Half of the more than 10,000 young people surveyed said they don't think religious institutions care as much as they do about issues and movements that matter deeply to them — like Black Lives Matter, gender equity, LGBTQ rights, immigrant rights, reproductive rights, environmental causes, income inequality and gun control — according to a recent study by Springtide Research Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization.

The survey also found that Gen Zers have felt exceptionally alone dealing with increased isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is still present more than a year after the first lockdowns.

Meanwhile, 23% said they attend weekly religious services — below the 31% average attendance for adults in 2019, according to Pew data.

Also, 78% of young people said they were "spiritual" without identifying with a particular religion.

"At the exact moment when young people were looking around trying to find guidance, they were trying all kinds of rituals and traditions — everything from tarot card readings, prayer, rosaries to crystals," Springtide's Executive Director Josh Packard told ReligionUnplugged.com.

Packard, who holds a doctorate in sociology from Vanderbilt University, believes houses of worship are more diverse than young people realize, but religious leaders often turn off young people with rhetoric that seems disrespectful or not inclusive of diverse social identities.

In the study, 54% of young people expressed frustration that religious communities want to solve their problems instead of "just being there" for them.

"I'm gay," said Ethan, a 21-year-old participant. "And I know that the conservative Christian community doesn't necessarily support people who are LGBTQ+.

And a lot of the beliefs were written by members of the religion who don't necessarily respect these people.

"And so it's made me question to what extent can I really trust that this is what I should believe, that it is ethical or proper. And for that reason, I've kind of lost faith because I just feel like there's not a lot of trust I can place in the religion when there's a lot of hypocrisy and contradictions."

Gen Z's saving grace may have been social media spirituality.

On social media platforms like TikTok, teen uploaders shared their collective fears and existentialist thoughts in unprecedented times. Some users even expressed how the pandemic was a time meant for spiritual awakening.

Some Gen Zers are even creating their own religions through unorthodox combinations of beliefs and practices, Springtide reported.

Teens on the web showed videos of themselves practicing Buddhist meditation with elements of Wiccan nature worship.

"Young people are turning to other people of faith to find out what is worthy and valid out of that tradition," Packard said.

When young people choose spirituality over organized services, they tend to incorporate their values into their practices, Springtide reported.

For example, nearly 4 out of 5 young people indicated concern for environmental issues, and half said that being in nature is very much a spiritual experience for them.

"I like to shut everything off for a moment," said Collette, a 23-year-old participant. "So I'll either meditate, I'll do yoga, I'll listen to music — like self-care, maybe take a bath or just go on a walk, anything to stop thinking about whatever stressed me out. I know that doesn't fix the problem, but it does help momentarily."

Young people who called themselves "very religious" said that they were flourishing significantly more than those who identified as "not religious at all."

On the other hand, Gen Z respondents who said religious leaders and trusted adults from a religious institution reached out to them reported feeling less anxiety.

But only 10% of young people said a religious leader personally reached out to them in the last year.

Twice as many young people said they turned to family and friends in hardships rather than religious leaders, and 16% said they turned to "no one" when they felt overwhelmed this year.

Half of the young people surveyed told Springtide they don't turn to faith communities due to a lack of trust in the people, beliefs and systems of organized religion.

Last year, Springtide's 2020 report found that simply attending religious programs did not increase young people's trust in religious institutions, but its data didn't reveal a loss of interest in the depth of religion or spirituality — only a loss of trust.

Packard said Springtide aims to heal generational gaps so that young people do not feel left alone in their spiritual journey. They say want mentors who practice listening, integrity and transparency instead of judgment.

• Anna Carlson is a student at The King's College in New York.
• First published by Religion Unplugged. Republished with permission.

Why move against civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, when she had gone along with so much of their program, even defending their campaign against the Rohingya Muslims?

And what explains such a defence on the part of Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner celebrated for standing up for democracy and universal human rights?

Our frame of reference is that military rule is autocratic and therefore bad and that those opposed to it are democratic and therefore good. That's hopelessly simplistic when it comes to the country formerly known as Burma.

What we fail to appreciate is the degree to which Burmese Buddhism has over many centuries nurtured a very different conception of good versus bad government. I've learned better from anthropologist Ingrid Jordt, an expert on religion and politics in Myanmar who teaches at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

In brilliant articles on the 2007 revolt against military rule and the anti-Rohingya campaign of the 2010s, Jordt explains the dynamic interplay of religion and political power in traditional Burmese statecraft and how this has functioned in recent times.

Briefly, Burmese Buddhism understands political legitimacy as derived from a species of spiritual potency called hpoun. The source of hpoun is the monastic order, or sangha, which acquires it by renouncing power and forswearing worldly things.

Political leaders, like everyone else outside the sangha, obtain hpoun through their support of the sangha, emblemized by placing of food in the monks' begging bowls. In this system of what Jordt calls "karmic kingship" (the title of her forthcoming book), hpoun is what differentiates a good (legitimate) ruler from a bad (illegitimate) one.

Although monks are required to be apolitical, they do have the right to act in order to protect the teachings of the Buddha. They do this by refusing to accept food donations from those they believe have violated those teachings. By "turning over the bowl," they withhold hpoun.

That is just what happened in 2007, during public protests over an unannounced removal of fuel subsidies by the military government.

After a brutal crackdown on several hundred monks who had joined the protests in the name of relieving human suffering (a core Buddhist teaching), tens of thousands of monks protested this assault on religion by marching through the streets holding their bowls upside down. In the end, junta leader Than Shwe earned the title "Monk Killer," lost his legitimacy and in 2011 resigned from the position of head of state he had held since 1992.

Not surprisingly, the military was anything but happy with this development. So they did what Burmese leaders in similar situations had always done: denounced those who denied them hpoun as false monks and found monks who would support them.

The campaign against the Rohingya was spearheaded by one of the latter, who sold the campaign to the Burmese public as all about preserving Buddhism against alien religious power and influence.

None of this is to say that Western ideas of democracy and human rights have been absent in Myanmar. In 2007, some younger Burmans, including monks, embraced them — but their standard-bearer, Aung San Suu Kyi, only up to a point.

The daughter of the martyred independence leader Aung San, Suu Kyi spent 15 years in house detention as head of the National League for Democracy (NLD), the political party whose landslide electoral victory in 1990 the generals refused to accept. Despite the name, the party has been less pro-democracy than anti-dictator — in traditional Burmese terms, as opposed to illegitimate kingship.

According to Jordt, the arrangement of a shared civilian-military rule that has just been overthrown was a diarchy, an awkwardly shared rule that pitted Senior General Min Aung Hlaing against civilian leader Suu Kyi. The coup, led by Min Aung Hlaing was grounded in his hope that, at age 75, her power was on the wane.

His own current effort has been to build up his hpoun by donating to monks and important pagodas and consulting with the monastic leadership. He is seeking to demonstrate that the entire country, supernatural as well as natural, is with him and that he is the legitimate ruler in the traditional way. It remains to be seen whether he can bring the sangha with him.

This time around, however, exposure to social media has made the Burmese people far more aware and supportive of democracy as such. Gen Z has been at the forefront of a civil disobedience movement far more inclusive than anything that occurred in the past.

The activists are doing investigative reporting, doxing those who support the military. Significantly, many of the protest messages on Twitter and in the streets are being written in English — to let the world know what has been going on in their previously shuttered society.

In the face of these massive protests, Min Aung Hlaing has been compelled to make his claim to power in terms of democracy. "Democratic practice allows people to have freedom of expression," he said on Feb. 9. "Democracy can be destroyed if there is no discipline."

So far, however, there's no sign that the protesters consider this anything more than lip service.

"What's really changing is the idea of the location of power," says Jordt. "The old system of personalized sovereignty is being challenged by the broader system, the rule of the many. There's been a remarkable change in the landscape.

"We're in a period in which there are two competing concepts of political authority. I don't think we're going to see an eclipse of traditional Buddhist ideas. But what the younger generation is trying to bring about is a future in which many identities — ethnic, religious, age- and gender-related — have a place in the Burmese state. Whether such a future will come about is an open question."

• Mark Silk is Professor of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and director of the college's Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life. He is a Contributing Editor of the Religion News Service.
• Reprinted with permission.