Face It! -- The Spiritual Problem With Teens: They're Following Us

There is a lot of truth to this. Churches need to leave the "touchy-feely" world view behind and get back to basics: Biblical Truth and Moral Absolutes.

(AgapePress) - Recent sociological studies are revealing a growing scandal within American Christianity. Many of our churchgoing teens are not Christian or, perhaps, are marginal believers who profess religious ideas that represent an astonishing departure from historic Christianity.
In fact, large swaths of our teens hold to views that are decidedly pagan, according to study results from University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton.
See earlier installments of this series:
"A Strange Faith -- Are Church-Going Kids Christian?"
"God, Religion ... Whatever -- Are Our Churchgoing Youth Falling Away from the Faith?"
The pair of researchers reported their findings in a stunning book, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. They said, for example, that "57% of Catholic youth maybe or definitely believe in reincarnation, 46% in astrology, 48% in communicating with the dead, and 32% in psychics and fortune-tellers .... On the other hand, 33% of conservative Protestant youth maybe or definitely believe in reincarnation, 33% in astrology, 31% in communicating with the dead, and 21% in psychics and fortune tellers."
When compared to the clear teachings of Scripture and Christianity, Smith and Denton said numbers like these were "astounding."
Just as disturbing, according to the Barna Research Group, a polling firm that focuses on religious trends in the U.S., 63 percent of self-professed Christian teens do not believe that Jesus is the Son of the one true God, and 58 percent believe all faiths teach equally-valued truths.
How did this spiritual sickness happen -- and, equally as important, how can it be cured? Many of the problems and solutions can be found in the same places.
Home-Grown ReligionIf "home is where the heart is," then home is also where the religious heart of a young person is often shaped.
While many parents probably doubt that they have much influence on their teenagers -- especially as compared to that of friends or the media -- the opposite is actually true, Smith and Denton said.
"Most teenagers and their parents may not realize it, but a lot of research in the sociology of religion suggests that the most important social influence in shaping young people's religious lives is the religious life modeled and taught by their parents," the researchers said.
Even in the research for Soul Searching, Smith and Denton found "that the importance of faith for teenagers fairly closely tracks the importance of faith for their parents. Parents for whom religious faith is quite important are thus likely to be raising teenagers for whom faith is quite important, while parents whose faith is not important are likely to be raising teenagers for whom faith is also not important."
Understanding this truth might be empowering to parents, or even alarming, they said. But it should not be ignored. The state of teenage religious beliefs in this country should be "understood as largely reflecting the world of adult religion, especially parental religion, and are in strong continuity with it. Few teenagers today are rejecting or reacting against the adult religion into which they are being socialized."
So if the religion of churchgoing teens is increasingly non-Christian, and if their religious beliefs are to a large extent shaped by parents and other Christian adults, what does this say about the religious beliefs of the adults themselves?
In his book, Real Teens: A Contemporary Snapshot of Youth Culture, pollster and researcher George Barna reaches the obvious conclusion: "Without a doubt, teen America's confusion regarding truth is a reflection of the distorted and contradictory teaching ..." they get from the adults in their lives.
Moreover, beyond simply what adults say about religion is the manner in which adults live their lives in front of teenagers. "We may conclude that teenagers don't think about moral truth often or deeply because they are neither challenged to do so nor is such behavior modeled for them," Barna said. "Their attitudes suggest that they have a sneaking suspicion that this is a vital issue, but without the people they can trust and imitate devoting themselves to the matter, they have no trouble ignoring the issue."
The critical importance of parents, then, is why Smith and Denton suggested that "the best way to get most youth more involved in and serious about their faith communities is to get their parents more involved in and serious about their faith communities" (emphasis in original).
That would mean, they said, that instead of thinking of youth ministry in isolation, "our findings suggest that overall youth ministry would probably best be pursued in a larger context of family ministry, that parents should be viewed as indispensable partners in the religious formation of youth."
In the end, they insisted, parents "most likely will get from teens what they as adults themselves are."

Read the rest here.