Pictures is the main sanctuary in Christ the King Catholic Church. In recent years, the number of young people participating in church services has dwindled. Photo by Sam Anderson
Story By Ellie Levy
The last time sophomore Wiley stepped into a church was over three years ago.
As churches closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, Wiley began to feel separated from the Methodist faith and the ideologies of the church.
“My mom said that she was disappointed in me and wished she could’ve done something to make me not be this way,” Wiley said. “She just wished she could have done something to help me stay Christian.”
Wiley grew up in a religious environment and regularly went to church, but says there wasn’t any pressure to believe in Christianity.
“It’s more like I didn't know anything else,” Wiley explained. “That’s all I was raised in, and I’d been in that church since I was younger, [so] that's all I knew.”
The Park Cities is home to over 15 churches, including Presbyterian, Catholic, Espiscopal, Baptist, and Methodist denominations, most of which have been around since the 1930s. The people of the Park Cities have been in attendance for years. However, over the years, there has been a growing feeling of resentment among young church-goers.
“It's people rebelling against their parents or [because] they feel pressured,” Wiley said.
On the contrary, freshman Molly O’ Rourke says while she didn’t necessarily enjoy going to church when she was younger, she enjoys it now.
“It was really boring, but now I pay attention to what they say, and I like it a lot more now,” she said.
O’Rourke says she generally goes to church every Sunday with her parents and then goes to a bible study once on Mondays and twice on Wednesdays. These church-related activities have helped her to be more in touch with her faith.
[Catholicism] is all I was raised in, and I’d been in that church since I was younger, [so] that's all I knew."
While a general dislike of church can be attributed to boredom, it can also be attributed to different religious beliefs in teenagers that conflict with their parent’s views. Over half (52%) of teens report not sharing the same religious beliefs as their parents, according to a Pew Research Center study titled “U.S. Teens Take After Their Parents Religiously, Attend Services Together and Enjoy Family Rituals” by Elizabeth Podrebarac Sciupac, a senior researcher, and Philip Schwadel, a professor of sociology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
“It is not unusual for teenagers to wish they're not going to church,” Christ the King youth minister Kirk Dooley said. “That’s been going on forever. But now that your age group is in that window, you think, ‘Oh man, we’re the ones who don't want to go to church.’ All teens have faced that.”
However, this generation of teens is unique in that the coronavirus could have led them away from the church.
During the initial outbreak of the coronavirus, churches were either shut down, or moved to online. This caused people, especially teenagers, to separate themselves from their religion due to a break in consistency and routine, Dooley said.
“During quarantine, you had to go to church via TV,” Dooley said. “[But even] now that the live masses have come back, not all the people have come back.”
O’Rourke says that during COVID, her church didn’t have much attendance.
“When I first went there, we were one of like four people at the church, so it was awkward,” O’Rourke said. “I felt bad for the church because they had a really bad turnout.”
While the online church was present at the fringes of the religious world before, the pandemic amplified its presence.
Beyond the pandemic, an age-related drop off in attendance has always been found upon confirmation and adulthood in the denominations that confirm young teens. Confirmation refers to a right of passage for Christian youths designed to deepen one’s relationship with God.
“A lot of people don't come back until they're married, or married with kids,” Dooley said.
While some teens are likely to say they don’t like church or only go because their parents want them to, there are many teenagers who say they enjoy church and go of their own volition. The same Pew Research study conducted by Sciupac and Schwadel showed that 27% of the teens surveyed say they get a lot of enjoyment out of church, and 51% say they get some enjoyment out of it.
This is partially due to the modernization of church practices. Things like youth groups and integration of modern culture into church attract younger, more permanent members, according to Dooley.
“The kids [whose] parents were forcing them to go, they don't want to go, so it's not good for the group,” he said. “The way most churches get around that is they make going to church or make the high school youth group ‘fun’ enough to go.”
This is the case for sophomore Taylor Weatherwax, who is an atheist. Weatherwax says she previously went to church of her own volition because it was enjoyable.
“My parents didn’t try to force me [into] religion or anything,” Weatherwax said. “It was my own decision to go to church every Sunday because it was a fun environment.”
However, Weatherwax began to feel pressured within the religious environment, not from her parents, but from the church itself.
“Basically I’d just go to church everyday, and then there was the whole concept of hell,” Weatherwax said. “They kept on mentioning how if you don’t believe in God, or if you say something wrong, you go to hell, and you’d be forever tortured.”
Sometimes I go through seasons of my life where I feel further away from my beliefs. But I wouldn't want to go without it. It gives me hope to be around people who all have the same values as me, and it’s just a great community."
Weatherwax disagrees with the idea that Christianity is built upon the idea that one must trust in God upon the expectation that you will be forgiven.
“If there was a God, [he wouldn’t] allow babies to die from bone marrow disease and stuff like that at a really young age, and all this crap that's happening today,” Weatherwax said. “I just think that if there is a God, he’s a real jerk, so there’s probably not one.”
Unlike Weatherwax, O’ Rourke finds it comforting to attend church services and says it has strengthened her as a person.
“Sometimes I go through seasons of my life where I feel further away from my beliefs,” she said. “But I wouldn't want to go without it. It gives me hope to be around people who all have the same values as me, and it’s just a great community.”
Like Weatherwax, she was also introduced to youth groups but felt welcomed in the environment and was eager to attend each week. O’Rourke says the balance between free time and more serious time spent learning about Christianity is a positive way to encourage teens to see going to church as not just a chore.
Despite this, social media and the age of information have deepened the divide between the traditional, older generations of the Park Cities and the teenagers of Generation Z, which has shown possible consequences on organized religion.
“The world is moving so much faster because of the internet,” Dooley said. “That’s something that our parents didn't have to deal with. It was much simpler back then, but today, social media has made religion almost on a different level.”
Despite this divide, Dooley believes that religion should be open and flexible to one’s own preferences. Dooley says he goes to church and finds religious meaning within this experience but isn’t bothered if other people don’t.
“If somebody goes to a different church, great, and if they don't go to church at all, that's fine,” Dooley said. “I think that tolerance is a Christian virtue.”