Canadian and American churches have something in common, a disconnection between youth and their faith.
Hemorrhaging Faith is the title of a study done by the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. Spokesman Rick Hiemstra tells OneNewsNow the research dealt only with young people who were raised in the church.
"Only about half of those maintain their religious affiliation into adulthood, and we're finding that of about one-third of young adults who had attended church weekly as a child only about one-third of them still attend weekly as young adults," he explains.
Hiemstra cites one of the reasons.
"One of the things that was very important in whether they left or stayed was whether they had an experience of God," he notes. "So, if they had experienced God in some way, either through prayer or through a short term mission or a Christian summer camp, then they were far more likely to stay."
Of the young adults who no longer attend church, about half also stopped identifying themselves with the Christian tradition in which they were raised. Among the reasons cited for backing away from the church are perceived hypocrisy, judgmentalism and exclusivity.