Via adicting Info: Teens Are Leaving Religion In Droves, And That Spells Big Trouble For The GOP

It is no secret to anyone who bothers to turn on a television news show or use Google that the current incarnation of the GOP is hellbent on turning America into a fundamentalist Christians theocracy. They believe that everything that is even a little bit progressive, from climate change to acceptance of homosexuality, to abortion, is some evil liberal plot to take away their Bibles, burn down their churches, and persecute Christians. While thinking people know that they are deluded, the people who make up today’s GOP pander to the nut jobs who believe it. Well, luckily for the rest of us, that base of people and their politicians are getting older and dying off. Even better is the fact that younger version of these people are not replacing them.

According to a recent- and quite thorough study, today’s adolescents are leaving religion in droves. It isn’t because they haven’t found god yet or anything like that, either, according to this study. It’s because there has been a cultural shift, and these people do not need or want religion in their lives. Jean Twenge, the psychology professor from San Diego State who led the study, says:

“Unlike previous studies, ours is able to show that Millennials’ lower religious involvement is due to cultural change, not to millennials being young and unsettled.”

Further, the study concludes that this is the least religious generation in six decades. Also, because it is a cultural change, these young people are unlikely to turn to religion as they get older. According to Twenge, who also authored a book on the Millennial generation entitled Generation Me, this shift has to do with the fact that children born in the 1980’s and 1990’s are simply more inclined to be individualistic than those before them. She describes Millennials as tolerant, confident, open-minded, and ambitious but also disengaged, narcissistic, distrustful, and anxious,” and calls them the “Entitlement Generation.”

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/05/28/teens-are-leaving-religion-in-droves-and-that-spells-big-trouble-for-the-gop/