We’ve been discussing the dramatic drop-off in church attendance and church affiliation and why that might be happening. Lutheran social scientist Lyman Stone of the Institute for Family Studies looks at the data and comes to a startling conclusion: It is primarily children, in early adolescence and before, who lose interest in religion, an attitude they retain when they grow into adulthood.
In his article Secularization Begins at Home, Stone refers to the book we have been discussing, by Jim Davis, Michael Graham, and Ryan Burge. The emphasis of that study and the interviews featured in the book focus on adults. “To read The Great Dechurching,” Stone writes, “one might suppose that Christianity is declining in America because adults, after considering a range of different concerns, decided church just wasn’t for them.”
But by basing their book on retrospective surveys of adults, Davis, Graham, and Burge overlook one essential descriptive fact about religion in America: most of the decline in religion is actually among children, and virtually all of it among people under age 22. Secularization, or what they call “dechurching,” is happening among children and then trickling upwards into the general population as those children age. This essential fact suggests that any story of secularization in America has to begin with home life: what changed for children born in the 1980s and 1990s that they never fully absorbed religious belief as children? [My emphases]
Stone draws on two large and ongoing studies of adolescents. He shows a graph of the responses of 8th graders (13-14 years old), 10th graders (15-16), and 12th graders (17-18) who agree with the statement “Religion is not important to me at all.” In 1993, only 13% of both 8th graders and 15% of 10th graders claimed to have no interest in religion.
Those numbers showed a consistent rise every year. By 2021, the percentage who said “Religion is not important to me at all” amounted to 23% of eighth graders, 28% of tenth graders, and 29% of twelfth graders.
Stone combines this data with a different longitudinal study (one that tracks the same respondents over time) beginning in the late 1990s. At age 13, about 12% said they were nonreligious. When they were 17, about 17% were nonreligious. By age 21, about 23% were nonreligious. And that percentage hardly changed at all for the rest of the study, when the respondents were 31.
In fact, Stone concludes that “there really isn’t very much secularization of adults at all”! He shows that there is little change in religiosity for individuals born in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s.
But for the cohort born in the 1990s, they began as adults with a minority confident belief in God. Kids born in the 1990s didn’t lose their faith as adults; they had already lost it in childhood. There is little to no change in belief in God for 1990s kids between ages 18-20 and 28-30. In other words, the decline in religiosity we’ve seen across America in the 2000s and 2010s, and especially among young people, isn’t driven by a loss of faith among adults in that period. It appears to be driven by a failure by parents to pass on the faith in the 1990s and 2000s.
“By now,” Stone concludes, “it should be clear that childhood, including before age 13, is the key battleground for religious formation, not adulthood. By the time a child goes to college, much of the religious question has already been settled.”
So the question remains, why?
For religious people, and especially religious parents, this has several important takeaways. Children, even 16 and 17-year-olds, are usually not having extremely sophisticated apologetics-style arguments. The arguments that persuade children to believe things are not necessarily rationally coherent or compelling, and by the time people are old enough to fully absorb the content of religious debates (their 20s), they tend not to change religion. In other words, most of the rise in secularism in America probably doesn’t have much to do with any actual deficiency of rational arguments for religion, or strength of arguments against it.
Rather, loss of religion is about childhood socialization.
Stone blames school environments, social media, pornography, absent parents, and the like. He stresses above all the role of parents in children’s life and faith.
But let’s ask the same questions we asked in our earlier posts on the subject: Is there anything in today’s predominant theology that would contribute to the lack of faith in children? And is there anything in church practices today that would make children and adolescents think religion is not important?
First of all, many evangelicals assume that children can’t really have faith at all. They can’t be Christians until they reach the alleged “age of accountability” and make a “decision” for Christ. Conversion is for adults, or at least young adulthood. It’s true that young people in those traditions typically make that “decision” and get baptized in their early adolescence, around or just before the ages these studies begin. But conversion is thought to be instantaneous, so these churches usually do very little catechesis–that is, instruction in what Christians believe.
So it’s understandable that The Great Dechurching, written by three evangelical pastors, focuses on adults. Whereas Lyman Stone, Lutheran that he is, zeroes in on the spiritual formation of children. For us Lutherans, a baptized infant is a Christian, who might lack knowledge but who has genuine faith in her heavenly Father, just as she has faith in her earthly father. Jesus holds up the faith of a child as a model for adults to emulate (Matt 18:3). But that faith must be fed, taught, and nourished from a very early age.
But Sunday Schools too often consist mainly of coloring and arts and crafts, maybe with a perfunctory Bible Story. Might we do more to immerse children in the Gospel and the Word of God?
And far from teaching children to worship, churches today are often kicking them out of worship, sending them instead to “children’s church,” which is often just more play-time. Is it any wonder that children grow up thinking that worship is not for them?
Youth groups are often little more than ice-breakers and pizza. OK, I acknowledge that just as “socialization” is a reason why children leave the church, as Stone says, it can be a reason why they stay. Stone’s findings make a good case for homeschool co-ops and good Christian schools.
But couldn’t we do more apologetics and more diving into the depths of the Christian faith? Too often, a superficial understanding of Christianity is all young people know, and as their minds grow and they get thoughtful–which happens years before they go off to college–they assume that this Sunday-School faith is childish and unrealistic. We need to expose them to the sophisticated side of Christianity, and make that part of their identity.
[By the way, remember that post-confirmation class on Lutheran identity I blogged about and that some of you urged me to write up as a curriculum, saying that you too would like to go through that? I have taken your advice and am writing it! CPH will publish it. I expect it to come out next year. Stay tuned for that. Thanks for the suggestion!]
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