These charts are from a scientific study published at PLOS/ONE. The top chart shows the percentage of young people who never attend church. The chart below that shows the percentage of young people who claim no religious affiliation.
It has been a fact that for several generations now there have been a smaller percentage of people accepting religion with each generation -- but there is an explosion of growth in young people fleeing religion today. Religious leaders, especially those on the right, want to blame this on secular teachings at "liberal" colleges, but as you can see, it is not just college students fleeing the church -- it is young people of all ages.
The truth is that young people today just can't accept the homophobic, misogynistic, and racist teachings they encounter far too often in churches today -- especially in the fundamentalist evangelical churches.
Our schools teach the Constitution and its guarantee of equality, but then on Sunday the church teaches something different -- that there are groups that don't deserve the same rights as other people. Today's youth are not stupid. They know that both cannot be true, and to their credit, ever larger numbers are opting to believe in equality.
