In an article on Fox news.com titled, “Young People Less Tied to Organized Religion, Poll Finds,” Lauren Green, Fox religion correspondent, cites a study by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion that shows that the people born after 1980 were less tied to organize religion than the previous generations. However, the poll showed that this does not mean that these young people are necessarily less religious than their parents and grandparents. It is just that they tend not to affiliate themselves with “organized religion.”

While the study showed that 25% of people between the ages of 18 and 30 said they were “unaffiliated,” 75% of those polled said they believed in heaven and hell and 90% said they believed in God. So the conclusion was that the under 30 generation was not necessarily less religious, but just chose not to be a part of organized religion.

Reading this report got me to wondering as to why these “religious” young people would have such an aversion to organized religion. I am neither a Solomon nor psychologist so I may not know many of the reasons for this phenomenon. However, I believe a couple of factors may come into play here.

1. Today’s young people tend to want benefits without public commitment to the “institutions” of society. Witness the decline in marriage and the increase “just living together” arrangements. They want the benefits of the marriage bed without commitment to the marriage institution. Similarly, they prefer a “personal faith” without the responsibilities and scrutiny that go with membership in an organized group. It gives them the liberty to kind of “freelance” their religion without any responsibility of doing their share in an organized entity. Also, they can keep their religion private without any pressure to measure up to public commitments they would make by becoming affiliated with organized religion.

2. Today’s young people are smart. They can see the spiritually bankrupt condition of modern organized religion. The “mainstream” denominations today are more like social clubs than religious institutions. Besides their many social “ministries” along with the facilities and staffs to support them, even the worship services are heavily socially oriented, with very little spiritual value. Congregational singing is all but replaced with “praise teams” to entertain the ears of the “worshipers.” The sermon has more of a social message or a social commentary on current events rather than proclaiming the Gospel from the biblical text and making application to the spiritual needs of those present. Millions of dollars are raised and spent on the annexes to houses of worship to accommodate the social and entertainment desires of the congregation and community at large and to entice the less spiritually minded to the church. The “independent” mega churches are no better and even sometimes worse than the “mainstream” churches.

Why would an intelligent spiritually minded young person want to affiliate himself with such a mess? Why not just worship God the best he can privately without committing himself to support the agenda of modern organized religion.

All of this could provide all of us who are striving to follow the New Testament order of things with an opportunity to spread the borders of the Lord’s church. If we could just be more zealous to seek out those young people turned off to modern organized religion but still quite religious privately and introduce them to the simplicity of the New Testament church we might be successful. Show them that modern organized religion is nothing like the true religion of Christ. That by obeying the simple plan of salvation they can be saved from their sins and be added to the church (Acts 2:47) without being a part of anything like modern organized religion. And that the only organized church that they will need to be affiliated with is a local congregation of Christians (Acts 9:26). This local congregation is simply an independently organized church with its bishops, deacons and saints (Philippians 1:1). Its public worship is simple and unadorned by pomp and ceremony. It’s work/mission is spiritual.

It will take a diligent effort on the part of all and not just that of “the preacher” and/or elders. We believe it is worth a try
. edbragwell@gmail.com