A Survey of Young Thinking About Christianity

In Unchristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity…and Why It Matters (Baker Books, 2007), David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons invite readers to see what Christianity looks like to people age sixteen to twenty-nine who are outside the church. The researchers have some hard truths to tell, and the story it isn’t very pretty.

Kinnaman is a young, evangelical researcher with the Barna Group. It was his book that caused me to investigate the Barna Group, to learn about its founder George Barna who has provided competent, honest and reliable research for a quarter of a century to Christian ministries, customarily in evangelilcal circles, that are willing to pay for the service. When I read that George Gallup once said that Barna had a “really good research mind,” I was convinced of the legitimacy of the Barna Group’s work, and confident about the trustworthiness of Kinnaman’s findings.

And what do young outsiders think of Chritianity? In a nut shell, says Kinnaman, they think that Christians today no longer represent what Jesus had in mind for the faithful. Those ages 16 to 29 think “Christianity has become marketed and streamlined into a juggernaut of fearmongering that has lost its own heart.” Beyond that, Kinnaman’s research has discovered that Christianity’s image problem is not just with those who stand on the outside. Younger people who think of themselves as being part of the church are also feeling the weight of negative perceptions.

Kinnaman says today’s 16 to 29 year olds live lifestyles that are more diverse than those of their parents’ generation, including education, career, family, values and leisure. They favor a unique and personal journey. Relationships are often the force that drives their lives, and friendship is one of the highest values. They have a strong need to belong to a loyal tribe of people who know and appreciate them. Although they tend to esteem fair-mindedness and diversity, they also tend to be irreverent and blunt. They consume more hours of media from more sources than do any of the generations that preceded them. And while spirituality may be important to them, many consider it just one element in a successful, eclectic life.

Kinnaman found that most young people who were involved in church as a teenagers disengage from church life, and often from Christianity itself, at some point during early adulthood. But unlike their forebears, the Baby Boomers, today’s young people are less likely to return to church later in life, even when they become parents. They exhibit a growing hostility and resentment towards Christianity. Whereas a decade ago surveys tended to show that Americans possessed a widespread respect for Christians, this isn’t any longer true; in fact, to Kinnaman’s chagrin, the “disdain for evangelicals among the younger set is overwhelming and definitive.”

The research does not indicate that hostility to the church is due so much to theological perspective per se as to attitude. “Christians may not normally operate in attack mode” Kinamman writes, “but it happens frequently enough that others have learned to watch their step around us.” He quotes another person in the younger set who says, “Most people I meet assume that Christian means very conservative, entrenched in their thinking, antigay, antichoice, angry, violent, illogical, empire builders; they want to convert everyone, and they generally cannot live peacefully with anyone who doesn’t believe what they believe.”

The younger set sees Christians as having an “us vs. them” mentality. Kinnaman reports that younger folks “feel minimized – or worse demonized – by those who love Jesus.” He continues, “In our national surveys we found the three most common perceptions of present-day Christianity are antihomosexual (91 percent), judgmental (87 percent), and hypocritical (85 percent),” followed by three-quarters’ percent of young outsiders who say the church is old-fashioned, out of touch with reality, insensitive to others, boring, not accepting of other faiths, and confusing.

In summarizing, Kinnaman writes that young men and women are mentally and emotionally disengaging from Christianity, skeptical about the faith. “The nation’s population is increasingly resistant to Christianity, especially to the theologically conservative expressions of that faith.” He asserts that young people, those who are professing Christians and those who are not, “do not want a cheap, ordinary, or insignificant life, but their vision of present-day Christianity is just that – superficial, antagonistic, depressing.”   Perception of one facet of the Christian community paints with a wide brush that coats all, of course.  Progressives in the Chrisian community have to deal with young people's perceptions too, regardless of their origin.

The generation of young people from 16 to 29 years old yearns for a faith expression in which honesty, integrity, enthusiasm, energy, joy, humility, service, community, loyalty, faith, hope and love are self-evident in the lives of people. They are looking for crugruence between what is spoken and what is lived. It is an enormous challenge presented to any congregation to cut through the curtain of skepticism that has been woven into the fabric of current American life.