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An interesting editorial about millennial religion


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46 minutes ago, rpn said:

The article would make a great discussion topic for an Institute or YMYW Fireside.

Yes, I think there is a lot in there that could fit nicely in the elements of The Church of Jesus Christ, both to consider embracing as well as healthy examination.

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7 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

This is so utterly different than confident claims that religion is over in the West and there is no way back for it.  

 

Some times I will hear from Muslim activists (who have anti-America ish as part of their activism) about the godlessness and secularism of America and I'm like . . . you have never been here, that's all I have to say.  Now I'm not saying our versions of God are all healthy, but honey, we've got him on every street corner.

Edited by Maidservant
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On 7/12/2019 at 10:24 AM, Maidservant said:

Yes, I think there is a lot in there that could fit nicely in the elements of The Church of Jesus Christ, both to consider embracing as well as healthy examination.

And to help the youth ask themselves who they can or need to be, and why.

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  • 8 months later...
On 7/13/2019 at 2:02 PM, Maidservant said:

What I got from the article is that the premise is that young people are less about believing specific cosmos concepts but still searching for a focused path and a real time community.

My experience with YIMYW as of recent is that in their homes there is little discussion and/or teaching about that fundamentals of the Gospel. I have noticed in the last few years that the Sacrament talks are banal and shallow; lacking strong doctrinal foundation and a little more than travel logs or personal journal entries. The God of the universe is as real as daylight. We are ALL sinners; broken, fallen creatures on our way to perdition unless we repent and come onto Christ. People forget that hell is a real place and that eternal death is a real predicament. Without true repentance and the Atoning blood of Christ there is  no hope for our souls. That is the heart of the Gospel of peace and the rest is an appendage to our religion. And I hear very little of it. 

Couple that lack of insight with the distraction of this world and you have YM and YW with a shallow faith that has no real spiritual or theological anchor. When the storms of life come or the smooth, liberal, existential thesis for which they have no cogent counter argument, they fall by the wayside.  Just my thoughts. 

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@Robert F. Smith:

Re: The Video You Post Above

So I can resist the urge that, undoubtedly, I will feel to throw my laptop across the room once I start watching the video, who is that idiot, and what is the Reader's Digest Condensed Version of what he has to say?

P.S.: My hypothesis is more in line with a key passage from the article about nuns about why people embrace religion (see my next post, below).  To those who say that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has to change this or that allegedly-outmoded doctrine, or that it has to change its racist, sexist, homophobic, bigoted, outmoded ways or it's going to keep hemorrhaging members (especially younger, more-"enlightened" ones), I say that if it tries to do that too much, there won't be anything left for former members who once rejected it to return to.

Edited by Kenngo1969
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I think that here is the money quote from the article linked to, above, discussing the attitude of young people toward religion:

Quote

 

Overall, organized religions in America are still leaching members. But it appears that young people who do seek religion are drawn to a stricter, more old-fashioned form of it. Orthodox Judaism is becoming more popular with young Americans today than other, more liberal Jewish sects. The majority of Jewish Americans who are reform or conservative are over 50, while the majority of Orthodox Jews here are under 40. This isn’t only because Orthodox Jewish families have more children. Orthodox Judaism’s retention and conversion rates are much higher than they were two decades ago. The memberships of “liberal” Protestant sects like Lutheranism are rapidly aging while more doctrinaire Christian denominations—Baptists, Orthodox Christians—have younger adherents. A fascinating study showed that millennials—even Protestants and atheists—are attracted to churches with old-fashioned gilded altars and “classic” worship styles over modern ones. Young Americans are often more likely than their elders to believe in core elements of traditional religious belief like heaven and hell, miracles, and angels, and young religious people are more likely than older ones to assert that their faith is the “one true path to eternal life.”

Pollsters have also observed that young people in America seem more open than their parents or grandparents were to authoritarianism, as if we possess a hidden desire to be ruled—that it would be a relief. In 2016, nearly one-quarter of young Americans told Harvard researchers that democracy was “bad” for the country—in 1995, only around 10 percent of young people said that—and they are consistently more likely than their elders to say technocrats or a strong leader should run America, even if that means doing away with elections. My friend Josh, a convert to Catholicism, told me he was drawn to the church specifically because it “doesn’t hold a vote to determine the truth.”

Several people to whom I suggested, recently, that Americans might become more religious said that couldn’t be true. They pointed to surveys saying Generation Z is the most undogmatic and atheist generation ever. But the truth is that it’s incredibly hard to read American young people. You can find surveys and news stories indicating they’re more genderfluid, more committed to traditional gender roles, more rebellious, more uptight and moralistic about drugs and sex, better with money, lazier. This may reflect internal contradictions, the kind that compelled some of the young women I met to seek a much more streamlined answer.

 

 

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9 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

@Robert F. Smith:

Re: The Video You Post Above

So I can resist the urge that, undoubtedly, I will feel to throw my laptop across the room once I start watching the video, who is that idiot, and what is the Reader's Digest Condensed Version of what he has to say?

David Voas presented the condensed version you seek.  It is 16 minutes long and quite factual.  His arguments are based on easily obtainable social statistics.  He even mentions Mormons along the way. There is really nothing controversial about the conclusion that there is a steady secularization going on in modern countries, and that the younger generations are ignoring religion more and more.  Why would the facts upset you?  Facts are your friend.

9 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

P.S.: My hypothesis is more in line with a key passage from the article about nuns about why people embrace religion (see my next post, below).  To those who say that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has to change this or that allegedly-outmoded doctrine, or that it has to change its racist, sexist, homophobic, bigoted, outmoded ways or it's going to keep hemorrhaging members (especially younger, more-"enlightened" ones), I say that if it tries to do that too much, there won't be anything left for former members who once rejected it to return to.

The CJCLDS is not going to change its doctrines, and there is no likelihood that it will lose members as quickly as most other denominations, but it will find it increasingly difficult to gain converts in the Western world.  That is a strong social trend which will continue.

What Voas overlooked in his statistics is the trend of non-religious people not to reproduce, not to get married or form families.  This trend is at its highest level in history.  More people live alone (even before the pandemic) than ever before in history.  Non-religious people do not replace themselves in the population.  Religious people have a higher birthrate and thus win the secularization debate by default -- not because they have better arguments for God.

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On 6/1/2020 at 8:49 AM, Robert F. Smith said:

The CJCLDS is not going to change its doctrines, and there is no likelihood that it will lose members as quickly as most other denominations, but it will find it increasingly difficult to gain converts in the Western world.  That is a strong social trend which will continue.

Wow, this is a blast from the past.

I would be very wary of declaring that social trends will continue. They seem to die and get reversed pretty regularly.

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2 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Wow, this is a blast from the past.

I would be very wary of declaring that social trends will continue. They seem to die and get reversed pretty regularly.

Some trends are baked into reality, while others are evanescent.  The key is in knowing the difference between long-term and short-term trends.

Take, for example, "the distilled algorithmic wisdom of a crowd. ..., that’s the worst of all possible worlds: a manipulated consumer certainty that only shores up the authority of an unchosen, hidden source," which objectifies The Lonely Crowd of Riesman, Glazer, and Denney, even though it was published in 1950.  https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/yelp-and-the-wisdom-of-the-lonely-crowd

The internet and social media have only exacerbated the problems of the middle class in America -- another kind of pandemic.

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48 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

internet and social media have only exacerbated the problems of the middle class in America -- another kind of pandemic.

They have helped with other issues though. I would never have found someone who liked talking about religion because I was too shy to ask face to face or go to new places. The internet gave me a different sort of safety (anonymity I guess as well as making others easy to find) which helped me work on my extroverted qualities. 
 

Also I wonder how many more decades I would have suffered before being diagnosed by doctors instead of figuring it out myself and having access to the most advanced knowledge online. 
 

Maybe it has ramped up good and bad, so life is growing in intensity?

Edited by Calm
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This may be off-topic, Maidservant.  Feel free to rein me in if you think it goes too far afield.  What do we do if the good professor (in the video linked above) is right that "there's no way back for religion in the west"?  (I'm not suggesting that we, as members of the Church of Jesus Christ, cease to minister, that we throw Mosiah 18:8-10 out the window, et cetera, but ... :huh::unknw:)

Are the First Amendment's religion clauses in danger of being repealed?  (I hope not.  At least a plurality of the United States Supreme Court was persuaded that a retaining a monument containing formerly-overtly-religious symbol is a worthwhile endeavor because of the monument's cultural significance.)  See here:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/17-1717_4f14.pdf

Thoughts?

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