Shari Oosting: How are young people navigating uncertainty? Josh Packard is the Executive Director of Springtide Research Institute. He’s a sociologist with a background in teaching, speaking, and writing. Springtide Research Institute specializes in researching people between the ages of 13 and 25 years old. Each fall they publish a document called “The State of Religion and Young People.” Today’s interview explores what they’ve learned about the faith lives of these young people as they’ve moved through such a season of incredible uncertainty.

You’re listening to The Distillery at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Josh, thank you so much for speaking to me today.

Josh Packard
Thank you so much for having me. I’m really glad to be here.

Shari Oosting
So, you work at Springtide Research Institute, and I think it would be great for the purposes of our conversation if you told us a little bit about what Springtide is and what some of your goals are.

Josh Packard
Yeah, sure, of course. We're relatively new so it’s—the question is a natural starting place. We’ve been around for about three years now—two and a half, three years—and we're research institute, to put it very straightforward. But are—we have a very particular kind of focus and, primarily, that means that we center all the work that we do on the faith and religious and spiritual lives of 13- to 25-year-olds. Because that's what's commonly known right now as “Gen Z.” Now as Gen Z ages, which you know—obviously, they're going to grow up and there’s going to be some generation after them—we'll stay right here, we’ll stay right here, paying attention to 13- to 25-year-olds. We just saw this as a really growing need that was not met in the research world; that really paying attention to young people, all the way down to that 13- age bracket, through a variety of, you know—we do a lot of surveys—we've done like 30,000 surveys over the last few years, and I think we're closing in on 300 interviews. And because so many young people are really beginning to make important decisions—both like making their own decisions, but also they're starting to be informed about the wide variety of possibilities when it comes to faith and religion and spirituality at younger and younger ages. And we really wanted to make sure we capture that at that low end. And then, of course, going all the way up to 25, you know, that's when social scientists—parents might not like this—but social scientists have found that that's about the age at which you can say that people would like, statistically, the majority have moved out of their home of origin and, for lack of a better, more technical term—"on their own”—which is not, that is not something that always happens evenly or certainly not across the board for all groups and sometimes there's stops and starts with that but—that's about where we capped that off. The other thing that makes our work, I think, a little bit unique in this space is that we are—we're not doing it through the lens of any particular faith perspective. So, you know, we're not a Baptist research group studying young Baptists or, you know, a Jewish research group studying young Jews. We really are paying attention to all young people, and that includes—and maybe the biggest focus is on that 40% of young people who claim no religious affiliation—we’re really trying to understand them and how they're, you know, what new things are on the horizon for faith leaders and religious leaders and parents as they try to engage that group, and also then to try and try to help them to do new things with that group. So, we're not just a research institute—we’re an applied research institute and we're constantly trying to figure out how to make sure that our data and our research is actionable. One of the things we say all the time is we don't want to be interesting; we want to be useful. And I think that that makes us, you know, sort of a little unique in the world of researchers.

Shari Oosting
Yeah, that’s great. So, it struck me just simply looking at the founding date of Springtide in 2019—one of the things we want to talk about today is young people and navigating uncertainty and—these have been three of the most uncertain years in my living memory. So, can you talk a little bit about this theme of uncertainty and maybe what it's been like to come alongside the uncertainty of young people in such just a generally uncertain time.

Josh Packard
Yeah, that's right, I mean I’m chuckling here because we did—the first publication that we released, the first study we did was called “Belonging: Reconnecting America’s Loneliest Generation” and it came out in March of 2020. And I remember very distinctly that we were launching at the same time that everything was shutting down, and it was—

Shari Oosting
Yeah, what a month in our collective memory, right? Yeah.

Josh Packard
But I think that even that first publication tells you something about why these past few years have felt the way that they felt. I mean, we did that study and wrote that publication, obviously, in order for it to come out in the same week that the country was shutting down—we did that work months before that, before anybody knew anything about a pandemic, or that there would be, you know, what the word COVID even meant. And so the reality is that even walking into this pandemic, there's clear research out there. I mean, a really big study from SIGMA in 2018 60,000 Americans confirming, for the first time ever, that Gen Z, the youngest generation, is the loneliest generation that we've ever recorded using a very standard scale of loneliness. And then, our own work, extending that down to 13-year-olds in that book really signaling that something new and different was going on with this generation. And then, of course, COVID comes and doesn't help any of that at all. And it's, you know—as a research institute it’s limited us a little bit in terms of our methodology which we're starting to emerge from now, so mostly we've been relying on surveys and interviews. And now we get to, we’re starting to ease up a little bit and get a chance to do some more unique and in-depth forms of data collection. But we have heard from thousands and thousands of young people and what the pandemic has done, really, is accelerate these trends that were already in place, you know, that the foundations of which will built years before the pandemic.

Shari Oosting
Yeah, I keep thinking with so many different things in society that the pandemic has just been like a brick on the gas pedal. Any kind of inequity or questions of belonging or loneliness—it's just exacerbated it or accelerated it. So, let's talk about this thing of how young people that are navigating uncertainty—so, can you talk to me about how that became a core research question and then we can get into a little bit about what you found.

Josh Packard
Yeah, so, every fall we put out “The State of Religion and Young People.” And the first year was—one of the things we found was that the young people were responding less to programs and more to relationships. And, in particular, relationships that were done with the combination of particular characteristics—along with expertise, there were things like caring and listening and integrity. And after we wrote that and sort of broke that down the next question that occurred to us was like, okay, well, can these relationships actually move young—can they provide comfort? Can they provide certainty/assurance? Can they provide clarity? Like, what do these relationships do? And that's what got us turning our minds and heads towards uncertainty as young people were obviously navigating, as you mentioned, you know, completely unprecedented times. And so, for “State of Religion and Young People” for 2021 that was our focus. And it became really evident that some of the best research has, like—what we thought we would find just wasn't there. So, what we thought is that we were going to find, you know—oh! And 2020 we come along and say like “Hey, you know your programs aren't so effective, but the relationships that you form with young people are really important!” And so we're going to come along the next year and talk about how great these relationships are and how many young people have with adults and—

Shari Oosting
Wouldn't it be ideal if one year had a great question and the next year had a great answer?

Josh Packard
*laughs* That's what we were hoping for! And what it turns out was like—it became actually a little more revealing in terms of, like, oh, we don't actually have systems to do relationships and ministry at scale. And so, when we look at how young people are navigating uncertainty, as much as they really want those trusted adult relationships and need them—I mean, all the research confirms that they need them—and our research really shows that young people desire them—they still just don't have them. And it's not because, I mean—you all talk to a lot of people in ministry, you know, if you ever met anybody who's not working hard enough, I haven't—

Shari Oosting
No, but the standard joke is part-time pay for full-time work, right?

Josh Packard
Exactly! You know, there's structural impediments but there's not a deficit of caring or deficit of intention. We are working with some structural issues, and, you know, that are impediments that are in place. So, who are young people turning to navigate uncertainty? Well, they're often turning to a variety of other sources, including their peers. And that was really what this study was about, was—alright, so only something like six percent of young people told us that, during the pandemic, that a faith leader had reached out to check on them. And that's an astonishingly low number. And again, I don't think that's a—that's not an indicator of how much youth directors care or how much campus ministers are working or anything like that. It's just, like, we just don't have systems to reach out to people to form relationships when they're not coming through our doors anymore. And so, in that absence young people we found turning to a variety of sources online, they're turning to their friends, they're asking a lot of questions and a variety of other things.

Shari Oosting
So let's talk more about that—so you broke it down a little bit to talk about—tell me if this is a false characterization—but kind of an old model of relationships where it's either kind of expertise which I would call like a relationship of positional authority—someone's like a teacher or an expert—or someone has kind of this more proximate relationship of familiarity or closeness. And I think what you're trying to move toward is a different model of relational authority or what's your perhaps recommending to faith communities. Can you talk about that?

Josh Packard
Well, I think a lot of people when they—a lot of especially religious leaders—we get really worried about anything that moves away from positioning us as the expert because we get concerned, then, that the only alternative, then, is to sort of be a young person's friend for lack of a better term, or like they're fun uncle or something like that you know? I'm not really doing formation with them if we're not being the expert and—so, without being able to sort of imagine or conceptualize another option, I think a lot of times religious folks get caught in between those two poles. Like, I can either be the expert in the room or I can be the one they like. Well, I can't compromise on the scriptures and the word of God so I’m going to be in this extra role. But what we saw from the day—I mean, young people are really clear: they really don't want adults to be their friends. They tell us they have a lot of friends. Often their friends were the source of all the problems and drama, so they're not looking for adults to add to that.

Shari Oosting
Which might be like a relief for a lot of adults to hear like “oh good, I don’t have to be the cool one or something. I don't have to try to be the friend.” Yeah.

Josh Packard
Exactly, and I think you know, so I hear this—you know, a lot of people working in youth ministry have heard this before too, you know—somebody will say, like, “oh gosh, I'm so not-cool” or, like, “the kids don't think that I’m cool.” They don't—we didn't hear a single interview from a kid who said that they really needed their youth minister to be cool or that they left church because their pastor was just square or something like that. Not that kids would use that term but—*laugh*

Shari Oosting
Dating yourself a little bit.

Josh Packard
Sure, yeah. Instead what they told us is that they really want adults to be adults. But the trick is that being an adult that matters in the life of a young person means that you're an adult who's curious about their life, who will genuinely listen to them, who shows and expresses care by spending time with them by sharing things from their own life with those young people. It's, you know, it really comes back to that old adage that the young person will not care how much you know until they know how much you care. And when we lead with expertise—whether that's in the form of our position at an institution—like, you know, I’ve got such-and-such title, we've been here for so long, we have this many members—young people don't care about any of that. They really just don't. Until they know that you have their best interests in mind and not the institution's best interest in mind. And so that's the real key: you have to convince them that you have their best interests in mind, because their default is to think that you have the institution's best interest in mind, not theirs. And, spoiler alert, they really, really, really don't trust institutions, just like their parents and their parents’ parents.

Shari Oosting
I think there's another thing in your report that is a bit of a pressure point for a lot of people who do work in churches—and you've identified a statistic that during the pandemic many people lost the practice of attending religious services, but also that they were pretty happy to have lost that connection. And I imagine that that's a pretty jarring thing for those who plan and kind of dedicate their lives to these kind of meaningful communal worship experiences. So can you talk a little bit more about that because I anticipate how that lands with people.

Josh Packard
This is a more complicated story. So, for those people listening/hearing that for the first time and are sort of alarmed—I mean, it is alarming. But also, there's a complicated story here that is really important that makes it somewhat less alarming. Young people, about a third of young people said they got more religious during the pandemic—more spiritual or religious—about a third said they'd declined—but the vast majority stayed the same. And that was really strong—I would not, it's not that I was expecting it, but I would not have been surprised to see young people come through the pandemic and say, like, that was it for me—just massive numbers leaving. Or worse, not caring about the question—which I do think is worse. What's really going on during the pandemic is that when they were completely loosened and unmoored from those institutional ties, is not that they replaced them—it's not that there's a gulf or a vacuum that exists—it's that they started replacing those sort of taken for granted practices which weren't particularly fulfilling before the pandemic now with new things and explorations. But some of those are, like, what do young people tell us that they are finding meaning and purpose in, like engaging with nature, conversations with friends, hobbies, art, music, etc. And those are all fine and good and great—certainly have no problem with those. We're big believers in the power of institutions, I mean, as I mentioned a couple of times, we’re sociologists. There’s not like meaningful long-term coordinated human activity that can be sustained without institutions. They're really, really important and—but they're not, but religious institutions, as we've seen in other parts of the world, are not—we shouldn't take for granted, it's not their birthright that they're going to exist and be around. So they do have to respond to the environment in order to keep engaging people, and I think one of the things we're seeing from Gen Z here is this understanding of, like, well if you're going to package this entire system up and hand it to me and tell me that these are the things that I get to do and I have really no agency over that, then instead they're not going to pick bits and pieces of it. They're just going to reject that notion wholesale and they're going to go and try and find this in other places. I don't think they'll be successful over the long run, because, again I think these institutions are really critical, but then I don't think the institutions will be successful over the, you know—it’s sort of a mutual demise situation unless one or the other can pivot and engage more fully. And our position at Springtide is like that's clearly the job of the adults, not the kids. It's the institution’s job to pivot—not on their beliefs, nobody, you know—young people don't—they weren't asking, you know, institutions or people even to change their beliefs. And certainly one of the great things about Christianity and religion in general and America is that there's, you know—if you have a particular belief and that is the sort of, like, “I'm going to die on this hill” belief for you, you can probably find a religious community that embraces that.

Shari Oosting
Yeah.

Josh Packard
But there's a lot of room to pivot and change and adapt about how we engage people around those beliefs. Rituals are critically important for young people, they really like them; they like them, though, when they're connected to relationships and meaning and people; they don't like them when they just exist in a vacuum and they don't understand them or don't resonate with them in some particular way. So I think there's really—there's real room for that. And even though, and we should be clear too about, like, so young people might have said that they liked the fact that they lost touch with some of these communities, but we're interviewing and surveying 13- to 25-year-olds. I mean, we take their words very seriously, we respect them a lot. But they're also kids, and the hallmark of youth is change and, you know, lack of perspective. I mean, they're not all kids—obviously the 18- to 25-year-olds are not, you know—they're adults, but they're young. And it's worth remembering that because there's also a lot of data that we've collected and others which we report and Gallup just came out with this giant summary of all their data about religion and flourishing that is pretty conclusive: religious people and religious young people fare better than their nonreligious counterparts and flourishing in all, you know, more in almost every part of their life.

Shari Oosting
Can you talk about what that means to fare better?

Josh Packard
It's a variety of indicators here like are you—it’s self-report data, you know?—How are you doing in school? How’s your mental health? How's your faith and spiritual life? Etc.—as well as depending on who's doing the study, some standard scales that are used around those things. But no matter how we look at it, the result is still the same. You can argue, I think—and people do; goodness knows that I was an academic and people argue about these things—about why that is, like, you know, is it the divine presence in your life that causes that or is it, like, the community that often comes with religion that causes that or whatever it is. But nevertheless, religion leads to flourishing. And it's not it's, you know, generally speaking—I’m going to be very clear about this, and bracket this—generally speaking, more religion leads to more flourishing. But there's a limit to that, obviously, that's why I’m being very careful here. It's not that all religion is equally good and in vast quantities, I mean there's obviously ways of being really harmful and damaging and controlling and lacking an inquiry in those kinds of things. So while young people might say that they're happy about it we're not, you know, we should put that in an appropriate place—that is probably how they feel, they feel that way for a variety of reasons. But it is not necessarily an indication of their sort of fundamental levels of flourishing or happiness.

Shari Oosting
Yeah, so, I'm curious for to talk, you said, about how young people do find a great deal of meaning in rituals, as long as they're connected and grounded in relationships. Can you share a story or an example that demonstrates that?

Josh Packard
Yeah, so, in fact I can share one from a young person I was just talking to, a young Jewish person actually, that I was just talking to the other day. And he was saying it's like—when I was younger, like, I didn't understand all this candle lighting was about. Like, why are we getting together? It just felt like we were constantly lighting candles.

Shari Oosting
*laughs* Yeah, what are we doing?!

Josh Packard
It’s sort of funny to think about that because it's, you know, it's the only time I’ve ever heard a young person say they didn't like fire, for example.

Shari Oosting
Wow!

Josh Packard
*laughs* Because young people always like fire! But, you know, to him, it just felt like going through the motions and it wasn't until—he said that his grandmother sat him down and explained why a particular—I can’t remember if it was—gosh, I'm blanking on which one it was—but she was explaining why it was important to her and how it had reminded her of her own parents, which would be this young man’s great-grandparents. And then it started to click for him. And then that abstract became real. But, you know, so often what we're trying to do is connect young people to this, like, very intellectualized version of the faith. We have to understand, you know, like—we think that in order to access some meaning of these rituals whether it's, you know, I mean, I think about my own tradition: there’s a lot of emphasis in my youth put on understanding the timeline of events that led up to Good Friday and into Easter—like, really in some cases, breaking it down hour by hour. But it wasn't, you know, for me, like Easter never really meant anything until I was able to comprehend what it, like, what the implications were. And that's what this young man was explaining, he was like “okay, so I know what Yom Kippur is—I understand what Purim is”—which is the Jewish holiday which just passed—“like, I get all that, I've studied it.” But resonating with it? That's the thing that’s not going to come, especially for this generation through, learning—I mean, not learning in that traditional sense of, like, you know, what are the theological underpinnings—that work that used to be primary now needs to be secondary; it's the experiential relationship stuff that needs to lead the way there.

Shari Oosting
Yeah, so it sounds like he kind of had this ritual experience or this practice, but then his grandmother's testimony is what kind of made it come alive.

Josh Packard
Oh yeah! And I should say, and then he was like—I'm sorry, I forgot to close loop on that story—he was like: “I'll never miss that again because now it's a connection to my grandmother.”

Shari Oosting
Yeah, and so he has—it's part of his own DNA.

Josh Packard
Right

Shari Oosting
I mean, it probably was before, but his awareness of it has changed.

Josh Packard
Right

Shari Oosting
So I'm curious, as you think about the work ahead and your continued journeying with young people, what's something that makes you hopeful and curious moving forward?

Josh Packard
I think we're incredibly hopeful. I mean, I think this decline narrative is a little bit misconstrued. We've been paying attention to a couple of variables for a while now about it—

Shari Oosting
The “nones” and the “dones,” right?

Josh Packard
--yeah, exactly—about attendance and affiliation. If they were adults, we would call them “nickels” and “noses” but kids don’t—*laughs* And it's not to say that attendance and affiliation are unimportant, and certainly they are on the decline, that is, those things are all true. But we don't think that that's the real story that matters—that it’s the only story that matters. And we certainly don't see that it's a very strong indicator of the sort of underlying religious and spiritual activity. And so actually we're really hopeful when it comes to young people's religious faith and spiritual lives. Our position at Springtide is that young people's religious lives need to be well attended to in order for them to flourish. And, you know, for some young people that's going to look like considering a whole bunch of things and ultimately rejecting religion and faith in God all together. We think those young people are far better off than the young folks who pay no attention to it, who don't have any framework for understanding it. And to that end, we are, you know, really encouraged because what we see is young people in a variety of ways asking a lot of questions. So in that first “State of Religion” report that I mentioned we really broke open those categories of affiliated and unaffiliated and show that they don't mean what you might think that they mean—like, over half of young people who are affiliated say that they don't trust organized religion. You know, so they’re checking the box to say I’m Christian, Catholic, or Jewish or whatever, but then they're also saying, like, I don't trust organized religion and saying—and on and on, we won’t go through all of them. And on the unaffiliated side, we see a lot of unaffiliated young people who are praying regularly, who consider themselves religious, whose spirituality and religion and faith has increased over the last few years. So, we really see a much broader playing field, so to speak, for adults who want to be, you know, influential, have an influential role in the life of a young person because they're open to those questions—they're having those conversations. They're exploring these in a variety of ways, often online and some terrifying ways with their friends, like, you know, 16-year-olds shouldn't be the leaders of other 16-year-olds when it comes to understanding millennia-old religious traditions. But that's often—

Shari Oosting
Especially if the forum for those conversations is social media.

Josh Packard
Yeah, like two hundred and forty characters and a 5000-year-old faith and 16-year-olds talking to each other about—which is great! I mean, we're really excited about all that! But also, there should be an adult, you know, or five who are connected to that conversation in some way. And it doesn't mean that they need to be in every conversation, but you know what I’m saying, like—

Shari Oosting
Yeah.

Josh Packard
Those conversations should be happening, you know, with people who have more perspective to—

Shari Oosting
This shouldn't be reduced only to peer relationships, yeah.

Josh Packard
That’s exactly right. So we're incredibly encouraged. We don't see this, like, falling off of a cliff of people's interest in God or even the rituals that accompany religion. Now, like, they're going to interrogate them—they're going to ask all kinds of questions. They’re especially going to want to know if any of those rituals are coming out of, you know, imperialist or racist or sexist cultures or environments. They’re gonna ask tough questions about those things; this generation cares very much about social justice and inclusion. But those challenging conversations can be really great—rituals don't always have to look the same forever.

Shari Oosting
Yeah. So, I don't know a single Christian leader who isn't thinking—whether or not they work directly with young people are not—who isn't thinking about questions of faith for the younger generations, which I think is also encouraging that this is a lively question. You know, a lot of times it's driven by fear about oh no, where are the young people, right? But the fact that it raises a question can be a good thing. So if you were to give an encouragement to faith leaders, to Christian faith leaders, to keep asking good questions about the religious lives of young people what kinds of questions would you want them to continue to lead with?

Josh Packard
The questions that I would say, I mean, as we were talking right now I’ve got this poster on the wall behind me—I know this is an audio medium, not a visual one—so this is probably not making for the best podcast copy, so I’m going to describe a picture. *laughs*

Shari Oosting
That's great. Go for it.

Josh Packard
But it’s a picture of Ted Lasso and it's a quote actually from Einstein if I remember correctly, but it's featured prominently in the show Ted Lasso. If you're not watching it or if you haven't watched it you definitely should and—

Shari Oosting
Amen! I’ll second that.

Josh Packard
Yeah, it’s really great! It was exactly what I needed during the pandemic. I just couldn’t watch hard stuff.

Shari Oosting
Mmmhmmm.

Josh Packard
And it says: “Be Curious, Not Judgmental.” And I think all too often what we get—we just don't get enough genuine curiosity from religious leaders about the lives of young people. We get a lot of assumptions. We certainly have a lot of strong opinions about what young people should be doing and should not be doing. But we don't get a lot of just outright curiosity, especially when it comes to really complicated and hot button issues where adults feel like they have to make a stand and, you know, really hold the line. And we think that even to ask or entertain the question is—it's as though we're abdicating our, you know, our responsibility to set the moral or ethical standard or religious standard for them. But if I could encourage adults to do anything, it would be that first and foremost to be curious. We have a podcast called “The Voices of Young People” where, you know—it's a really diverse group of young people talking about our research on—each episode is often one or just two people. And one young woman told me in the first season or second season, she said, “Our experience with adults is of being dismissed.” And it really clicked for me about why, you know, often when I was a professor, I would have to ask my students—even my own advisees—several times, “What do you want to be when you grow up? What do you want to be when you grow up?” Like, you know, over and over and over. How can I help you? And I'm coming from a really genuine place—I'll make introductions, will set up internships, like, we'll do whatever we can to help you. This is what college is for. But they just didn't think that I was really being honest until I’d ask the third and fourth and fifth time—until I’d taken notes about what they had said and reflected it back to them to follow up and see if that was still true, you know? Until I actually set up that introduction for that internship at the nonprofit downtown or wherever they wanted to work. It was, you know, that we have to think of ourselves as working, I think, a little bit at a deficit and so being curious, following through, really showing people that you are in it for them will go a long way, because when they—in that assumption that you, you know, are gonna dismiss them and that you don't have their best interest in mind, that can be—that's obviously a difficult place to start from, there's no doubt. But the good thing is that if you can do just a little bit when you're starting from that place, you can do just a little bit to show genuine curiosity and follow-through, well, you can make a lot of progress in a very short amount of time.

Shari Oosting
That's a good word—it sounds like not just genuine curiosity, but persistent curiosity. That's a good word. Josh, thank you so much for talking with me today.

Josh Packard
And thank you, Shari. I'm really glad to be here. If anybody's interested in the work they can find us at springtideresearch.org and we're always happy to—you can email me directly josh@springtideresearch.org and we're happy to talk.

Shari Oosting
Wonderful, thank you so much.

Josh Packard
Thank you.

Shari Oosting
You've been listening to The Distillery at Princeton Theological Seminary. Interviews are conducted by me, Sushama Austin-Connor and Shari Oosting. Our producer is Brooke Matika. Like what you're hearing? Subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Google Play, or your favorite podcast app. And, while you're at it, leave us a review and let us know how we're doing. The Distillery is a production of the Office of Continuing Education at Princeton Theological Seminary. Find out more at thedistillery.ptsem.edu. Until next time, thanks for listening!