Something weird is going on in religion. The churches are complaining that Youth is leaving. This is not a new complaint: There is a natural age at which youth moves out—usually, but not always, to return.
What is weird is that, while the kids are leaving the churches, they are not leaving religion. You don’t need to go looking for “Jesus freaks”: just tune in your nearest folk-rock station. It is likely to sound like a tent-meeting. If it isn’t Elvis Presley telling you about Everlasting Life, it is one of several groups urging you to “Put Your Hand in the Hand of the Man from Galilee,” with faint echoes of the winter hit “Amazing Grace.” AM radio today sounds like those stations that used to appear out of nowhere at 2 a.m. with hymns about the Gospel train (“God is the conductor, Jesus is the engineer”), and commercials that would have put Mencken under the bed (“Get your true-life statue of Jesus Christ: that’s j-e-s-u-s, of biblical fame”). But the records in question are not emanating primarily from the Peruna belt: They are coming from your favorite rock stations in New York, Chicago and points west. All of which does not mean that station managers coast-to-coast have had simultaneous conversions. What it means is that this is what the kids want, and that is where the bread is.
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