Reaching the “Post-Christian” Generation, by Thomas Griffin

By Thomas Griffin, Crisis Magazine, Jan. 17, 2022

Thomas Griffin teaches apologetics in the religion department at a Catholic high school on Long Island. …

Many statistics and words have been shared regarding the declining faith of young people. Alongside this decline in America today, we have seen dramatic increases in the rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide. Both the decrease in overall faith and the increase in depression have been amplified by the pandemic, but we are dealing with issues that have their roots deeply ingrained in pre-COVID soil.

The trend of our younger generations will inevitably show us the path that we are headed on in America. Millennials are young people born between 1981 and 1996, and the Pew Research Center notes that 35 percent of them have no religion at all. Generation Z are young people born between 1997 and 2015, and they are the least religious generation ever. Roughly one third of Gen Zers also claim that they have no religion whatsoever, but Gen Z’s percentage of atheists is 21 percent while the percentage of Millennials who are self-proclaimed atheists is 15 percent. …