Generation Z embodies a rapidly changing reality in the United States and in many countries around the world. According to several recent polls, not only is Gen Z (persons born roughly between 1997 and 2012) less religious than previous generations in the U.S. (33% identifying as “religiously unaffiliated”), we are also less likely than previous generations to identify as Republicans (21%), more likely to identify as LGBTQIA+ (28%), and the “most racially and ethnically diverse generation” in U.S. history. With an estimated 41 million Gen Zers eligible to vote in the upcoming 2024 election, taking account of these seismic shifts in the terrain of U.S. political and cultural life has even greater importance. But the uniqueness of my generation does not stop here. As reported this week by The New York Times, “For the first time in modern American history, young men are now more religious than their female peers. They attend services more often and are more likely to identify as religious.” For researchers on religion and churchgoers alike, this is paradigm shattering!
For the first time in modern U.S. history, the men of a generation are more likely than the women of their generation to be religious – and it must be said that this binary report leaves out nonbinary persons and those who do not identify within the male-female scheme. Nevertheless, this dramatic shift carries with it not only implications for our theoretical frameworks as scholars but also in the lived experiences of religious persons in the U.S. This shift also comes at a time when Christian Nationalism, an “ideology that seeks to create or maintain a legal fusion of Christian religion with a nation’s character,” is on the rise in the U.S.
According to a survey done by the Pew Research Center,
“White evangelical Protestants are more likely than adults in most other groups to say the Bible should have at least some influence on U.S. laws (86%) – including 55% who say the Bible should have “a great deal” of influence. A majority of Hispanic Protestants (78%) and Black Protestants (74%) also think the Bible should hold at least some influence on the country’s laws.” [emphasis added]
So, if the religious persons of Gen Z are more likely to be men, and as The New York Times described, these men are often attending evangelical churches, which tend to hold more conservative beliefs, then young Christian spaces in the U.S. face a potentially dangerous reality: churches, which once shared belongings in common (Acts 2:42-47) and were commanded to welcome the outcast and provide for the poor (Mtt. 25:31-40), are now poised – perhaps for the first time since the Inquisition and the ideology of “manifest destiny” – to be echo chambers of a toxic theology that has more to do with Donald Trump than Jesus of Nazareth. This is not to idealize the church’s history or to deny the fact that Christian denominations have historically supported and benefitted from exploitative practices, including slavery and segregation. It is rather to identify that, if left unchecked, Christianity in my generation risks devolving even further into a demonic force of injustice in U.S.-American life.
Did I really just say that?
At this point you might rightly be questioning on what grounds I made that seemingly polemical accusation. Let’s get into it. In addition to the stark changes that Gen Z embodies, men in my generation, who are more religious than our female counterparts, are also less educated than the women of our generation (again this binary erases people). This reality matters because it has been shown that persons who receive more education are more likely to have an egalitarian outlook (specifically they are more likely to reject negative racial stereotypes), though it must be noted, however, that this outlook does not necessarily translate into support for “specific policies designed to overcome racial inequality.” The question, then, is not merely about a desire for an egalitarian society but more presciently about gaining the ability to create such a reality in our daily lives. To crudely interpret the meaning of this for churches with more men from my generation it means that, generally speaking, the folks in our communities are less likely to value egalitarianism, less aware of and more likely to deny racial, ethnic, and gender-based discrimination, and less likely to have the skills necessary for creating an egalitarian community. And this reality has even deeper consequences…
According to the Dunning-Kruger model, persons who are less competent at a skill also tend to overestimate their ability because they also lack the competence to recognize their incompetence. In other words, I may think I’m a great teacher simply because I didn’t learn what good teaching entails. If I take a classroom management or teaching theory course, I’d come to realize the faults in my method. This is what it means to gain competency, to gain and develop skills that make me better at whatever it is I’m trying to do. Do the men in my generation want to be egalitarian? Can egalitarianism, specifically actively working against racism and sexism, be treated as a competency? If so, what are the implications?
This is exactly what researchers Keon West and Asia A. Eaton assert in their 2019 research in which they applied the Dunning-Kruger model to egalitarianism. (And yes, we’re coming back to my Gen Z “church bros” soon!) Their research found that “In line with the Dunning-Kruger model, participants overestimated their levels of racial and gender-based egalitarianism, and this pattern was strongest among the most prejudiced participants” (West & Eaton, p. 111). That is to say, people who are less competent – persons who have not received the education and training necessary for a certain skill, in this case egalitarianism – are more likely to overestimate their egalitarianism.
A poignant example, which is quoted at the opening of their article, is former president, Donald J. Trump saying, “I’m the least racist person that you have ever met” immediately following a quote from Senator Bernie Sanders saying that Trump is “the most racist, sexist, homophobic, bigoted president in history” (West & Eaton, p. 111). It has been shown that white people regard racism as less of a problem than persons of marginalized racial and ethnic identities, it has also been shown that “men, compared to women, are less likely to notice or respond to sexism” (quoted from West & Eaton, p. 111). As West and Eaton illustrate, the Dunning-Kruger model is true of racial and gender biases as well.
So what? The Call to be the Church
Gen Z men are less educated than Gen Z women and more religious. Therefore, as discussed above, since white men are less likely to notice sexism, and white people with less education are more likely to deny racial and ethnic discrimination, the Christians of my generation run the risk of being the most prejudiced gathering in U.S.-American life. And by integrating the research of West and Eaton, we now know that this same gathering – Christians from my generation – is, based upon the demographics, perhaps the most prejudiced gathering and also the most likely to overestimate how egalitarian we are. “We’re not racist or sexist” says a white male pastor who looks out at a crowd of young white men who, generally speaking, have not had the training necessary to recognize our own prejudice.
But as Christians we believe that there is always hope! West and Eaton show us that egalitarianism, specifically recognizing and working to overcome racism, sexism and – I would add – transphobia and homophobia, is a skill that can be gained. The challenge is for us as churches, theologians, and religious leaders to recognize the need for egalitarianism as a competency. Afterall, we believe that as Christ-followers we are to be known by our love for one another (Jn 13:35), and that no member of the body can deny the value of another (1 Cor. 12:21-27). Therefore, we must make it clear that in gaining the competency of egalitarianism we gain the competency necessary for being the church.
While West and Eaton don’t provide a detailed plan for overcoming this situation, they speculate that “most diversity training does not involve any actual training in techniques to reduce bias, but rather focuses on the delivery of information about bias” (West & Eaton, p. 117). We must not only educate our communities on the statistics and effects of biases, but we must also provide them with the techniques necessary for reducing our own biases so that we can become the church more fully. Two of these techniques, which they passingly reference, are “counter-stereotypic imaging and stereotype replacement” (citing Devine, Forscher, Austin, & Cox). Using the theology of feminist theologian Elizabeth Johnson and the work of Afro-Cuban American artist Harmonia Rosales, I have demonstrated one possible way of using these techniques in churches and research on religion in a previous blog for this website.
The task for each of us and all of our churches continues to be – especially those with younger participants – to learn and engage in such strategies. In other words, the challenge is for us to be the church!
Photocredits: (C) Ben White auf Unsplash
RaT-Blog Nr. 18/2024