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Lord, Your word says to train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it (Proverbs 22:6). Thank you for demonstrating to the world through this Gallop poll that Your word is true.
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The percentage of the population that has no religious identity may be increasing, but a new Gallup report says such an anti-religion worldview is primarily embraced by younger people – and that as people age, they are more likely to get back in church.

“Predictions of the forthcoming demise of religion as we know it may be premature,” Gallup’s Frank Newport wrote in the new report.

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The report notes that between 20 and 25 percent of U.S. adults are now identified as “Nones,” meaning they answer “none” in surveys when asked about their religious identification.

But “despite this overall increase of nones,” Newport wrote, “older people are still less likely to eschew religion than those who are younger.” This is even true among people in their 30s compared to those in their 20s.

Newport referenced a recent Washington Post story – “Why Millennials Are Skipping Church and Not Going Back” – and argued the picture is more complex.

“There are signs that older millennials may in fact, contrary to the headline, be going back to religion,” Newport wrote. “… Older millennials are more likely than younger millennials to have a religious identity, and older millennials are more likely than younger millennials to say they attend religious services frequently.”

About 38 percent of adults in their mid-20s identify as “nones,” according to 2019 Gallup data, but that percentage falls to 24 percent among those in their early 40s, around 17 percent among those in their 50s, and only around 7 percent among those in their early 80s.

A similar pattern holds for church attendance, Newport noted. About 20 percent of adults in their mid-20s attend church weekly or almost weekly, but among adults in their 80s, it’s around 50 percent.

“People return to religion as they age,” he wrote.

No doubt, “nones” are up among all age groups, Newport wrote. But older people are still less likely to renounce religion.

Religiosity plummets after age 18, coincident with young people leaving home and heading out into the real world of work or college,” Newport wrote. “Then, religiosity begins to rise again as young people go through their 30s, coincident with marriage, children and more stable involvement in specific communities. Religiosity generally continues to rise with age, albeit with some points at which it is fairly flat and reaches its peak in Americans’ late 70s and 80s.

“… Broad structural changes in society and culture may well continue to affect religiosity across all groups, but the big bulge of millennials may actually get more religious as they age,” he wrote.

“It has long been a truism of generational human experience that young people tend to be less religious in their practice than they were as teens or what they will be in their coming adult years,” Stanton told Christian Headlines. “Even the good Puritans in the Colonial days bemoaned the troubling ‘loss of faith’ among their own children. Weekly church attendance does increase as people grow older and settle into a greater rhythm of life with their children.”

“The nones are not a new group of growing secularists or unbelievers,” Stanton said. “Leading sociologists of religion are clear and consistent on this point. These are simply those who used to say they identified with some denomination but only went at Christmas or Easter, if that. Now they are simply more comfortable admitting what they’ve always been: nothing. It’s simply a change in categorization, not belief so much.”

(Excerpt from Christian Headlines. Article by Michael Foust.)

Share this article with anyone you know who is praying for someone who has walked away from faith.

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Peggy Bridges
November 16, 2019

Once you are approaching 50, you have tried to fill the hole with everything the world has to offer, and you are still empty. Then people remember the promises and return to the Lord, realizing, only he can fill the God shaped hole we are born with.

Karen Secrest
November 16, 2019

I like to believe a greater percentage of people never lost their faith in a Joly Hod who watches over this crazy seeming world er live in.
It’s simply more viable to believe empty meters have more time and energy to pursue daily events.

Always concede there were those pg us that finally understood you can’t complain about the changes you don’t like in your community and nation if you aren’t willing to speak up and pray up.
Amen.
So Be It..

    Karen Secrest
    November 16, 2019

    Isn’t it interesting how my syntax gets lost also? Lol

Carol
November 16, 2019

Heavenly Father: Many of us in our later years can understand how the younger adults in our culture view religion in their own lives.
We may have been there ourselves at their age. We pray that the seeds of your Truth will pass near them and their ears and sink into their heart, there to grow at the ripe time. We pray that the Truth will come to them in ways that might raise eyebrows. But you work in mysterious ways, in your own time in your own way. Help us believers keep planting seeds of Truth, to show our unconditional love as you showed us by your Son Jesus Christ dying on the cross. Let them see your Light as we live out our lives. Show them first their need of you because of original sin of all, and then help them see the solution, reaching out and up to you and receiving the Good News that Christ died for them for all the sins in their own personal lives and that by accepting your as their Savior, they are the recipients of all your benefits of saving grace.

Thank you Lord for hearing our prayer. Amen

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