The next generation is often leaving the faith while under the supervision of parents who believe they’re passing on their religious values.
When church leaders imagine young people turning away from Christianity, they may picture a college student being convinced by an atheist professor or an older high schooler getting a driver’s license and using their newfound freedom to leave church behind. In reality, the secularization of the next generation may look more like a 14-year-old watching YouTube in their room.
New analysis published at the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) reveals children born in the 1980s and ’90s never absorbed the faith in their home. And they walked away from it at an earlier age than most parents and leaders suspect.
In the early 1990s, no more than 16% of 8th, 10th, and 12th graders said religion was not important to them at all, according to the Monitoring the Future survey series. By the early 2000s, however, the percentage of high school seniors who completely dismissed the importance of religion to them personally began to increase dramatically.
For close to a decade, sophomores were more like 8th graders, with both hovering around 15%. But around 2010, 10th graders became more like 12th graders in terms of their disregard for religion. A few years later, the percentage of 8th graders who said religion is not at all important began to rapidly increase.