Calvin offered a few guesses as to why religious participation has remained steady in Black communities. First, using statistics on prayer, church attendance and the importance of church, Calvin concluded, “it seems blacks are more invested in the practices and rituals associated with church life.” Second, Calvin opined that “whites and blacks view the institution of the Church differently.” For African-Americans, the church is a place of retreat from discrimination and a place to rally for justice. Third, Calvin suggested that “sometimes it is freeing to spend a few hours in a place where you are not a minority.” For African-Americans, the church is a community where integration fatigue decreases and code-switching is unnecessary.

Most people credit historians and social scientists William Straus and Neil Howe with coining the term “millennials,” a synonym for “Generation Y,” which is usually defined as that generation of persons born between 1982 and 2004. Current estimates say there are approximately 80 million millennials in the United States.

As a generation, millennials are thorough-going creatures of the digital age—being the first generation to grow up with computers in the home, with cell phones as appendages of their hands, texting to the point of creating “texting thumb” injuries, and iPods attached to their heads. Some have noted the generation’s tendency to put off adulthood roles (i.e., marriage, family formation, independent living), consequently labeling them the “boomerang generation” or the “Peter Pan generation.” It’s a generation of some privilege and opportunity.

Whether you view millennials positively or negatively depends on whether you generally accept or criticize Straus and Howe’s theory. Straus and Howe saw this generation like the next great generation, “civic-minded” with a strong sense of both local and global community. But others, like author Jean Twenge, have a more mixed view, seeing the generation as confident and tolerant while also possessing narcissistic and entitlement mentalities.

Millennials and Religion

Compared to earlier generations, Generation Y is less likely to attend religious services. They’re more likely to be skeptical of religious institutions and in growing numbers are more likely to adopt irreligious attitudes.

Over the past couple of months a number of thoughtful Christians have pondered the problem of so-called millennials leaving the church. Jefferson Bethke offered a Washington Post op-ed that put the focus squarely on millennials themselves. He writes, “My peers and I have too quickly caricatured ‘fundamentalists,’ without realizing we are eerily close to becoming what we say we hate.” [Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]

Writing at CNN’s Belief Blog, Rachel Held Evans maintained that the problem isn’t Generation Y but the local church. She says millennials want the church to update its substance, not its style. According to Evans evangelical churches lose millennials because they fail to offer authentic community concerned with more than a good Sunday morning performance.

Trevin Wax at The Gospel Coalition agreed with a fair amount of Evans’ analysis but differed with Evans’ view of the church, Jesus, the Gospel, holiness, and discipleship. He suggested that part of the problem is competing visions for Christian faith, practice and community.

As I read the exchanges, I couldn’t help wonder if any of this applied to the Black Church.

Black Church Attendance

Washington Post columnist Rahiel Tesfamariam weighed in with a question of her own, “Are Black Millennials Being Pushed Out of the Church?” Reflecting on a number of recent events where millennials were disciplined or removed from the church, Tesfamariam wrote:

“More than ever before – the digitalized, global community we live in demands that the church constantly elevate how it will be relevant to this and emerging generations. As the church seeks to preserve tradition, it will constantly be faced with resistance from rebellious young people. Will it alienate them or find innovative ways to bring them into the fold? Does the church understand their needs?”

Tesfamariam seems to take for granted that Black millennials are mostly like all other people of their generation. She doesn’t seem to question the notion that Black Generation Y’s are departing the church in comparable rates and speeds as their White counterparts. So she called rebellious millennials to grapple with their own rebellion while offering a charge to Black church leaders:

“Church leadership would be better off asking why so many youth and young adults are drawn to celebrities, places and ways of life that the church deems unhealthy for them. What is the lure? What are they getting from those things that they can’t find in the church and its leadership? Why isn’t religious life equally attractive? What is the church missing and is there a way to strike a healthy balance?”

On the one hand, these are good questions for every generation to wrestle with. Yet, these questions assume a problem that might not be adequately defined or really there.

Bryant T. Calvin joined in with a different perspective in his piece, “Why Aren’t Black Millennials Leaving the Church?” Calvin looked beneath the general statistics to discover some interesting differences between White and Black religious involvement. While overall numbers and rates of “irreligious” millennials have been growing in recent years, the same has not been true of African-American millennials. So-called “Black millennials” make up about 24 percent of Black church attendance, essentially unchanged from their parents and grandparents’ generations.

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