Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 2, 1994 TAG: 9407040094
SECTION: RELIGION PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID BRIGGS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Beginning when their children reach their teens, older baby boomers are showing signs of going to church less often. When the kids leave home, the first empty nest boomers are showing an even more dramatic decline in church attendance, according to new research by sociologist David Roozen of Hartford Seminary.
Consider also that the boomers' children will be entering their young adult years - a time of experimentation when many leave organized religion - around the height of the empty nest syndrome for their parents.
The result, Roozen says, is that religious groups will face considerable pressure to fill their pews in the next two decades.
``It's something that needs to be taken seriously, particularly within old-line Protestantism,'' Roozen said in an interview.
No generation may have had more of an impact on American religion than the baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1965. The heights of membership and church attendance were achieved in the 1950s and early '60s when baby boomers were children.
But they left churches in large numbers in the late '60s and 1970s - a time when institutions were under attack and many viewed organized religion as irrelevant. Mainline Protestant churches were the hardest hit, losing millions of members all the way through the 1980s.
In a hopeful trend in recent years, a number of studies showed baby boomers coming back to churches when they became parents and desired religious education for their children.
But the period of stabilization in religious participation may soon be ending, Roozen says in a new study, ``Empty Nest, Empty Pew: The Boomers Continue Through the Life Cycle.''
In analyzing worship attendance data collected by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, Roozen discovered some of the first evidence baby boomers may be less active in churches after their children leave the house.
Just 37 percent of baby boomers born between 1946 and 1955 with children no longer at home reported attending church regularly in 1990. That's about a third less than the 53 percent of older boomers with pre-teen children who reported attending church three times a week or more.
And the downward trend is noticeable even before they have an empty nest. Forty-five percent of older baby boomers with teen-age children only reported being regular church attenders in 1990.
If baby boomers continue the pattern of an on-again, off-again relationship with organized religion, according to Roozen, ``the inevitable and relatively massive transition of the boomers out of active parenting roles should exert considerable downward pressure on overall levels of religious participation for at least the next 20 years.''
Roozen said the ``consumer attitude'' toward religion of many baby boomers makes it plausible that there will be a dropoff after their kids receive religious training.
``What that sets up is you don't go to church or synagogue out of duty or loyalty. You go to it if you get something out of it,'' he said.
Sociologist Dean Hoge of Catholic University of America said conflicting trends make it difficult to predict what baby boomers will do after their children are grown.
Hoge, co-author of ``Vanishing Boundaries: The Religion of Mainline Protestant Baby Boomers,'' said the research he and his colleagues did found that the strongest predictor of church involvement of individuals 33 to 42 was whether they had children.
``It would also seem to follow that when the kids leave, that motivation for church involvement also has been lost,'' he said.
However, Hoge also noted that in the past worship attendance has generally increased with age, and that churches are important sources for friends and social networks of older persons. In addition, people are less likely to make major changes as they get older.
``The total life cycle has a settling down quality,'' and baby boomers might settle down into churchgoing, he said.
by CNB