Promoted post: If the Atheists and the Christians Debate, Islam Wins!

By Jessica Ebenstein Grose, who is an American journalist, editor, and novelist. She is the author of the 2012 novel Sad Desk Salad, the co-author of the 2009 book LOVE, MOM: Poignant, Goofy, Brilliant Messages from Home, and the 2016 novel Soulmates

This is an addendum to a series about Americans moving away from religion. Read part one, part two, part three, part four and part five.

When I wrote my series on why Americans are moving away from organized religion, I didn’t focus specifically on those under 30, even though I knew they were the least religiously affiliated. I wanted to tell the full story that included different age groups because in recent decades, all age groups have seen a decline in religious participation. The sociological term for the unaffiliated is “nones,” a catchall for atheists, agnostics and those who say they have no religion in particular.

I also thought that for the youngest adults, the move away from traditional worship was just an extension of the overall trend: a combination of fewer of them being raised by religious parents, a greater social acceptance of not identifying as a person of faith and a cultural association between conservative political beliefs and Christianity that started years before the first Zoomer was born.

But after more reading, rumination and reporting, I think there’s something slightly new happening for Gen Z and the youngest millennials. So I turned again to Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University who is a pastor and the author of “The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are and Where They Are Going.” He told me: “The estimates vary on this, but it’s empirically defensible to say that at least 40 percent of Gen Z are nones now.”

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Jadon George, 20, who lives in Philadelphia, said there were many moments that caused him to question the Christianity he was raised with, but the final straw was the sexual assault accusations against Ravi Zacharias, a now deceased evangelist whom his family used to listen to on the radio. “He knew how to hold an audience in the palm of his hand,” George told me.

Zacharias cautioned male leaders not to be alone with women: “I have long made it my practice not to be alone with a woman other than Margie and our daughters — not in a car, a restaurant or anywhere else,” he reportedly said. But several women alleged that in private he wasn’t just alone with them, he harassed and assaulted them. It particularly bothered George that a witness told independent investigators that Zacharias said she shouldn’t speak out against him, “or she would be responsible for the ‘millions of souls’ whose salvation would be lost if his reputation was damaged.”

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