paternalistic leadership, they place a high value on learning from past generations.

I have a good friend who lives in Jackson, TN and he occasionally drives to Nashville (two hours away) to sit at the feet of a man who has mentored him for years.

He does this because his mentor has knowledge my good friend highly values.

He is not an exception.

I have driven as far as Dallas to spend a weekend with a family I love and respect.

I had no other reason for going than to watch how they parent and let this man give me nuggets of wisdom on following Jesus and loving others.

Many might think this is ridiculous, but this is what makes Millennials unique.

They value wisdom and insight.

It is a valuable treasure, and they will travel long distances to acquire it.

Millennials aren't standoffish towards those who have gone before us.

They place a high value on learning. But they want to learn from sages, not dads.

If your church is generationally divided and refuses to pour into the next generation, you can be sure your church will not attract Millennials.

8. Culture is viewed as the enemy

Millennials are tired of the church viewing the culture as the enemy.

Separationist churches that create "safe places" for their members, moving away from all the evil in the city, are unlikely to attract the next generation.

The next generation is trying to find ways to engage the culture for the glory of God.

Millennials are increasingly optimistic about the surrounding culture because this is the model of Jesus.

He loves all types of people, does ministry in the city, and engages the culture.

They also know the church does not stand at the cultural center anymore.

In past generations, preachers could stand in pulpits and lecture about the evils of the culture because the church shaped the culture.

Today, this is not true.

The goal of Christian living isn't to escape the evils of the culture and finish life unharmed.

To reach people today, the church must be immersed in the community for the glory of God.

9. Community is not valued

This might be the greatest value of Millennials.

Community is a non-negotiable part of their lives.

And they aren't looking for another group of people to watch the Cowboys play football on Sunday…the next generation desires a Christ-centered community.

They value a community that moves beyond the surface and asks the hard questions.

Community keeps Millennials grounded and focused.

Community challenges them to reach heights never imagined alone. Jesus lived in community with twelve men for most of His earthly ministry.

Jesus spent a lot of His time pouring into people.

Community isn't an optional part of a Millennial's life…it is essential.

Personally, I have seen the value of community on so many levels.

Without authentic Christian community, I wouldn't be in full-time ministry today.

I wouldn't have overcome serious sins and struggles.

I wouldn't have been challenged to live fully for God.

In a culture becoming increasingly independent and disconnected, Millennials model something important for the church.

There is power in numbers. As an African proverb states, "If you want to go fast, go Alone. If you want to go far, go Together."

Millennials want to go far and want their life to have meaning. In their minds this is not possible without deep, authentic, Christ-centered community.

I agree.

10. The church is a source of division and not unity

Nothing frustrates Millennials more than a church that doesn't value unity.

Jesus's final recorded prayer on earth in John 17 has been preached for years.

What many churches miss is one of the central themes in that prayer… unity.

On four separate occasions, Jesus explicitly prays for unity.

It was important to him.

He brought together tax collectors and Zealots (just do some research if you want to know how difficult it would have been to bring these groups together).

He brought people together.

This is why places like coffee shops are grounds (like my pun?) for a lot of Millennials.

They want to be in environments where everyone feels welcomed and accepted.

Churches that value racial, generational, and socio-economic unity will attract Millennials.

Why?

The gospel is most fully reflected when all of these groups are brought together, and most of them are just crazy enough to believe the power of the Spirit is sufficient to make it happen.

• Frank Powell has a website devoted to God. He hopes every word on this page gives glory to Him. Frank's goal is to challenge status quo Christianity and push everyone (Christian or not) to see God with fresh eyes. Married to Tiffani, they have three children and needless to say have a busy home, but enjoy every second of it.
• Originally published at www.frankpowell.me. Republished with permission.

Christian City Church, better known as C3, has its origins in a church started up in Sydney by a New Zealand couple Phil and Chris Pringle in 1980.

The Pringles were childhood sweethearts who went to high-school together in Masterton.

C3, has tapped into the millennials.

"I think that, without sounding judgmental … sometimes the presentation of religion can be tailored more towards irrelevance," C3 pastor Sam Picken, 32, the Pastor of the C3 in Toronto.

"I think it seems like (Jesus is) un-relatable because we picture him in his surroundings, in his context from back in the day," say Picken.

"But if he was alive today, I would think that he would have an Instagram account.

"I think he would wear similar clothes to what we wear, I think he would hang out at Trinity-Bellwoods and he'd probably drink coffee from many of the cafes that we go to today…"

"What we try and do at C3 is talk about the Bible and talk about Jesus and make the (services) relatable and real.

C3' has dressed-down approach to Sunday services - Picken delivers his sermons wearing skinny jeans and t-shirts.

And its active presence on social media appears to have struck a chord.

In the five years since it set up in Toronto, the congregation, made mostly of millennials, has grown from eight to a steady 800 and 1,100 people attended its 2017 Easter Sunday service.

The Pringles were living in a hippie community in Christchurch when they "happened upon a small Pentecostal church where they were radically saved and set free."

They married shortly after and moved to Australia.

The Pringles founded the first Christian City Church - as it was known then - on the Northern Beaches of Sydney in 1980.

Source

• thestar.com
• c3churchglobal.com
• Image: c3churchwellington.nz

The scent of freshly brewed coffee wafts in from the lobby, where you can order macchiatos and purchase mugs boasting a sleek church logo.

The chairs are comfortable, and the music sounds like something from the top of the charts. At the end of the service, someone will win an iPad.

This, in the view of many churches, is what millennials like me want. And no wonder pastors think so.

Church attendance has plummeted among young adults.

In the United States, 59 percent of people ages 18 to 29 with a Christian background have, at some point, dropped out.

According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, among those of us who came of age around the year 2000, a solid quarter claim no religious affiliation at all, making my generation significantly more disconnected from faith than members of Generation X were at a comparable point in their lives and twice as detached as baby boomers were as young adults.

In response, many churches have sought to lure millennials back by focusing on style points: cooler bands, hipper worship, edgier programming, impressive technology.

Yet while these aren't inherently bad ideas and might in some cases be effective, they are not the key to drawing millennials back to God in a lasting and meaningful way.

Young people don't simply want a better show. And trying to be cool might be making things worse.

Increasingly, churches offer sermon series on iTunes and concert-style worship services with names like "Vine" or "Gather."

The young-adult group at Ed Young's Dallas-based Fellowship Church is called Prime, and one of the singles groups at his father's congregation in Houston is called Vertical. Churches have made news in recent years for giving away tablet computers , TVs and even cars at Easter.

Still, attendance among young people remains flat.

Recent research from Barna Group and the Cornerstone Knowledge Network found that 67 percent of millennials prefer a "classic" church over a "trendy" one, and 77 percent would choose a "sanctuary" over an "auditorium." Continue reading

- Rachel Evans is a blogger and author of "Searching for Sunday" Loving, Leaving and Finding the Church".

By most accounts, Pope Francis wants the synod on the family to be a messy, earnest affair — high on dialogue and low on posturing.

The Oct. 5-19 extraordinary Synod of Bishops is meant to open deeper discussions throughout the church, and will culminate in another synod of bishops next year. The conversation about family will mean different things to people in different parts of the world.

• In Africa, there will be a focus on poverty, war, AIDS, interreligious marriage and polygamy.
• In Latin America, violence, jobs, inequality and the splitting up of families through migration.
• In Asia and the Middle East, war, refugees, religious persecution, interreligious marriage (especially in India) and selective abortion (in places like China).
• In the Catholic West, the focus will be on of divorce, gay marriage and birth control — matters of doctrinal law over which the laity and the hierarchy in America, where ex-Catholics would form the country's third largest religion if classified as such, increasingly find themselves at odds.

The expectation is that the synod will hold import for the future of the church.

"This could replicate, in a somewhat different but no less fruitful way, a dynamic that was essential to the blossoming of Vatican II," NCR columnist Robert Mickens has written.

Synod and the Church's future

So then how does the church find its future in America today, the millennial generation?

American millennials, the digitally connected 20- to 30-somethings who grew up on the Internet and came of age during a time of war, economic decline, political dysfunction and rabid cultural polarization, are the subject of some controversy in American life.

They have been labeled the "me me me generation."

Because many end up back home after college (those who are able to pursue higher education, that is), they have also been called the "boomerang generation."

But dismissive labels tend to hold little sway with millennials themselves.

"I reject that notion that millennials are defined by a culture of superficiality," said 25-year-old Christopher Hale, senior fellow at Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and co-founder of Millennial, a Catholic blog featuring millennial writers.

"I find that most millennials are intelligent, open-minded people searching for a way forward in life."

"What we need to see more than anything is a church that is willing to listen and a church that's willing to engage," Hale said.

"The church needs to realize that a large number of millennial Catholics did not grow up in a household with a mom and a dad. We are growing up in different times, and we still need a church to minister to us."

"What once was alternative is now normal," he said.

Today's 'normality'

In America today, normal means that more and more millennials are choosing to marry later and later in life, and that many come from broken homes or have friends who come from broken homes.

It means that millennials live in a time when the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community is more than ever accepted in society, and more than ever protected by law.

It means that overwhelming numbers view access to contraception as something necessary and basic in their lives — not to be debated, not to be withheld.

At the Catholic level, there are roughly 15 million millennial faithful living in America, said Bill D'Antonio, a sociologist at The Catholic University of America.

Catholic millennials, D'Antonio said, represent the tail end of a sweeping attitudinal shift that has taken place within American Catholicism over the past quarter-century, one from obedience and compliance with authority as the norm to an overriding sense of "conscience" as the primary marker of Catholic identity in American life. Continue reading

Image: Belief Net

In the United States alone, they number more than 78 million, even larger than the seemingly ubiquitous Boomers.

They are the Millennials.

They are changing our nation, our world, and our churches.

For the purpose of today's post, I want to focus on changes they are already bringing to our local churches.

I have the benefit of a large research project on the Millennials, plus the ongoing conversations I have with members of this generation.

And I have spoken with countless leaders in churches about their experiences with Millennials.

Keep in mind that the birth years of the Millennials: 1980 to 2000.

So the oldest member of this generation is 34, while the youngest is only 14.

But their impact is already noticeable, and it will be for years to come.

Here are ten ways they are shaping local congregations today:

1. More of them are attracted to smaller venues. They are thus one of the reasons for the incredible growth in the multi-venue model of churches and the growth of new churches. Leaders of smaller churches should be encouraged by this trend as well.
2. They see culture as something to influence, rather than an enemy to denounce. Many Millennials truly have a missionary mindset. They are turned off by those who constantly rail against people.
3. They like to cooperate with others. They do not view other churches and Christian organizations as competitors. They are attracted to congregations that are working with other congregations.
4. They abhor worship wars. I have a previous post on this topic called "What Worship Style Attracts the Millennials?"
5. They love churches that love their communities. One of the first questions a Millennial will ask a church leader is, "What is the church doing to influence, impact, and minister to the community?"
6. They are attracted to churches that emphasize groups. The Millennials want to be a part of a congregation that has healthy small groups, Sunday school classes, home groups, or other groups.
7. They want to be trained on their schedule. The Millennials truly desire training. But they are accustomed to having that training available when they are able to hear it or view it. Such is the reason that many churches are going to video training while having "live" worship services and small groups.
8. They will question almost everything. This generation will want to know why a church does what it does. The most unacceptable answer is, "We have always done it this way."
9. They are slow to join, and slow to leave. Church leaders are often frustrated that a Millennial takes so long to commit to a local congregation. But they are intentional and thorough. Once they commit to a church, they are less likely to leave, especially over petty issues.
10. They want to be involved. If a church does not have an intentional plan to get Millennials involved in ministry quickly, they will not reach Millennials. Continue reading

Sources

• Thom S Rainer
• Image: Central Piedmont Community College

That she has to stop and think about it for a moment, counting backwards to when they first got together, is telling of their level of commitment - there's no self-conscious mental tallying of months like there is by those on their toes in the first throes of a new relationship.

But like many people her age, she sees no real need to get married. Both she and James are children of divorce; her parents opted to get hitched in a registry office over a white wedding. "I don't know if it matters much to me," she says.

The hundred-odd wedding dresses she keeps in boxes piled high in her living room tell a different story.

They're leftover from Brides: A Dress-up Conversation, an "interactive theatre" project Tate-Manning and a collaborator, Barbarian Production's Jo Randerson, held in Wellington last year.

It ran in an empty shop across the road from the Beehive for two weeks in April, happily coinciding with the passing of marriage equality.

Their aim was to generate discussion about the meaning of marriage in a time when one in three end in divorce. Continue reading.

Source: The Wireless

Image: Salon

The style of worship is not their primary focus, wrote Dr Thom Rainer in the Christian Post.

Their focus is on theologically rich music, authenticity and quality in worship, which reflects adequate preparation in time and prayer.

What they want is from music in worship is that it has "rich content", Dr Rainer writes.

"They desire to sing those songs that reflect deep biblical and theological truths," he continued.

They also desire authenticity in a worship services.

"They can sense when congregants and worship leaders are going through the motions."

And they will reject such perfunctory attitudes altogether," he noted.

They also want a quality service, which reflects this authenticity.

This will reflect the preparation of the worship leaders spiritually and in time of preparation.

Dr Rainer's conclusions were based on research with 1200 young people in the millennial bracket.

He is president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention in the United States.

He wrote that "millennial Christians, and a good number of seekers among their generation, are gravitating to churches where the teaching and preaching is given a high priority".

"They are attracted to churches whose focus is not only on the members, but on the community and the world.

"Inwardly focused congregations will not see many millennials in their churches."

Millennials will "walk away from congregations that are still fighting about style of music, hymnals or screen projections, or choirs or praise teams", Dr Rainer wrote.

"Those are not essential issues to millennials, and they don't desire to waste their time hearing Christians fight about such matters."

Dr Rainer has co-authored a book about the millennial generation with his son, Jess.

There are about 79 million "millennials" in the United States, making this America's "largest generation".

Sources

• Christian Post
• Image: Times Free Press

You can find articles about their political views, their work habits, and their buying trends.

You can also find complaints from non-affluent Millennials that these discussions don't apply to them.

The Millennial Generation is not very religious, and Millennials are not very orthodox even when they are.

But at places like Benedictine College, where I work, you meet a hybrid version of them: The Hardcore Catholic Millennial.

They are truly hardcore Catholics. They are also truly Millennials.

Their religion does not wipe out their generation's culture any more than their culture wipes out their religious beliefs.

So, what are they like? Continue reading.

Tom Hoopes is Vice President of College Relations and writer in residence at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.

Source: Aleteia

Image: catholicvote.org

Speaking about the millennial general she says, "For some of us, the clichés are still maddening and alienating."

Recently she asked her followers online for the five church clichés that they tend to hate the most. These were the top five responses: continue reading

• attend Mass weekly,
• pray daily,
• consider religion "very important" than Catholics 30 and older.

Yet the millennial Catholics who do practice and value their faith are doing something odd: They are spearheading a resurgence of traditional Catholic liturgy and disciplines that their parents and grandparents had largely abandoned.

A recent study of Catholic religious orders confirmed this trend.

Sister Mary Bendyna, a member of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas and director of the Georgetown University-affiliated center that conducted the study, summarized the findings for The New York Times.

Compared with older generations, she said, millennials who consider becoming priests or nuns are "more attracted to a traditional style of religious life, where there is community living, common prayer, having Mass together, praying the Liturgy of the Hours (the church's daily cycle of Scripture readings and prayers) together."

"They are much more likely to say fidelity to the church is important to them," she added. "And they really are looking for communities where members wear habits," the age-old garb of monks and nuns.

A similar desire for traditional religious practice has developed in recent years among many young Protestants, Jews and Muslims, according to a 2007 analysis by the U.S. News and World Report.

Continue reading more about the faith of the millennial generation in "For these millennials, faith triumphs relativism"