During every generation, there comes a point, where the previous generation becomes frustrated in their attempts to communicate with the current generation.
The era we are living in now is no different.
However, as far as the effect that this failure to communicate may have on the future of America as a strong and vibrant nation, it is definitely more frightening.
The Christian Post reports that
A San Diego State University study published earlier this month has found that millennials appear to be the least religious generation ever recorded. SDSU psychology professor Jean M. Twenge suggested that one main reason for millennials abandoning religion is rising individualism in American culture, which is less prone to showing commitment to institutions.
“These trends are part of a larger cultural context, a context that is often missing in polls about religion,” Twenge said in an article published by Eureka Alert.
“One context is rising individualism in U.S. culture. Individualism puts the self first, which doesn’t always fit well with the commitment to the institution and other people that religion often requires. As Americans become more individualistic, it makes sense that fewer would commit to religion.”
The detailed study, which published its findings in the journal PLOS One, looked at data from 11.2 million respondents from four nationally representative surveys of U.S. adolescents ages 13 to 18 taken between 1966 and 2014.
The study defined millennials as “American adolescents and emerging adults in the 2010s,” and said that they were “significantly less religious than previous generations (Boomers, Generation X) at the same age.”
The analysis, led by researchers Ramya Sastry from SDSU, along with Julie J. Exline and Joshua B. Grubbs from Case Western Reserve University and W. Keith Campbell from the University of Georgia, presented that twice as many 12th graders and college students today never attend religious services.
Additionally, twice as many 12th graders and entering college students in the 2010s give their religious affiliation as “none,” compared to those in the 1960s-’70s.
“Recent birth cohorts report less approval of religious organizations, are less likely to say that religion is important in their lives, report being less spiritual, and spend less time praying or meditating. Thus, declines in religious orientation reach beyond affiliation to religious participation and religiosity, suggesting a movement toward secularism among a growing minority,” the study said.
The findings noted that millennials are the least religious generation of the last six decades, and possibly in the nation’s history.
Earlier in May, a major Pew Study found that Christianity continues declining in the U.S. as a whole, while the religiously unaffiliated keep rising.
Pew said that Christians as a whole fell from 78.4 to 70 percent of the population between 2007 to 2014, while the religiously unaffiliated group rose to 22.8 percent share of the population. The “nones” now outnumber American Catholics, Pew said, who fell to 20.8 percent.
Some Evangelicals, such as Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, commented on the study by saying that the “increasing strangeness” of Christianity is “good news” for the church.
“Christianity isn’t normal anymore. It never should have been. The increasing strangeness of Christianity might be bad news for America, but it’s good news for the church. The major newspapers are telling us today that Christianity is dying, according to this new study, but what is clear from this study is exactly the opposite: while mainline traditions plummet, evangelical churches are remaining remarkably steady,” Moore said in a statement.
He is exactly right.
The church I attend, which happens to be Southern Baptist, is in the process of growing weekly, with Baptisms being witnessed every Sunday morning.
San Diego State psychology professor Jean M. Twenge’s theory is 180 degrees off.
It is not an act of ‘individualism” which is causing these young people to turn away from the “Faith of Our Fathers”.
It is selfishness and an innate conceit, imbued in them by those, whose familial nurturing and raising, with or without exposure to Christianity, could not compete with the Siren Song of American Popular Culture and secular socialization.
While the Scriptures of our Christian Faith tell us that “nothing is impossible with God” (Luke 1:37), America’s Popular Culture, reinforced by the current President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, and his fellow “Progressives”, tells those who have achieved, through the Grace of God,
You didn’t build that.
Popular Culture, under the guise of “making the individual feel better about themselves”, actually constrains individual achievement.
These “millennials”, by believing that they are “their own god”, are limiting themselves.
History has shown us, time and again, what happens to a society, when man starts worshiping himself.
As Proverbs 16:18 tells us
Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.
Right now, you’re probably saying to yourself,
Hold on, KJ, you just said that the individual CAN achieve.
Yes, I did.
Those who have gone before us, such as our Founding Fathers, our military leaders, our civic leaders, and our spiritual and familial leaders, all had one thing in common:
They all possessed a spirit of self-sacrifice.
Not sacrificing their will to achieve for the “good of the State”, but, rather, unselfishly sacrificing their time and talents for the betterment of those around them.
And, that is where the “Progressives” (i.e., Liberals), such as Professor Twenge, get it wrong.
It is not “the State”, nor the community-at-large, that drives, or allows, Individual Americans to succeed.
It is that “still, small voice” that resides within each one of us that has endowed us with our “certain inalienable rights” as Americans, of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”, that gives us the strength and discernment to succeed.
Without God, nothing is possible.
Until He Comes,
KJ
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