It seems to me that most mainline Christians have all but given up on emerging adults. They see this as a wanton, rebellious time in life and assume that once people are done experimenting, they’ll come back to church to get married and have their babies baptized.
We shouldn’t be so sure that’s the case.
In “Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults,” which recounts the results of the National Study of Youth and Religion, Christian Smith and Patricia Snell describe the general cultural trends for young people aged 18 to 24. These emerging adults have very few institutional loyalties. They can easily hold apparently contradictory ideas in tension. They embrace diversity in their world. They take context into consideration when discerning moral questions. This generation of emerging adults has not grown up in a simplistic, black-and-white world, but rather a complex and challenging one.
These generational characteristics are not necessarily bad ones -- unless you are the church and other institutions. “Souls in Transition” demonstrates that the foundation of emerging adults’ complex and sometimes confusing world is almost unbridled individualism. Smith writes, “When it comes to culture, most emerging adults seem to be what sociologists call social constructionists, whether they know it or not. That is, they mostly unquestioningly presuppose that most things about the sociocultural world are not fixed or given facts of nature but rather human constructions invented through shared social definitions and practices that are historically contingent, changeable, and particular.”
In other words, emerging adults live in a very malleable world in which external facts do not really exist. Everything is based on individual perception. They do not readily adhere to any particular system of thought, whether philosophical, theological, ethical or political. Their attitude is, ‘What is OK for me may or may not be OK for you.’ There are few, if any, firm guidelines for how to live. Everything is relative and must be discerned on a case-by-case basis.
Those of us in the mainline church could easily dismiss this trend among emerging adults as just a normal part of their developmental stage or a result of postmodern relativism gone awry. Or we can acknowledge that this trend to forgo religious institutions has been happening over the course of decades and we can no longer assume young adults will automatically come back to the church once they’ve “settled.”
Reaching out to young adults will be hard work for sure. We must come ready to listen without judgment the way Jesus has called us. We must listen to their critique which will undoubtedly include the ways in which the institutional church failed to walk its own talk about love, peace, and mercy.
If we listen, really listen, I’m sure we can begin to see a new vision of church emerge. In this vision of community, inclusive of young adults, we will live more fully into the call of the gospel. We will move outside the comfort of our building walls, becoming communities of mission and mercy. We will be firmly rooted to our tradition, making it relevant to emerging generations.
Those of us in the church can be an oasis of calm in the chaotic world of young adults. At the same time, these young adults can help form new visions for Christian community -- ones that we couldn’t possibly envision without them.
Nicole M. Havelka is the associate conference minister for youth and young adult ministries in the Iowa Conference of the United Church of Christ.