You Want Millennials to Return to Church? Invite Jesus Back in and Act Like Him
As a host of the Millennial Edition podcast (Twitter @MillennialEdit1), I received several questions for our #AskAMillennial segment regarding Millennials and religion.
Question: How do most Millennials feel about religion, and what does it mean to be religious?
From what I have experienced and have heard from the Millennial community, I feel most Millennials reject the traditional definition of religion that the prior generations accepted. You know, the strict legalistic system of faith and worship that you live by because your parents did, or your community does, so you go along with it to not get rejected from society and you fit in. Or because you are fearful of consequences like going to hell for all eternity or even in some religions, breaking religious norms could mean certain death.
The thing that is both admirable to some and irritable to others about the Millennial generation is that we question everything, and that includes religion. The religion of our parents and the prior generations call for people not to question God or whatever the Divine Being you serve, you are only to have faith. And Millennials are not falling for that! It is not good enough, because in order to follow a religion and understand a system of belief, we need some questions answered even if that answer is “I don’t know”- which is a perfectly acceptable answer. Yet, most religious leaders are afraid to say that in fear that someone might challenge them on it and disprove their religion altogether. So they do that thing where they attempt to fill in the gaps and speak for God and they just wing it, which leaves everyone further confused and farther from faith. Side note to religious leaders: you can stop telling us that our loved ones died because God needed a new flower or angel in heaven, so he inconveniently chose our loved one leaving him happy and us on earth devastated. It doesn’t make any sense, it is very sweet, but just not believable. God made the earth and angels in seven days. He spoke it into existence, so he is powerful enough to do that again without taking the lives of those we love here on earth. But I digress.
Which brings me to the topic of religious leaders. I think if we are being honest, this is one of the many reasons people in general, not just Millennials, have left the faith. Historically, if you look at religions like Christianity, there was no separation between church and state. Laws of Christianity were followed as every law in society, which meant typically that a group of rich powerful men set the laws and controlled the masses. These rich powerful men justified heinous acts in the name of the God or the religion they served. And they hurt a lot of people especially women, children, and the poor. I would argue that they more than likely did not believe in a Divine or a God, or religion for that matter. They just wanted control, and religion was a way of securing that since religious populations tend to have a blind trust in their religious leaders and are vulnerable to just following along with whatever they say. Even now in the modern Evangelical Movement, the voice of God is typically an older, white male spewing racist, homophobic, Islamophobic venom; all while enriching themselves to the highest portion of money they can collect from their fully devoted parishioners. I still laugh at Evangelical Pastor, Jesse Duplantis believing God and asking his parishioners to give him $54 million for a 4th private jet. $54 MILLION FOR A 4TH PRIVATE JET! How many of his parishioners are struggling with paying their medical bills or student loan bills? And you expect the Millennial generation to not only attend this church, but to help fork over money so a religious leader can acquire another private jet, while almost 30% of Millennials are said to be unemployed; and we are not to call out the religious leader who prays to God for more luxuries and not the eradication of poverty? What was that about the Sermon on the Mount? “Blessed are the poor . . . Blessed are those who are humble . . . Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice . . .” I never read in the Bible that God blesses those who acquire a fleet of private jets that the congregation will pay for, but I digress.
Have you ever noticed that the more extreme and judgmental the religious leader, chances are that leader has a dark, shady, hidden secret that usually comes to the surface that when revealed, either causes the tearing apart of the church or an unusual, unnatural devotion to the leader that even the most talented psychologist can’t even explain? But it most definitely has an impact on why Millennials are walking away from the church.
But I would argue they are not as much walking away from God. And yes, there is a portion of the Millennial generation that identify as Atheist and with good reason. I heard a statistic that about 24% of Millennials identify as Atheist, and that is said to be higher than the Boomer generation in which only 14% identify as Atheist. But when you think about it, that still means about 76% of Millennials still identify as some religion, or believes in a God, or believes that “something is out there.” So it appears that they are leaving the old religious norms and taking control of their own religion and spirituality. After all, how one serves and worships their Divine is supposed to be a personal experience and Millennials understand that and have tapped into that.
Which leads me to the question, what does it mean to be religious? If you ask a variety of Millennials, you will get a variety of different answers, like I said before we have tapped into religion as a personal experience. So I will say what it means to me. Obviously, I am a Millennial. I identify as a Nondenominational Christian. Just to give you some frame of reference, my religious practices are not similar to the modern, white Evangelical Movement. My religion stems from being someone who is fascinated with who Jesus was as a man here on earth, and who Jesus is as a Christ or God-like being. Love is the center of what governs over me since I believe God is love. I do not really focus on a set of rules or “do’s and don’ts” because truthfully, I probably won’t follow them anyways.
I grew up in church my whole life and on the one hand, I think that might have helped introduce me to this brand of faith that I now identify with as my own and I am grateful for that. On the other hand, because of all the hypocrisies I spoke of and the constant barrage of messaging (the exclusionary behavior, the politics, the homophobia, the fear of other religions, and the message that everything is a sin if it is not in the Bible, and if you do not follow it as law, you are going to hell) I am shocked that I am a Christian to this day. Because even as a young child, I questioned that if God is a God of love and compassion, then how could he hate the Arab nation or the LGBTQ+ community? Didn’t the same God that made me, make them as well? Of course, when I tried to ask more questions I was immediately rebuked, told that God was angry, and sent away to pray for more faith. So it left me with the impression that God was an unjust, hypocritical male that wanted everyone to follow his laws while people were being murdered and starved to death, whom I was not allowed to question, and just had to have more faith. Oh, and of course I had to believe that the pastor was God’s anointed voice on earth so that anything he or she said was God’s truth. So I had to accept the pastor’s wife telling a story about a child who was being abused by a parent and was saved by the generous adoption of a same-sex couple. The pastor’s wife said it was sad to be abused, but it was not “God’s Will” for the child to live with the same-sex couple. So essentially, God would rather a kid be abused in a household with heterosexual parents, than live in safety and love in a same-sex household? And no one questioned it.
As a heterosexual child who always read the Bible and went to church every Sunday, with years of misguided messaging, I was appalled and basically stopped liking God because he sounded too much like the adults in my life and they seemed to be awful, irrational people. I soon realized that I was only going through the motions because I was deathly afraid of God causing bad things to happen in my life as punishment and banning me for all of eternity to hell.
The change in the way I viewed religion as I came of age, began when I moved away from my home churches (and yes I had several) and started exploring “the meaning of life” and this whole idea of religion and Christianity. I sought for myself what attracted me to my own faith. I started to reject and critique religious leaders and some parts of the Bible. I could openly admit what I didn’t understand about certain religious principles and what I did not like, a phenomenon I would have never thought of doing when I was younger for fear of an eternal life in flames. I also experienced different religions and was able to participate in their ceremonies to learn what made them devoted to it. I do not fear other religions and I do not believe God does either. And I could see that in the various religions I was fortunate enough to experience, there was something that connected us all.
I discovered that what I liked about Christianity was what Jesus stood for. After reading about him more on my own, and even if you do not believe in religion or that there is even a God, the story of Jesus is kind of interesting. Jesus was a radical for his time. He attacked the hypocrisy of the religious leaders. He was born in a radical way. I love the story of the Nativity- it is very sweet! For those who do not know the story, basically, this young girl named Mary, who lived in Nazareth under the oppression of Rome, is chosen by an angel sent by God that she will bear a Christ-child who will ultimately die to save her people from oppression and from hell. That’s it in a nutshell, and you have to admit it’s kind of sweet!
But what I like most about the story of the Nativity is that the angel did not choose a powerful family or local celebrity in town. The angel chose a no-name girl, who was nothing special in society and was living poor and oppressed. And this was a common theme with Jesus. He hung out with those to whom society feared and discarded. He was the first and ultimate human rights activist. He saved a woman from being stoned-to-death for simply having sex with a man she was not married to. He fed thousands of poor people, he performed miracles, and he healed them when they were sick. He loved little children. He believed that you should be kind to and forgive even your enemies, you know, that whole “turn-the-other-cheek” thing instead of the “eye-for-an-eye” revenge message that they were all used to. He said people who were last in society would be first. He told really great stories like The Good Samaritan, not only to encourage society to help each other, but to let them know that they should love and accept other cultures and those who do not believe like they believe. And in the end, he was willing to die for what he believed in, even for those who did not believe in him. Even for those who would be his executioners. Jesus was a badass and the reason I am a Christian to this day.
I strive to be more like him, that is how much I love and admire him. And I do not feel like I am forced to believe in him, and I do not fear hell. I can stream into a live church service practically anywhere in the world and I do not feel guilty or that I am less of a Christian for not driving to church. God is everywhere, even on my app and that means I can tune into him and my religion at any time, not just on Sundays. I still attend church as well with my family and friends, including those who identify as LGBTQ+. And I listen with an open mind, not just blind obedience. And I still question everything. I just think that the message that Jesus left us all is the type of society that I want to see. One where love is at the center of everything we do, despite our differences and shortcomings. I just wish the older generations would get back to this understanding of religion. Everything I mentioned, most people would not associate with modern Christians and Evangelicals today. They do not appear to be full of the love and acceptance like Jesus was.
So if you want to see Millennials return to church, then perhaps the older generations and religious leaders should act more like Jesus.
