This summer is the 3rd go-round of the "young adults are attracted to liturgy" story since 1980. It is the exact same story now on a 20 yr cycle.

1980: "Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail"

2000: Emergent and Ancient/Future faith

2020: A bunch of a-historical articles
It isn& #39;t a millennial thing. It is a post-evangelical thing that started with baby-boomers dissatisfied w/the evangelical subculture.

I think I can even make the case that it goes back to c. 1960 with Thomas Howard& #39;s memoir account in "Christ the Tiger."
It was obvious enough two decades ago that I tried to convince my publisher (c. 2000) that this should be a book. It was on "post-evangelical journeys to the historic church." I even wrote the proposal, did early research & interviews.
Eventually, I laid it aside in favor of writing "Strength for the Journey" (my own memoir on the theme), pub 2002.

There& #39;s an entire chapter in my book on "how radical evangelicals love liturgy."
The more interesting questions seem to be:

1) Why does this happen every other decade or so - and why hasn& #39;t anyone (except me apparently) noticed the pattern?

2) And what happens AFTER "young evangelicals" don& #39;t particularly like liturgy any more? Where did they go next?
Back c.2000, I interviewed dozens of post-evangelicals who became Catholic, Orthodox, and traditionalist Protestants. Went to their churches. Worshipped with them. In US & England.

It was interesting. But also kinda depressing. One can only take so much theological nostalgia.
There was an interesting group who didn& #39;t think RC, Orthodox, and Reformed were "historic" enough. They mostly became Wiccan. I also interview them - post-evangelicals who read Starhawk and made a case for nature-based liturgy.
OK: so now I& #39;m going history deep:

Same thing happened in the 19th century, c. 1820, 1840 (skips 1860 due to obvious circumstances), 1880.
There& #39;s a genuine multi-generational impulse away from evangelical religion among younger Americans that rears its liturgical head about once every twenty years since the Early Republic.
(FYI: The reason I laid it aside is that I couldn& #39;t convince the publisher that evangelicalism had enough discontents to sell a book about it - even then I was arguing that white evangelicalism was facing an reckoning whereby hundreds of thousands of young adults would leave.)
(And anyone wanting confirmation of this thread, just ask @julieingersoll. We talked about this a lot when I was doing the research.)
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