How College-Age Millennials view God & Religion

College-Age Millennials Are Becoming Less Religious

So what do college-age Millennials think about God or religion or other issues such as abortion or same sex marriage? 

A concern that I have is that we, the church, properly ground our kids in the gospel and the Word of God so that they have a proper biblical worldview so that when they face the world, they will be able to think properly about, not only these issues, but any issue. Why is this so important? Read the stats below and you'll see why!

Here's a sample of the research posted at The Gospel Coalition by Joe Carter:

The Story: Younger Millennials (ages 18-24) report significant levels of movement from the religious affiliation of their childhood, mostly toward identifying as religiously unaffiliated, according to a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute and Georgetown's Berkley Center.

The Backgroung: The 2012 Millennial Values Survey took a random sample of 2,012 adults age 18 to 24. Interviews were conducted online in both English and Spanish between March 7 and March 20, 2012. The margin of sampling error for the entire sample is +/- 3.3 percentage points at the 95% level of confidence.

The Highlights:

• While only 11% of Millennials were religiously unaffiliated in childhood, one-quarter (25%) currently identify as unaffiliated, a 14-point increase.

• Catholics and white mainline Protestants saw the largest net losses (-7.9% and -5%) while black Protestants and white evangelicals saw the least decline (-1.1 and -0.8).

• College-age Millennials are more likely than the general population to be religiously unaffiliated. They are less likely than the general population to identify as white evangelical Protestants or white mainline Protestant.

• Millennials also hold less traditional or orthodox religious beliefs. Fewer than one-quarter (23%) believe the Bible is the word of God and should be taken literally, word for word. About 1-in-4 (26%) believe the Bible is the word of God, but that not everything in the Bible should be taken literally. Roughly 4-in-10 (37%) say the Bible is a book written by men and is not the word of God.

• Millennials' feelings toward present-day Christianity are fairly ambivalent. Approximately three-quarters (76%) of younger Millennials say that modern-day Christianity "has good values and principles" and 63% agree that contemporary Christianity "consistently shows love for other people." On the other hand, nearly two-thirds (64%) say that "anti-gay" describes present-day Christianity somewhat or very well and more than 6-in-10 (62%) also believe that Christianity is "judgmental."

Want to learn more about what they think of abortion or same sex marriage, read the whole article HERE.