By guest author and board member, Austin Rogers.
A recent study from Pew Research warns of a startling trend concerning religion in American. Our nation appears to be rapidly moving away from church as a meaningful, communal part of life, replacing it with social media, various forms of entertainment, and political tribalism. Since the early 1990s, the portion of Americans self-identifying as Christian has declined from over 90% to 63%. These “deconverts” almost all became “nones,” or religiously unaffiliated. That does not necessarily mean they became atheists. They simply became disinterested in faith, failing to see any benefit of it to their lives. The church’s allure is fading, and a shrinking share of Americans want to be part of it, even in name only.
What will the future look like if present trends continue? Pew modeled a rather dire set of possible scenarios based on a few sets of assumptions. In all of them, they see Christian self-identification continuing to decline, and in the most likely scenarios, the percentage of Americans who self-identify as Christian is expected to fall below 50% sometime in the next few decades.
Most of the decline is due to the successive drop off in religious affiliation in each younger generation. Here is the share of four broad age groups who attend religious services at least weekly:
· 43% of Americans 60 or older
· 27% of Americans aged 45-49
· 25% of Americans aged 30-44
· 21% of Americans aged 18-29
Though there has been slippage across most demographic groups in Christian self-identification, it is mainly the drop off among younger Americans causing the overall decline in religious affiliation.
These are concerning trends, and they can easily lead Christians to despair. The United States is steadily becoming a “post-Christian nation” reminiscent of Europe.
In the face of this religious decline, especially among the young, what are Christians to do? Perhaps we should begin by asking, What could make the gospel and the church compelling to younger generations? Fortunately, that answer is readily available.
For younger generations in America, two key virtues are authenticity and selflessness.
Gen Z, those born between 1997-2012, are the first generation raised entirely in the digital age. They’ve been on social media since their parents first posted pictures of them in diapers. Online life has developed within them a keen and innate ability to distinguish between what’s real and what’s fake. They have scrolled past enough filtered and edited selfies, and posted enough of them themselves, to have learned that so much of what people present, both online and offline, is fake – an inauthentic performance meant to capture attention rather than portray reality.
In a world awash with performative behaviors and attention-seeking, one way Christians can be compelling in post-Christian America is simply to be authentic.
Likewise, in the digital age, what often passes as “selflessness” is no more than virtue signaling paradoxically meant to draw attention and praise to oneself from a sympathetic group. Rather than worry ourselves with the hard business of actually doing good in the world, we often find it easier and more satisfying to publicly highlight our good intentions or complain about others’ faults, not unlike the Pharisee praying aloud in the temple from the gospel story.
For everyone in the digital age, and especially for the younger generations who have lived their entire lives in it, it is starkly counter-cultural to be truly selfless – to love one’s neighbor like the Good Samaritan even when no one else sees it – amid a sea of virtue signaling.
Rather than despair the changing culture and declining Christian self-identification of Americans, let us believers be a minority of people known for our counter-cultural authenticity and selfless love of others. This is how we can be “salt” and “light” in post-Christian America, to borrow Jesus’s metaphors from the Sermon on the Mount.
At OnRamp, it is our earnest desire to illustrate the authentic beauty and selfless love of God to our increasingly post-Christian culture. Whether it draws more to the faith, as we hope, is not up to us. But whether we are faithful to that calling is.