The Rev. Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor

© 2023, Dr. Tamilio

I came across some statistics recently that disturbed me greatly: a preacher was explaining why we are in the post-Christian age.  The younger generation does not go to church.  There are many reasons for this, but at the heart of it all: they believe in God less and less — and those who do believe in God do not find church important.  It doesn’t have any meaning for them.

And it isn’t just kids these days.  This is not one of those sermons.  Adults attend church less and less, too.  A recent NBC News report claims that according to Gallup, only 47% of adults say that they are affiliated with a house of worship.[1]  This is the first time the number has dipped below 50% since Gallup started tracking these numbers 80 years ago!  For a long time, church membership was in the seventy-percentile range.  It was 76% right after World War II.  It only dipped to 73% in the mid-60s, which is surprising considering how radical that period was in American history, how it saw a departure from traditional values.  It really started to drop markedly when we entered this new century.  In 2000, it was still 70%.  Within five years it dropped six percentage points.  By 2015 it was at 55%.  And today?  Well, I gave you that number already: 47%.  Yet almost 90 % of Americans say they believe in God!  It does not take much to conclude that if 90% of us believe in God, but only 47% of us are affiliated with a church — and I don’t mean that 47% of us go to church regularly; I am saying that 47% of us are “affiliated” with a church — if only half of believers go to church, then that means that something is really off.  We have missed the boat.

Now, let me contrast these figures with numbers that are about a radically different topic, and let’s go back to the younger generation for a second.

The documentary The Social Dilemma, which is on Netflix, looks at social media and the problems it has caused.[2]  Dr. Jonathan Haidt, a Social Psychologist from the New York University School of Business, talks about depression and anxiety in teen and preteen girls in the United States.  The number of girls that were hospitalized because they cut or hurt themselves went way up when we hit 2010.  It is up 62% among older teenage girls.  It is up 189% among preteen girls.  The numbers get worse.  Suicide is up 70% in teenage girls from 2000 to 2010.  Suicide among preteen girls is up 151%.  What happened in 2010 that accounts for this change?  These kids are part of the first generation that got on social media when they were in middle school.  According to Dr. Haidt, “A whole generation is more anxious, more fragile, more depressed.  They are much less comfortable taking risks.”  They are getting their driver’s licenses much later.  They do not engage in romantic relationships.  I have been told by several college-age kids that they are part of what is called “hook-up culture.”  In other words, they have sex, but they do not date.

According to Jaron Lanier, who is featured in the same Netflix documentary, “We created a world in which online connection has become primary, especially for the younger generation.”  This has influenced their worldview and, more importantly, the way they view themselves.  People are glued to their screens.  They are looking for meaning in some sort of alternative, vapid, digital world, and the reality is that this world leaves them feeling more isolated and empty.

Now let’s get back to the church.  This generation is more and more biblically illiterate; there is no doubt about that.  Let me give you just one example — just one.  When I first started teaching in 1992 (I taught English at Salem State between 1992 and 1999), students had at least a working knowledge of the biblical narrative.  If, for example, I read these lines from T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”…

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter

…if I read these lines and then asked my students what Eliot is alluding to here, I would get a fair number of students who would say, “John the Baptist.”  Herod decapitated John to appease his wife Herodias.  Nowadays, they have no clue.  Most don’t even know who John the Baptist was!

Don’t worry, though.  Others are vying for their attention and allegiance.  Here is the title of a story that came across my news feed yesterday.  Ready?  The “ACLU hails first ‘After-School Satan Club’ meeting at Virginia elementary school ‘a victory for free speech and religious liberty.’”  I am not making this up.  What would happen if this was an after-school Bible study club?  Actually, such clubs do exist, but they are considered intolerant of religious indoctrination.  But an after-school Satan Club?  Hurray for tolerance!

This is the world we live in.

By the way, do you know which city is the most unchurched city in the United States?  It is a three-way tie: San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, California.  Do you know who is in second place?  It is a tie between Boston and Manchester, Massachusetts.  We do not live in a part of the country that cares too much about church.  The good old days are gone.  The next person who asks me, “Why can’t our church be the way it used to be,” meaning the way it was in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and maybe even the ‘70s and a bit of the ‘80s, the next person who says this will be handed a copy of this sermon.

This is why.

We live in an age that has created other gods, rather than the one true God.  We live in an age that is about self-worship and self-centered ideologies.  According to an article that came out about five years ago by Dr. J.H. McKenna, Senior Lecturer in the History of Religious Ideas at the University of California Irvine, according to this article, “God Is Unconvincing To Smart Folks.”  That is the title of the article!  We are too smart to believe in God.  Science, culture, and technology give us all the answers we need.

The soul of this country is lost.  I think we need another great revival.

Now it isn’t going to happen by us “doing church” the way we always have.  I hate to break it to you, and I am sure you are not going to want to hear this, but our worship is probably pretty similar to the way it was in the heyday of the church: the 1950s and ‘60s.  Can you imagine if we did anything the way we used to sixty to seventy years ago?  Can you?  You would laugh.

If we want our church to grow (let alone survive), we are going to have to start doing things differently.  I am not saying that we have to change or even water down what we believe.  We have to change the way we package what we proclaim.

When Peter, James, and John ascended the mountain with Jesus, they had no idea what was going to happen.  When he was Transfigured before them, they were awestruck.  I want people to come to this church and leave awestruck — not because of me, or you, or anything else that goes on here, but because of the Living Lord whom they encounter when they come here.  I wanted them to be saturated with the Holy Spirit.  I want them to have a deeply personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  I want them to not only believe that God exists, but that God cares about them all the way down to the smallest atom in their bodies.  I want them to see the Bible as the Word of God, which it is.  I want them to read it and let it govern their lives.  Can you imagine if we got people to read the Bible as much as they look at videos on TikTok?  Can you imagine if we got people to be guided by the teachings of Jesus rather than what their favorite celebrity or politician says?  Can you imagine?

I can.  I think a spiritual metamorphosis is definitely possible, but it is going to take the work of all of us.  It will require a sea-change.

We, all of us, need to be open to what that change could be and will be as we pray for God’s guidance.  Amen.

[1] “Examining the Decline in Church, Other Religious Membership,” NBC News NOW on YouTube, April 2, 2021.

[2] The Social Dilemma on Netflix, 2020.