Generation X and the Return to Christian Orthodoxy [A Surprise Trend]

Zenit/EWTN ^ | April 29, 2003 | Colleen Carroll

[Salvation]

A ZENIT DAILY DISPATCH

GENERATION X AND THE TURN TO CHRISTIAN ORTHODOXY

Journalist Colleen Carroll on a Surprising Trend

WASHINGTON, D.C., APRIL 29, 2003 (ZENIT)

The growth of evangelical "mega-churches" has long been a focus of media attention.

Much less noted has been the embrace of traditional Christianity by Generation X and the rejection of the religious and cultural values of that generation's parents, the baby boomers.

A Gen-X journalist, Colleen Carroll, set about to document this trend. The result was a highly acclaimed book, "The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy" (Loyola Press).

Carroll described the phenomenon of "the new faithful" in an interview with ZENIT.

Q: How did you ever launch upon this project of finding out about "the new faithful"?

Carroll: I first saw signs of the trend toward orthodoxy in the mid-1990s, when I was a student at Marquette University. The students there were not necessarily of the "new faithful" mold, but they also defied the "cynical slacker" stereotype of Generation X. Many had an almost visceral attraction to God, the Church, and self-sacrifice.

Later, as a young newspaper journalist, I continued to see a disparity between media portrayals of my generation and the young adults that I saw all around me. Not all young adults are attracted to orthodoxy, but a growing number are seeking truth and embracing a demanding practice of their faith.

Their stories were not being told in the mainstream media, and many religion experts seemed to be tone deaf to their voices. So, with the help of a grant from the Phillips Foundation and a book contract from Loyola Press, I set out to explore this trend and tell their stories.

Q: Is this "new faithful" phenomenon a part of the new springtime in the Church?

Carroll: Yes, I believe the new faithful are at the heart of the Church's new springtime and are a driving force behind the new evangelization. I interviewed a mix of young Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox Christians for "The New Faithful."

The Catholics I interviewed certainly stand at the forefront of renewal in the Catholic Church. They are committed to spreading the Gospel—a commitment instilled in many of them by their hero, Pope John Paul II.

Q: Who are the new faithful? Did they have any previous religious background?

Carroll: As I mentioned earlier, the New faithful come from denominations across the Christian spectrum, though most are Catholics or evangelicals. They range in age from about 18 to 35. They are united by firm, personal, life-changing commitments to Jesus Christ.

Their religious backgrounds vary. Many grew up in secular homes or fallen-away Catholic homes. Many others were raised in evangelical or mainline Protestant churches or Catholic parishes. Nearly all of them faced a reckoning in young adulthood that forced them to decide if they would make following Christ the central concern of their lives or not.

These young adults have chosen to take Christianity seriously, and have decided that embracing Christian orthodoxy is the way to do that. Their faith commitments have led them to make countercultural decisions about everything from who and how they date to which careers they pursue and which political causes they embrace.

Q: Your title suggests that the new faithful are embracing Christian orthodoxy. Does that mean Catholicism?

Carroll: The orthodoxy embraced by "The New Faithful" is a small "o" orthodoxy that encompasses more than one denomination. Many, many Catholics have embraced an orthodox practice of their faith, and my book focuses a great deal of attention on them. But this trend crosses denominational borders.

To draw boundaries for this book, I borrowed a definition from G.K. Chesterton, who said orthodoxy means "the Apostles' Creed, as understood by everybody calling himself Christian until a very short time ago and the general historic conduct of those who held such a creed." Or, as one young man told me, "orthodoxy means you can say the Apostles' Creed without crossing your fingers behind your back."

Q: Are the new faithful receiving good catechesis? From where are they receiving such teaching?

Carroll: Yes and no. Most of the New faithful, particularly the Catholics in this group, did not receive good catechesis as children. Many were raised by parents who did not know or teach the faith. Many others attended Catholic schools and parishes where they learned "God is love"—and little else.

These twenty- and thirty-something Catholics grew up in the years after Vatican II, when the American Church was still struggling to make sense of the changes. They suffered the effects of a religious education crisis, and many never learned even the most elementary Christian teachings.

The good news: Many young adults have taken it upon themselves to learn the faith and study Church teaching, by forming parish groups to study Scripture, the Catechism, or the teachings of the Holy Father. And many have benefited from the new boom in Catholic apologetics materials and the rise of such popular apologists as Scott Hahn.

The Catholic apologetics craze—driven in large part by the catechetical demands of this generation—reflects the deep and widespread hunger for truth among today's young Catholics.

Q: What aspects of Catholicism did the new faithful feel drawn to? Why have they chosen the Church or Christian orthodoxy rather than the New Age spiritualities the Church recently addressed?

Carroll: The New faithful Catholics are drawn to precisely those aspects of Catholicism that repelled many of their baby boomer elders. They love Church tradition and history. They relish devotions like the rosary, and they line up for confession in droves. They are committed to eucharistic adoration and evangelization. And they love the Pope—not simply because they admire his personality, but because they admire his commitment to defending the truth in season and out of season.

These young Catholics grew up in a society saturated with moral relativism and dominated by the idea that they should "do whatever feels good." They see orthodoxy as a fresh alternative to those values, an oasis of truth and stability in a world gone mad.

While many of their elders criticize Church teaching as rigid or retrograde, these young adults love the Church's time-honored teachings and countercultural stands. To them, it is New Age spirituality—not orthodox Catholicism—that's empty, boring, and yesterday's news.

Q: What factors within the culture and the larger society do you think gave rise to the new faithful?

Carroll: The rise of the new faithful is partly the result of a pendulum swing. Many of these young adults are the sons and daughters of the hippies, children of the flower children. These young adults think that authority and tradition make more sense than free love and no-fault divorce.

Many suffered ill consequences from baby boomer experimentation in morality and religion, and they want their own children to experience a more stable life. They crave stability for themselves, as well. But sociology only gets us so far in this analysis. In the end, each of these young adults tells a story far richer, and far more complex, than the story of the pendulum swing.

I met doctors, lawyers, Hollywood writers, and cloistered nuns who told me amazing conversion stories, stories of faith and hope and a love that reached out and grabbed them when they least expected to find God.

For a Christian, the only way to understand those stories is to take these young adults at their word, and judge God by his works, and see this as the amazing grace of the Holy Spirit being poured out on a generation once considered lost.

Q: Do you have any sociological data to back up your findings? How widespread is this phenomenon of the new faithful and why is it largely found among young, educated, professional people?

Carroll: The book overflows with statistics—from the Gallup poll that shows a growing number of teen-agers identifying themselves as "religious" instead of "spiritual but not religious," to the UCLA freshmen poll that shows approval for abortion and casual sex dropping year after year. This trend has not swept over the entire generation, of course.

The new faithful still constitute a fairly modest segment of the population. But their influence extends well beyond their numbers because so many of these new faithful are educated professionals with a disproportionate amount of cultural influence.

They are rising stars in politics, the arts, the entertainment industry, in medicine and law and journalism. They are the sort of bright, culturally engaged young adults that their peers tend to follow. And they are uniting—across denominational lines, in many cases—to bring the Gospel to every realm of American life that they touch.

Q: Do you see this phenomenon continuing for the foreseeable future?

Carroll: This phenomenon is on the rise, and for the reasons mentioned above, it has considerable room to grow and serious staying power.

As this movement grows, the new faithful will be tempted to fall into extremes of either isolation from the culture or capitulation to it. Both extremes could undermine this movement and hamper the spread of the Gospel by these believers. Those who want to be "salt and light" in the world will have to keep those dangers in mind, and strive to be "in the world, but not of the world."

Q: How has the secular media responded to your findings? Has your book received much attention outside of Christian media?

Carroll: The secular media has given this book a good deal of attention, which has been gratifying. "The New Faithful" has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, Washington Post, National Review, PBS, Canada's National Post, and dozens of other regional newspapers and secular radio outlets.

Many secular journalists still struggle to understand this trend: It's counterintuitive for those who assume religion is on the wane and orthodoxy is on life support.

But to their credit, a fair number of baby boomer journalists in the secular media have been willing to consider that the excesses of their generation may have made today's young adults reluctant to follow in their footsteps, and attracted those young adults to orthodoxy. ZE03042923 

This article has been selected from the ZENIT Daily Dispatch
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[Salvation]

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[Salvation]

Catholic Discussion Ping!

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[nickcarraway]

BUMP

[.45MAN]

ping

[Pippin]

Thanks for the ping, Sal!

[Pippin]

Good morning Y'all!

[Desdemona]

Gen- X bump

[Salvation]

Good morning to all of you, too. Have a blessed day!

[Polycarp]

Thanks for posting this. Its always good to acknowlege signs of hope.

[StAthanasiustheGreat]

I can personally attest to this. I don't know if I classify as Generation X (born in 1982), but my University Catholic Center at Northwestern has a really strong base of Orthodox Students. In fact, one has conservative Catholic students and liberal Catholic Associates. It is quite a sight to see sometimes. I really think that my generation is moving back to Orthodoxy and Tradition because we see a society without it and we do not necessarily like what we see (I know I don't). There is Hope. That Hope is Jesus Christ and His Church and students are embracing the fullness of that more and more. God Bless

[ken5050]

and a good morning to you, as well..nice to see a hopeful story....however, sadly, there are those of those who reside within the Episcopal Diocese of NY....God still has LOTS of work to do here....

[Salvation]

**There is Hope. That Hope is Jesus Christ and His Church and students are embracing the fullness of that more and more. God Bless**

What good news!

[Salvation]

**God still has LOTS of work to do here....**

This is true for many places.

Keep praying for sincere, heartfelt vocations!

[Maximilian]

This was posted quite a while ago. Or maybe it was a different interview of the same author regarding the same book.

The point made by several posters back then still stands: this is absolutely ludicrous. The vast majority of young people 18-35 are so totally clueless that they don't even know what they don't know. I worked with several people in my last position who were late 20's supposed Catholics. They knew nothing, nada, zip, zilch about their faith. They didn't even have a clue about where to start to look.

They themselves recognized that their lives were shallow and empty and meaningless. There was a lot of alchohol and sex to cover up for a lack of any real purpose. They were even interested in finding out why they were so unhappy. But they were so lacking the mental categories to think about something like religion that it was impossible to talk with them about serious subjects. It was like discussing algebra with a primitive tribesman whose language only has words for "one, two, many."

It's nice to know that there may be a tiny cohort of serious committed Christians. But first of all, look at the indifferentism of the author. She lumps fallen-away Catholic who have become evangelicals, traditional Catholics and born-again Christians into one big category of the "new orthodox" (with a small "o" she emphasizes).

It used to be considered standard operating procedure for the Catholic Church to teach and convince an ENTIRE generation. It wasn't considered good news that maybe 1% were getting the message. The adults of the 1950s were all children at one time. Somehow they got the message, and a very large majority went on to become believing and practicing Catholics. Have we become so innured to failure that we praise a random victory now and then but are blase to the millions of souls being lost?

I know I probably sound unduly pessimistic. But it's like an alchoholic -- they can't begin to get better until they admit they have a problem. Let's start by being realistic. An entire generation of souls has been lost for all eternity. More of the same from the Church is going to result in more of the same in the lost souls category.

[TradicalRC]

Interesting. I have a couple of friends who fall into this category. One of the supposed characteristics of Gen-X is a desire for authenticity. They see experimentation in the Church as phony and rightly so. Tradition gets slapped around at every turn.

They go for Traditional worship when they can, however, its slim pickins for them in Iowa City where they live. I went to their church: the stations look like drawings on a chalkboard with the centurions in modern attire (suit and tie).

They are slowly learning to distinguish what beliefs stem from Catholicism and what stems from liberalism. This can be quite a slow process; I have been doing it for years, shedding layer after layer of liberalism in an effort to get at the Truth of Tradition.

I've gone as far back as Thomas Aquinas versus William of Ockham which may or may not be the source of the problems of the modern era.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

The adults of the 1950s were all children at one time. Somehow they got the message, and a very large majority went on to become believing and practicing Catholics.

Or maybe not. The adults of the 1950's were the ones who subjected us to the juvenalia of Vatican II. It wasn't a bunch of 17 and 18 year olds who chaged everything.

Many of us feel that the failings of the present are to be laid directly upon the feet of the so-called "Greatest Generation" who generally ran things into the ground from 1940-1970.

These were also the adults who provided such poor catechesis to their young that most of the youth (Baby Boomers) simply dropped out of the Church like leaves from a tree in fall in the 1965-1980 period. The shallowness of the Baby Boomer generation originated in the upbringing they had from their parents, the genesis of which can be traced to the end results of World War II, and the wave of social libertinism (epitomized by the likes of Dr. Spock, the emergence of Playboy, and the Kinsey Report) that swept through the world after that. This period was also the origins of the ugly architecture movement, and the mindless materialism we are now subjected to. Lastly, the planning of Vatican II and the revolution occurred mostly in the ten years leading up to it - 1952-1962.

Lets not be blinded by the dazzling failure of the 1965-1980 period. Lets keep a focus on the causes. That will help us have a better grasp on the present, and also evaluate the so-called orthodox revival being claimed, especially as regards the pertinent question of "Where is the revival in morals if there is a revival in faith?"

[pseudo-justin]

I've gone as far back as Thomas Aquinas versus William of Ockham which may or may not be the source of the problems of the modern era.

I think Ockham is the primordial source of the problem. More specifically, it is Ockham's notion of freedom that is the source of the problem. Ockham's radical voluntarism is the historical root of the notion of autonomy. Ockham's nominalism is the origin of the attack on metaphysics (especially natural theology). Now, Ockham further replaced natural law theory in ethics (and consequently the Patristic/Thomistic view of salvation as deification) with a divine command theory in ethics. Now, when we join a divine command ethical theory with a vountarism like Ockham's, the result is a huge shift in perception of what it is to be human and what it is for a human to stand before God. I admit, the resulting picture is psychologically intolerable, and so Ockhamism engendered a reaction to Ockham's image of God and Ockham's image of the moral life. That reaction takes the form of, first, Protestantism and, second, atheism.

To see the implications of Ockhamism spelled out in detail, I highly recommend a book by the Belgian Dominican Fr. Servais Pinckaers. Title: "The Sources of Christian Ethics". Catholic University of America Press, 1995. (For those who might be intimidated by the large, scholarly work of Pinckaers, there is an abridged version called "Morality: The Catholic View" available through St. Augustine's Press.)

Pinckaers, I think, was a ghost writer for "Veritatis Splendor", and I am convinced that he wrote the sections of the Catechism on the Beatitudes and the New Law. Once you read him, you will see what I mean.

An essentially Ockhamist view of freedom is what lay behind Kant, Nietzsche, Sartre, the whole gang.

John Paul II knows this perfectly well, and so has made this very theme, that freedom is essentially ordered to truth, a key theme in virtually all of his writings. JPII is striving to overturn the Ockhamist notion of freedom and replace it with St. Thomas' intellectualism.

This is why I am convinced that of all the Popes since Trent, JPII has the deepest critique of modernity. Prior Popes have attacked modernity, but only at the surface level where it was least vulnerable. JPII has gone to the root. The difference between (JPII and St. Thomas')notion of freedom and our own (Ockhamist) notion is so radical that it takes years to purge oneself, and one's interpretation of the Catholic faith, of Ockham's corruption.

Tridentine Catholicism, implemented mainly by the Jesuits, was itself insufficiently purified of Ockhamism. And this insufficient purification eventually caught up with the Jebs. They are now essentially Protestants, and on their way to atheism. This is not to say, of course, that Tridentine Catholicism contained error. It is merely to say that Tridentine Catholicism was band-aid solution to a deep, deep problem that is the root of Protestantism and Secularism. Vat II removed the band aid, and now we have one bloody mess on our hands until the wound of a thousand years is really and truly healed.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

the source of the problems of the modern era

Protestantism and the Enlightenment.

[Alkhin]

I have posted this article on my blog today.

BRAZOS CANTINA PING

[Maximilian]

Many of us feel that the failings of the present are to be laid directly upon the feet of the so-called "Greatest Generation" who generally ran things into the ground from 1940-1970.

I agree with your analysis of the so-called "greatest generation." But you're mixing up the causes and effects in terms of this discussion. The point is that when these people were children, the adults of that time were able to inculcate the faith in them. Later they lost the faith and went haywire after Vatican II.

But the Church of the generation who were adults when the "greatest generation" were being educated believed that their goal was to teach and sanctify every Catholic. They were seeking every soul. They did not assume 100% failure as the de facto standard, and then rejoice if even 1% succeeded.

The approach represented by the author of this book would be like the Good Shepherd who sees his 100 sheep wander away, and then rejoices because 1 sheep found his way back into the fold.