Posted on 07/26/2013 5:40:33 AM PDT by NYer
A friend of mine attended a Christian college where almost all of the students, including her, grew up in non-denominational, evangelical Protestant churches. A few years after graduation, she is the only person in her graduating class who is not Roman Catholic, high Anglican or Lutheran. The town I live in has several “evangelical” Protestant colleges: on Ash Wednesday you can tell who studies at them by the ash crosses on their foreheads.
Young Christians are going over to Catholicism and high Anglicanism/Lutheranism in droves, despite growing up in low Protestant churches that told them about Jesus. It’s a trend that is growing, and it looks like it might go that way for a while: people who grew up in stereotypical, casual evangelicalism are running back past their parents’ church to something that looks like it was dug out of Europe a couple hundred years ago at least. It’s encouraged by certain emergent leaders and by other “Christian” authors whose writings promote “high” theology under a Protestant publisher’s cover.
Ten or fifteen years ago, it was American evangelical congregations that seemed cutting edge. They had the bands, the coolest youth pastor, professional babysitting for every women’s Bible study, and a church library full of Christian novels. But now, to kids who grew up in that context, it seems a bit dated or disconnected—the same kind of feeling that a 90′s movie gives them. Not that it’s not a church; it’s just feels to them the way that 50′s worship felt to their parents. So they leave. If they don’t walk away from Christianity completely, they head to Rome or something similar.
In a way, it’s hard to understand. Why would you trade your jeans, fair-trade coffee, a Bible and some Getty songs for formal “church clothes”, fasting, a Bible and a priest? It makes no sense to want to kneel on a stone floor instead of sit in a comfy chair. And if you’re hearing about Jesus anyway, why does it really matter?
In another way, it’s very obvious why these kids are leaving and going where they are. In her recent article, “Change Wisely, Dude”, Andrea Palpant Dilley explains her own shift from Presbyterianism to apostacy to generic evangelicalism to high church: “In my 20s, liturgy seemed rote, but now in my 30s, it reminds me that I’m part of an institution much larger and older than myself. As the poet Czeslaw Milosz said, ‘The sacred exists and is stronger than all our rebellions.’ Both my doubt and my faith, and even my ongoing frustrations with the church itself, are part of a tradition that started before I was born and will continue after I die. I rest in the assurance that I have something to lean against, something to resist and, more importantly, something that resists me.”
The kids who leave evangelical Protestantism are looking for something the world can’t give them. The world can give them hotter jeans, better coffee, bands, speakers, and book clubs than a congregation can. What it can’t give them is theology; membership in a group that transcends time, place and race; a historic rootedness; something greater than themselves; ordained men who will be spiritual leaders and not merely listeners and buddies and story-tellers. What the kids leaving generic evangelicalism seem to want is something the world can never give them–a holy Father who demands reverence, a Saviour who requires careful worship, and a Spirit who must be obeyed. They are looking for true, deep, intellectually robust spirituality in their parents’ churches and not finding it.
But not all kids who grew up in American evangelicalism are jumping off into high church rite and sacrament: congregations that carefully teach robust, historic Protestant theology to their children are notably not losing them to the Vatican, or even Lambeth. Protestant churches that recognize their own ecclesiastical and theological heritage, training their children to value and continue it in a 21st century setting, usually retain their youth. These kids have the tools they need to think biblically through the deep and difficult issues of the day and articulate their position without having a crisis of faith. They know the headlines, church history, theology and their Bibles, and so are equipped to engage culture in a winsome, accessible way. They have a relationship with God that is not based on their feelings or commitments but on the enduring promises of the Word and so they can ride out the trends of the American church, knowing that they will pass regardless of mass defections to Rome. That’s not to say that the Book of Common Prayer is unbiblical in its entirety–far from it! It is to say that children raised in spiritually substantive and faithful homes usually find things like holy water, pilgrimages, popes and ash on their faces an affront to the means for spiritual growth that God has appointed in His Word.
“He cannot have God as his Father who does not have the church for his Mother,” said Cyprian, nearly two millennia ago. Perhaps if Protestant churches began acting more like dutiful mothers instead of fun babysitters, there would be fewer youth leaving their ecclesiastical homes as soon as they are out of the house.
Add another ex-evangelical who swum the Tiber to your list!
This article doesn’t apply to me (my family wasn’t churchgoing), but it reflects my opinion of the Catholic church and what it provides that the others do not.
Thanks
You hit the nail on the head. This isn’t the 1600s where it’s Catholics vs. Protestants. It’s now religous vs. atheism. And our side is losing. Everyone needs to set aside the petty bickering about doctrine and start figuring out how to reverse our losses. They are getting bigger.
For the Lutheran ping list.
I shared this article several days ago on Facebook. Quite interesting.
You want more young people to come to your parish?
Give a copy of this book to your pastor and parish council: http://www.amazon.com/Rebuilt-Awakening-Faithful-Reaching-Making/dp/1594713863/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374847856&sr=8-1&keywords=rebuilt
I’m not saying I agree with everything in the book, but it is a great conversation starter to say the least.
Knowing Jesus is only the start of the journey.
The more committed the young Evangelical is to walking with the Lord, the more likely they will (eventually) hunger for the Eucharist
Just my $0.02.
“Everyone needs to set aside the petty bickering about doctrine and start figuring out how to reverse our losses. They are getting bigger.”
“The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
I’ve argued with Calvinists often enough that this might sound odd, but it is NOT up to us to convert people. Our job is to faithfully proclaim the Gospel: “repent and believe”. But we cannot make men repent. Not by offering them coffeehouses instead of churches. Not by hiring the reincarnation of Michael Jackson to be the ‘worship leader’.
We can repent and pray, but I’m not sure what to pray for any more - revival, or judgment. Increasingly, I’m inclined to think the latter...
I think you’re hitting it on the head. They leave their church roots because they are not believers - just sprinkled and stamped (this goes for Protestants, too). They wander knowing they are lacking something. They return to something ‘spiritual’ but different from what they grew up in. In effect, one lifeboat picks up survivors from another lifeboat and so on. Protestantism is rife with church-hopping people leaving one church or denomination to find another that tickles their ears or gives them happy vibes.
Personally, I believe when we finally apprehend to robe of Christ and hear his voice, we follow him and religion falls by the way. In effect, we seek to share they overflow of life within rather than be filled by our churches. Religion versus relationship.
It’s only my opinion but I think it wise to never confuse a belief in God with religion. Your dichotomy might be better phrased as belief in God vs. atheism. Religion is a filter or a lens (depending on your view) to God. One need not use either a filter or a lens if one wants a direct experience. Just as many Protestants see no need for a priest to stand between them and God, some see no need for a religion either.
Now that we've torn His Body apart, maybe we should be figuring out how to each bend toward unity, to put His Body back together again.
He wants His Body made whole again, united, not this division we have made and foment, that Satan uses to his advantage against us, to cause Jesus pain.
When I'm not sure what to pray for, I usually turn here:
"Our Father who art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name; Thy kingdom come Thy will be done On earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; And forgive us our trespasses As we forgive those who trespass against us; And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil. "
Oddly enough, something in there usually jumps out at me as appropriate to the situation.
I think what you're saying is true, but I also think that we have an obligation, through spreading the Word, to make a concerted effort to bring in the sheaves, so to speak. I think in general, we are failing in this. For instance, when high-profile protestant church leaders are becoming entangled in extra-martial affairs and the Catholic church is caught in its own sex scandals, it hurts Christians as a whole because it damages our ability to speak to moral issues with authority.
So instead of sitting around arguing the merits of transubstantiation, the question should be: holy cow! More and more people are turning away from Christ and rejecting the church. Why? And what can we do to fix this?
I was thinking more along the lines of this prayer:
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.
Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!
O men of blood, depart from me!
They speak against you with malicious intent;
your enemies take your name in vain.
Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with complete hatred;
I count them my enemies.
Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!
And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting!
“For instance, when high-profile protestant church leaders are becoming entangled in extra-martial affairs and the Catholic church is caught in its own sex scandals, it hurts Christians as a whole because it damages our ability to speak to moral issues with authority.”
I agree, and I agree that we need to engage the lost with more fervor than we engage each other over something like transubstantiation. But in the end, we need to accept that it may not be our failures as Christians that are a stumbling block to this generation, but Jesus Christ Himself.
“For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
Do what I do - pray for a revival, and pray for mercy.
An interesting column. and hopeful
Lutheran Ping!
Be rooted in Christ!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.