You might have spotted some interesting headlines last month: ‘Gen Z half as likely as their parents to identify as atheists’, ‘Gen Zers on why they’ve turned to God: "It’s beautiful waiting for sex"’, and ‘Gen Z more pro-marriage than millennials and have less casual sex’. These articles sound encouraging – and there definitely are encouraging insights to be found within – but the picture is a little more complicated when we drill down into the detail. Nevertheless, I think they give us some important lessons to learn.
The headlines come from The Times, which last month released a series of articles sharing the results of research they had commissioned exploring the attitudes of Gen Z. (Gen Z are today’s teenagers and young adults – those in their mid-teens to late twenties.)
The findings
The findings are fascinating and complex. For Christians who believe in the gospel and hold to the historic Christian understanding of sexuality and gender, they are both encouraging and discouraging.
Gen Z are much more likely to be open to spiritual things – among 18-24-year-olds, 62% said they were either ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ spiritual. This fits with research released back in January that found under-25s are the least likely to describe themselves as atheists.1
The findings are fascinating and complex. They are both encouraging and discouraging.
But this does not necessarily mean they are open to the Christian gospel or historic Christian teaching on sexuality and gender. One of the Times articles notes that ‘Gen Z today place a strong emphasis on social and gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights’ and mentions a recent ONS report that says 10% of 16-24-year-olds identify as either gay or bisexual. They also report that Gen Z are significantly more likely to support transgender rights: 53% said they believe that increasing transgender rights pose no risk to women’s rights. Only 31% felt there might be some risk. That compares to 57% of the wider population who believe transgender rights do pose a risk to women’s rights. More than 60% of Gen Z are also in favour of schools allowing children to socially transition.
One of the big findings was that Gen Z are more open to recognising marriage as an important institution. Only 20% believe marriage to be ‘irrelevant’, compared to 39% of the same age group two decades ago. Gen Z are more likely than not to say that marriage isn’t an irrelevant institution (59%) and a third think marrying before having children is a good idea.
However, the Times suggests that some of this positive attitude towards marriage might be because of the belief that divorce provides an easy get-out. As one 25-year-old woman said, ‘Young people’s life philosophy has baked into it the idea that divorce is a possibility. And because we don’t see marriage as a forever thing, we are more open to trying it.’
The research also confirmed the findings of similar research in recent years which has consistently found Gen Z to be engaging in less casual sex than previous generations, and when asked whether their friends commonly look at internet pornography, the results showed a reduction from 20 years ago. However, this usually doesn’t stem from a deep, Christian understanding of the significance and sanctity of sex.
The lessons
So the results are complicated and mixed. But I think there are some important lessons for those of us who want to reach Gen Z with the gospel and God’s good news on relationships, sex and gender – which should be all of us!
We need to talk about sexuality and gender (and other real-life topics)
Gen Z care about real-life topics and they care about faith impacting those real-life topics. The author of one of the articles (admittedly a Millennial, but still representative of a classic Gen Z attitude) offers a revealing comment from their own experience: ‘I found churches that only talked about forgiveness and how much Jesus loved you, rather than real social issues happening in the real world, self-indulgent.’ We must never stop talking about forgiveness and how much Jesus loves people, but we must also show how the Christian faith makes a difference in the nitty-gritty of everyday life. We need to show that God has good news on sexuality, gender and many other topics.
We need to talk about the spirituality of sex
We also need to lean into the spirituality of sex and sexuality. The Bible teaches that sex and marriage ultimately point to Jesus. They are a picture of the future eternal relationship between Jesus and the Church. In that way, sexuality is deeply spiritual – it carries deep and profound meaning. We might worry that will scare young people off (‘That’s a bit odd, isn’t it?’). But the fact many of Gen Z say they are ‘spiritual’ shows they are open to the ‘odd’ and they are looking for something more than the empty, materialist perspectives of the dominant secular culture.
We need to take gender-related distress seriously
We also need to talk about gender. We need to do this in a way that is truly compassionate – recognising the genuine and sometimes very distressing feelings those who identify as transgender might experience. I suspect part of the reason that support for trans rights is so high among Gen Z is because they personally know many trans-identified people. They know something of the distress those individuals have experienced, and they want that to be acknowledged and help to be offered. The way we do that within a Christian perspective will have some significant differences to the dominant approach among Gen Z, but we must do it and we must help Gen Z see how Christian teaching can best acknowledge and engage with people’s gender-related distress.
We need explanations and examples of true marriage
Gen Z are more positive about marriage, but their conception of marriage is often far from the Christian understanding. We need to help young people realise that relationships based primarily on feelings and self-satisfaction don’t work – they don’t last and they don’t actually fulfil us. But marriage isn’t meant to be like that. Marriage is a relationship based on self-sacrificial love – the choice to love someone through self-sacrifice until separated by death. That can work because it’s based on a choice we can make, not on feelings that are out of our control. Feelings aren’t unimportant, but they are fostered and sustained in marriage by acts of self-sacrificial love. We need to make sure that we and our churches have a right understanding of marriage so that we can communicate it to Gen Z. And that communication needs to be not only through words, but also through example. Gen Z need to see that life-long marriage is possible through the example of committed, loving, lasting Christian marriages.
Every generation comes with its own distinctives. That provides churches that want to reach new generations with challenges, but there are also opportunities. We have a wonderful opportunity to share the good news of the Christian gospel and of the Christian perspective on sexuality and gender with Gen Z. Let’s be those who take up that opportunity.
The stats mentioned in this post can be found in the following articles from The Times:
- Hannah Evans, ‘Gen Zers on why they’ve turned to God: “It’s beautiful waiting for sex”’.
- Oliver Wright, ‘Gen Z more pro-marriage than millennials and have less casual sex’.
- Oliver Wright, Lottie Hayton & Lara Spirit, ‘The hopes, fears and feelings of Gen Z’.
- Kaya Burgess, ‘Gen Z half as likely as their parents to identify as atheists’, The Times.
