I’m not sure that we’re losing religion per se – rather, we are sensibly responding to the modern condition.

Millenials are delaying marriage, children, and permanent employment. David Brooks of the NYtimes has noted that in 1960, roughly 70 percent of 30-year-olds had achieved these things. By 2000, fewer than 40 percent of 30-year-olds had done the same.

Married people and families are more likely to participate in religious communities. Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow argues that our society provides lots of structural support for children and teens, but leaves younger adults to fend for themselves during their 20s and early 30s – the decades when they’re making crucial decisions about family and work. This lack of structural support and increased self-reliance – along with delayed marriages – are all factors contributing to the decline in religious participation among millenials.

There’s a lot of literature on this topic – check out “After the Baby Boomers” by Wuthnow.

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Turn on any news channel, scan any political website – left or right – and organized religion, for the most part, looks like that thing crazy bible thumpers do on weekends. Belonging to a church, it would seem, means you hate gays, love guns, and think Jesus was a white guy with a beard. (And his dad’s a whiter guy with a white beard.)

I know because after years in Democratic politics I thought I knew exactly what organized religion stood for. Then I found the Episcopal Church, and discovered a place that puts reason on par with scripture and tradition. That performs – gasp! – gay marriages. And that believes the questions and the search matter more than the answers. (Other denominations are like this, too, I just happen to like mine the most!)

Unfortunately, as in the political word, us moderate Christians aren’t as loud as our extremist brethren. So it’s no surprise when people think that religion, as you put it, creates a “space between ourselves and our faith.”

While you can certainly have a relationship with God or a higher power outside of church, you miss out on the thousands of years of beautiful and insightful thought that has gone in to answering those most fundamental and important questions. You pass up lifetimes of soul searching, and have far more difficulty “standing on the shoulders of giants” to explore a deeper and more meaningful relationship with God.

In the same way a great professor can make a text come alive, church services with a well educated pastor/preacher/priest/imam/rabbi/lama can open up a world of ideas that would have otherwise taken years to unfold through individual study. That’s just one of the reasons I’ve decided to give up on a successful political career to pursue a graduate degree in divinity. :-)

One final bit of advice. When picking up a bible, don’t read it like a science book. Algebra (at least for most people) doesn’t stir the soul. Faith in God doesn’t come from reason and the fundamental truth of why we exist can’t be expressed by a formula. So read the Bible – or any religious text – like you would read poetry, and measure it by those standards instead.

I think the idea of religion is changing. One of the commentators mentioned that civilization is based on the morality tales of the Bible. And in many ways, despite what the new atheists claim, it is very very true. It is why they can say we are in a post-Christian time, because those morality tales are ingrained into the cultural fabric (they can’t claim both to say it is post-Christian, and not based on these tales). We are in a unique time where the world is rapidly changing. The standard questions that people ask (unconsciously) to figure out the world (Who am I? Where am I? What is Wrong? What is the Solution?) are beginning to require different answers. And that plays out in changing the Symbols and Stories (both within and outside religion) that we orient our lives around. The symbols that are now changing include the institution of religion, and the church. The question is, what answers to those questions will “win out” and become the basis with which our generation, and the next will see the world.

I do believe in God, and I’m a masters student in Theology.

I think the truth is that we have a lot more information available to us about religion via the internet and a lot of organized religions flaws has been brought to the forefront.

I am personally an atheist. I grew up Christian, went to 8 years of bible camp, ran some bible studies while in high school and gave up when i got to college. I looked up to people like C.S. Lewis and Josh McDowell who seemed to have it all figured out. In the end however I am comfortable with the randomness that is me and want to enjoy it as much as possible. I don’t know what happens when I die but I find comfort in not thinking there is anything afterwards and that this life is my gift … not the next life.

When I was forced into Baptist church on Sundays, I noticed that the congregation cursed stuff like the radio for being impure/un-Christian. They’d scream and cry about it. And as they tore out of the parking lot after service, they blasted their Madonna.

I believe that a lot of Gen Y tries to live by religious principles without letting weird congregations get in their way. We just left the churches to stay true to the core religion.

I wouldn’t box Gen Y’s into saying that they are losing religion. I think it depends on who you spend time with. For me, a vast majority of my Gen Y friends are Christians. My personal Christian faith is extremely important to me and I find encouragement from my church community as well.

Thinking about the early Christian church, as found in the book of Acts, it wasn’t this massive building with a program. It was a group of believers who met together daily to encourage and help each other. The poor and rich pooled their resources together and gave to everyone as they had need. They prayed for each other and worshipped God together. It was a pretty grassroots, organic and holistic movement.

I’m not really sure how one would define religion, but my personal faith and community with other Christians gives me joy and purpose.