A few days ago a provocative article ran on abcnews.com entitled “Young Americans Losing Their Religion: New Research Finds Number Who Claim No Church Has Risen Sharply”. The gist of the piece was that young Americans (members of Generation X and Y) are moving away from organized religion in historic numbers. Americans who identify with no religion are referred to as “nones” by pollsters. In the recent past, “nones” made up about 5% of the American population. Today, however, a full 30-40% of young people fall into the “none” category, and this could portend extremely significant changes in the religious and political landscape of the United States within the next several years. Robert Putnam, the Harvard University professor who conducted this eye-opening study, explains that these “nones” are not necessarily atheists.
“Many of them are people who would otherwise be in church,” Putnam said. “They have the same attitidues and values as people who are in church, but they grew up in a period in which being religious meant being politically conservative, especially on social issues.”
Putnam says that in the past two decades, many young people began to view organized religion as a source of “intolerance and rigidity and doctrinaire political views,” and therefore stopped going to church.
While this article is thought-provoking in and of itself, we also enjoyed reading a piece by Tara Stiles of The Huffington Post which discusses Putnam’s study in a passionate manner. Stiles is a yoga instructor who rejects organized religion herself, and in this opinion piece, she argues strongly that the practice of yoga is a fulfilling alternative to the rigid nature of religion. Titled “Generation X: Praying To No One?”, we found this commentary quite compelling, and judging from the multiple pages of reader comments at the article’s end, other people did too. Check it out!
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