If millennials leave religion, then what? [View all]

[cbayer]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/commentary-if-millennials-leave-religion-then-what/2014/04/21/5c6619d0-c98b-11e3-b81a-6fff56bc591e_story.html

By Peter Levine | Religion News Service, Published: April 21

As the Pew Research Center recently found, today’s young people are “less likely than older generations to be affiliated with any religion.” The question is whether this trend is a good thing or a bad thing.

If you are a person of faith, you may worry about the souls of these “millennials,” the generation born after 1980. If you are a critic of organized religion, you may rejoice.

From a more neutral perspective, we can ask about the lasting impact on politics and democracy. After all, political movements in America have often drawn on religious movements for recruitment, leadership, financing, and moral vision. That was true, for example, of abolitionism, of Prairie Populism in the 1890s, of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ‘60s, and of the United Farm Workers’ struggles on behalf of migrant workers.

Perhaps society can or will develop functional equivalents or replacements for churches and other congregations. Denominations have done harm as well as good, and there may be other paths to worldly justice and happiness. But equivalents will have to meet several demanding criteria.

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