Feeling bored today I started to Google some of my old friends from High School. Some of these people I haven’t seen in over 25 years.
I was really surprised to see many ID themselves as Christians (as opposed to agnostic or atheist) not that big a deal really. But what really got me was some of them were total fanatics, or at least that was the inference I took from some of their FB pages. (Always talking about god in their posts or church events or “finding god”.)
I’m sure this may be confirmation bias, but this discovery seemed to be somewhat enlightening to me. I’ve often wondered to myself: “Where are all these die hard religious Congresscritters coming from? Shouldn’t the people of my generation be filling those congressional seats?”
As a teenager, my circle of friends and I never gave much thought to religion. And I got the sense that feeling was fairly common for all kids of that time.
So what the heck happened to Gen X? Sometime between HS and adulthood they went all God crazy
Is this par for the course for all generations?
Has the above been your experience as well? Or something completely different?
Yea, when I was younger I used to think that things would be much better when people in my generation were in control. I have no such illusions anymore.
Depending on how you define generations, I could be a Baby Boomer or Gen-X. I definitely identify more with Generation X. It fascinates me sometimes that I am old enough to know '60s pop-culture references, but ‘young’ enough (psychologically, at least) to like alternative music from the '90s and '00s.
I’m a member of my high school’s group for '70s students. There were five high schools in the Antelope Valley. Antelope Valley High, where Frank Zappa went to school, was the ‘traditional’ high school. Palmdale High was Palmdale’s school, and had a bit of a violence problem. Another was a Christian school, one was a school for students who had ‘issues’, and then there was my school. The progressive one. Some of the classes were non-traditional. For example, you might have an entire semester on Edgar Allan Poe. There were Jeezoids, of course; but religion was not ‘a think’ there.
Now, through the FB group, I see that most of the people I hung out with are no longer ‘progressive’. They’ve become conservatives. Indeed, some are Teabaggers. Others have become ultra-religious.
No, not at all. Speaking as an Xer, I literally do not know one person from HS who is a religious zealot of any creed. I have one HS friend who became a hippy, liberal Rabbi who goes on existential meditative nature hikes… that’s all I got.
It may have something to do with the fact that you live in Texas and the general status of religion as a legit topic of conversation there. (I’m from NYC where proselytizing Jesus/taking about your religion except in an informational way is really not considered good manners). Would you say that the people who are highly religious today, came from fairly religious families? Because participating more in your family’s religious beliefs after you have kids is pretty much par for the course.
I’m a Gen Xer, most of my friends whose parents were religious (inlucing myself) are less religious now than they were in the 80’s and 90’s. A few, who were raised largely without any spiritual or religious upbringing are now more religious.
My brother and I are both gen-x, though toward the later part of it. I’m a gay atheist and he’s a married (about to be a father) right-wing pastor. Can never tell which way it’ll go.
I always considered the term “gen X” to be a highly suspect fabrication of convenience for lazy media, in as much as it was supposed to be meaningful in any way. And just when they’d finally stopped it, now they’ve come up with the equally suspect term “millennial.”
Please, let it rest. Go home. It’s Chinatown, OP. “Gen X” is just as fatuous a term now as it was then.
It may be selection bias or something. Facebook seems to attract people who like to talk (post, write, whatever) and the religious do like talking about it. At least, the evangelical types. People less inclined toward religion, but not outspoken atheists are likely not on Facebook or shut the hell up about it.