Survey: 72% of Millennials ‘more spiritual than religious’ – USATODAY.com.
Of course, this strikes me as very true, but what will this mean in the future? If faith dies and churches close, what will our world look like? Will it be less moral? Will it change how we see ourselves and our place in the universe? Should be be concerned or delighted?
First, for people like you and me, who were brought up in religious households and/or studied religion in college, this should be a startling spectre for Christians– does a significant waning of religious interest signal the coming End Times (Revelation and all that)? Or is this part of the cycle of history, and just mean that we are do for another Enlightenment in this or the next century?
• One of the things that I read in this article that should be a conern to religious people, and is truly demonstrative of the tightrope that churches are trying to walk, is in one of the last paragraphs. Colin Hansen talks about building “new, passionately Christian dynamic churches,” which to me says, “We’ll water down religion enough to make it appeal to the masses.” You might draw some bodies with that approach, but you risk losing your long-standing committed faithful. “Relativism” is always the enemy of organized religion.
• I think another thing to think about in this article is the age of the respondants as related to the evolution of our culture– people in their 20s today are more like the teenagers of a generation past, and so on up the line. Maybe they’re not very interested in religion now, but they’re also not very interested in jobs, long-term relationships, or starting families. It would be interesting to survey this same group in about 15 years and see where they’re at.
Kyle found this, providing a nice contrast. http://www.theonion.com/articles/priest-religious-but-not-really-spiritual,17373/