NEWS STORY: Young Christians Blaze Own Trail, Independent of Parents

c. 2004 Religion News Service PORTLAND, Ore. _ In Christianity, the image of the shepherd leading sheep is a powerful one. For generations, the same could be said of parents leading their children to their religion. But for many young adults, that’s beginning to change _ and not in the way you might expect. To […]

c. 2004 Religion News Service

PORTLAND, Ore. _ In Christianity, the image of the shepherd leading sheep is a powerful one. For generations, the same could be said of parents leading their children to their religion.

But for many young adults, that’s beginning to change _ and not in the way you might expect. To be sure, here and across the country, people still practice religion, or don’t practice it, the same as their parents. But pastors and scholars are noticing something else happening, too.


Many young adults are moving away from their parents’ example _ but not toward a more secular life, as was the case for so many baby boomers in the 1960s and ’70s. Instead, they are carving out their own faith, which often is more devout or more active than that of their parents.

These young people, especially those from Christian backgrounds, are both joining mainline churches and founding their own new spiritual communities. In part because their parents tend to be so secular, their impact is especially striking in the Pacific Northwest, the most unchurched part of the country, according to several academic studies.

They vote their consciences, which is not to say they all vote the same way, either as each other or as their parents. They may or may not take part in the “culture wars.” Some of them don’t even want to be called Christian, a label they say is as loaded as they come.

So what is happening to twentysomethings that is making them turn away from their parents’ religious background, or their lack thereof, and declare themselves a different kind of believer?

Ask them, and they’re not sure. For starters, they often want a clear-cut idea of moral right and wrong, absolutes that weren’t that important to their counterculture-era parents. Talk to pastors, scholars and other observers and you come up with cultural reasons that might be part of it: a turning away from an increasingly technological, anything-goes, consumer-driven society.

“They are longing for a connection to the past in an age where we think history started yesterday with `me,”’ says Paul Metzger, a professor at Multnomah Biblical Seminary, in Portland, Ore. He says young people are finding more comfort in old-style symbols and ceremony than modern mega-churches.

“There are many who want to return to Christian roots.”

“They come looking for people of integrity,” says the Rev. Melinda Wagner, co-pastor of First Immanuel Lutheran Church in Northwest Portland. “They believe that people they meet at work can’t be trusted or that they have different values.”


Sometimes it’s a mark that, as young adults, they are settling down, she adds. “As one person put it, `I got engaged. I got a dentist. I joined a church.”’

Colleen Carroll Campbell, who wrote a book about the phenomenon, thinks it has to do with growing up in affluence and still feeling empty, a sort of early midlife crisis that has helped fuel the increasing religiosity in the country. Her book is “The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy.”

“A lot of them have seen the best that secular life has to offer,” she says. “Some have been raised without religion and indulged in a whole party lifestyle. Many have already done quite well in their careers and have more money than their parents had.”

Their question, she says, is: Now what?

“This generation wants an integrated Christian faith. They detest compartmentalization,” Campbell says. “They say, `I don’t want my faith to be something I do on Sunday. If it’s not something that impacts every part of my life _ my school work, my job, who I date, how I vote _ if it doesn’t transform my life, then it’s not worth much.”’

That’s where Emily Pearlman, 24, of Gresham, Ore. found herself three years ago. She’d grown up along the Sandy River, in a household where her dad did not welcome religion. She’d visit a church now and then with a friend, but it was in college, at the Catholic University of Portland, that she first studied theology. It opened up to her the work of Jesus.

She defines that work in terms of feeding the hungry, healing the sick,funding insurance coverage for the poor, striving to end war and all its casualties.


A wife, mom and medical receptionist, she is an active member of a church but doesn’t like being called a Christian, believing the label has been ruined by those who don’t live out their faith.

“I am somebody who follows the mission of Christ daily _ and if that makes me a Christian, so be it,” she says. “But being a Christian is more than attending church on Sunday and having a fish decal on your car.”

Josh Butler, 27, had a similar experience. He grew up in Salem-Keizer, Ore. with a mom who took him to a church now and then and a dad who wasn’t much interested in religion.

As a boy, Josh nurtured a fascination for the stories of J.R.R. Tolkien and the Bible. He saw God as vague and distant but still devoted to the outcast.

He tried an evangelical church in high school, but by college he thought the faith “closed him off” to others who didn’t share it and to the culture at large.

These days, he’s a graduate student in theology and a pastor of worship and the arts at Imago Dei Community, a 4-year-old Christian group that’s grown from a core of 15 to almost 750 believers.


He says he’s found a worshipping community that values art, beauty and even uncertainty. They don’t agree on every political point but they are committed to living in community, even in tension. His challenge, he says, is to “live the essence of the Gospel,” realizing that his understanding of it may change over time.

He teaches a Saturday morning class on theology and culture, trying to convince his students that the secular world may have something relevant to say, even on religious topics. A movie like “I Huckabees,” for example, asks timeless questions about the meaning of life and of relationships, he says.

For young adults, following their parents’ lead may still be the most common path to religious faith. But a group of religious free agents are finding their own way. Author Carroll thinks they may end up changing the Christian faith.

Only time will tell who is leading whom.

(Nancy Haught writes about religion for The Oregonian in Portland)

MP/JL END RNS

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