Responding Faithfully to Generation X: Why Gen X Rejected the Church En Masse, What It Means to the Future of the Church & What We Can Do About It

By Rev. Dr. Christopher Doyle

The research, writing and analysis in the pages of this work show the story of how Generation X grew-up during one of the greatest periods of technological, social, political, economic and educational change in US history. Included in that story is how the greater percentage of them grew-up in the church, but then walked away en masse. Today, Generation X is the smallest percentage of Main Line and Catholic Church membership, while the overwhelming majority of church membership is made up of an aging population of Baby Boomers and Silent Generation folk. In ten year's time, what will be the state of the church when many of the current membership has passed on to eternal life, or are no longer able to do what it is that they're doing today? Generation X could well be the answer to much of the solution. Generation X is generally at a more comfortable place in their lives and are asking the questions about the meaning of their lives while considering issues of mortality. Yet at the same time, they're having now to care for parents, grandchildren, and for many Gen Xers, their own children still. They're busy and committed, but they're also spiritually hungry. Having had a relationship at one point in their lives, they're not completely foreign to what the church can be, but the ball is really in the church's court. How the church chooses to respond to Generation X could mean life, or church closure. It's a conversation that needs to take place, and that conversation begins here.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jul 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781664268760

Rev. Dr. Christopher Doyle

After nearly fifteen years of working in overseas mission in the Middle East, Christopher Doyle felt called to pursue ordained ministry with the PCUSA. He therefore moved with his family to Dubuque, Iowa where he attended the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, graduating in 2009. Once he began to lead worship services in Iowa, he quickly saw the obvious that there were few if any folks sitting in the pews on Sunday mornings from his own generational cohort of Generation X. It was trying to grasp an understanding of this that lead him to focus his doctoral dissertation project on examining what and how this situation came about and what the church needs to do to rectify it.

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ISBN: 978-1-6642-6877-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-6876-0 (e)

WestBow Press rev. date: 7/2/2022

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the

University of Dubuque Theological Seminary

In Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Ministry

CONTENTS

Dissertation Abstract

Chapter 1 Growing Up Generation X

Chapter 2 Defining Generation X

Chapter 3 The Changes That Were Taking Place

Chapter 4 Approaching Generation X Biblically and Pastorally

Chapter 5 Moving Into Tomorrow

Appendix 1

Bibliography

DISSERTATION ABSTRACT

As a member of the Generation X cohort and Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church, USA, I have long had a concern for the future of the church due to my generation having disengaged en masse from the churches of their youth once reaching adulthood. This project examines this issue through in-person interviews, survey collection, and standard research methodologies. The specific target of this study has been those of Generation X in the Northeast corridor of the United States, which represents one of the most diverse and secularizing regions of the country.

Through this research it has been found that Generation X is spiritually hungry and open to reengagement with the church. However, any reengagement would require that the church show an openness and willingness to address certain past realities and practices that the cohort finds difficult to ignore. Examples of these range from the church’s role in purely political initiatives and military conflicts, to how the church has approached questions of diversity, the role of women and the corrupting power of wealth. The church would also have to show an openness to understanding of what Generation X experienced growing to adulthood in the 1980’s, which was a time of significant political, social, and technological change and subsequent influence.

This dissertation is not only a sociological study. Foundationally woven into this story of Generation X, are biblical examples and analysis that shows Generation X to not be the first example of humanity to withdraw from their traditionally known spiritual practices due to social and cultural influences or inadequate leadership. Pastoral reasoning for reengagement is provided, as well as practical steps for churches to practice when extending its hand of welcome to those many believe to be lost to the church.

ONE

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Growing Up Generation X

…while the boomers and millennials have been siphoning up all this mass media oxygen, somebody seems to have forgotten to put together the cover stories about Generation X turning forty. More to the point, somebody seems to have forgotten Generation X. We hear plenty about people in their teens and twenties, and even more about people in their fifties, but the stodgy old species known as the thirtysomething has been shuttled off, like Molly Ringwald herself, to some sort of Camp Limbo for demographic lepers.¹

Introduction

Being born in 1969 in the Northeast United States, I always felt that I had been brought into this world at a very special space in time. It was a period when most of the neighborhood kids still met after school, or on Saturday mornings, to play outside without our parents being too concerned about where we were. Whether growing-up in a rural location, suburb, or in one of the region’s many urban areas, we would often go home only if we were particularly hungry and wanted something we knew could only be found in our mother’s kitchens. In school, we learned the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and that we could not all be winners all the time. It was what an ideal US childhood was written to be.

With that said, though, it must be noted that the race I was born into was in the majority and had a government that took particular interest in my kind; white and middle class. As was the case in much of the country, where I and my peers grew-up, we did not have much of a minority community to speak of, and our annual school class pictures rarely included kids that did not look remarkably similar. Segregation and disenfranchisement were alive and well and obvious if you were a member of the minority, as it still is today, but for those of us who did not experience that side of US life, there was little way for us to know about those realities in the bubbles of our existences.

Then, in the midst of it all, the 1980s began and life seemed to start changing; not just because we were growing into young adulthood, but because the world was changing in ways that no one appeared to completely understand. For instance, we had had as our nightly entertainment four television channels; ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS, but then, when I was in the sixth grade, my family, as did many others, acquired Cable Television. Our parents were suddenly turning on CNN to watch the news that we had been used to seeing only on the evening network newscasts. With Cable Television, there seemed to be suddenly something new and exciting about which to talk. Video games came at about the same time and began replacing the pin ball machines at the roller rink, and then the kid down the street was gifted an Atari for Christmas. As white middle-class youth, we went from happily building forts in the woods and playing at the parks to wanting to stay inside because of the new entertainment possibilities. Personal computers came next and opened-up another world for those of us who were fascinated by the new technology. Those kids finding fascination there became a whole new label unto themselves.

Through it all, church was a part of our bubbles as well, just as much as anything else. In fact, the far majority of kids I knew were at least somewhat involved with a church of some variety. My mother was a devout Roman Catholic while my father had grown-up in the Methodist Church where he would attend when he could. My sister and I were raised in the Roman Catholic tradition, as per my father’s agreement, and it was a big part of who and what we were. We went through all of the years of Christian Education until we were confirmed in the church, as did what seemed like most of our peers.

As our parents had been, we were taught that we should not question too much of what and how we were being instructed at the church. Those same lessons had been good enough for so many of the generations before us, and so they must be just what we needed too. However, the 1980s with all of the changes and events we were continually exposed to, did tell us differently from many of our parents that we really did have to question what the norms of church and society were and were becoming. Times were changing rapidly before our very eyes at that point, and what we saw in those years of our youth lead to many of us leaving the church as soon as we reached adulthood.

In more recent years, after work and life experience and much soul searching, I returned to the church and felt myself called to pastoral ministry in the Presbyterian Church, USA, the largest of the Presbyterian based churches. As a minister in the church, I look out and see the pews on Sunday mornings containing few to no parishioners that fit into my generational cohort. What makes this situation especially crucial is that I know that hundreds of other pastors are in the same exact situation. I meet with other pastors from across denominational lines and we discuss how it is that Generation X has become absent, for the most part, from the majority of Mainline and Catholic churches. What will it mean to the future of these churches in ten-years-time when the Baby Boomers are no longer willing or able to do the work that they currently do? Who will be present to do the practical work of the church that makes the church have meaning?

The purpose of this writing project is to consider why so much of my generation in the Northeast corridor of the US, a section of the country known for being politically and socially progressive, has turned from the churches of their youth, and to explore what it is that many Mainline and Catholic Churches can do to re-engage with them. To begin, the question of whom Generation X is will be explored.

How We Define Generation X

Depending on where one looks, they will find varying definitions, labels, and descriptions of whom is most commonly known as Generation X. Some will define Generation X as those born between 1965 and 1980² while others will define the generation with added years, presenting it as those born between 1961 and 1983.³ Others will claim the generation begins in the mid-1960s and ends in 1977 or 1978. What this shows is there have generally never been strict lines of demarcation to distinguish generational parameters. As a result, most sociologists and research and governmental entities who are in the business of defining generational parameters most often designate varying spans of fifteen to twenty years to block-out generational time periods. With that being the case, forming generations into those fifteen to twenty-year units does raise some difficult questions on common generational experience and how to describe the demographic accurately.

For instance, my father, who was born in 1942, is considered by most to be a part of what is known as the Silent Generation which begins in or about 1928. This forces us to ask, How can we accurately describe that generational experience when one member is born in 1942 and another is born in 1928? The person born in 1942 would have no recollection at all of the Great Depression or other memorable events of that time, while the person born in 1928, who would have been a teenager in 1942, would have distinct memories of not only the Great Depression, but of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor which took place in December of 1941? Both are very distinct and foundationally important events that could shape how the world would be seen throughout that person’s entire life.

Keeping this in mind, it does appear as reasonable that for purposes of governmental statistics gauging the various issues of economics, as well as the demographic changes of its population, that fifteen to twenty-year time spans of age may be adequate. However, for sociological descriptions and discussions on how to decipher generational experiences and needs, the fifteen to twenty-year block of time seems far too long. On account of this, I suggest that for academic research looking at the experiences of people on a common generational footing, the block span of time should be ten to twelve years, with twelve years not to be exceeded. Therefore, for at least the purposes of this study, I propose Generation X to be those born between the years 1963 and 1975.

The reasoning behind the differing block span of time is that it is those born in a ten to twelve year period who will experience specific societal changes and events during their most foundational years. At either end of the designated time span, there will still be cross-over characteristics and experiences, but I propose that in making the grouping smaller, there will naturally be more commonality that will then describe the generational experience more accurately and with less chance of having to explain the sub-groups based on age that would clearly need designating.

While this concept is not a commonly accepted one, it is also not a brand-new one. In recent years, some sociologists have proposed that for academic reason, generational time periods should be designated differently than just by the years we have traditionally accepted. Sociologist Adam Possamai speaks of two other sociologists, Johanna Wyn and Dan Woodman who proposed in their work that generations should be located within specific economic, social, cultural and political conditions rather than arbitrary sets of birth years.⁴ In their studies and reasoning, they were in part making reference to German sociologist, Mannheim, who wrote: …generation is a term that should be applied to people who belong to a common period of history, or whose lives are forged through the same conditions.⁵

For Generation X, if we designate our definition as being from 1963 to 1975, they would be the group who would have been more foundationally impacted by the dramatic changes that took place in US society in the late 1970s and 1980s. It is they that can still recall certain foundational experiences of that period that those who came later cannot. For example, those who were born between 1963 and 1975 can still recall, for the most part, a time before such technological advances as cable television and video games, or even before such political events as the Iran Hostage Crisis and Ronald Reagan becoming president, those born between 1975 and 1983 cannot. Those items, innovations, and occurrences of the late 1970s and 1980s would undoubtedly have affected those who came later in the accepted generational outline, but to those who came before 1975, those were all taking place at a very foundational time of maturation.

To further this idea as legitimate, there has recently been given a name by researchers to those of the late 1970s and early 1980s who do not feel comfortable with the label of Generation X or Millennial, those born from the early 1980s until the year 2000. Those who were born in between those two cohorts are referred to as a micro-generation and are called Xennials. There is debate as to where the label originated, but the point is clear that as they grew-up, the technology that is so common today was growing-up alongside them. Having that been the case, they can use it more naturally than their predecessors.⁶

Therefore, if we can endorse the notion of breaking apart the generational time-period, breaking it nearly down the middle of what has traditionally been accepted, the generational descriptors and effects will be more accurate. With such a proposal accepted and in place, generations will become known more by events and experiences that are foundational to those in the cohort, instead of just simply by birth years. With that distinction and reasoning clarified, consideration of common labels, descriptions, and issues that are currently found for Generation X can be examined.

How We Label And Describe Generation X

Instead of using the label of Generation X, some writers and sociologists will label the cohort as the Baby Busters’, the Thirteeners or as the Twenty-Somethings.⁷ All of those labels are founded on varying reasons and also designate years for the generation slightly different than what has become standard. Geoffrey Holtz in Welcome to the Jungle: The Why Behind Generation X, uses the label Baby Buster and chooses 1960 for the date of Generation X to begin. His reasoning is that this was the year that the G.D. Searle Drug Company first offered the birth control pill to the public. This made it much easier to not have children and was the beginning of the baby bust years.⁸ His premise is a direct contrast to the Baby Boomer years following World War II that saw the largest generation produced in US history until the Millennials eventually took over that top spot.

The next label that commonly appears to be used for Generation X is Thirteeners and is likely the most straight-forward and the least of which needs any deep explanation. It comes about simply because it is Generation X who are considered the thirteenth generation since the founding of the United States.⁹

The label of Twenty-Somethings famously came from a Time Magazine article in the early 1990s that attempted to describe the generation that was coming to adulthood.

"They have trouble making decisions. They would rather hike in the Himalayas than climb a corporate ladder. They have few heroes, no anthems, no style to call their own. They crave entertainment, but their attention span is as short as one zap of a TV dial. They hate yuppies, hippies, and druggies. They postpone marriage because they dread divorce. They sneer at Range Rovers, Rolexes, and red suspenders. What they hold dear are family life, local activism, national parks, penny loafers and mountain bikes. They possess only a hazy sense of their own identity but a monumental preoccupation with all the problems the preceding generation will leave for them