As they grapple with a profound disconnection from their parents and older adults generally, nearly 40% of young adult women in Generation Z — those born between 1999 and 2015 — now discover as religiously unaffiliated, in accordance with recent data released by Barna Research.
The data from 2,000 adults and teenagers between the ages of 13 and 24 shows that 38% of Gen Z women (ages 18 to 24) currently discover as atheist, agnostic or say they haven’t any faith in any respect. This is higher than the 32% of men in the identical age group who said they’re religiously unaffiliated.
The data was collected in the summertime of 2023 and shared in a report published last week. The error margin for this data is 2.1 percentage points.
While Barna’s recent research has shown promising openness amongst Gen Z to explore spirituality and faith, including in Jesus, females were found to be the almost definitely to disengage from church, prayer and belief amongst young adults and youths.
Young adult Gen Z women reported the bottom rates of Bible reading, church attendance and prayer amongst their peers, the report said.
In general, some 73% of all Gen Z respondents report that they consider in God or a better power, and 47% say they consider Jesus is the one technique to God. When it involves Gen Z young adult women, those that say they consider drops significantly.
Only 58% of ladies 18 to 24 report having prayed inside the past week. That is far lower than the 63% of younger teenage girls and greater than 70% of teenage boys who said they prayed. Only 31% of young adult women reported reading the Bible over the identical period in comparison with 41% across all other Gen Z groups. Only 30% of them also reported attending church within the last seven days. It was the bottom of any demographic group within the survey.
This level of spiritual disengagement comes as other findings by Barna researchers have shown that Gen Z women are combating what they see as a scarcity of support from the adults of their lives including their parents.
Just 23% of Gen Z young adult women feel supported by their father in comparison with the 47% of younger teenage girls who feel that support. Only 36% of the cohort also reported feeling support from their mother in comparison with the 74% of younger teenage girls who feel that way. In general, only 32% of young adult women consider their parents even understand them. Just 33%, said they feel valued by older adults.
According to the report, 40% of Gen Z women agree that “older people don’t seem to grasp the pressure my generation is under.”
“If we would like to see change in Gen Z women’s spiritual trajectories, relationships are the place to start out,” Daniel Copeland, Barna’s vp of research, said. “Faith is a skill that should be modeled first, and powerful, supportive relationships can bridge the gap between doubt and belief.”
Other Barna studies have shown that because the COVID-19 pandemic, men are beginning to outpace women in other key spiritual indicators, akin to church attendance. As a part of its ongoing State of the Church initiative, Barna reported earlier this month that 43% of men reported attending church weekly, compared with 36% of ladies.
The gap in church attendance between men and ladies is the biggest ever recorded by Barna since they began tracking the trend many years ago, marking a reversal of decades-long trends that saw women outpacing men in church attendance by a large margin.
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