Generation X

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Do the Math: Reporters use labels all the time, but religious life is more complex than that

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Do the Math: Reporters use labels all the time, but religious life is more complex than that

Everything I do on social media is a trade-off.

That’s the nature of data visualization. You have to take an incredibly complex and often messy social world and distill it into a rather straightforward graph that the average person scrolling Twitter can understand in five seconds or less. Not an easy task.

One of the ways in which social scientists have tried to make the concept of age more palatable is through the use of generations — Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, etc. There have been several pieces published in the last few years that have exhorted social scientists to stop using these concepts because they mean very little from an empirical perspective.

One reason is that they are completely arbitrary. Born in December of 1979 — you are a Gen X. Born just one month later — you’re a Millennial. And consider the fact that you can be born in 1981 or 1995 and are part of the same generation. That’s just nonsensical the more you think about it.

One way around is to use five-year birth cohorts.

Instead of 15 or 20 year spans for generations, a birth cohort can be just those born between 1940 and 1945. This helps to further isolate the impact of age on religious trends. I’ve been making graphs using this cohort strategy for a while now and they can provide a lot of illumination about American religion and politics.


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Gen Z and trends in religious faith and practice: Looking at 2021 and beyond

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Gen Z and trends in religious faith and practice: Looking at 2021 and beyond

It’s been nearly two years since I’ve written a post about the precarious religious position of Generation Z (those born after 1995), and with data from late 2021 available it seems like a prime opportunity to update what we know about their religious inclinations.

Because almost all surveys only contact adult Americans (18+), we can’t get a full picture of the entirety of Gen Z, but just the oldest members of this generation. Thus, here I am analyzing those between the ages of 18 and 25 years old.

Let’s start broadly, comparing the religious composition of different generations beginning with the Silent Generation (who were born between 1925 and 1945).

In this generation, half of all respondents indicated that they were Protestant, while 22% said that they were Catholic. Just 8% of the Silent Generation say that they were atheists or agnostics and nearly the same share describe their religion as “nothing in particular” (10%). In sum, the oldest Americans are 72% Christian and 18% none.

Now, for Generation Z things are much different.

Just 22 % of the youngest adults describe themselves as Protestant — a more than 50% decline from the Silents. Catholics make up 14% of Gen Z, an eight percentage-point dip from the Silent Generation.

Of course, the share of nones is much larger. Seventeen percent of young people describe their religion as atheist or agnostic, and 31% say that they are attached to no religion in particular. Taken together, 36% of Gen Z are Christians, while 48% are nones.

For journalists, there is the news hook: This is the first generation in history in which the nones clearly outnumber the Christians.


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New York Times on young Republicans and African-American voters? Look for familiar ghosts

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What we have here are two New York Times political stories that really needed input from (a) the religion-news desk, (b) polling experts who “get religion” or (c) both.

Both of these important reports are, to use GetReligion-speak, haunted by “religion ghosts.” If you look at them through the lens of politics, alone, then you won’t “get” what is happening with millions of voters who don’t want to vote for Donald Trump in 2020, but believe that they will have no choice but to do just that.

The headline on one story states: “Trump Pushes Young Republicans Away. Abortion Pulls Them Back.”

Oh my. I wonder if religious convictions might have something to do with this? You think?

So let’s do some familiar searches in this text. How about “church”? Zip. Maybe “God”? Zero. Surely “religion” or “religious” will show up? Nyet. How about “Christian”? Nope.

That’s strange. Look at this summary material and I think you will sense the ghost that is present.

Like millennials, who are now in their mid-20s to 30s, members of Generation Z — born after 1996 — tend to lean left. But there are still plenty of young Republicans, and the generational divide that is so apparent between younger and older Democrats is no less present on the other side of the aisle. It’s just less visible.

In interviews with two dozen Republicans ages 18 to 23, almost all of them, while expressing fundamentally conservative views, identified at least one major issue on which they disagreed with the party line. But more often than not, they said one issue kept them committed to the party: abortion.

While polling shows an age gap in opinions on abortion, it is smaller than the gaps on some other issues, and researchers say that for people who oppose abortion, that opposition has become more central to their political choices.


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