Why are Young People Leaving the Church?

And What Could We Do To Fix It?

The statistics are clear: young people are leaving the Church. Anxiety about the Dying Church has consumed discourse in most mainline liberal protestant denominations, especially in the seminaries, where the next generation of Christian Leaders are being educated. Research says they’re right to be worried: Pew shows a steady decline in church attendance generation by generation starting with Boomers. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the Dying Church, but I thought it might be helpful to dig in a little on why exactly young people, especially Millennials and Gen Z, are leaving the church, and what, if anything, could be done to get them back.

It Began With Boomers

There have been true believers and atheists in every generation. However, as Baby Boomers came of age in the 60’s and 70’s, they began to explore new ideas, and that included new ideas about religion. Whole books, college syllabi, and academic careers have been dedicated to explaining how and why this particular era was transformative ideologically for many young people in the US. Rather than try to recap them, I think it would be sufficient to summarize by saying that a generation raised in the relative comfort of the post-war period began to question the assumptions that underwrote the society…