Experts reveal why millennials are abandoning organized religion and what they're doing instead
A new study has detailed that millennials are ditching traditional religion, but not spirituality altogether.
Researchers analyzed the development of over 1,300 Americans born in a 10-year period from the late 1980s, they discovered that organized religion was being abandoned.
Experts from Cornell University, Tulane University, Oklahoma State University - Tulsa, and the University of Oklahoma published the paper, titled Breaking Free of the Iron Cage: The Individualization of American Religion, in Socius in April.
The in-depth analysis comes as those stating they are not affiliated to religion, known as 'nones', has grown rapidly.
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The paper detailed how in 'just a few decades' those who are no longer affiliated with religion surged from one in 20 to more than one in four.
The team of sociologists examined data from the National Study of Youth and Religion, which carried out four rounds of surveys in total on the participants who were all aged between 13 and 17 years old from 2003 to 2013.
They were asked to confirm the frequency in which they attended religious services and prayed on their own, if they affiliated themselves with religion and believed in God, if they practiced meditating, and finally if they support converting to other religions.
It found that young Americans were turning away from organized religion due to their social values - underlined by one participant named Chris.
In his fourth and final survey, he told researchers: "I used to go to church [and] Mass all the time. I was born and raised Catholic. . . . I think growing up changed it - having different perspectives. . . . I was tired of going to church and hearing about politics.
"And I was tired of going to Mass and hearing about how we can’t let the gays get married. . . . I said [to the padre], 'For a church that says they’re accepting, we pride ourselves on being holier than thou, you guys are pretty discriminatory. And I don’t appreciate it . . . I used to love coming to church, [but] I don’t anymore. It’s because every time I come here, you tell me who I should be and who can do this and who can do that'."
First author of the Cornell-led paper, associate professor of sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences Landon Schnabel, explained the switch away from traditional religion.
"People aren’t leaving religious institutions passively or only because of partisan politics, but because of more deeply held values - about the sacredness of the individual, their concern for others and feeling that their participation in an institution doesn’t align with being the type of person they want to be," he told the Cornell Chronicle.
"They’re more intentionally choosing to follow what they really believe in.”
He added: "The move away from organized religion doesn’t look like kind of the pure material secularism that some people thought. It doesn’t reflect disenchantment with the world, but re-enchantment through something other than church.”
The results found that institutional aspects of religion declined much quicker than individual faith and spirituality, but belief in God remained.
Joe Yates