Why Younger Generations Stopped Trusting the Church (p3)

In part 1 of this series, we traced the rise of modernism — the Enlightenment bet that reason and science would save the world. In part 2, we watched that bet collapse under the weight of two World Wars, the Holocaust, and the atomic bomb.

And out of that wreckage grew postmodernism, a civilisation-wide refusal to trust any grand story, any institution, any authority that claimed to have the answer. Truth became suspect. Sincerity became cringe. Deconstruction became the thing.

And for a while, that worked. Or at least it felt like it did. Because tearing things down is energising. It feels like progress. It feels like freedom.

Until you realise you're standing in the rubble with nowhere to go.

The Post Modern Wound

Postmodernism offered a lot to a new generation recovering from their disillusionment in both religious institutions and the scientific establishment. Relativism, the belief that there is no such thing as absolute truth, might sound ridiculous to those of us who find freedom in truth. But for others, no truth was a kind of relief. They could finally reject the social narratives that benefited people in power which harming the vulnerable. And so a whole generation went on a journey to dismantle everything they were told was true. To tear it appart. Dissect it. Examine it. Reject it.

But you can only deconstruct for so long before the question hits you — ok, now what? You've torn down every grand narrative. You've exposed every institution. You've questioned every truth claim. And now you're standing in a field of broken pieces with no story to make sense of your life, no community to belong to, and no framework to tell you why any of it matters.

Think of it like this. Imagine living in a house that is not safe. It has mould in the walls, holes in the roof etc. The house is unlivable, so one day you take a sledgehammer and start tearing the place down. When you finish, you are standing in a pile of rubble and it feels good because that old, nasty house is now gone. But then, the sun begins to set. The wind begins to blow. Rain drops start falling and you hear wolves howling in the distance. And all of a sudden it hits you - you have no shelter. Nowhere to weather the storm, cook a meal, or sleep safe. You tore the house down, sure, but now what?

That's what postmodernism left in its wake. And its where younger generations are right now.

The loneliness epidemic. The mental health crisis. The burnout. The doom-scrolling. The mass consumerism. The brain-rot. These aren't signs of a generation that's thriving in its freedom from grand narratives. These are signs of a generation that is starving for exactly the things postmodernism told them to distrust: meaning, belonging, hope, and a story bigger than themselves.

Enter Metamodernism

Scholars, cultural critics, and artists have been noticing signs of an emerging mood for over a decade now, and it's starting to show up everywhere: in film, in music, in the way people talk about faith and spirituality, in the questions younger generations are asking.

The cultural theorists Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker were among the first to name it. In a 2010 essay called "Notes on Metamodernism," they described an emerging cultural sensibility that was different from premodernism, modernism, and postmodernism. They called it "a kind of informed naivety, a pragmatic idealism." [1]

I know, I know… what on earth does that even mean? We’ll, let’s unpack it because its super important.

"Informed naivety" means: I want to believe in something, but I can't pretend I don't know what I know. I can't unsee the critiques. I can't un-learn the lessons of postmodernism. I know that institutions can be corrupt. I know that truth claims can be weaponised. I know that grand narratives can be used to control people. And yet, I still want to believe. I still need a story to live inside. I still ache for something bigger than myself.

"Pragmatic idealism" means: I haven't given up on building a better world. I'm just done pretending that any single system or ideology will deliver utopia. I'll work with what I have. I'll hold my ideals loosely enough to adapt, but tightly enough to keep going.

This is the emotional landscape of metamodernism. An oscillation, a back and forth, between sincere hope and ironic awareness. Between "this matters deeply" and "but does it really?" Between wanting to commit and being terrified of getting burned. Between reaching for something beautiful and flinching because the last beautiful thing turned out to be a lie.

Metamodernism is Everywhere

You can see metamodernism all over contemporary culture once you know what to look for.

The best example might be the film "Everything Everywhere All at Once", the 2022 movie that swept the Academy Awards and became a cultural phenomenon. Director Daniel Kwan himself described the film's sensibility as metamodern.[2]

And this movie is, for lack of a better word, bizzare. There are alternate universes where people have hot dogs for fingers. There's super weird acting and a song about a bagel. The multiverse logic of the plot borders on incomprehensible. It's chaotic, irreverent, and super random. One of the central characters concludes that nothing in the entire multiverse matters (and this is the scene where she sings the bagel song).

But then, somehow, in the middle of all that chaos, the film lands on a moment of pure, beautiful sincerity. A mother telling her daughter she loves her. A family choosing each other even when everything is falling apart. Kindness winning over despair.

That combination of absurdist chaos that refuses to look away from how broken everything is, combined with a stubborn insistence that love and meaning are still real, is metamodernism in a nutshell. The audience didn't have to choose between cynicism and sincerity. The film held both. And millions of people, especially younger people, loved it because they were hungry for exactly what the film proposed: permission to be sincere again without having to be naive.

But the movies is not all. You can also see this emerging mood in the "spiritual but not religious" phenomenon. Now this trend has been around since postmodernism, but in Metamoderism’s “permission to be sincere/ not naive” moment, its trending harder and even resulting in a church attendance spike. According to Barna's State of the Church 2025 report, 66% of US adults say they've made a personal commitment to Jesus — a 12-point jump since 2021. Among Gen Z men, commitment to Jesus has jumped 15 points since 2019. For millennials, it's up 19 points. [3]

But here's what's important to understand: this renewed interest in Jesus is not translating into institutional commitment. Younger generations are not flocking back to denominations. They're not shopping for the "right church" the way their parents and grandparents did. In previous generations, your denomination was a core part of your identity. You were a Baptist, a Presbyterean, a Seventh-day Adventist etc. And those boundaries mattered a lot. People debated them, defended them, lived inside them.

Today, most younger seekers couldn't care less.

As political scientist Ryan Burge notes, "Denominational identity is not a priority for younger generations. They're looking for community and authenticity, not a specific label." [4] Mainline Protestant denominations have seen membership decline by as much as 40% since 2000, and even among younger adults who are returning to church, many are not returning to the churches of their childhood, they're seeking out congregations that emphasise relationships, flexibility, and a less institutional approach.

In other words, the walls we built between traditions, the walls we spent centuries arguing over, are invisible to emerging generations. They don't see them. They don't respect them. And they're definitely not going to choose a church because it won the theological argument against all the other churches. They're going to choose a community that feels real, that speaks to their actual life, and that introduces them to a faith that heals rather than harms.

This is metamodernism in action. A generation that wants to believe. A generation drawn to the person of Jesus. A generation reaching for meaning, hope, transcendence. And a generation that flinches the moment you wrap those things in institutional packaging, because every institution they've ever encountered has either hurt them, lied to them, or both.

So what does this mean for us as Adventists?

I'm going to keep this section brief because the big practical conversations are coming in Parts 4 and 5. But I want to plant a few seeds here.

First, we need to recognise that the old playbook was designed for a modernist world. Evangelistic campaigns built on logical argumentation, proof-text chains, and systematic presentations of doctrinal truth worked when the audience shared our assumptions about truth, authority, and institutions. That world is gone. It's been gone for decades. And doubling down on modernist methods in a metamodern world isn't faithfulness, it's stubbornness.

Second, we need to understand that metamodernism is not our enemy. In many ways, it's the most gospel-friendly cultural moment we've had in a century. People want to believe again. They're hungry for story, for community, for sincerity, for hope. They're drawn to Jesus. The soil has never been more ready. But the seed has to be planted in a way the soil can actually receive, and that means learning a new language, a new posture, and a new way of inviting people into the truth we carry.

Third, we need to reckon with the fact that this renewed interest in Jesus is not translating into denominational loyalty. Younger generations are not shopping for the "right church." They couldn't care less about the walls between traditions that older generations spent centuries building and defending. As we saw above, they're looking for community, not labels. If we think our job is to convince a metamodern seeker that Adventism is the correct denomination, we've already lost the conversation. Our job is to show them that the story we carry is beautiful and to let them experience that in a community worth belonging to.

Fourth (and this is the hard one) we need to reckon with the fact that the institutional church has contributed to the very distrust we're now lamenting. We've used truth claims to control people. We've fused cultural preferences with divine mandates. We've prioritised being right over being kind. We've built systems that rewarded compliance and punished questions. And people noticed. Especially young people.

Let me wrap this up with a picture.

Imagine you're sitting across from a 25-year-old. She's smart, thoughtful, curious. She meditates. She reads Brené Brown and listens to podcasts about meaning and purpose. She's explored Buddhism and astrology and plant medicine. She's been hurt by the church, maybe directly, maybe through watching what it did to someone she loves. She thinks Christians are judgmental hypocrites who are obsessed with being right. And yet, when someone mentions Jesus, something in her softens. She's interested. Cautiously, yes. But interested nonetheless.

She is the metamodern seeker.

She doesn't want your proof texts. She doesn't want your prophecy chart. She doesn't want your 28 fundamental beliefs presented in a neat, thematic, logical order.

She wants to know if this is real. If you're real. If the God you talk about actually looks like Jesus or if he's just another power play dressed in religious rhetoric. And she’s still interested in what you believe. But she doesn’t want a list of doctrines. She wants a story she can identify with. A story she can imagine and feel. A story she can be a part of.

And if you can show her through your life, your honesty, your willingness to sit with her questions without panicking, and through a story that speaks to the deepest hungers of her heart, that the gospel is the most beautiful, most liberating, most human story ever told...

She'll lean in.

That's the opportunity in front of us. And it's the biggest one we've had in a very long time.

Parts 4 and 5 will get into the practical details — how we actually translate our message for this moment. What changes. What doesn't. And what it looks like to be an Adventist community that metamodern seekers actually want to be part of.

But for now, the foundation is laid. The world broke. The culture stopped believing. And now it's reaching for something to stand on again.

Let's make sure we're there when they reach.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker, "Notes on Metamodernism" (2010). This is the essay that first named and defined metamodernism as a cultural shift: the idea that culture is swinging between sincere hope and ironic suspicion without landing permanently in either.

[2] Daniel Kwan, co-director of Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), described his film's approach as metamodern. The film won Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

[3] Barna Group, State of the Church 2025. 66% of US adults say they've made a personal commitment to Jesus, up 12 points since 2021. Among Gen Z men, up 15 points. Among millennials, up 19 points. Barna CEO David Kinnaman called it "the clearest trend we've seen in more than a decade pointing to spiritual renewal."

[4] Ryan Burge, quoted in Relevant Magazine, June 2025. Burge studies religion and generational trends at Eastern Illinois University. The 40% mainline Protestant membership decline comes from Pew Research Center data cited in the same article.