Table 9.1 American Adults’ Belief in Non-Naturalistic Phenomena by Generation (%)

  Of the following things that some people believe in, which would you say you believe are actually real? Early Boomers Later Boomers Gen Xers Millennials

  Karma (a universal force repaying good and bad)

   I definitely believe 20 41 45 40

   I maybe believe but am not sure 39 31 29 27

  Demons or evil spirits active in the world today

   I definitely believe 35 41 44 37

   I maybe believe but am not sure 23 23 26 24

  Angels active in the world today

   I definitely believe 40 51 47 35

   I maybe believe but am not sure 28 23 22 23

  UFOs, aliens that visit earth, unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAPs)

   I definitely believe 20 28 23 33

   I maybe believe but am not sure 35 34 39 30

  The ability to project positive and negative energies outside oneself

   I definitely believe 20 26 35 32

   I maybe believe but am not sure 34 34 33 31

  Nature spirits or spiritual energies in nature

   I definitely believe 18 24 25 29

   I maybe believe but am not sure 32 36 36 30

  Miraculous healings

   I definitely believe 39 43 39 28

   I maybe believe but am not sure 37 26 28 29

  Ghosts that haunt people or houses

   I definitely believe 12 19 26 27

   I maybe believe but am not sure 34 33 34 30

  Psychic abilities, ESP, empath powers, a “sixth sense”

   I definitely believe 23 29 31 26

   I maybe believe but am not sure 47 35 36 32

  Family members who are dead visiting or communicating with you or living relatives

   I definitely believe 15 26 30 24

   I maybe believe but am not sure 35 30 29 31

  Auras or chakras (energy centers of the body)

   I definitely believe 15 15 20 20

   I maybe believe but am not sure 28 36 33 33

  Reincarnation (having lived past lives and reborn into this world)

   I definitely believe 10 16 19 18

   I maybe believe but am not sure 30 29 33 33

  Making desires come true by mentally visualizing them (“manifesting” through “the law of attraction”)

   I definitely believe 10 15 19 18

   I maybe believe but am not sure 29 31 32 31

  Good luck charms, symbols, or numbers

   I definitely believe 6 12 19 18

   I maybe believe but am not sure 26 36 37 30

  Communication with the dead who are not family members

   I definitely believe 7 11 16 18

   I maybe believe but am not sure 16 26 36 27

  Spirits channeled in living people’s bodies

   I definitely believe 9 11 15 18

   I maybe believe but am not sure 19 29 37 30

  Astrology (the belief that celestial bodies affect human affairs)

   I definitely believe 12 14 14 17

   I maybe believe but am not sure 25 32 31 25

  Tarot cards for fortune-telling

   I definitely believe 5 9 11 16

   I maybe believe but am not sure 17 20 23 21

  Certain objects having spiritual powers (e.g., crystals, pyramids)

   I definitely believe 6 9 17 14

   I maybe believe but am not sure 21 26 26 25

  The ability to see into the past or future

   I definitely believe 9 14 16 15

   I maybe believe but am not sure 36 39 32 33

  The ability to cast real magic spells or curses (not stage performance magic)

   I definitely believe 3 13 13 14

   I maybe believe but am not sure 19 23 25 20

  Reiki healing (transferring universal energy by laying on hands)

   I definitely believe 13 13 15 11

   I maybe believe but am not sure 30 31 33 30

  Bigfoot

   I definitely believe 4 6 8 10

   I maybe believe but am not sure 25 27 25 23

  Werewolves

   I definitely believe 5 3 6 9

   I maybe believe but am not sure 11 9 13 16

  Vampires

   I definitely believe 3 2 5 7

   I maybe believe but am not sure 7 9 13 12

  TOTALS (unweighted n’s): 100 (n = 341) 100 (n = 358) 100 (n = 485) 100 (n = 677)

  Source: Millennial Zeitgeist Survey, 2023 (N = 1,861). Percents may not add to 100 due to rounding. Answer categories were “a huge amount,” “a lot,” “some,” “very little,” “none at all.”

  First, we see that large numbers of American adults not only do not dismiss most of the spiritual, paranormal, magical, occultic, esoteric, and New Age ideas in the table but also that sizeable minorities report “definitely” believing them and larger minorities “maybe” believe them. American religion may have become obsolete, but most Americans have not become naturalistic secularists. Many have instead become re-enchanted through spirituality and occulture. It is normal in examining such tables to focus immediately on comparisons of differences between groups. But the place to start is absolute percentages within categories. Thus, 40–45% of Americans between the ages of 25 and 68 say they definitely believe in the reality of karma, and another 30% also might. Continuing down the list, a majority of Americans 25–68 definitely or maybe believe in half of the ideas in Table 9.1. Substantial minorities of especially post-Boomers also believe in the rest of the list. Even considering the three least-believed ideas, 33% of Millennials nonetheless report definitely or maybe believing in bigfoot, 25% in werewolves, and 19% in vampires. Those are considerable numbers for such heretofore exotic beliefs.

  Some readers may be tempted to discount this as survey respondents just joking around, but close attention to what has been developing in the culture over the past decades would commend taking these responses seriously. Spirituality and occulture have been growing in major ways. In the past, when news stories occasionally reported the number of Americans who believe in astrology, for example, the amused responses were often something like, “How can people be so ridiculous?” My thesis here, to the contrary, is that, in the Millennial zeitgeist, such beliefs are not fringe silliness but part of bigger, significant cultural movements deserving serious attention.

  Second, Table 9.1 reveals a pattern of belief in these ideas being more widespread among younger generations than older. Early Boomers are the least open to any of these ideas. Gen X usually reports the highest levels of definite and possible belief in them, often more so than Millennials. The only exceptions are communicating with the dead, channeling spirits, astrology, tarot cards, magic spells and curses, bigfoot, werewolves, and vampires—in which Millennials believe most, by a few points. These modest differences may be a cohort effect of Gen Xers being truly the most “into” these ideas, with Millennials being a bit more skeptical. Or it may be an age effect of Millennials needing more life experience and greater exposure to “alternative” parts of culture before being prepared to declare their belief in these ideas, which more eventually will. Time will tell. Having noted those differences, however, Gen X and Millennials look sufficiently similar overall that the inclusive label “post-Boomer” works well here.

  Another observation: in two cases, Later Boomers report higher levels of credence than Gen Xers: belief in angels and miraculous healings. Not coincidentally, these are the two from the list that also belong to parts of traditional religion. They are also the two ideas about which Millennials show the greatest drop in definite belief relative to Gen Xers. Late Boomer belief in these two and Millennials’ relative distance from them may both come in part from their possible associations with traditional religious outlooks. In sum, in keeping with my argument about the zeitgeist, belief in these supernatural, enchanted, magical, esoteric, occultic, and sometimes dark ideas had, by 2023, become astonishingly common and generally more widespread among post-Boomers than older generations.

  Although the re-enchantment story has not played a major part in the preceding chapters, and although I cannot fit a robust analysis of the re-enchantment of American culture into this volume, grasping the point here about spirituality and occulture is absolutely essential to understanding this book’s argument. Religion did not become obsolete because secularity won the day. Religion lost out in good measure because alternatives that are actually more like religion than secularism emerged as cultural options that proved attractive to many post-Boomers. These ideas and interests replaced religion more easily than secularism could. Traditional religion has to compete against spirituality and occulture. But so does secularism. Nobody of a secularist persuasion could come away from Table 9.1 thinking their viewpoint has emerged victorious. If anything, while occulture and spirituality represent functional replacements for traditional religion, they are outright rejections of core premises of secularism. The jury is still out, it would seem, on whether replacement or rejection is the more threatening possibility for traditional religion. In any case, this development substantiates my argument that the decline of traditional religion does not count as support for secularization theory. In this multiposition field, religion can lose without secularism winning. The implications are huge.

  In brief, one key takeaway about the Millennial zeitgeist is this: through immense, tectonic shifts in global and national sociocultural orders, the terrain on which religion and secularism have long contended as binary rivals has undergone upheaval and reconfiguration. New players have gained in numbers and influence. The cultural landscape has become more complex and, for religion, more challenging than before. Understanding the big picture adequately requires recognizing the larger significance of this rise of spirituality and occulture.

  Conclusion: Why the Zeitgeist Made Religion Obsolete

  So what exactly about the Millennial zeitgeist rendered traditional religion obsolete? Why the cultural mismatch? I close this chapter drawing together much of the above into this analytical summary. In heart and soul, as a matter of deep culture, the Millennial zeitgeist was (and seems to remain):

  • Immanent: Focused on the here and now, not the transcendent or otherworldly

  • Individualistic: Envisioning society as a collection of atomistic, choice-making selves

  • Anti-institutional: Avoiding structured social groups and institutions

  • Presentist: Captive to the contemporary, unmoored from history and tradition

  • Relativist: Viewing knowledge, truth, and ethics as opinions dependent on perspectives

  • Distrustful: Suspicious of most people’s and organization’s motives and agendas

  • Subjectivist: Assuming interior feelings and experience to be the best guides for living

  • Anti-authority: Hostile to structured social roles of influence and power

  • Fluid: Expecting change, instability, revision, mobility

  • Multicultural: Comfortable with sociocultural diversity, dubious of homogenous groups

  • Minimalist: Preferring to strip away unnecessary systems, particularities, creeds

  • Transgressive: Breaking down received boundaries, norms, categories, decorum

  • Pornographic: Inundated by images of nudity, sex, and violence of all sorts in most media

  • Jaded: Bored by hype and defeated by disappointment, scandals, and dim futures

  • Consumerist: Conceiving the good life as continually acquiring new experiences and products

  • Entertained: Soaking up relentless stimulation, amusement, performance, spectacle

  • Re-enchanted: Open to believing “weird” stuff that enlightened modernity had suppressed

  Of course not every post-Boomer was or is all of these things. We are not talking about individuals here but the macro-cultural mood of generations. The zeitgeist shaped many individual Gen Xers and nearly all Millennials but in different ways, in various degrees, in diverse settings. Furthermore, again, the zeitgeist did not push most post-Boomers into hard-core secularism. Some did become naturalistic, scientistic atheists. But even more moved into the alternative camps of spirituality and occulture. By the turn of the twenty-first century, the main options were not the simple binaries of religious and secular. The re-enchantment of culture opened up plenty of space for those wanting to leave traditional religion yet not wishing to become fully secularized. That, too, presented even more challenges for traditional religion.

  Lest anyone take any of this to be Millennial bashing, I repeat that this zeitgeist is not the novel creation of an aberrant generation. It is the natural outcome of the social, institutional, technological, and cultural conditions in which post-Boomers were socialized. Older generations were the ones that created and fostered those conditions, among whom the owners of its technology and culture industries profited spectacularly. Post-Boomers were raised by Boomer parents who instilled in them most of the values and attitudes that their children, under different technological and social conditions, pushed to new limits. As D. H. Lawrence observed, “It is a curious thing, but the ideas of one generation become the instincts of the next.”25 Gen Xers and Millennials coming of age simply tried to make sense of the world they were handed. The zeitgeist was the meaning they made of it, a cultural bricolage pieced together from materials at hand in a way that seemed to them sensible and resonant. It was not a rebellion against an alienating system in need of change—that was the Baby Boomers’ story. It was a functional adaptation to a seductive-yet-wounding system against which protest seemed futile and exit impossible. Some readers may love the zeitgeist. But if any critique is justified, therefore, sociological realism tells us to direct it not at “kids these days” but at the larger social system that helped create those kids.

  Let us return then to the questions posed at the start of this chapter. How would we expect traditional religion to fare in such a cultural atmosphere? How does the picture of reality embodied in this zeitgeist resonate or not with the picture offered by traditional religion? How would religion appear to young Americans who soaked in the zeitgeist’s concerns, moods, and sensibilities? The answer is that traditional religion’s picture of reality did not resonate with most of those who soaked up the zeitgeist. American religion’s demise has not been due to its farfetched belief contents—as most atheists and some secularization theorists would have it—but because of its own fossilized cultural forms that it was unable to shake. Religion in the Millennial zeitgeist felt alien and disconnected from what mattered in life—in short, badly culturally mismatched. The vibes were off.

  10

  Through the Exit Doors

  As traditional American religion became obsolete for post-Boomers, many no longer had any use for it, and it faded from their lives. We return now to this basic consequence of religion’s obsolescence: the mass exodus of post-Boomers from traditional religion. Why did so many leave the religions of their youth? This chapter draws on our interviews with post-Boomers to answer this question. Most of this book has explored the larger sociological forces that have led to religion’s obsolescence. The following pages elucidate how many post-Boomers experienced and responded to those forces.

  Of course, the reasons people give for their actions will never provide a complete explanation. People have blind spots and often lack perspective on the consequences of massive social changes. So we should not expect the interview responses below to map perfectly onto larger societal trends. Nonetheless, hearing what people say about religion—especially attending to the voices of the many who grew up in a religion and later left it behind—provides a window into the ways they experienced and make sense of the large social and cultural conditions that shaped their lives, which can contribute to a fuller understanding of religion’s demise.

  This chapter begins by examining what members of the younger generations said turns them off about religion and why they left the faiths of their youth. It also considers the perspectives of younger Americans who didn’t leave religion altogether but became less religious. The chapter then turns to examine three important minority American religions—Judaism, Black Protestantism, and Mormonism—that offer important lessons about religious obsolescence. Attending to these smaller traditions matters not simply for representing religious minority voices, but because each is a theoretically important case that provides insight into how the macro-sociological forces described in the preceding chapters work out in particular religious contexts.

  Religious Turn-Offs

  What do post-Boomers dislike about religion? We asked our interview respondents what, if anything, about religion turned them off, what they thought was bad or problematic. Most of them had plenty of criticisms to voice (Table 10.1). I studied their answers to this question systematically and, through a multiple iteration process of thematic grouping, sorted respondents’ answers into general categories. I also separated respondents into religious types according to their different life experiences with religion.1 Respondents often offered multipart answers that contributed to more than one category. The numbers should be interpreted as the percentage of interviewees of each religious type who mentioned that category of answer. The columns are not expected to add to 100.2

  Table 10.1 Religious Turn-Offs for Post-Boomer Americans (%)

  Bad and criticized features of traditional religion mentioned Decliners (N = 135) Still Religious (N = 34) Increased (N = 20) Low Stable + NR (N = 17)

  Harm: Causes violence, suffering, oppression, destruction, war, division 77 59 40 47

  Of which specifically anti-LGBTQ 14 3 15 6

  Of which specifically anti-female, misogynous 12 3 – 6

  Of which specifically justifying racism, slavery, colonialism 4 3 – 6

  Social control: Tool of manipulation, conformity, imposition 50 6 5 –

 

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