In a West Side apartment, Baby Ruth Sutton tries to overcome the pain of a lifetime of drug abuse by writing searingly personal poetry to God. “Is any suffering like my suffering?” she cries out.
Some 30 miles to the south, on a farm in Wadsworth, Ohio, Mark Bruno and Randy Kilbride walk across the bleak fields of winter trying to understand what God wants from them. They still go to church, but it is in encounters like this, as prayer partners, or in small groups like Promise Keepers or Bible studies, that they experience their faith.
“It’s not a Sunday morning experience,” said Bruno, 39. “If you’re looking to experience God, this is a great generation that wants to experience God. The last generation came to worship God. This generation came to experience God.”
Sutton, Sherwin, Kilbride, Bruno and other members of Generation X are on a spiritual journey unlike any other in American religious history. They are among Americans ages 20 to 40 who treat religion more as a matter of personal choice than a duty or responsibility handed down from past generations.
They haven’t given up on God. In an August 2000 Gallup Poll, 85 percent said religion was important to them personally and more than 60 percent said religion can solve all or most of today’s problems.
Generation X — that squishy generation born roughly between 1960 and 1980 — is behind the national boom in nondenominational churches, small prayer groups and contemporary worship services, researchers say.
Their church attendance may have fallen off, and they may be one of the least Sunday-Schooled generations in the last half-century, but many are deeply committed to the search for God in the modern world.
What some scholars and church leaders fear, however, is that this increasingly personal faith threatens to ease traditional churches out of the picture and to set God to one side. By shopping for churches, and turning away quickly if the church does not meet their needs, God can be reduced to a New Age guru who exists to put a divine imprimatur on their own desires.
For good or ill, those who study post-baby boomers believe the faith of this new generation will have a profound effect on American religion.
“Folks just don’t want to be catered to. They want something to challenge and renew at a deeper level,” said Donald Miller, director of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California. “It could actually be a sign of a much deeper spiritual quest.”
Ask 41-year-old Sutton to consider what her life would be like without God, and she responds matter-of-factly, “Boy, I’d probably be dead, rotten, stinking somewhere.”
A former Sunday School teacher’s helper, Sutton says she began drinking and doing drugs at age 14. She would get mad at God when her drugs ran out, but could never let her faith completely go.
“There were times when I read my Bible, and I would always pray — high, drunk, sober, whatever. And who else better to talk to than God? Who else would listen? When your money ran out, your friends were gone,” she said.
One day two years ago, at a time she was not on drugs, Sutton says God appeared to her as she was praying before bed. The pages of her book of meditations grew bright, and a warmth came over her. She said, “He told me, ‘You’ve been praying for faith, but you’ve had faith all along.’”
The feeling of God’s presence lasted for six days, and since that day she has entered recovery programs for her addictions. She finds community in the Scranton Road Baptist Church. During painfully lonely moments in her apartment, she takes up her pen and writes poetry to God.
Generation X does not place its faith in institutions.
One of the most self-reliant generations in modern times, it was the first generation of latchkey kids raised on television and nurtured on the Internet. Their music, reflected in groups such as Nirvana, Public Enemy and U2, is one of alienation, an appeal to find truth within oneself.
This independence is reflected in their attitude toward organized religion.
Just 60 percent of young adults told the August 2000 Gallup Poll they belong to a church, compared to 76 percent of people 50 and over who belong to a local house of worship.
But there is little difference among the generations when it comes to the overwhelming numbers — more than 90 percent — who believe in God.
God is everywhere, said many of the Gen Xers interviewed.
“If I’m in the car, he’s sitting in the passenger seat. If I’m at home, he’s across the couch from me,” said Paul Woodard, 35, who attends Wadsworth United Methodist Church.
He compares God’s presence to the same “warming” feeling he has when he puts his arms around his young son or daughter.
“You just feel the peace, that everything’s going to be OK. You just sit there and not say a word.”
“It’s not about religion. It’s about a relationship with Jesus,” 39-year-old Sandi Condle insisted. “Everybody is searching for something, (to fill) a hole of something. Everybody is searching for truth. They’re searching for peace, for love.”
In their search for a personal experience of God, hundreds of thousands of Generation Xers have turned to churches like Calvary Chapel or Vineyard Christian Fellowships or numerous other “seeker” churches where only the Bible is sacred.
These churches, born in Southern California during the Jesus movement of the 1970s, have grown rapidly nationwide among young adults who want to peel away the traditional architecture and rituals of mainline churches. They are looking to find God in a community of peers in small prayer groups and worship services that incorporate cultural icons they understand, such as video screens and contemporary music.
Small-group experiences, casual dress and contemporary worship services have made their way into many mainline churches.
Bruno and Kilbride keep each other on the right path as prayer partners, then see each other in Bible studies and Promise Keepers meetings.
“Our generation, if it’s not doing something for me, then I’m not going to do it,” said Kilbride, 42. “We see it as a heart attitude. When we come, we’re more into a real feeling and a heart attitude.” (RNS)
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