Podcast: Daniel Cox on Why Millennials Are Leaving Religion and the Family

The co-author of a worrisome new report on the quickening secularization of American young people joins us to talk about his findings.

Jaap2/iStock.

Jaap2/iStock.

Observation
Tikvah Podcast at Mosaic and Daniel Cox
Jan. 30 2020
About the authors

A weekly podcast, produced in partnership with the Tikvah Fund, offering up the best thinking on Jewish thought and culture.

This Week’s Guest: Daniel Cox

 

That the young tend to be less religious than the old in America is not in itself news. But the degree of alienation from religious faith that is expressed by today’s millennials may indeed be something new, as well as something far more permanent than many have thought.

That’s one of the ominous implications of a new report published by the American Enterprise Institute. The report, titled “The Decline of Religion in American Family Life,” finds that the proportion of young people involved in regular religious activities and being raised in religious homes is declining, and that those leaving religion do so at a surprisingly early age.

In this week’s podcast, Jonathan Silver, the host of the Tikvah Podcast and, as of April, the next editor of Mosaic, sits down with Daniel Cox, one of the report’s co-authors, for a discussion of millennials, religion, and family life. Though Cox’s work, and this conversation, do not focus on Jews in particular, his findings about the state of Christianity in in the U.S. have deep implications for American Jewry and the well-being of American Jewish life.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Background

 

For more on the Tikvah Podcast at Mosaic, which appears roughly every Thursday, check out its inaugural post here.

If you have thoughts about the podcast that you’d like to share, ideas for future guests and topics, or any other form of feedback, just send an email to [email protected].

More about: Millennials, Politics & Current Affairs, Secularization