None of the Above ≠ Nothing at All

​After 20 years of teaching at a private religious university, one challenge I face is the fact that more and more students come to my Ultimate Questions in Theology course—required of all undergraduate students—with little to no knowledge of Christianity, the Bible, or even religion in general. 

Given that the majority of undergraduate students at Saint Louis University come from US midwestern states, the shift in religious affiliation from Christian to None at SLU follows national patterns for Gen Z students. Since an overwhelming number of SLU undergraduates, even those who claim “no religious affiliation,” at one time identified as Christian, understanding the dissatisfaction with and exodus from Christianity by young people age 18–29 is a pressing concern for Christian institutions.

Digging deeper into the data gathered by the Pew Research Center and the Public Religion Research Institute, changes in attitudes toward institutional religion are often grounded in some ideological disagreement or personal disappointment with the church. As a church theologian and a minister of the Word and Sacrament active in the mission and life of the Presbyterian Church (USA), my own experiences confirm that the church’s own actions have contributed to its demographic demise, which is why so many—including many Christians—no longer consider the church an institution worth defending.

But amid the church’s panic over the rise of the religious Nones there is reason for hope. According to the Pew Research Center, “one-third of Americans say they do not believe in the God of the Bible, but that they do believe there is some other higher power or spiritual force in the universe. A slim majority of Americans (56%) say they believe in God ‘as described in the Bible.’ And one-in-ten do not believe in any higher power or spiritual force.” Most telling, a predominance (72%) of the religiously unaffiliated—a group that brings together those who identify as atheist, agnostic, or “nothing at all”—still “believe in a higher power of some kind, even if not in God as described in the Bible.”

​Therefore, instead of focusing on what the church can do to bring Millennials and Gen Z back into the fold, the church ought to listen to what these Nones are saying, in order to take spiritual inventory and get its own house in order. In the words of the late Rachel Held Evans, popular ex-evangelical author, "Most young adults I know aren’t looking for a religion that answers all of their questions, but rather a community of faith in which they feel safe to ask them." 

Millennials and Generation Z, the largest subset of religious Nones, attribute their exodus from institutional religion to the church’s hypocrisy, lack of intellectual rigor, and politics of intolerance. A new Christian apologetics—one that leaves coercion behind and seeks to attract believers via appeals to beauty and compassion—demands a high degree of humility, recognizing that what Christian faith offers the postmodern world is a series of theological fragments whose efficacy rests not with the church or its institutions but solely on the work of the Spirit. 

One such fragment, informed by the Trinitarian theology of the Eastern Fathers, can be found in the theology of Fr. John Zizioulas who reminds us: “There is no way to God which does not pass through the human being, as there is no way for God’s love to reach each of us except through the love of human beings.”

​ Jesus might have said it first and more concisely: "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Mark 12:31).