From the very liberal Washington Post.
Excerpt:
A growing tide of young Americans is drifting away from the religions of their childhood — and most of them are ending up in no religion at all.
One in four young adults choose “unaffiliated” when asked about their religion, according to a new report from the Public Religion Research Institute and Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs.
But most within this unaffiliated group — 55 percent — identified with a religious group when they were younger.
“These younger unaffiliated adults are very nonreligious,” said Daniel Cox, PRRI’s research director. “They demonstrate much lower levels of religiosity than we see in the general population,” including participation in religious rituals or worship services.
Some of them will return to their faiths as they age, “but there’s not a lot of evidence that most will come back,” added Cox, who said the trend away from organized religion dates back to the early 1990s.
The study of 2,013 Americans ages 18-24 focused on the younger end of the cohort commonly known as the “Millennials” or “Generation Y,” which generally includes young adults as old as 29. Interviews were conducted between March 7 and 20.
Across denominations, the net losses were uneven, with Catholics losing the highest proportion of childhood adherents — nearly 8 percent — followed by white mainline Protestant traditions, which lost 5 percent.
Among Catholics, whites were twice as likely as Hispanics to say they are no longer affiliated with the church.
White evangelical and black denominations fared better, with a net loss of about 1 percent. Non-Christian groups posted a modest 1 percent net increase in followers.
But the only group that saw significant growth between childhood and young adulthood was the unaffiliated — a jump from 11 percent to 25 percent.
And this is very interesting:
An overwhelming majority of white evangelical Protestants (68 percent) said they believe that some things are always wrong, compared to 49 percent of black Protestants, 45 percent of Catholics and 35 percent of the unaffiliated.
I’m a non-white evangelical Protestant, and I think that in general, evangelical Protestants are the ones who emphasize theology, apologetics and worldview integration the most. I think that any other church that wants to stop the losses will have to get serious about apologetics and worldview. It’s especially important for churches to emphasize that Christianity is about truth, to emphasize how we know it’s true (science, history) and to explain why some things are wrong and why Hell is fair. We just don’t have the requirements straight right now – too much emphasis on Christian culture and externals, and not enough emphasis on theology and apologetics and moral reasoning. And parents – not pastors – need to take the lead in teaching their own children after church is over.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
“I think that any other church that wants to stop the losses will have to get serious about apologetics and worldview. It’s especially important for churches to emphasize that Christianity is about truth, to emphasize how we know it’s true (science, history) and to explain why some things are wrong and why Hell is fair. We just don’t have the requirements straight right now – too much emphasis on Christian culture and externals, and not enough emphasis on theology and apologetics and moral reasoning.”
Amen!
“…if you destroy the foundation, the superstructure must fall.” Daniel Webster 1800
LikeLike
Awesome and terrible article. The call to make apologetics a pursuit in our churches needs to be heard by more people.
LikeLike
The degree that they are leaving is in direct proportion to the hypocrisy that they see in the churches and Christians who profess to acknowledge Christ but deny Him in character/righteousness.
Sad but true.
This is DESPITE a incredible of ministry (literally on every street corner) but very little witness / testimony of the fruit of Spirit that is the result of a 1 on 1 relationship with Jesus.
LikeLike
I think it’s because of not knowing the fine-tuning argument and not studying physics.
LikeLike
it could also be this..Matt:24:8-10 All these are the beginning of birth-pains.
9 ‘Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. 10 At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other,
LikeLike
I think one of the biggest issues being overlooked are some of those brought up in the links here:
http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/04/23/1335242/in-nothing-we-trust
about many American’s loosing faith the US and big business. Now add that to the fact that christianity seems to be tying itself ever more closer with the big corporations that Americans despise more and more and your bound to lose people. I’ve never heard any of the christian leaders critisize (sp?) the extreme excesses of the corporate world for fear of being seen as anti-business. In other words, they’ve stopped critisizing the sins that the book they preach from destroyed entire civilizations for.
LikeLike
You’re not going to believe this but Bill Gates just showed up at my door WITH TWO ARMED POLICEMEN and demanded 30% of my salary to support his development of “Microsoft Social Engineering”, a new collection of “social” programs designed to transfer wealth from people who work to people who don’t work, electronically.
Oh wait, not Bill Gates, the government.
LikeLike
C’mon, snark never solved anything – funny too that you’ll be snarky all the way to an atheist state – which you know will make me happy. You decry that people are abandoning faith while simultaneously applauding the fact that the majority of people can no longer afford to have families. But don’t worry, as wealth accumulates to fewer and fewer, we’ll go back to the way it was just 200 years ago and our aristocracy can command us to believe;-) See – I can be snarky too!
LikeLike
“We just don’t have the requirements straight right now – too much emphasis on Christian culture and externals, and not enough emphasis on theology and apologetics and moral reasoning.”
Don’t get me wrong – I think it’s a good thing for Christians to be culturally engaged. But your statement here is spot-on. Far too many churches present watered-down, “feel-good” self-help sermons. I’ve fortunately been blessed to find a church where the pastor isn’t afraid to deliver intellectual, theologically-rich messages…but that’s sadly become rare these days.
LikeLike
Wait till you see the sermon that I’m going to post this week on the gospel featuring pastor Paul Washer. It’s exactly the point you raised.
LikeLike
Washer seems like a pretty legit guy, from the little I know. Looking forward to it!
LikeLike
Ah, I decided against using it – he is a bit excitable and raises his voice.
LikeLike
This is a really interesting article — thanks for posting it.
This issue is very real and I think it is a lot more complex than the level of apologetics and theology preached in churches. I would say Frankie Allan has it right, really.
If you want to get more technical, there are so many factors: breakdown of family structure, rising popularity of cynicism, dominance of postmodern thought, media coverage of church and clergy scandal, politicization and polarization of the church, dilution of the Gospel… these are just a few of the things I have observed from my own little place in the world.
LikeLike
“We just don’t have the requirements straight right now – too much emphasis on Christian culture and externals, and not enough emphasis on theology and apologetics and moral reasoning. And parents – not pastors – need to take the lead in teaching their own children after church is over.”
Well said WK.
LikeLike