Atheist millennials are finding spirituality on the therapist’s couch instead of the church pew
By Elizabeth King
4 hours ago
“I like your generation, but I worry about you,” my psychiatrist told me last year. “You’re very atheistic and agnostic, so I worry about what’s grounding you without a sense of spirituality.”
As a millennial evangelical-turned-atheist, I took this concern seriously. But I also had a ready response. I’d noticed a pattern in the way my friends, former classmates, and colleagues had been dealing with life’s major challenges and where we’d been turning for guidance.
“Most of the people I know are in therapy,” I told my doctor. “I think therapy is our new church.”
It’s clear that millennials are less religious than other generations. According a 2015 survey from the Pew Research Center, a quarter of people born between 1981 and 1996 identify as nonbelievers. Five percent say they are atheist; 7% call themselves agnostic; and 13% identify as “nothing” (meaning that they don’t have any specific religious beliefs, or religion was just not important to them). By comparison, just 16% percent of Generation X identifies as nonbelievers, and only 11% of Baby Boomers.
http://qz.com/796630/millennials-are-finding-spirituality-on-the-therapists-couch-instead-of-the-church-pew/