More adults leaving childhood religions, including in the Inland Northwest

By Mia Gallegos | FāVS News

A recent study released by the Pew Research Center detailed the fact that many adults have left the religions they grew up in — mainly Christianity and Buddhism — and that includes people in the Inland Northwest.

According to the study, religious switching is more common in certain countries rather than others. Nearly all adults in India, Israel, Nigeria and Thailand (95%) are still within the religion that they were raised in, whereas countries in East Asia, Western Europe, North and South America have significantly lower percentages in religious participation from adults who grew up with a faith background.

There are a variety of factors that can contribute to young people drifting from their faith. Some leave the religion they grew up in and become agnostic or choose not to affiliate with any sort of organized faith. Others – in more rare cases, according to the study – will switch to a different religion that they feel is more in line with their lifestyle or beliefs.

Ven. Thubten Samten of the Sravasti Abbey in North Spokane is a Buddhist monastic who was raised in the Catholic Church. The church she grew up in was one that celebrated the Latin Mass, where her mom was the organist and therefore encouraged her family to remain consistent in their weekly attendance at the services. Samten greatly admired her mother for the dedication that she exhibited to her beliefs and the Catholic faith as a whole.

“She was a very good example of staying with something and being committed to it,” Samten said. “I learned that it was very important to show up and be consistent. It was very striking, even as a child.”

Samten began to realize a shift in her commitment to the faith when the Latin Mass was no longer being practiced at her home parish as a result of Vatican II, or the Second Vatican Council which caused several changes to take place in the universal Catholic Church.

The traditional nature of the church that she had fallen in love with had vanished, along with her desire to remain consistent as she had been in the years before. Samten ended up going off to college where she was hoping to reconnect with her faith.

“I could just tell that I was drifting away, even though I really wanted a spiritual connection,” Samten said. “By the age of 22, I just thought ‘this isn’t working for me.’”

The college years are nes that often put young adults at a time of discernment surrounding their faith. The Rev. Jack Bentz, a Jesuit priest and the chaplain at Gonzaga University, explained the variety of reasons why he feels that college-aged individuals often drift from their faith around this transformational time in their lives.

“I think that most people walk away because they weren’t given a compelling reason to stay,” Bentz said.

He explained how he’s seen many people point fingers at various “ruptures” that cause young adults to leave the faiths they grew up in. He doesn’t find this to be an adequate argument for why these swarms of people that have been detailed within the study are no longer members of their childhood religious affiliations.

Bentz believes that some responsibility falls on the church for finding ways to retain the younger members of the Catholic faith, especially in times of transition or change like the college years.

“Often the Catholic church feels that if they just leave a light on, people will show up,” Bentz said. “That’s just not the case. It never has been. If you want to be a mission-oriented church with a big evangelical strand, you have to reach out repeatedly and creatively.”

Bentz said he feels like with the current state of society, a large number of adults may be walking away from the Catholic Church and Christianity as a whole due to some of the stigmas that have been perpetuated surrounding various social and political issues that have been condemned by the church in the eye of the public. He specifically made reference to the LGBTQ community, and how years of the notion that that group of individuals is not welcome within Christian spheres.

“I don’t think you need to wrap the church in a rainbow flag,” Bentz said. “However, there’s a broad band of young adults who might not be LGBTQ identified, but their cousin is, or their brother is, or their uncle is. They’ll say ‘you are being mean to my (family) and so I’m not going to show up.”

Bentz feels like the implication of the welcoming nature of the church needs to not only be recognized, but to be vocalized from the get-go in order for the retention of young adults to be maintained.

“The church needs to be welcoming to everyone, and to lead with that and not just assume it,” Bentz said.

The Pew Research Center’s study detailed how a vast majority of the adults that are switching from their childhood religions are often entering into the disaffiliation category, meaning that they aren’t entering a new faith background but are becoming agnostics, atheists, or “nothing in particular.”

This is different from the experience of Samten, who found Buddhism several years following her cleave from the Catholic faith.

Samten attended a Dharma talk in Seattle where she heard a lesson on friendship from Ven. Thubten Chodron, the widely recognized Buddhist monastic who founded Sravasti Abbey. Samten hadn’t been looking for a new religion to invest in and was actually encouraged by an outside source to attend the talk. However, she was instantly struck by the words of Chodron.

“She started to talk about a topic that’s not foreign to any religion or anyone on the planet: the kindness of others,” Samten said. “The way she unpacked it made my mind feel like it was opening up and I couldn’t stop it. The words were pouring in and the way the topic was being described was striking me in a way that I’d never been struck before.”

It wasn’t until years later that Samten took some time away from the job she was working at the time to go to Nepal and further investigate the seed of curiosity toward the Buddhist religion that had been planted. She discovered the striking nature of all of the Buddhist monastics who had studied with Chodron.

“I just wanted to know how to get headed in the direction of having that kind of wisdom and compassion,” Samten said.

This curiosity was what spearheaded her journey to becoming the monastic she is today.

The question becomes whether or not there is a method for retaining individuals participating in the variety of religions whose numbers of young adults are decreasing rapidly. For many, it may require Bentz’ suggestion for reaching out creatively. However, it also may mandate a switch like Samten’s from one religion to another that resonates better with the individual. There likely isn’t a singular way to retain adult members within various religious denominations, and it will be interesting to observe how these numbers continue to change in the decades to come.

This story was written in partnership with FāVS News, a nonprofit newsroom covering faith and values in the Inland Northwest.