Throughout the holiday season, you might see fewer members of Gen Z at traditional services in houses of worship — but this does not mean the generation is less religious altogether. A 2021 Religion News Service report found that people aged 13 to 25 were more likely to engage with religion in untraditional ways, such as combining practices from different traditions or centering politics in religious practice.
The Revs. Irene Monroe and Emmett G. Price III joined Boston Public Radio to discuss Gen Z’s relationship with religion and what it means for the future of faith in the United States.
Price pointed to the tumultuous period in which Gen Z has come of age.
“Gen Zs were born around 9/11, they have experienced all of these school shootings,” he said. “They have experienced the church, in its various manifestations, talk a rhetoric of love while showing hate to ‘otherized’ people — and these young people are not having the hypocrisy.”
Still, Price believes young people want feelings of holiness, they just refuse to compromise their beliefs for traditional religion. Instead, younger people pick and choose elements of religion that fit with their beliefs — and their identities — rather than accepting a tradition as a whole.
“They're bringing their parents’ tradition, but revising it in a way that is far more inclusive,” Monroe explained. “So God is no longer he or she, they’re using particular pronouns, or no pronouns. It's a rereading of scripture, a complete overhaul around policy and governance.”
Monroe believes these adaptations will create lasting political change. “You're seeing a needed shift, that will just bring about a much more inclusive society, whether you are churched, or non-churched,” she said. “It certainly will sort of push back the kind of conservative tide that we see.”
Both reverends think part of the urge to adapt religion comes from a desire for larger feelings of connection. “It [religion] gives them the opportunity to tie into something much bigger than them,” Price said.
“What they want is what we all want, and I think even more so in this pandemic,” Monroe added. “A kind of community where we can be ourselves, and yet understand that there's something far greater than ourselves that connects us.”
Monroe is a syndicated religion columnist, the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail and co-host of the All Rev’d Up podcast. Price is the founding pastor of Community of Love Christian Fellowship in Allston, the inaugural dean of Africana studies at Berklee College of Music and co-host of the All Rev’d Up podcast.
