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TechnoratiThis appears to be a growing sentiment among many younger Christians in America today. They love Jesus but they want little to do with His Church. It’s not that they don’t like the their local church or even other Christians—it’s that they don’t like how Christianity in America is frequently represented by many professing Evangelicals, which in their minds is often unloving, judgmental, arrogant, and hypocritical.
This assertion finds support in the data revealed in Barna’s most recent research. For example, “four out of five young churchgoers say that Christianity is antihomosexual; half describe it as judgmental, too involved in politics, hypocritical, and confusing; one-third believe their faith is old-fashioned and out of touch with reality; and one-quarter of young Christians believe it is boring and insensitive to others.” (Kinnamon & Lyons, unChristian, Baker Books, 2007, pp.33-34)
Those outside the Church hold increasingly negative views of Christians as well. Among young people (aged 16-29), roughly 49 percent hold an “extraordinarily negative” view of evangelical Christians and only 3 percent have a “good” impression!
Kinnamon and Lyons summarize the problem well by pointing to the comments of one thirty-five year-old believer who says, ‘Christians have become political, judgmental, intolerant, weak, religious, angry, and without balance. Christianity has become a nice Sunday drive. Where is the living God, the Holy Spirit, and amazing Jesus, the love, the compassion, the holiness? This type of life, how I yearn for that.”
Before you dismiss this criticism as overly simplistic or somehow lacking in credibility, humbly listen to what the next generation is actually saying. Love of Christ, love of one another and humility should compel us to try and understand why so many young people and Christians, in particular, feel the way they do. In my own frequent interactions with younger serious-minded Christians—many of whom invigorate me by their enthusiasm and zeal for Christ—I often find that they are very turned off and even angered by the watered-down, politicized, shallow, culturalized Christianity that has come to dominate American evangelicalism. According to Kinnamon and Lyons, “The Christian life looks so simplified and constricted that a new generation no longer recognizes it as a sophisticated, livable response to a complex word.”
This younger generation of Christians is simply and rightfully frustrated by the fact that this very real condition serves to inhibit their efforts to share the love of Christ with others. In other words, contemporary American Christianity carries with it a lot of negative baggage. So much so that “they feel raising the ‘Christian flag’ would actually undermine their ability to connect with people and maintain credibility with them.” And so, they feel they must “distance themselves from the current ‘branding’ of Christianity.” (Kinnamon & Lyons)
I can tell you from the perspective of one who spends a great deal of time engaged with those outside the faith; a significant portion of any conversation begins with me making apologies for the many misrepresentations of Christianity, the abuses suffered at the hands of misguided Christians, and correcting their many misconceptions—this—just so I can get to any meaningful dialogue. I can fully appreciate the need to “distance” one’s self from the mainstream “brand” of Christianity in order to earn any credibility with the person to whom I am speaking. Continue »
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