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There is hope for youth ministries, but they must innovate to survive
Gen Z is no longer engaging with religious institutions in prototypical ways, though majorities say they’re religious or spiritual.

[religionnews.com]

xenoview 8 Mar 4
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9 comments

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0

Whenever I see or hear the words ministries or pastors or any other synonym you might think of, I basically read exploitation and brainwashing of the feeble minded.

2

In my opinion...Religion adapts to societal changes. There have been many religions/cults that have come and gone. Some may start off as being benign but soon change when greed for wealth, power, and control become the main focus.
As long as there are people with emotional needs and wants that are not being met, there will be religions/cults to meet that need.

Betty Level 8 Mar 4, 2022

The rise of US youth street gangs can also be attributed to unmet emotional needs; another interesting parallel is the gangs' greed for wealth, power, etc.

@MizJ I agree. 🙂

@Betty Perhaps the next question should be what society needs to do to support the next generation. I am not naive enough to believe that in a country where banning Maus happens that anything will be done of course.

@MizJ Maybe a good start would be to become aware of the neighbors around us and offer emotional support, possibly by providing an unjudgmental ear. 🙂

@Betty There's an African saying, "It takes a village to raise a child". In the grocery store recently a child was standing in the cart and I said, "Please sit down, it's really easy to fall out of there". My words were met with stony stares from both mother and child. It almost feels as if society is broken. I'm not all that fond of kids but the spawn of my friends all know that they can show up at my door anytime for any reason.

@MizJ Defensiveness and distrust is plentiful. This divides communities. It's going to take a lot of time, patience, and understanding to make a difference. First, people have to be willing to a least try.

@Betty Others will do whatever, as individuals we can make choices that make a difference.

@MizJ I agree. 🙂

1

"We all know that any emotional bias -- irrespective of truth or falsity -- can be implanted by suggestion in the emotions of the young, hence the inherited traditions of an orthodox community are absolutely without evidential value.... If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences. With such an honest and inflexible openness to evidence, they could not fail to receive any real truth which might be manifesting itself around them. The fact that religionists do not follow this honourable course, but cheat at their game by invoking juvenile quasi-hypnosis, is enough to destroy their pretensions in my eyes even if their absurdity were not manifest in every other direction." -- H P Lovecraft

6

Youth ministries are vile and need to be stopped.
The religious indoctrination of children should be illegal.

3

It does not make me happy either. The longer they drag this around the longer we have the invisible man and thoughts and prayers.

That's not the only option.

@skado What is the other option?

@xenoview
The "invisible man" is religious literalism. Another option is religious figuratism. The man is a personification of an abstraction - not an actual person.

@skado Religious literalism is why some people claim they would die for this crap. They believe their god stuff literally. In other words, a great many of them think they will actually go to a place called Heaven to be with their god, and the big guy has a body just like they do.

@DenoPenno
That’s right . They’re just not the only religious people out there. The fundamentalists are the squeaky wheel that gets all the press, but they don’t represent religious people at large.

1

“ Gen Zers are more likely to engage with art as a spiritual practice (53%) than prayer (45%), more likely to engage in yoga and martial arts as a spiritual practice (40%) than attend a religious group (25%), and more likely to practice being in nature (45%) or meditation (29%) as spiritual practices than study a religious text (28%).”

Looks like a return to original religious values. Finally!

skado Level 9 Mar 4, 2022

Oh, you mean extirpation of heretics, witch burnings and crusades?

@LenHazell53
No. That’s not religious, originally.

@skado Well if you go back much further than that you have people sacrificing one another to the sun, the moon and seeing eclipses as a sign that a multitude has to die to make the light come back.
It is a myth to believe that religion was EVER anything but an excuse for exploitation of fear and gullibility, the gaining of wealth and a shameless grab for power.

@LenHazell53
You can't go back far enough to get in front of ignorance. It has always been there. But ignorance has never been the point of religion. Religion was always an effort to get above ignorance, but ignorance always finds a way to corrupt, and blame the corruption on the sincere party. That's how ignorance works.

@skado The ignorant can be educated, but you can't do anything for the stupid.

@xenoview
There are some who seem incapable of learning, but they are not excluded from the ignorant - ignorant is ignorant, regardless of the cause. And educating the capable is still not an easy project. Once they are an adult, they will learn only what they want to, capable or not.

4

WTactualF, is this supposed to make me happy?????

4

Is this supposed to be some kind of positive development? I don’t much care how they “engage with religious institutions,” if they are still promoting superstition, whether traditional or “New Age.”

What if they are not promoting superstition?

@skado that would be terrific, but it would mean they were no longer ministries, just community youth groups. Church ministries are by definition religious, and as has been pointed out many times there is no definition of religion that cannot also be applied to superstition and vice versa.

@LenHazell53
By your definition, but apparently not theirs, and definitely not mine. There is no consensus such that any one of us has the authority to claim our definition is the only one. That would be superstitious, and fundamentalist.

@skado
Religion, from Latin ligatura to bind fast (as in ligature) and re- =again
therefore, to rebind to a new deity. That being the case, belief in and subservience to a deity is inherently superstitious (from Latin superstitiosus "filled of dread of the supernatural" )

Like it or not @Skado words have meanings, and just because you don't know those meanings does not allow you to make up your own definitions and declare them to be true.

@LenHazell53

Religion is one of those words, the origins of which are unknown. There are three or four possibilities, depending on which source you ask. Relegere, religare, religiens, and so on. And there are those who say it's only a Western concept anyway, since many world languages don't have an equivalent word.

So, unfortunately, it's not as cut and dried as we would all like. We can choose a favorite and pretend it is the official one, or we can recognize that all language is a flexible, "living" thing, and communication requires a willingness to see things from unfamiliar perspectives. That doesn't mean we have to adopt the other person's view, but before we can decide whether to adopt or reject it, we first have to understand it. And that requires a willingness to consider ideas that we haven't considered before.

And not only do the experts not agree on the origins of the word religion, they also don't agree on the concept itself. It's an area of scholarship that is very complex, and very contentious. We can all have our preferred view, but to claim that it can only be one certain way, is to set oneself up as an authority over all authorities. I don't take myself or anyone else that seriously. All I claim is that my view is mine, and that I can justify it with facts, and sound reasoning, if given a chance. That still doesn't mean it's the only view that can be reasonably justified, but it isn't just a belief - it's a reasoned position.

Yes, words have meanings - lots of them.

@skado In my experience, “ministry” is one of those words that tend to mark a religious context, and a specifically christian one. “A monkey in silk is still a monkey.”

@The-Krzyz
I’m not quarreling with that, but this: “ there is no definition of religion that cannot also be applied to superstition and vice versa.”

Religion and superstition are not synonymous. Scholars don’t agree on a single definition of religion. The best anyone can claim is that they know what it means to them.

4

No youth ministries need to END! It is simply a euphemism for child indoctrination and brain washing.
If a ministry feels it has to to change to gain and retain members, they might as well admit that they had previously been lying and the Lie has stopped working because their victims have seen through the deception.
Children and young people need facts and reality, NOT "revealed truth" another euphemism for mendacity.

I agree, no youth ministries need to end!

@skado OH.. how clever, I forgot a comma, do excuse me while I wallow in my shame.

@LenHazell53
No shame implied. I’m just agreeing.

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