Naomi Schaefer Riley, Got Religion? How Churches, Mosques, and Synagogues Can Bring Young People Back. West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2014, $24.97 (cloth), $15.95 (paper).

Got Religion? is journalist Naomi Schaefer Riley’s contribution to a growing field of books that seeks to expand on sociologist Christian Smith’s groundbreaking analysis of the spirituality of “emerging adulthood.” This term, recently coined by developmental psychologists, refers to eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds who are delaying their transition into adulthood. Often labeled as the “millennial generation,” emerging adults tend to defer the “traditional markers” of adulthood such as leaving home, assuming financial independence, getting married, and establishing roots in a community. One surprising result of Smith’s studies is that this demographic may actually be more spiritually inclined than their boomer parents. But that does not translate into faithful commitment to traditional religious practices.

Riley explains that “delayed adolescence” extends to several faith traditions. Separate chapters are devoted (in order) to evangelical Protestants, Muslims, Roman Catholics, Jews, Mormons, and African American churches. In every case, a sharp loss of religious identity markers results when these religious minorities assimilate into the broader host culture following college graduation. She cites two particular common factors that shape the religious sensibilities of emerging adults.

First, there is a strong anti-institutional bias. Millennials prefer the à la carte experience that feasts on a merry-go-round of choices. And in a world of unbridled choice, paralysis can set in because “consumers of jam and religion think that they will not be happy with their choice because they will always think there was something better out there” (132). Institutional loyalty is a hard sell in a culture of choice.

Compounding institutional resistance is a second factor that is perhaps more profound: many young people are busy in the cultivation of multiple identities. A young Jewish adult explains: “If I were going to describe myself, I wouldn’t use Jewish in the top five descriptors. I’m from Atlanta, an artist, I love to play Frisbee. Judaism is a big part of my identity but not the main label” (79). As young people are encouraged to experiment with lifestyle options, identities become less stable and more malleable. Again, institutional restraints are eschewed. As one young adult put it frankly: “What people in the past have gotten from the church, I get from the Internet and Facebook” (89).

Riley challenges some of these assumptions in a lively prose that often turns a clever phrase, as, for example, when she insists that “practicing faith is a team sport” (82). Here is “plausibility structure” made simple. Without social confirmation from a religious community, faith commitments will atrophy under the intensely pluralistic pressures of modern life. She also turns a skeptical eye toward some popular religious trends. Short-term missions experience often gets “lost in translation” and does not result in a long-term commitment to religious service. She upholds the value of smaller churches and warns that the attractional church can cease to be the church.

At the same time, Riley identifies initiatives that she believes may bring young people back to institutional commitment. Millennials are urban tribes, and peer-to-peer activity seems to work, at least for the short term. One example she commends is an urban church plant (a congregation in the Presbyterian Church in America) in a large southern city that is attracting young people with a particular emphasis on a “theology of place.” But even here, the reader is left wondering whether concessions to the millennial mindset might jeopardize long-term success. The church eschews gimmicks, the pastor noted, “because twenty- and thirty-somethings value authenticity” (30). But might “authenticity”—rarely is that virtue ever defined—simply be the latest gimmick? Consider that Riley goes on to note that this congregation is so eager to welcome and affirm all of its members that it only recently took the step of installing elders (and this was to spare the pastor from making all of the church’s financial decisions, including his salary). A congregation without discipline seems a mighty thin expression of genuine community.

Another innovation that Riley commends is “Charlotte ONE,” an ecumenical collaboration of forty evangelical and mainline Protestant churches that seeks to bring college graduates back with more “wow factor”—expensive bands, charismatic speakers, and elaborate social events—with the intention ultimately of “funneling” them back into more traditional churches. By pooling their resources, these churches pledge not to compete against each other for this demographic. Charlotte ONE deliberately avoids features of traditional Christianity that prompted young people to leave in embarrassment (i.e., the “cringe factor”) and high on that list was the sermon. Young people do not listen, organizers explain, because they “want to have their voice heard” (126). It is difficult to imagine how this mindset will funnel millennials into settled, adult spirituality, enabling them to “grow into their faith.” In these and other initiatives that Riley commends, we see superficial expressions of community that conform to the desires of young adults rather than engage them in their spiritual formation. The language of self still seemed to trump any vocabulary of service.

The challenge of (re-)incorporating millennials into religious communities is at the same time the task of taking them from “here to maturity,” to borrow from the title of Thomas Bergler’s latest book. In this and in his previous book, Bergler has perceptively described the problem of “juvenilization” in American churches[1] (which he defines as the developmental characteristics of adolescents becoming normative for Christians of all ages). It seems wise to explore the extent to which juvenilization plagues the spirituality of emerging adults, but this is a question left largely unexplored by Riley.

Got Religion? is a lively introduction to the challenge of emerging adulthood. Riley documents adequately how the “whole idea of delayed adolescence is very much real” (91). But she comes up short in demonstrating concrete solutions for turning emerging adults into sustaining members of religious communities. In the end, her suggestions of innovative forms of young adult ministry only serve to delay the inevitable crisis of belonging. She virtually concedes this point when she posed this question in her description of a Latter Day Saint program to segregate Mormon millennials into “Young Single Adult” wards: “What happens when they turn thirty-one?” (103).

Endnotes

[1] The Juvenilization of American Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), and From Here to Maturity: Overcoming Juvenilization in American Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014).

John R. Muether serves as a ruling elder at Reformation Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Oviedo, Florida, library director at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida, and historian of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Ordained Servant Online, March 2016.