Study on religion finds young adults less affiliated but not less believing

The Pew Forum reports that fewer than 20% of people age 18 to 29 attend church services regularly, but about three-quarters of them believe in an afterlife -- about the same rate as older generations.
By Mitchell Landsberg
February 22, 2010

Is faith losing its grip on the young?

That would be one way to read a new report by the respected Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, which found that more than one-quarter of Americans age 18 to 29 have no religious preference or affiliation, and fewer than one in five attend services regularly. That makes them easily the least religious generation among Americans alive today, perhaps the least religious ever.

Or does it?

The Pew study found that, although young adults -- the so-called Millennial generation born after 1981 -- are shunning traditional religious denominations and services in unprecedented numbers, their faith in God and the power of prayer appears nearly as strong as that of young people in earlier generations. the rest