Six Reasons Young Christians Leave Church

The Barna Group – Six Reasons Young Christians Leave Church.

The above article is based on recent research in the changing landscape of young adults and faith.  Over the past decade I have seen a lot of this going on and have tried to address some of these issues in my blog.  The research reinforces in my mind the need to present a more robust articulation of our faith tradition that handles the many challenges of an increasingly pluralistic and technologically advanced culture.

Sources of Authority

 I read a good article in a book called Christianity in Jewish Terms. The author of the article, Miachael A. Signer did a good job of summarizing quite succinctly the differences that result from the various traditions of Christianity and Judaism.  Jewish interpretation is informed by the TaNaCh (Torah, Nevi’im-the prophets, and Ketuvim-the writings) as well as Oral Torah, the Mishnah which makes up the Talmud, their Scriptures and interpretation of Scriptures.  Christians view the Bible as the Old and New Testaments which consist of Torah, Nevi’im and Ketuvim but do not include the Oral Torah.  Thus, a split occurs based on sources of authority for Christian and Jewish communities.  Within the Christian community there are further divisions related to Scripture, tradition and theology.  Catholics and Protestants disagree on what constitutes Scripture.  Catholics include additional books as canonical, what Protestants call the Apocrypha.  Orthodox Christians view tradition as encompassing the writings of the church fathers and the decisions of the councils.  Catholics accept these along with believing the tradition is continued through the teaching office of the church (the Magisterium) in concert with theologians.  For Protestants, interpretation of Scripture is influenced for some in the mainline by church confessions, while many restrict authority to simply the text of the Bible itself, ipsissima verba, the words of God.  Theology is utilized in various ways by these three traditions.  The use of reason and philosophical method in theology is utilized by Catholics in combination with church fathers, church councils and papal documents.   Orthodox theology relies primarily on the early church fathers.  Protestants focus mostly upon Scriptural exegesis and reasoned philosophical methods.  With all these various approaches and sources of authority helping combine to provide interpretation of Scripture and in fact determine what is Scripture, it is no small wonder that interpretation varies so widely and simplistic views of all religions teaching the same thing dissolve into the complex realities of faith traditions.