Millennials Leaving the Church

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Here are some possible explanations:

1. Lack of apologetics training - churches generally do a very poor job (if at all) of giving reasons to believe what is presented.  This is sad, as a wealth of great authors, such as Lee Strobel, William Lane Craig, and J Warner Wallace provide an excellent historical case for the New Testament and philosophical defenses of orthodox Christian theology. 

2. Lack of clarity - similarly, many millennial don't understand what Christianity is and the basics of Christian doctrine.  This wishy-washiness is naturally going to lead to less interest in faith and make one more likely to make statements like "All religions are basically the same," which would obviously make church attendance seem less obligatory.  On the other hand, fundamentalist churches which over-emphasize positions such as young-Earth creationism or encourage denial or obfuscation of scientific facts will seem ridiculous and cause disillusionment with the church.

3. Disagreement - in other cases, millennials have a full knowledge of their religion and simply reject it, whether it be for differences over social issues or other considerations (for example, the doctrine of salvation through Christ alone seeming inherently unfair or narrow-minded).  In this case, the individual simply no longer agrees with the required behavioral norms and beliefs they associate with Christianity, and simply decide to leave the faith as a result.

4. Logistics - many churches have a youth group where kids go instead of services.  Having never attended a full normal service (or only for Easter or other special occasions) and not being used to it, they don't want to sit through a full service and get bored by it.

5. Issues with parents - sharp disagreements with parents may spill over into matters of faith, as the parents' decisions the individual disagrees with is seen as because of religion -i.e. an individual annoyed with parental restrictions on seeing friends / what they can or cannot watch and thus associate Christianity with overbearing authoritarianism.

This is key. Lack of apologetics training has hurt credibility.

Idk, if millenials wanna find apologetics they can easily research it for themselves online. Perhaps instead the issue is that believing in Christianity's explanations for the natural world are now unconvincing, with all the advances in scientific understanding that we've made since the 1st century CE.

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Idk, if millenials wanna find apologetics they can easily research it for themselves online. Perhaps instead the issue is that believing in Christianity's explanations for the natural world are now unconvincing, with all the advances in scientific understanding that we've made since the 1st century CE.

There is a grain of truth that current scientific findings may cast conventional Biblical interpretations of Genesis and creation in doubt to some extent.  Nonetheless, I would contend that many of the strongest arguments in favor of Christianity - mainly concerning the reliability of the New Testament, which have been elucidated by writers such as CS Lewis in the past to J Warner Wallace and Lee Strobel today - are largely unknown among those who have left the church.  I have heard claims that books in the Christian canon were not written until the Council of Nicaea, that there is no evidence for a historical Jesus at all, etc.  - these claims are refuted by the overwhelming consensus of Biblical scholars, and I think equipping young people with this knowledge would do wonders in helping keep them in the church.

Reliability of Christian is meek at best. The Gospels were all written at least half a century or more after Jesus' death, meaning their content was based on oral history. There are no existing original books of the New Testament, we only have translations today which have gone through multiple languages and have lost some nuance and potentially include fabricated portions added by scribes. There are no contemporary Roman accounts of Jesus, the only accounts we have were written decades after his life. There are many non-Canonical books that have varying degrees of legitimacy; some are just as legit as canonical ones, putting into question what we can rely on as true gospel. If I were Christian, I'd be very concerned that my entire religious belief system was based on such flimsy record and evidence.

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Idk, if millenials wanna find apologetics they can easily research it for themselves online. Perhaps instead the issue is that believing in Christianity's explanations for the natural world are now unconvincing, with all the advances in scientific understanding that we've made since the 1st century CE.

There is a grain of truth that current scientific findings may cast conventional Biblical interpretations of Genesis and creation in doubt to some extent.  Nonetheless, I would contend that many of the strongest arguments in favor of Christianity - mainly concerning the reliability of the New Testament, which have been elucidated by writers such as CS Lewis in the past to J Warner Wallace and Lee Strobel today - are largely unknown among those who have left the church.  I have heard claims that books in the Christian canon were not written until the Council of Nicaea, that there is no evidence for a historical Jesus at all, etc.  - these claims are refuted by the overwhelming consensus of Biblical scholars, and I think equipping young people with this knowledge would do wonders in helping keep them in the church.

Reliability of Christian is meek at best. The Gospels were all written at least half a century or more after Jesus' death, meaning their content was based on oral history. There are no existing original books of the New Testament, we only have translations today which have gone through multiple languages and have lost some nuance and potentially include fabricated portions added by scribes. There are no contemporary Roman accounts of Jesus, the only accounts we have were written decades after his life. There are many non-Canonical books that have varying degrees of legitimacy; some are just as legit as canonical ones, putting into question what we can rely on as true gospel. If I were Christian, I'd be very concerned that my entire religious belief system was based on such flimsy record and evidence.

The case for the synoptic Gospels being written before 70 AD (which is less than 40 years after Jesus's death, not 'more than 50') is very strong.
http://www.tektonics.org/ntdocdef/gospdefhub.php
http://coldcasechristianity.com/2016/why-we-know-the-story-of-jesus-isnt-a-legend-video/
http://coldcasechristianity.com/2013/do-the-non-canonical-gospels-challenge-the-historicity-of-the-new-testament/
https://beliefmap.org/bible/1-corinthians/15-creed/date/
These timescales are generally considered too early for legendary development.  The claims that the earliest manuscripts are .  All the claims of Jesus's divinity - the virgin birth, the resurrection, the divinity of Christ, etc. - are all preserved through the chain of custody - from John's students like Polycarp and Papius, to their students like Iranaeus, and so on as the chain of custody goes.  This shows that even though we don't have the original copies of the Gospels, we can reasonably conclude that the original copies of the Gospels very much presented Jesus as a divine being in a similar light to Christian theology today - even if there were slight changes in wording and some variants, the writings of the Early Church Fathers make it clear the original copies of the NT books contained the same messages as the New Testament today.  Also, none of the non-canonical "Gospels" can be dated to the 1st century and have numerous other marks of fraudulence, whereas the entire New Testament can be shown to have been written in the 1st century.  You are correct that much of the content in the Gospels (and the creed of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ) comes from oral tradition, but oral tradition was considered quite reliable then over relatively short timescales.  What is noteworthy is that Paul's letter to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 15) documents the resurreciton of Christ, and even secular scholars like  Gerd Lüdemann agree that the tradition it dates from was at most three years after Christ's death.  

None of this proves that Christianity is true, of course, but it does demonstrate that Christianity is very much a defensible faith based in real history with concrete claims substantiated by the testimony of eyewitnesses.  

Idk, there's very little to support the claim of Jesus being resurrected except for "his followers strongly believed it." Just because people believe in miracles doesn't make it true; heck, belief in the supernatural and miraculous events was widespread all over the Near East in that time. You can find true believers of modern day miracle-doers, some who'd probably give their lives if they believed strongly enough.

Imo, we can dismiss that literal resurrection actually occurred because we know scientifically it's impossible. Working from there, we can come up with other theories. I'm convinced that something occurred that many people witnessed, but it was either misinterpreted or exaggerated/embellished.

Also most biblical scholars agree that the earliest Gospel, Mark, was written between 66-70 CE, that the authorship is unknown/anonymous, and that Jesus died somewhere around 30-40 years previously. If Jesus' followers were around the same age as him, then if Jesus died at age 35ish then his followers would've been between 65-75 when Mark was written. I don't think people lived that long back then, nor do I think someone could reliably remember a 30-40 yo event (think of how unreliable eye witnesses are today). Lastly, modern biblical scholars mostly agree that the author of Mark was writing for theological reasons, not to give an objective account of history.

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Idk, there's very little to support the claim of Jesus being resurrected except for "his followers strongly believed it." Just because people believe in miracles doesn't make it true; heck, belief in the supernatural and miraculous events was widespread all over the Near East in that time. You can find true believers of modern day miracle-doers, some who'd probably give their lives if they believed strongly enough.

Imo, we can dismiss that literal resurrection actually occurred because we know scientifically it's impossible. Working from there, we can come up with other theories. I'm convinced that something occurred that many people witnessed, but it was either misinterpreted or exaggerated/embellished.

I agree that the resurrection claim on its own .  Of course, none of this means that Christianity is certainly true, simply that I believe a strong case can be made for it based on historical evidence.  Back to the context of the thread, I would argue that better teaching in apologetics would convince more young people to stick with Christianity, even if it's still imperfect. 


I would refer you to this fantastic site, specifically to the negations argument:
https://beliefmap.org/jesus-resurrected/
1. Jesus is the most influential human being who has ever existed.  I would argue that this fact alone means that the accounts of his resurrection should be taken far more seriously than other miracle claims, because the inherent probability of him being a divine figure is much higher on this account, especially when one considers that this is consistent with the Christian teaching that God would spend the Holy Spirit to the Earth to draw people to the repentance and belief in Jesus and make disciples of all the nations.
2. Jesus fulfills many Jewish prophesies of a Messiah.  So this is a miracle claim that has a foundation in past predictions, which again heightens the probability that this is a miracle
3. As Christian bishop NT Wright puts it, both the empty tomb and the post-crucifixion appearances of Jesus to his disciples are like two half-arches that are historical facts, and the resurrection is the cornerstone that ties them together and offers the best explanation of the facts.  Even opponents to Christianity concede the empty tomb  as recorded by Early Church Fathers, which is a critical piece of evidence in favor of the resurrection.

So retrospectively, we have a man who impacted human history more than any other and is worshiped as God by 2 billion people around the world, whose life circumstances were extraordinary in relation to the much-earlier descriptions of the Jewish messiah; we further see evidence of numerous post-resurrection experiences and an empty tomb.  With respect to the resurrection being unscientific, the basic Christian premise is that the laws of nature are upheld by God and can be changed in the event of a miracle; arguing that miracles are unscientific is simply dismissing the possibility of a God with supernatural power, which to me is an unreasonable starting point when investigating the Gospels if we rule out supernatural explanations without further examining the evidence.

"Jesus is the most influential human being who has ever existed"
That's just a subjective Christian opinion. No offense but many, many people would disagree with that. For example, I'd say Caesar was more important. Without him, we wouldn't have the Roman Empire, therefore no Romans in Judea, therefore no crucifixion. Also, your logic doesn't work: being important doesn't equal a higher likelihood that of truth.

"Even opponents to Christianity concede the empty tomb"
The empty tomb ain't evidence in favor of resurrection. It's evidence that the body was removed somehow. I'd use Occam's Razor: the simplest theory is better than the more complex one. It's simpler to say that the body was stolen, which was a common problem in Jesus' time, than it is to say that something occurred that defied the laws of nature and physics.

"arguing that miracles are unscientific is simply dismissing the possibility of a God with supernatural power"
There is always a scientific, natural explanation for supernatural and magical phenomena. I can dismiss the explanation of a supernaturally powerful God over a totally plausible, natural occurrence because one is falsifiable and matches with our most advanced knowledge of nature, and the other is a totally unscientific, extraordinary explanation.