In an article written by Elizabeth Drescher, a religion teacher at Santa Clara University, entitled “Connecting With Teens One Digital Mustard Seed At A Time,” she talks about the distance that has appeared to have grown between teenagers and their religion in which they were raised. Drescher states that nearly “15 percent of people raised as Christians wll become Nones (people who answer “none” when asked with what religion they identify) as adults” in the beginning paragraph of her blog (Drescher). This led me to believe that the entire blog post would be explaining as to how and why individuals have progressed from being religious, to reporting and identifying as non-religious later in their lives. However, much like the title states, Drescher focuses on how individuals in a mentoring role, such as parents and other primary adults that have influences on young adults’ lives, can connect more with teens to keep their faith strong. She references Facebook and filling in which religion the adult follows, proudly displaying this as affirmation for young adults that their faith is something to be proud of.
Like I mentioned earlier, I was expecting this article to be descriptive of how individuals have strayed from their faith and why they recognize themselves as “nones”. I am interested in this topic partially because I am an individual who is not partial to any religion, however I was raised Christian and attended a private, Christian school for 6 years. My straying from religion was mostly due to what Drescher also recognizes as a large factor and that is “A lack of spiritual role modeling among parents and other primary adults” (Drescher). Because many individuals in my family did not practice religion in their lives, and my only experiences with religion were with school (which I absolutely loathed), when I was given the chance to go to public school, I jumped at the opportunity. Since then, I can see in myself that that was the moment when my “faith” took a turn for the worse and I began to lose recognition of any religion to follow.
Source Link: http://blog.newmediaprojectatunion.org/2011/11/connecting-with-teens-one-digital.html
You have an interesting story to tell. I don’t think I’ve met anyone who wasn’t raised and influenced to be a part of a certain religion. And that you feel that your faith “took a turn for the worse”. That’s an interesting self-awareness. I guess I differ than you in a way that I wasn’t exactly raised with a certain religion. Sure my parents mentioned God and Christianity, but I went to church at such a young age that I spent the services in the day care and don’t remember any of it. It wasn’t until high school that religion was pushed on me, and by that time I felt that I didn’t need some reassurance of a higher being or a religion to keep me moral or on a certain path. I made it this far in life with out it. So it’s interesting comparing differences I guess.