I don’t mean to imply, of course, that all Millennials have rejected religion in favor of a kind of angry, portentous neo-paganism, only that a great many members of this age demographic have more or less done away with religious belief, and in the absence of religion they have ascribed a quasi-religious morality to a great many other issues and societal affairs, some of them quite passionately.

One of the greatest theological dialogues of the last 500 years is found between St. Thomas More and William Tyndale, the former a giant of the Catholic Church and the latter one of the more significant figures of the early Protestant Reformation. Tyndale’s translation of the Bible into English, and his work The Obedience of a Christian Man, was controversial and problematic enough that More, one of the fiercest critics of the Reformation, was compelled to respond. Tyndale responded with an “Answer” to More’s “Dialogue,” to which More responded with a “Confutation” of Tyndale’s “Answer” (the titles alone are worth reading). The tracts are rich with conviction, both utterly sure of their interpretation of the Word of God as it is revealed to humanity, both certain the other is not merely factually incorrect but sinning, going against the will of God to the detriment of the other’s eternal soul.

There’s not much of that going around these days. If you speak to the average 20-something or Millennial about the concept of sin, you may be treated to a kind of quasi-Unitarian dismissal of the concept, a sort of uncomfortable rejection of the notion of ecclesiastical proscription in any sense: “I’m very spiritual,” you’ll hear a lot, “but not religious.” What this looks like in practice is generally a dismissal of accountability towards any higher power, or at least towards any rules He might impose upon His people: It is, after all, 2014.

Yet the Millennials, having sloughed off the religious notions of their parents and grandparents—at least one-third of Generation Yers are more or less without religion—have taken it upon themselves to adopt a new set of mandates and dictates to guide their lives. Call them the “new sins,” a number of commandments by which one might stay on the narrow way. The old interdictions now cast aside, a new series of injunctions must be obeyed: and like most religions and denominations, adherence to these commandments is held sacrosanct, any deviation from them fairly blasphemous. Religion may be out for a large number of Millennials, but its vacuum has been more or less filled.

Climate Change Dogma

One of the most fervent dogmas to which the Millennial cohort now cleaves is that of climate change. Indeed, if there is a modern-day corollary to the Apostolic Age, say, and the apocalyptic predictions to which it was in thrall, it is in the Church of Global Warming, which is as certain as was Paul that the end times are at hand. More than two-thirds of Millennials agree that the earth is “getting warmer,” and 75 percent of those agree that man’s activities have something to do with it. Since Millennials are a firmly liberal voting block, this is rather unsurprising.

A sin against God would have once demanded penance: prayers for forgiveness, a rosary, some good works, perhaps. A sin against the environment demands equal absolution: two-thirds of Millennials are “willing to pay more for products from sustainability-focused companies” (echoes of trading alms for indulgences). Eighty percent of polled Millennials also believe that utility companies should “generate at least 1/3 of their power from renewable sources” by 2030—not merely that this is a good idea, mind you, but that it should be required. The alleged threat of climate change grows every day, even if the dangers never actually materialize; and so we must absolve ourselves of the sins of burning fossil fuels. Thus has the God of Abraham been replaced by the God of Atmosphere; salvation by Christ is increasingly being supplanted with salvation by carbon tax.

Why not? It is, after all, Science.

The Church Of Gay Sex

I don’t mean to imply, of course, that all Millennials have rejected religion in favor of a kind of angry, portentous neo-paganism, only that a great many members of this age demographic have more or less done away with religious belief, and in the absence of religion they have ascribed a quasi-religious morality to a great many other issues and societal affairs, some of them quite passionately.

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