On Religion
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How do some young Americans remain believers while living in 'digital Babylon'?

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How do some young Americans remain believers while living in 'digital Babylon'?

Soon after the Internet boom in the 1990s, the Christian consulting firm WisdomWorks obtained software that could run automated chat groups – allowing anonymous teens to ask candid questions.

Mark Matlock and his team called the project "Wise Intelligent Guide (WIG)."

Tech-savvy young people were careful, often repeating easy questions over and over to determine if the "bot" was truly autonomous, as opposed to being operated by hidden adults. A typical user would then probe with relatively safe questions – like "Does God exist?"

Finally, there would be the "actual question the teen wanted to ask, usually about sex, depression, suicide, or abuse," noted Matlock and Barna Group President David Kinnaman, in their new book "Faith for Exiles." Typical questions: "How do I know if I am gay? What does God think about masturbation? What happens to people who commit suicide? I had sex with my boyfriend; what should I do?"

That was two decades ago. Today, most teens would use their omnipresent smartphones and take these personal questions straight to Google – a secular oracle offering guidance on topics that religious leaders often avoid.

"The church has bubble-wrapped itself in an attempt to avoid thinking about the truly disruptive forms of technology that are everywhere in our world," said Kinnaman, reached by telephone. "Most church leaders think they can just use technology as a way of reaching people. … They aren't looking at the real impact of all this on their people. It's easier just to look the other way."

Meanwhile, practical decisions on tough lifestyle and religious questions often have long-term consequences.

Religious leaders have been forced – after waves of Pew Research Center polling – to acknowledge the surge in Millennial Americans (born 1981-1996) who now identify as atheists, agnostics or "nothing in particular" when asked about religion. In a 2019 update, Pew noted that 40% of Millennials are "nones."

The goal of the "Faith for Exiles" study was to find patterns among young Americans (18 to 29 years of age) who were raised as Christians.

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Searching for saints on Google – for a variety of personal and practical reasons

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Searching for saints on Google -- for a variety of personal and practical reasons

Day after day, Catholics return from sobering hospital visits and type these terms into online search programs – "cancer" and "patron saint."

This leads them to St. Peregrine Laziosi, a 13th century Italian monk who spent his life serving the sick and destitute. Biographers note that, at age 60, he was mysteriously cured of a gangrenous growth on his right leg.

With additional computer-mouse clicks, cancer patients find prayers like this: "St. Peregrine, whom Holy Mother Church has declared patron of those suffering from cancer, I confidently turn to you for help in my present sickness. I beg your kind intercession. Ask God to relieve me of this sickness, if it be his Holy Will."

Members of ancient Christian churches grow up knowing about their own patron saints, as well as saints linked to their parishes. It's natural for Catholics to identify with saints – like St. Patrick in Ireland – linked to their homelands.

But there are times in life when it's natural for believers to seek "companion" saints to enter their prayer lives, said Father James Martin, author of "My Life with the Saints," a commentary on the role of saints first published in 2006.

"Even if you have no pre-existing ties to St. Peregrine, you are going to pray to him for his intercessions when you learn that you have cancer," said Martin. "That's just one of the many ways we get connected to saints at different times in our lives. Sometimes these connections are logical and sometimes they are mysterious. … 

"I tell people that when they find themselves being drawn to a particular saint, it's probably because that saint is already praying for them. In the end, this is all about the Holy Spirit and God's providence."

 It's hard to say why some saints are more popular or famous than others. The Catholic website Aleteia ("truth" or "disclosure" in Greek) recently published a feature entitled, "The top 12 saints according to Google searches."

The top online saint was St. Vincent de Paul of France, which could indicate that many people were looking for St. Vincent de Paul thrift stores.

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Law professor Phillip E. Johnson – A rare Christian apologist from Cal Berkeley

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Law professor Phillip E. Johnson -- A rare Christian apologist from Cal Berkeley

Phillip E. Johnson was doing what a University of California at Berkeley law professor was supposed to do during a mid-career sabbatical.

The former clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren had punched the academic clock – hard – and earned tenure. Now it was time to pause and look ahead after a divorce and his disappointing failure to land a judicial appointment. He had also converted to Christianity.

Visiting a London bookstore, he purchased "The Blind Watchmaker" by atheist Richard Dawkins of Oxford. Blitzing through that book led straight to another, Michael Denton's "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis." Johnson was no scientist, but he was fascinated by the rhetoric being used to crush debates about Darwinism.

"As a student of legal argument, I knew that how you state questions almost always determines the answers that you get," Johnson told me, during a 2002 conference at Palm Beach Atlantic University (where I was teaching at that time). "I knew that if I jumped into this fight it would take over my life. I would have people firing at me from all sides. It would cause incredible complications for me at Berkeley. 

"It would change everything. That was irresistible, of course."

Johnson found these kinds of debates irresistible, right up until his death on Nov. 2 at age 79, after years of struggles caused by two strokes.

Through it all, his goal was to "united the divided and divide the united, especially when the united were smug elites who felt no need to defend what they claimed to believe. … Christian elites of that kind bothered him just as much, if not more, than all the others," said philosopher John Mark Reynolds, president of The Saint Constantine School in Houston.

"We once joked that if all of the causes we were backing ended up winning, he would probably change sides – since the odds were good we would become insufferable, like everybody else."

As a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Chicago Law School, Johnson had zero insecurity about his skills in intellectual combat. He was an academic samurai brave enough to air his heretical ideas about Darwin in a faculty-lounge forum a year after his London sabbatical. His Berkeley colleagues were not amused.

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Concerning the prophet Nathan, millstones and former cardinal 'Uncle Ted' McCarrick

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Concerning the prophet Nathan, millstones and former cardinal 'Uncle Ted' McCarrick

U.S. cardinals needed someone who was willing, in the spring of 2002, to face waves of microphones and cameras and answer questions about a clergy sexual abuse crisis that kept growing more and more intense.

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick stepped forward. The Washington Post hailed him as the Vatican's "man of the hour," an "attractive public face" at a time when many Catholic leaders seemed "arrogant, secretive and uncaring."

"If you're looking to the future, I would say it's pretty clear that the Holy Father is calling for zero tolerance," the archbishop of Washington, D.C., told reporters.

These words rang hollow to some men who watched this drama, men who knew that McCarrick knew they would be stabbed by every word he spoke.

After all, the man some called "Uncle Ted" had "already completed a personal campaign of predatory sexual abuse of minors and young adult males that stretched back across four decades," according to "Nathan Doe," the anonymous author of "Delicta Graviora (More Grave Crimes)," posted at EssayForTheFaithful.com.

"While the national media waxed poetic about this charming and charismatic Cardinal with a twinkle in his eye, they had no idea that McCarrick was using them to send a powerful message to his countless victims that he was untouchable and in complete control. … It would be another 16 years – and an unspeakable amount of spiritual carnage later – before McCarrick was finally stopped."

This new essay's author is part of a group that calls itself "the Nathans," a reference to the biblical prophet who challenged King David to confess his adultery and abuse of power. The essay indicates that at least seven men have cooperated with church leaders and law enforcement officials, providing names, dates, times, locations and other forms of supporting evidence linked to their sexual abuse by the former cardinal, when they were between the ages of 12 and 16.

The author stressed, "I don't have an axe to grind with anyone other than Theodore McCarrick. For me, this is not an attack on our Church. This is not about Conservative vs. Liberal. This is not about Straight vs. Gay. This is not about Benedict vs. Francis. In my view, those arguments are a distraction. For me, this is about our humanity. This is about the criminal, sexual abuse of minors. …