America is witnessing a scary change as the teenagers identify as atheist, agnostic or unaffiliated with a faith.
Christianity seems to be losing its hold on American teenagers.
New studies show that the Generation Z, the guys after the millennials, would rather identify with atheism, agnosticism, than Christianity.
Barna’s research discovered that the percentage of those born between 1999 and 2015 that an atheist is double compared to that of the general U.S. adult population (13% vs. 6% of all adults).
According to the study, conducted in partnership with Impact 360 Institute, only three in five teenagers call themselves some kind of Christian (59%) while one-third of Gen Z (37%) doubt the existence of God.
This has led to them being dubbed the first real “post-Christian” generation.
Reacting to the research, Barna President David Kinnaman says, “[Y]oung Christians are struggling as much as we have seen it in the 20-plus years I have been at Barna and in the 35-plus years of our company to understand how to live out their faith in an increasingly skeptical culture.
“They are having to represent what the Bible says, what it means to be Christian, in a culture that doesn’t understand it or who believes that the Bible is simply a book that is religious dogma that has been used to oppress people — that being Christian is extremist or irrelevant in our society.”
How to revive Christianity among American teens
Despite these negative findings, Greg Stier, founder of Dare 2 Share, an organization that offers youth evangelism resources, is hopeful that something can be done to change this situation.
Speaking with The Christian Post, he advises youth groups and churches to focus on prayer as we encourage teens to talk to one another about God and faith.
In his words, “The youth groups trend of fun games and short Bible studies have resulted in frail youth groups and shallow young people. And spiritually immature teenagers will not lead their atheistic friends to Jesus.
“For this to happen, youth leaders must change their philosophy of youth ministry from being driven by fun to driven by faith. The Church cannot compete with the world when it comes to fun anyway because we don’t have the money.
“But the world cannot compete with the Church on a deeper level because they don’t have the truth. And if young atheists have doubled, we must double down, and the first step is to double our prayers."
“We must program the priority of prayer into our actual church services and youth group meetings. Through prayer, we tap into the very power of the Trinity to turn the statistics around in a way that only God can get the credit for.
“If we want to reach the lost we must pray for the lost. As it has been said, ‘Before we talk to people about God we must talk to God about people.’”
How do you think Christians can fix this generational crisis?
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