3: Nomads and Prodigals
In a recent article, Rolling Stone magazine asked one prominent entertainer from the Buster generation about his spiritual journey: “Did you ever go through a period where you lost your faith?” The comedian answered:
Yeah. It was a college angst thing. But once I graduated from college, some Gideon literally gave me a box of The New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs on a street in Chicago. I took one and opened it right away to Matthew, chapter 5, which is the opening of the Sermon on the Mount. That whole chapter is essentially about not worrying. I didn’t read it—it spoke to me, and it was an effortless absorption of the idea. Nothing came to me in a thunderbolt, but I thought to myself, “I’d be dumb not to reexamine this.”[20]
Who is this popular celebrity who encountered Jesus (again) through the gift of a street evangelist? Stephen Colbert, satirical conservative host of the popular faux news show The Colbert Report.
Colbert describes a dark period of his young life triggered by family tragedy—the death of his father and two of his brothers in an airplane accident when he was just ten years old. That event, coupled with an abrupt move to a new city, impacted the young man so that, by the time he went to college, Colbert was deeply skeptical about his faith—until his encounter with that Gideon handing out boxes of Bibles on the street.
A couple of decades after his return to the Catholicism of his youth, Colbert describes his nomadic spirituality like this:
From a doctrinal point of view or a dogmatic point of view or a strictly Catholic adherent point of view, I’m first to say that I talk a good game, but I don’t know how good I am about it in practice. I saw how my mother’s faith was very valuable to her and valuable to my brothers and sisters, and I’m moved by the words of Christ, and I’ll leave it at that.[21]
In the next two chapters of You Lost Me, you’ll find a few celebrities’ stories. I’ve used them because they are out-front, very visible examples of the dropout journeys we are trying to get a handle on. The last thing I want to do is objectify real people who are made in God’s image, and so I point to Stephen Colbert, Katy Perry, David Bazan, and others with respect and admiration, not ridicule or voyeurism. I also do so knowing that a closer, more personal examination of these individuals’ spiritual journeys would reveal an even more complex picture of their faith and motivations.
Colbert’s story sets up one of the questions this book seeks to answer: Isn’t the next generation’s wandering just a symptom of the same life-stage issues that all generations go through as they grow into adulthood? Isn’t it just “a college angst thing”? And closely related: Don’t young people return to church when they get older?
We might put a more academic sheen on these questions: Is Christianity’s dropout problem a unique sociological phenomenon of the early part of the twenty-first century or just a natural part of the human life cycle in which young people experience faith maturation? There is a good deal of debate on this matter among experts, as I have mentioned. This is also one of the most common questions I get when I speak or consult on this subject.
I want to argue that the problem is both old and new. That is, dropping out is both a natural part of the maturation process—of people of any generation becoming comfortable, in fits and starts, in their own spiritual and religious skin—as well as a unique, pressing reality for the church. Wrestling with faith is an enduring feature of the transition to young adulthood, as Baby Buster Colbert’s story demonstrates. And it is a particularly urgent dilemma for the Christian community because of the profound changes to the emerging generation’s social and spiritual context, described at length in the previous chapter. Many of the struggles experienced by Mosaic dropouts are not new—they have, in fact, been repeated through centuries of spiritual life within Christianity—yet they are exacerbated by the new realities of access, alienation, and authority, which combine to make today’s twentysomethings discontinuously different from previous generations.
In this chapter and the next, I want to introduce you to the dropouts of the next generation, who fall into three broad categories: nomads, prodigals, and exiles. As you might expect, no two young people share the same pathway away from or toward faith; we can identify trends, yet disengagement is a rich and varied tapestry of individual experiences. Each of the thousands of young people we interviewed described personal aspects of leaving faith or leaving a church, sharing unique and specific stories, conversations, and experiences. Remember: every story matters.
Even given the individuality of experience expressed by those we interviewed, we can observe some significant patterns. Young dropouts are being “lost” in three distinctive ways. Two groups (exiles, whom we’ll get to know in the next chapter, and nomads) are disengaging from church, while the third is rejecting Christian faith entirely (prodigals). I have intentionally rooted these labels in types of people found in Scripture, because our research uncovered significant alignment with these ancient archetypes of faith.
If you are an adult over the age of thirty, some of these templates have likely been true of your own experience or perhaps those of your peers; these forms of dropping out are not exclusive to ages eighteen to twenty-nine. Still, dropping out is concentrated among young adults, and we need to understand these patterns better to capture their particular relevance for today’s context.
Let’s get to know the first two types of dropouts: nomads and prodigals.
NOMADS
Every generation since the middle of the last century has had its pop princesses and celebrity trendsetters. The 1950s and ’60s made an enduring icon out of blonde bombshell Marilyn Monroe. Cher and Diana Ross, in their sequined jumpsuits and surreal headdresses, reigned supreme over the disco era of the 1970s. No one could come close to the superstardom of Madonna in the ’80s and ’90s—not until, that is, a cute little Mouseketeer named Britney Spears donned a suggestive schoolgirl getup and begged America to “Hit Me Baby, One More Time.”
When I set out to find a cultural icon to represent the nomads among the you-lost-me generation, I didn’t have to look any further than Katy Perry, pop music’s newest It Girl. Through the early months of 2011, it was nearly impossible to escape her infectious hit “Teenage Dream,” just as you couldn’t go anywhere in 2008 without hearing “I Kissed a Girl.” (You may find the lyrics objectionable, but the tune’s catchiness is undeniable.) A Southern California native, twenty-seven-year-old Perry is known almost as much for her colorful vintage style and ’50s-inspired pinup girl glamour as for her frothy, radio-friendly odes to teenage crushes and heartbreaks. Perry is married to potty-mouthed English comedian Russell Brand, a recovering heroin and sex addict, who once claimed to have slept with more than eighty women in a single month.
Katy Perry is also the daughter of Pentecostal evangelical ministers.
Perry grew up singing in church, speaking in tongues, and eating “angeled” (never “deviled”) eggs. By her own account, once she embarked on a career in pop music, she wanted to try everything that her strict religious upbringing had kept off-limits: “I was like, ‘Wow, there are a lot of choices.’ I began to become a sponge for all I had missed. . . . I was as curious as the cat.”[22] For the most part, Perry sees her experimentation and exploration in very positive terms: “To grow up and come from something different than what you are now and to spread your wings . . . I think that’s a beautiful thing.”[23] At the same time, her Christian heritage is still very much a part of her personal belief system, hodgepodge though it may be. In an August 2010 Rolling Stone cover story titled “Sex, God & Katy,” Perry describes her beliefs this way:
I still believe Jesus is the son of God. But I also believe in extraterrestrials, and that there are people who are sent from God to be messengers, and all kinds of crazy stuff. I look up into the sky . . . all those stars and planets, the never-endingness of the universe. . . . Every time I look up, I know that I’m nothing and there’s something way beyond me. I don’t think it’s as simple as heaven and hell.[24]
She also values spiritual ideas and pursuits but isn’t sure how they fit with her adult identity: “[Spirituality] is just important to me. The details of the importance are still to be determined, I guess. . . . It’s one of those things that as the older you get and the farther you try to run away from your parents, you just turn right around and they are embedded into your DNA.”[25]
Perry embodies the first, and most common, category of dropout—the spiritual nomad, the wanderer. For these young adults, faith is nomadic, seasonal, or may appear to be an optional or peripheral part of life. At some point during their teen or young adult years, nomads disengage from attending church or significantly distance themselves from the Christian community. They demonstrate an up-and-down, hit-or-miss faith, like Katy Perry and Stephen Colbert, who put their faith on the shelf for a time. Most, however, do not discard it entirely.
We estimate that about two-fifths of young adults who have a Christian background will go through a period of spiritual nomadism. This spiritual drifting, either a little or a lot, through the twentysomething years is the most common dropout experience of young Christians coming of age. Many of these young people will discontinue church participation, although not all will do so. This period of wandering is corroborated by other research we have done at Barna Group that shows that half of all born-again adult Christians say they have gone through a prolonged period in their lives when they felt very distant or spiritually removed from God. Much of this occurred during their young adult years.
Frequently nomads among the Mosaic generation say that leaving church was less an intentional choice and more of a “slow fade,” a period of increasing detachment that took many months or years. For some, faith was never very deep; they were “in the building” but never really committed to following Christ. Yet for others, the opposite is true. Many nomads describe a personal history of intense commitment.
One of the defining characteristics of this group of dropouts is that they have a mix of positive and negative feelings about their “native” faith. Most nomads are disenchanted with religion on some level but they have not cut all ties that bind them to Christianity. Most nomads consider themselves to be Christian, even when they are disengaged from church. Whether they are actively following Christ is another matter entirely; many have pushed their faith so far to the sidelines that they look little like a faithful Christian to those observing their behaviors and priorities.
Nomads can be particularly frustrating to parents and church leaders because they are neither inside nor outside the church. The parents of nomads may have an acute sense of anxiety over their children’s wandering, but what can they do? Many feel helpless to affect their dropout’s choices. Nomads can also frustrate researchers because, depending on what question we ask in our surveys, they can appear to be quite spiritual. But ask any pastor or church leader and he or she will tell you that, while nomads may show up every once in a while, they are missing from the faith community in the ways that matter most and are not actively pursuing a deeper relationship with Christ.
Sometimes disengagement happens in the late high school years or right after high school; in other instances it may kick in during the decade of the twenties. How long does the nomadic journey last? It can be a few months or a few decades—and sometimes a lifetime, morphing into a more entrenched posture toward the church or Christianity. Our research suggests that the average nomad is “out of commission” for about three years, though it is sometimes much longer. Some of these young people may hover on the edges indefinitely and never invest in a truly vibrant and growing spirituality. Others may encounter another group of dropouts—the exiles, whom we’ll get to know in the next chapter—and make a serious, deep-level commitment to Christ (though they may never return to the institutional church).
Here are some characteristics of the nomadic mindset:
Nomads Describe Their Faith Journeys
Percentage of 18- to 29-year-olds who have a Christian background
completely true of me
completely or mostly true of me
I think going to church or being with Christian friends is optional.
21%
43%
Faith and religion are just not that important to me right now.
15%
25%
I may return to church when I’m older but I have no interest now.
9%
24%
I used to be very involved in my church but I don’t fit there anymore.
8%
23%
Church meant a lot to me when I was younger but it doesn’t make sense in my life now.
8%
20%
I grew up as a Christian but since then I have tried other faiths or spiritual practices.
6%
14%
I made an emotional decision to be a Christian early in life that didn’t last.
5%
14%
Barna Group | 2011 | N=1,296
PRODIGALS
The second category of dropout consists of young people who leave their childhood or teen faith entirely. This includes those who deconvert (including atheists, agnostics, and “nones,” those who say they have no religious affiliation) and those who switch to another faith. For the sake of simplicity, I refer to both as prodigals.
Prodigals’ views of Christians and churches are all over the map, largely dependent on how positive or negative their experiences were. Many prodigals are quite nuanced and logical in their reasons for disengagement. Most are more defined by and committed to their distance from Christianity than they are to their current spiritual perspectives. In other words, one of the identity-shaping characteristics of prodigals is that they say they are no longer Christian. While nomads may bounce from church to church or from active to inactive, the typical prodigal is either holding firmly to “no faith” or espousing a different faith entirely.
Our research finds that many prodigals’ negative experiences with Christianity run deep. One such prodigal, singer-songwriter David Bazan, formerly of the band Pedro the Lion, is a deconverted Christian. His first solo album, Curse Your Branches (2009), was reviewed as a “harrowing breakup record—except he’s dumping God, Jesus, and the evangelical life.”[26] In an interview about his journey away from Christianity, Bazan describes the devastation of leaving the faith: “It’s like I have to go through life with a scalpel. What do you cut out? My whole identity since I was twenty-five years old was completely intertwined with the Christian faith.”[27] And later in the article: “My parents were the biggest [spiritual] influences. Their expressions of Christianity, love, service, and compassion really impacted me. They are deeply ethical and compassionate people. If it weren’t for their authentic example, I would have bailed on Christianity much earlier than I did.”[28]
Of the criticism he has received from his Christian fans, Bazan says, “What I’ve done is unforgivable to some: You don’t break ranks. But in the longer arc of the faith, I think what I’ve done falls in the tradition of people shaking their fists at God.”[29]
The term “prodigal” harkens back to the famous story Jesus told of a father and his two sons (see Luke 15:11–32). The younger son, as the parable goes, becomes a prodigal when he leaves his father’s household and throws away his inheritance on wild living and partying. Yes, the prodigal in Jesus’s narrative returns home, and that is the hope we can have for present-day prodigals. For now, however, they are lost, disconnected from their parents’ faith. I recently heard a mom describe one of her daughters in this way: “Janey is our prodigal. And it breaks our heart.”
The fact that many modern-day prodigals don’t “flame out” like the son in Jesus’s parable does not lessen the feelings of anxiety and even grief experienced by the parents, church leaders, and religious educators they leave behind. It’s my desire that, as we get to know two distinct groups of prodigals and their reasons for leaving “home,” we can respond with the patience and compassion that the father in Jesus’s parable displayed. (After all, as Tim Keller points out in his book The Prodigal God, the story of the apostate son is also the story of a father’s prodigal—that is, extravagant, even reckless—grace.)
Bazan typifies the first breed of prodigal, those who come to a point where Christianity is intellectually untenable. We might call them “head-driven prodigals,” because their reasons for abandoning the faith are rational and, many times, well-reasoned—even if many of them also feel hurt by their church experiences.
The “heart-driven prodigal,” on the other hand, embodies most fully the concept of prodigal, with all the emotional punch that term implies. These are young people whose faith burns out in an extreme fashion, usually as a result of deep wounds, frustration, or anger, or of their own desire to live life outside the bounds of the Christian faith. They express their rejection of childhood Christianity in emotionally strong terms and may feel bitterness or resentment for many years after leaving the fold.
Frequently head-driven prodigals define themselves by their new faith choices, while heart-driven prodigals focus on their denunciation of Christianity. There also seems to be something open-ended and unresolved about heart-driven prodigals, as though their spiritual flame could reignite at any moment; head-driven prodigals, by contrast, seem to be more settled in, perhaps even resigned to, their distance from the faith.
As you might expect, many prodigals maintain a mix of head- and heart-driven factors that led them away from faith. Both kinds of prodigals (and nomads too) often struggle with sex, alcohol use, or drug abuse. Our research does not allow us to determine whether these factors are cause for religious wandering or symptomatic of a deeper search for meaning.
Prodigals Describe Their Faith Journeys
Percentage of 18- to 29-year-olds who have a Christian background
completely true of me
completely or mostly true of me
Christian beliefs just don’t make sense to me.
10%
21%
I had a negative experience in church or with Christians.
9%
20%
My spiritual needs cannot be met by Christianity.
10%
19%
I don’t plan on ever returning to the church.
12%
18%
When I was a Christian, I wasn’t encouraged to think for myself.
7%
18%
I used to be a Christian but now I’m not.
9%
15%
My parents probably feel as though I rejected their faith.
5%
14%
Barna Group | 2011 | N=1,296
Here are some characteristics of the prodigal mindset:
WHAT ARE YOUNG PEOPLE LEAVING?
Here is a snapshot view of nomads and prodigals side by side:
Nomads
Prodigals
Wandering from church, wrestling with faith
Rejecting or switching faith
Disengaging from church, Christian community, or other conventional forms of faith
Switching from one faith to another or to no faith/deconversion
Going through a period of distraction, disobedience, or disconnection from God, or becoming disillusioned or frustrated with their church experience or with their parents’ faith
Those who drop out of church (nomads) are far more common than prodigals—roughly four times more common. Yet it is easy to imagine why three-quarters of pastors and youth workers believe that most young people are putting their faith on the shelf during their twenties, rather than recognizing that most dropouts are pressing pause on church. In one sense, church leaders are accurately reading the situation. By their measures of involvement, the church has lost these young adults. Many stakeholders, such as parents, pastors, priests, and youth workers interpret this loss as a massive exodus from the faith, but the sociological reality is that most of those absent young adults are going through a period of nomadism. Only 11 percent of young adults say that they grew up as a Christian but have deconverted entirely or converted to another faith; this number is offset somewhat by the 4 percent who convert to Christianity after a childhood in a different faith. All things considered, a young Christian has about 1:9 odds of losing his or her faith entirely. While this is a rare outcome, it is a very high number when you think about the estimated five million eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-old ex-Christians encompassed by this statistic.[30]
From the perspective of many Christians, prodigals are the more acute problem—and in one sense, that’s true. To put it crassly, prodigals no longer count in the “Christian column.” Yet this line in the sand ignores an important point: a nomad who self-describes as a Christian is not necessarily in a better state of faith than a non-believer. In fact the Bible serves up special criticism for those who are “lukewarm,” neither in nor out (see Rev. 3:16). Lukewarm would certainly describe many of the young nomads we interviewed. They think of themselves as spiritual but have little orthodoxy, meaningful accountability, or faith vitality in their lives. Furthermore, we should be careful not to define someone’s spiritual life as better or worse than another, because it is not always obvious who is moving in which direction.
All this reaffirms what we described in chapter 1, an important insight based on the research for this project. The dropout phenomenon is most accurately described as a generation of Christians who are disengaging from institutional forms of church. Young people are leaving established congregations. Many young Christians—even as they express generally positive associations with Jesus Christ—are alienated from the institutional forms of faith in which they were raised.
A NEW REALITY
At the beginning of this chapter, we asked if the dropout phenomenon at work in the Mosaic generation is any different from the pattern of young adult disengagement in earlier generations. I believe it is. Beginning with the Boomers, a period of nomadism in young adulthood became a normative experience for twentysomethings; yet the new social and spiritual reality in which Mosaics live makes it less likely that they will follow their predecessors back to church in the same numbers or in the same ways.
Given their access to all kinds of information and a wide variety of worldviews, many young adults no longer believe that the local church and Christianity provide the only or even best avenues to spiritual growth and maturation. Nomads and prodigals are able to get spiritual input from a variety of sources, unmediated by the delivery systems common in the established church.
Mosaics’ alienation from our society’s institutions—including the traditional family, educational and economic structures, and the church—means that they are deeply skeptical about the relevance of these structures to their lives. When the Christian community functions according to the priorities and protocols of previous generations, there is little resonance in the minds and hearts of today’s twentysomethings.
Finally, young adults’ location in a post-Christian culture encourages them to reject the authority of the Bible and of spiritual leaders and even to question the existence of truth. Many prodigals and nomads seek and find sources of authority outside of conventional Christian forms.
Dropouts reject Christianity or church involvement for a variety of specific and personal reasons. Some of their rationales may seem myopic, self-absorbed, and petty, the ultimate expressions of the narcissistic “Me Generation.” Others—such as stories from young people wounded by church life and repelled by poor embodiments of the faith—are gut-wrenching. In part 2, we will take a look at the six most pressing reasons Mosaics give for dropping out and at how these connect to issues of access, alienation, and authority that shape the world inhabited by the next generation.
But first, let’s meet one more segment of the you-lost-me generation—the exiles.