"What's the Matter with Kids Today?" (Nothing)
Elaborating on Scot McKight's SubStack yesterday
I’ve used this title before on my previous blog. The quote comes from the musical “Bye Bye Birdie”. It’s also reminiscent of the 2010 Annette Bening/Juliane Moore film, “The Kids Are All Right”.
Yesterday, my friend Scot McKnight was exploring some ideas about the political views of today’s generation and offering some plausible suggestions on their sources. His piece was titled “Flipping their vote” and argued that we were seeing a reaction to the close ties between evangelicals and the GOP in recent decades.
A suggestion: In the Reagan years many activists Southern Democrats joined the Republicans. Their children have been leaving the GOP, but especially now in the Trump years. I checked with a sociologist recently who told me that one can’t find numbers for this suggestion. There are no numbers about the children of former Southern Dems, or for Southern Dems who shifted to GOP under Reagan. Thus, I’m making a suggestion. What is undeniable is the growth of progressive evangelicals. My suggestion is that many of those who grew up in strong GOP homes are flipping their parents’ votes
I commented on Scot’s post that this was good stuff that deserved elaboration. I agree that we don’t have the exact data to explore his thesis but we may have lots of proxies that, taken together, support the broad argument.
He rightly argues, as I do in my book, that Gen Z (he doesn’t use that phrase) has been through massive social change in their brief lifetime.
Social justice concerns are very much part of it. Belief in universal health care – for good, solid Christian reasons – is part of it. Convictions that runaway capitalism is ruinous to American society is part of it. The lack of compassion for minority immigrants is part of it. The reality of white supremacy and racism are more than a little part of it. Christian nationalism is part of it, and what I have heard over and over is that these younger, former evangelicals cannot believe more evangelical leaders have refused to speak up and speak out and speak against the rise of Christian nationalism and white supremacy as the silent, but real, feature on the platform. The evangelical-GOP has utterly lost its prophetic voice. Barely a croak is left.
School shootings (sadly, another today), climate change, LGTBQ+ animosity, book banning, abortion restrictions, economic injustice, police shootings, racism, anti-immigrant sentiment, and much more have been a part of the milieu today’s young people emerged from. As they have developed relatively firm commitments on these important issues, their GOP-aligned churches have not provided room for those issues to be addressed. So the young people learn that they aren’t welcome.
But as they find others who share their passions, they are organizing politically. It’s hard to predict what will happen over the next 62 days, but I recently read that new voter registrations by young people is through the roof.
Today I received the new book by PRRI CEO Melissa Deckman, The Politics of Gen Z: How the Youngest Voters Will Shape Our Democracy. I bought it after hearing her interviewed by former CEO Robbie Jones. I’ve only read the preface so far, but this passage raises similar themes as Scot’s SubStack.
The political habits and values of individuals can also be shaped by the shared experience of their youth. Unlike their parents and grandparents, members of Generation Z have grown up in a world in which mass shootings have become far more prevalent, including at their schools. This has led some to label Gen Z as the lockdown generation. Gen Zers have come of age as the Earth’s temperature is warming dramatically, and the possess an acute sense of how they will suffer the impacts of climate change. Gen Z is the first generation of young people to witness a presidential candidate’s refusal to conceded his defeat in a free and fair election, leading to the almost unimaginable events of January 6, 2021. Debates about the rights of marginalized groups, whether people of color of LGBTQ Americans, have taken a central role in their political lives. Unlike their parents, Zoomers face a world in which long-assumed rights, such as access to abortion, are not guaranteed. (xii)
Melissa is not writing about young evangelicals, but my experience suggests some of the patterns transfer even though PRRI data suggests that just 11% of Gen Z are white evangelicals.
Perhaps GOP-related evangelicals have been taking political identity for granted, that “real Christians” don’t have questions about the above topics. Matthew Sutton’s recent piece arguing that historians have not paid enough attention to the political context of evangelicalism, focusing instead on historic theological pedigree.1 Sutton summarized his point:
Here it is: I argue that post–World War II evangelicalism is best defined as a white, patriarchal, nationalist religious movement made up of Christians who seek power to transform American culture through conservative-leaning politics and free-market economics. Contemporary evangelicalism is the direct descendent of early twentieth-century fundamentalism, North and South. Both movements are distinct from Antebellum forms of Christianity. There is no multi-century evangelical throughline.
Last week PRRI released their 2023 Religious Landscape Report. They report that the percentage of respondents identifying as White Evangelicals fell from 17% in 2013 to 13% in 2023.2
They report that White Evangelicals are concentrated in the South and Midwest. Given Scot’s suggestion, it’s worth imagining how the famous Red State Blue State map overlays with this one, Furthermore, they are less likely to have college degrees that the population at large and less that a quarter live in urban areas (35% in rural areas).3
Melissa Deckman’s book focuses on the gender gap among Gen Z. This aligns with what we know about the differential rates of college attainment for women. When you go to college and meet people different from who you knew in your small Southern town, it’s not surprising that political attitudes shift accordingly. And if the church and town aren’t willing to engage those attitudes, one simply goes home less often.
Michael Podhorzer’s SubStack yesterday adds to this regional perspective. His piece was contrasting Right to Union (RTU) states with Right to Work (RTW) states. He picks up the White Evangelical theme:
White Evangelicals make up almost a quarter of the population in the RTW states, over twice the share in the RTU states. And union members make up 14 percent of the population in the other states, over double the share in the RTW states.
Scot McKnight closes his SubStack as follows:
These voices are pointing to the vacuousness of the evangelical alignment with the GOP. Some of the original converts to Reaganism have flipped, but I suspect their children are the ones who will lead to a different evangelical politics, even if the word “evangelical” finds a different home.
Like Scot, I can’t quite connect all of the dots that support his argument. But there is something important happening with Gen Z. Not only are they All Right, but we will all be better off for their renewed political engagement.
He cites the now defunct Institute for the Study of Evangelicalism at Wheaton. I remember being welcomed to a group discussion there where the historians were making the theological pedigree argument. As the lone sociologist in the room, I was arguing that the individual identification with evangelicals was the relevant factor regardless of Princetonian pedigree. Needless to say, I like Sutton’s argument (which aligns well with Isaac Sharp’s).
There are measurement questions about how these counts work. If one uses a “born again” measure, you get a larger percentage. If one goes with religious bodies, you get a lower percentage.
One of the failings of the “81% of white evangelicals” supporting Trump is that they, as Sutton would suggest, fail to disentangle religious identity from rural or Southern identity (if that were even possible).
Thank you