Young Americans less religious than their parents

CNN: Young Americans less religious than their parents

(CNN) — Ministering to young adults at New York's Riverside Church, the Rev. J. Lee Hill Jr. hasn't had much success in recruiting for Sunday morning services.

But his mission trips to New Orleans, Louisiana, since Hurricane Katrina and his efforts to connect with older teens and 20-somethings — the so-called millennial generation — via Facebook have paid big dividends.

"Church is difficult because young people today want to engage actively," Hill said. "They just want to experience God."

A study released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public life appears to bear that out. On the one hand, it finds that young Americans are significantly less religious than their parents and grandparents were when they were young. But the report also suggests that many of the beliefs and faith-based practices of 18- to 29-year-olds mirror those of their elders.

One in four American millennials — which it defined as those who were born after 1980 and came of age around the millennium — are not affiliated with any faith tradition, Pew found. They characterize their religion as "atheist," "agnostic" or "nothing in particular."

That compares to fewer than one in five Generation Xers — Americans born from 1965 to 1980 — who were unaffiliated with a religion when they were in their late teens and early 20s.

Just 13 percent of American baby boomers — those born from 1946 to 1964 — were unaffiliated with any religious tradition when they were young adults, according to Pew.

But when it comes to many beliefs and practices — like views about life after death, the existence of heaven and hell and miracles — millennials resemble previous generations of young Americans. …