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| Monday January 23rd, 2012 |
by Laura J. NelsonA four-minute YouTube clip of a young rapper, produced in the style of an MTV video or a late-night digital short, has inflamed the blogosphere with a controversial message: love Jesus, not organized religion. "I mean, if religion is so great, why does it start huge wars?" asks 22-year-old spoken-word artist Jefferson Bethke. "Why does it build huge churches, but fails to feed the poor?" He goes on to call religion a "long list of chores" and concludes that he hates and resents the institutions of organized religion.
The video, called "Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus," has garnered 16.5 million views in less than two weeks and sparked a storm of controversy in a variety of media outlets. Christians have lambasted Bethke with a wide variety of criticisms, accusing him of oversimplifying the relationship between Jesus and the church and turning "a blind eye to the single greatest charitable institution on the planet."
But most of the mainstream news media's stories seem to be focused on a single question: Why did it take so long to make a video like this? All signs, after all, seem to point to the decline of religious affiliation in the United States.
Young Americans ages 18 to 29 are "considerably less religious than older Americans," with one-quarter of the age group not identifying with any particular religious organization or denomination. "With so many atheists coming out of the closet," one story muses, "it's not difficult to imagine a video decrying religion racking up millions of hits on YouTube." Some have dubbed the Millenials (born 1981-1995) "the apathy generation." The analysis the news media have provided frames Bethke's video as simply a sign of the times.
To some extent, that's true. But by not questioning that assumption, journalists miss a critical degree of nuance. Religious participation among young Americans has mirrored voter turnout rates for several decades now: participation, both civic and religious, is typically low when a generation is young and increases as the cohort ages.
So although fewer Millenials (born 1981-1995) identify with a particular denomination, or tradition, that doesn't necessarily indicate that religion is on the skids—in fact, Millenials believe in God at an equal rate as did members of Generation X (born from 1965 to 1980) when they were in their 20s. The main difference is not in the number of people who believe, but rather in the way belief takes shape over time. It's far easier for reporters to slap a label on the video rather than take the longer view and offer more analysis. But if we're going to prove the value of our profession in unsettled times, that's exactly what we need to do.
Laura J. Nelson is a reporter based in Los Angeles whose work has appeared in a variety of news outlets, including the Boston Globe, the St. Petersburg Times, the Los Angeles Daily News and the Kansas City Star. Laura has spent the last three years covering local news in Los Angeles, and will spend summer 2012 as an intern with the Los Angeles Times. She is in her last semester at the University of Southern California, where she is pursuing a B.A. in Print & Digital Journalism and a minor in French. Someday, she hopes to report from somewhere in the Francophone world. Laura believes everyone has a story worth telling.
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