From TheRoot.com
Words by: Brandee Sanders
Sunday morning rolls around again, and I get the early wake up call from my father. “Get up, Brandee. Get ready for church.” My first thought is to go right back to sleep, because I don’t want to go. It’s not a case of Sunday-morning laziness; I’d just rather not be there, and according to a study conducted earlier this year by the Pew Research Center, two-thirds of young Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 agree with me.
Church isn’t appealing to me, and it never has been. I have vivid memories of sitting in the last pew as a child with crayons and a coloring book for some sort of entertainment. Since I’ve retired the Crayolas and coloring books and started paying closer attention to the sermons, I discovered that some of the messages in church are irrelevant to people of my generation.
Many church principles simply don’t reflect the views of young Americans. A recent study discovered that young people are more accepting of homosexuality: 63 percent of young adults believe that homosexuality should be accepted within society, versus 50 percent of adults in general. In most churches, discussing homosexuality is a taboo. “There’s denial about homosexuality in the church,” said Boyce Watkins, Ph.D., founder of the Your Black World Coalition. It’s “even to the extreme where you have people who believe that if you pray enough, you will not be gay anymore,” he adds.
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