Young folk and the church
I don't know whether we have had a thread about this before.
I think people on the Ship have commented before about the shortage of young people in congregations. In the church I attend, there are many older people and relatively few families with small children, and very few college students or young adults. Is this the common experience? Does it depend on the specific flavor involved (COE, Lutheran, Baptist, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, etc)? Is there any accepted (and correct) explanation?
I think people on the Ship have commented before about the shortage of young people in congregations. In the church I attend, there are many older people and relatively few families with small children, and very few college students or young adults. Is this the common experience? Does it depend on the specific flavor involved (COE, Lutheran, Baptist, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, etc)? Is there any accepted (and correct) explanation?
Comments
There are usually a few millenials or Gen Zers attending at each service, sometimes with kids, but they tend not to come back on a regular basis.
UUs suffering such dismal numbers calls into question the notion that declining youth-participation is because young people are turned off by the theological and social conservatism of religion. I think it has more to do with religious institutions being less involved with providing for peoples' social and material needs than they had been up until about the mid-20th Century.
One possible explanation from blogger Fred Clark:
Italics from the original, bolding by me.
This seems like an underdiscussed aspect of declining church attendance among the young, who typically have less tolerance of abuse by the powerful, even if it happened to other people.
Are there any sizeable denominations that don't have a record of clergy abuse and cover-up at this point? Even if there were, would it be unreasonable for the more cynically minded to simply assume that particular denomination was just better at the "cover-up" part of this behavior?
And I think the rise of secularism and decline in religiousity got going in the west decades before clerical sex-abuse became a widely-discussed issue in the mid-to-late 1980s. (Mount Cashel in Newfoundland is sorta my dividing line, for Canada anyway.)
If anything, the trends are reversed: increasing secularism made people and institutions less ready to perceive religious leaders and institutions as beyond reproach or deserving benefit-of-doubt.
Our lack of twenty-somethings in the church is, therefore, not surprising. However, the thirty-somethings with young families don't come to church either, although we do have a healthy monthly Messy Church.
When we moved here we moved from a city church with a very small Sunday School (approx ten children, but it was unusual for all ten to be there on any given week) to this village church which had a healthy Sunday School. Then school football practice was moved to a Sunday morning, and then other competing activities started up on Sunday mornings and the Sunday School just faded away. We've watched it happen over the last 15 or so years, and we've made strenuous attempts to reverse it, but nothing has worked. (Messy Church works, but it is just once a month, and doesn't bring the young families in
I think the data suggest male clergy are about half as likely as the mainstream male population to be abusive - but I think this is lost in the public narrative.
What is "Messy Church"?
I haven't seen major scandals around safeguarding in the Church of Scotland, but that may be a matter of scale compared with the CofE. I think also the CofE has a wing prone to clericalism and a wing prone to falling for charismatic (in both senses of the word) individuals, and a very "establishment" culture that has traditionally liked to see things dealt with quietly. The three together make for a particularly toxic brew. Of course the RCC has two of those three in spades. It's possible that Presbyterian polity mitigated somewhat the worst excesses of clericalism in the Kirk, but I don't know how bad it has been by comparison in Presbyterian churches elsewhere (I'm wondering particularly about Australia and Canada).
Schools and other institutional settings seem to have been a particularly ripe environment for abuse, and I wonder whether the Kirk was simply fortunate to have had pretty much all its schools adopted by the state long before scandals started to surface, and didn't have the same tradition of boarding schools that CofE and RCC had anyway.
I mention all this because the Kirk is collapsing faster than any other major denomination except maybe Methodism in Scotland, while the RCC if not thriving is at least not disintegrating at speed.
We did regular zoom church throughout lockdown, but there wasn't a way to engage the younger kids, who were getting far to much zoom for school anyway. So several of the families got out of the habit of church attendance, and decided that they were getting on OK without it.
And what proportion of the "mainstream male" abuser population has access to large scale institutional power willing to cover for them, even to the extent of shuffling them out of the jurisdiction if it ever looks like they're about to be exposed? From my perspective the bigger part of the scandal isn't that there are abusers in the Church/Synagogue/Mosque/etc., but that the usual reaction of the Church (Synagogue, Mosque, etc.) when it discovers abusers in its ranks is to cover the whole thing up and silence the victims.
(Though it remains the case that you have always been most likely to be abused by a member of your own family.)
The distinctive nature of abuse in religious settings is that while abusing and covering up, the self same organisation was laying down the law on sexual behaviour to its laity.
It's the hypocrisy that marks religions out. And young folk have zero tolerance of it.
In church-land, we keep thinking that there is something wrong with us - that if we only used the "right" music or liturgy or welcoming technique or whatever, somehow young people would turn up. I think that we are chasing a chimera. I hesitate to say that the whole world has changed, because I can't generalize like that, but I think that there are significant shifts happening in significant parts of the world where many shippies live.
We need to stop looking for what we are doing wrong, and start looking at who and how God is calling us to be in societies as they are. Is it time to stop lamenting the people who aren't coming to church (they aren't joining anything else, either) and instead start exploring what the Good News is for the places in which we are incarnated?
Though somebody's bound to point out that's not the focus of the thread (sorry!) so...
My Vietnamese congregation is naturally lacking in very young people because of its focus--which is on serving people who cannot get anything out of an English language service. Those who can, go to English language churches; those who can't, well, we exist for them. And so naturally our average age increases every year. We've made our peace with that.
Our host congregation is English-speaking, and they do have some younger families and children. I'm sure they are wishful to see more, but they aren't badly off.
I know that it doesn't help having so many competing activities on Sunday morning which cannot be rescheduled--organized sports is the big one, and our son had to choose between church and participation at all (because they won't let you opt out of Sunday games or practice, and missing more than a very low number of those will get you dumped). School events may take place Sunday morning (usually as a combination Saturday/Sunday event), and while you CAN opt out (because of religious protection laws), nobody's going to go out of their way to reschedule or change things for your convenience. Scouts includes a lot of whole weekend stuff. Tests too may be scheduled with no regard for religious days of any sort. Truly, I should probably be encouraged to see as many children in church as we have!
@stetson: Messy Church and its Canadian child
@Lamb Chopped, I thought I was responding to this part of the OP:
Thanks. So if I'm understanding this, it's sort of like a house church, but anywhere can be the house?
Hmmm, I should probably defer to people who have more firsthand experience than I. However, my impression of a house church is that it is a small group of people who meet in homes for prayer, Bible study or reflection (usually using words), and perhaps a meal.
Messy church is, I believe, more intentionally intergenerational and multi-sensory. It usually happens in a space that is large enough for there to be multiple stations at which people can explore a biblical passage or theme. Thus, there might be a story or book centre, a finger painting or other craft centre, a dress-up corner where people can act out the story, snacks that reflect the theme in some way. There is a celebration/worship time which will include prayer and music. There is usually a meal.
For me, it would be more similar to a two hour intentionally intergenerational Sunday School with activity centres instead of a house church. I find this page, describing what Messy Church is and isn't, quite helpful.
I'm more than happy to be corrected or to hear what others have experienced!
Thanks alot. This is very interesting. I might get back to you.
@Lamb Chopped again... While cooking and doing dishes this evening, I was reflecting more on this conversation. Suddenly the penny dropped and I understood your comment about the focus of the thread.
How we incarnate the Good News in our societies as they are, without worrying about getting people into church is not what @HarryCH wanted to discuss. Sometimes I'm just a little slow on the uptake
So don't beat yourself up unduly.
On the young people thing ...
I've noticed a small but interesting influx of younger people into my own Orthodox parish and another I know quite well in recent months.
Some are Bulgarian or Romanian migrants with a kind of nascent faith that has been rekindled through their diaspora experience.
Others are indigenous British converts or seekers. I'm not sure what attracted their attention or interest but they seem to have read about Orthodoxy online or in the course of some theological reflection and then gone looking for it on the ground. This seems to happen from time to time.
I'm not sure it's common. After all, I'm not sure many people wake up in the morning and think, 'Hmmm ... Methodism / Episcopalianism / Presbyterianism ... I wonder what that's all about? I think I'll take a look ...'
At any rate, the younger people I'm thinking about tend to get together to visit pilgrim sites or places associated with Anglo-Saxon Saints, which strikes me as a wholesome activity.
I don't think there's any formula and generally agree that attempts to tailor niche liturgies or formats for younger people - or any other demographic - are chimeric unless they develop organically in some way.
I've been quite critical of Messy Church in the past but can see that it isn't supposed to be an entry-level way-in to the standard fare on offer but is meant to be 'church' in its own right. How successful or otherwise it is in those terms depends on what we mean by 'church' and what our expectations are, I suppose.
However we cut it, church activity of any kind seems to be becoming something for the keenies.
A few weeks ago I was invited to a Traditional Latin Mass (celebrating Christ the King on the last Sunday of October as was the case before 1970 ) Although the church was not large it was fairly well filled and I was struck by the good number of young people and young families who were there. they formed a greater part of the congregation than you would find in a mainstream Catholic church and very few would be able to remember the Latin Mass when it was standard in any roman Catholic church.
However I am not trying to suggest that the problems of the RC church would be solved if it reinstated the TLM. There are, as GG has just suggested , a number of young people who will like to try something 'new and different'
I notice similarly a higher proportion of young people in modern evangelical churches as well as the Wee Free church.
My experience - I'm 43 now but obviously I've spent much of the last 2 decades being younger - is that it's a hollowing out of the centre, with transference to the two wings of the CofE, and new younger people coming in to one or the other from outside - but rarely going straight into middle of the road.
Essentially, everyone I know who is under 40 and a churchgoer is basically either ConEvo or nosebleed high anglo-catholic - including those who didn't go to church at all before leaving the parental home. In English/UK party terms they're all worshipping in either Reform or Forward in Faith parishes. One of the interesting things, possibly for another thread, is what's going to happen in future years as this works through. I can already see (I'm a Puseyite anglo-catholic myself) the effects beginning of a lot of wealthy London conevos reaching the point in life where they run for the countryside to start a family and start Reforming their village churches because they have relative youth and energy on their side... I'd say we're standing on the cusp of the rural church hurtling down the candle in many places.
The RCs I know are very keen on the Extraordinary Form and mantillas...
The only ones who attend church regularly and don't go to either the highest high or lowest low are people like me who have moved away from nodal centres of the different party wings, and now attend their local parish church with their young children.
I know anecdote is not data, and I also know that to an extent I'm only commenting on my bubble (though it's a broad bubble that includes ConEvos and the Anglo Papalist). However, my own experience is that people in their 20s (and those in their 20s when I was), largely don't go to church, or want to go to church. Those that do, tend to want certainties and rules, which push them to one wing or the other, rather than 'wishy washy' middle of the road stuff.
Consequently they flock together and success begets success. If you go to Oxford on a Sunday morning, or bits of London, you can find churches filled to bursting with young people, but they will be the churches that are definitely on the wrong side of the dead horses for the zeitgeist (at either end of the candle). Unfortunately this then becomes self reinforcing, and doesn't necessarily make the church as a whole look any more appealing to the great majority who don't go to church, because it pushes all the wrong buttons on sexuality, clericalism, gender, etc even though most of the church is probably closer to where the majority of the population is.
All the above is obviously my own experience and take on things, I make no claim that it's authoritative.
No, but I find it interesting that there are a few people like that.
No, I think you're right. Most of the population is cool with LGBT+ (and yes, including T when we're talking about the younger demographic), can't imagine why anyone would think gender or sex would matter for ordination, and so on. But I think they are also agnostic, albeit mostly uninterested rather than specifically atheist. So we end up with the ironic situation that it's the churches most unlike the majority of young people who are picking up new members from those young people who are not like that majority.
If I wanted to be cynical (moi?) then one might say that if one is sexist, homophobic and/or transphobic it's probably easier to cope with that being such a minority position within ones demographic by believing one has been enlightened by God as opposed to the godless majority, or something like that.
So much for that Revival With Millions Turning To Christ In A Flood that was promised Sunday by Sunday throughout the late 80s in the CharEvo churches I knew.
Hmm - in any one area I think one could count them on the fingers of one hand after an unfortunate circular saw accident though,
Which sums it all up with admirable brevity. Yes that.
You can well see how that fits in with a theology of being a small group swimming against the sinful tide of immorality and godlessness, can't you?
I'd agree. When my mother was my age there were all sorts of groups - Floral Art Club, Electrical Association for Women, the Soroptomists, W.R.I, Women's Guild etc etc. Then, I think, these sort of weekly evening clubs were largely displaced by exercise classes, which didn't have the same structured form. No chair, no secretary.
Our Church Young Wives had a rule that you moved on to The Guild when your youngest child went to school. Then it was when your youngest child went to secondary school. Then there was no Guild to move onto, and so it was renamed the Women's Group. And then the Men's Group folded and it became the Women's Group (men welcome). And then it stopped for Covid and didn't restart.
Sounds like all the traddie Triddies that I know….
Yes, for some people - though I'd caution that IME it's not all of them. You also get, particularly in the urban areas, sort of competitive positioning between ConEvo and Trad AC where what's most important is that they're not doing whatever the other is - the 4-5 middle of the road churches between them may as well not be there.... So (and here I'm exaggerating for effect), you have a very binary choice between smoothies, lava lamps, sofas and a praise band vs three piece suits, exposition and benediction, sherry and Latin.
"Would you like to be shot or hanged?"
Because of its rarity people tend to travel for TLM, so comparisons with normal Sunday attendance at St Agnes by the Gasworks are likely to be misleading. For what its worth, we have a TLM centre in our parish in a large redundant church that was given to a Traddie order. People travel for miles on a Sunday, but our family Mass populated by locals still gets more people.
When considering young folks going to church it is worth asking to what extent this is a voluntary attendance or are they being hauled along by their parents.
Wow, now that was making a whopping assumption!
Tangent ends.
Absolutely what I'd have guessed, though said other denominations are outside my experience so I didn't want to speak for (or particularly about) them!
But don’t make assumptions about what people at such a church believe. I became a Christian in a con-evo church (St Helens) and now attend a chari-evo church yet I am liberal on all the dead horses issues and I openly say so within the church. I’ve been at the church nearly 20 years and haven’t been thrown out yet.
That is our experience as well. Add in migrants from Georgia, Russia and Ukraine to the mix.
Our adult catechesis group, which meets after the Sunday service, has a regular attendance of 6-10, a relatively high proportion of our congregation of around 50 each week.
This growth has been in progress for several years, initially slowly, but now seems to be accelerating.
Fixed code - la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
Many also have expressed concerns about the disparity between what their churches are teaching and what they are experiencing. Example: gender identity questions. Conservative churches want to paint everything black and white. Young people live in the gray. Old answers to ongoing questions no longer apply.
New Technologies have taken over some of the functions of a congregation. Once young people found their partners from within the community of faith. Now, there are dating apps.
One research group that studies these trends is the Barna Group. I like them because they point out possiblities of how to reach out to the several generations,
And there is less trust in institutions, leaders, and other people in general among younger people.
I imagine that you've not been asked to share these opinions from the front though?