Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Why the Millennials Are Walking away from Churches: Reminders from Peggy Drexler and Dan Savage



For Catholic centrists who continue (entirely fatuously) to imagine that they can maintain a vibrant sacramental community and vibrant sacramental presence in the world while pretending that their gay brothers and sisters just aren't there and that their testimony about the pain some Catholics inflict on them shouldn't count:

Peggy Drexler issues a valuable warning that somebody is listening.  It's the millennial generation.  Which has grown up watching gay and lesbian people they know and love being used--watching the lives of human beings they know and love being used--as objects in sinister political games in the American political arena, as the churches spur these games on.  Drexler writes,

What's interesting in the latest round of using gays and lesbians like sumo wrestlers use leverage is how the nation has changed since don't ask, don't tell. Look at virtually any opinion poll, and we are a nation moving on -- leaving politicians at a loss about what to do with their voting blocks of well-organized intolerance. 
The heart of the Republican dilemma is the Millennials -- roughly mid-teens to late 30s. There are 79 million of them -- making them bigger than the boomers. The boomers see them as entitled, lazy, and happy to live in mom and dad's basement. A recent Boston Consulting Group study found something very different.

And she adds,

They are very clear on social issues. One marketing study listed ten ways the generation describes itself. Number one is "friendly." A close second, at 81 percent, is: "open minded." Other studies show they are less religiously affiliated than their parents, and they feel government is too deeply involved in morality. They believe Christianity has good values, but they see it as judgmental, hypocritical and intolerant -- particularly on gay issues. 
Most telling of all, they largely see issues like gay marriage as beside the point. A Harvard Institute on Politics survey found the economy and jobs as their top concern -- at 58 percent. Nothing else got out of the single digits, and social issues barely registered. 
So to a generation of current and future voters, Obama has deftly offered a choice: a respectful and inclusive voice of the future; versus a schoolyard tormenter aligned with the intolerant voices of the past.

And as Dan Savage reminds us, of those millennials who happen to have roots in the churches, a significant proportion are walking away as fast and as furiously as they can, to distance themselves from the ugly and unholy behavior many "Christians" continue to be intent on displaying towards human beings who happen to be born gay.

Perhaps if those who want to defend the magisterium and natter on about the holy sacraments won't listen to the testimony of their brothers and sisters who are gay, they'll listen to the testimony millennials are providing by walking away from the churches in huge droves today.  The number of sacraments in the list, when and how they were instituted, to whom they may validly be doled out: not any of this will mean a hill of beans, when you no longer have anyone within your Christian communities to pay attention to that conversation.  Or to care about your sacraments.

Which is to say, none of it will make any sense at all when you've failed in the most basic sacramental obligation there is: to signify in an effective way God's universal salvific love for all human beings, and for the marginal and hurting above all.

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