Why College Students Have Left the Church

Larry Alex Taunton is an American author, columnist, radio talk show host, and cultural commentator based out of Birmingham, Alabama who serves as the Executive Director of Fixed Point Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to the public defense of the Christian faith.  Recently the Foundation did a study of college students who are committed atheists, asking them why they chose atheism.  What they learned is interesting. Here are some excerpts from The Atlantic piece as contributed by American writer Rod Dreher:

 

They had attended church

Most of the participants had not chosen their worldview from ideologically neutral positions at all, but in reaction to Christianity.  Not Islam; not Buddhism; but Christianity.

 

The mission and message of their churches was vague

These students heard plenty of messages encouraging “social justice,” community involvement, and “being good;” but they seldom saw the relationship between that message, Jesus Christ, and the Bible.

 

They felt their churches offered superficial answers to life’s difficult questions

When the participants were asked what they found unconvincing about the Christian faith, they spoke of evolution vs. creation, sexuality, the reliability of the biblical text, Jesus as the only way, etc.  Some had gone to church hoping to find answers to these questions.  Others hoped to find answers to questions of personal significance, purpose, and ethics. Serious-minded, they often concluded that church services were largely shallow, harmless, and ultimately irrelevant.

 

They expressed their respect for those ministers who took the Bible seriously

Without fail, the former church-attending students expressed respect for those Christians who unashamedly embraced biblical teaching. “Shallow, harmless, and ultimately irrelevant” — were the descriptions of what they thought of the church during their teenage years.

 

One can understand why a bright college student would find atheism more compelling than Christianity, if that’s the only kind of Christianity he/she had seen.

 

Social science data show that the churches that have liberalized have no more luck holding on to young people than those who remain more or less traditionalist.  When young people become more liberal in their views, they don’t seek out more liberal churches, which are available to them, but quit going to church all together.  This makes intuitive sense.  If church makes no serious demands on you, and you can pick and choose what you want to believe of the tradition to suit your preferences, then the religion will have no particular hold on you.  Put another way, if church is only about teaching you how to be good, as distinct from teaching you how to be holy, then its appeal is significantly diminished.

 

Dreher can see why the intellectually curious would be frustrated by churches that downplay the ‘Big Questions’ in favor of generic moralistic uplift.  But is this the same problem that non-intellectual young people would have with church?  It may be.

 

Dreher concludes feeling comfortable asserting that a church, and church people, who don’t take religion seriously aren’t going to appeal to those who don’t face social pressure to conform.  We live in a truly secular age, in which religion is not taken for granted, but is a choice — and in which there is little or no pressure to go to church at all.  More than ever, the Church has to give people a reason to believe.  Dreher isn’t talking about an argument to believe (though that’s part of it), but a sense that the faith is true and compelling.  “You can’t get there through argument alone,” says Dreher, “at least not with most people.  They need to see more. They need to see the faith incarnate in a meaningful way.”

 

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel