Religion's Generation Gap

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The Wall Street Journal

Religion's Generation Gap
When children become more devout than their parents, relationships can get strained. A report on keeping the faith, and the peace, at the dinner table.
By KATHERINE ROSMAN
March 2, 2007; Page W1

Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll used to be the Big Three of rebellion. Some families are adding religion to that list. An increasing number of teens and young adults who were raised in nonreligious or nominally religious families are getting swept up in religious fervor. This is creating a complicated and sometimes painful family dynamic.

The parents of 16-year-old Kevin Ellstrand are self-described secular humanists who shun organized religion. Two years ago, Kevin says, he "started following Christ with all my heart." He has taken a missionary trip to Mexico and participates in a weekly Bible study group. In a time when many teens are having sex and taking drugs, his parents mostly consider his piety a blessing. They get upset, however, when Kevin explains that he doesn't believe in evolution. "To me, this is appalling," says his mother, Karen Byers, who has a doctorate in strategic management and was raised a Methodist. "We get into arguments, and voices get a little louder than they should." Kevin says: "I don't want my parents to go to hell for not believing in God. But that is what's going to happen, and it really scares me." Kevin's father, Alan Ellstrand, director of M.B.A. programs at the University of Arkansas business school, says he respects his son but is saddened that he has such worries. "I'm sorry that's the byproduct of his religious studies," says Mr. Ellstrand, who grew up Unitarian.


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Tom Lin's parents, immigrants from Taiwan, sent him to Harvard University with the expectation he would become a corporate attorney. When he instead opted for a much lower-paying career in a Christian ministry, his mother threatened to kill herself, says Mr. Lin, 34, a regional director for InterVarsity, a college ministry that has 843 chapters in the U.S. Mr. Lin adds that both parents cut off all communication with him for seven years, reconnecting only after his mother was diagnosed with cancer. (She died in 2002.) Mr. Lin says his choices were "shaming" to the values held within many immigrant cultures. His parents "moved to America for material prosperity," says Mr. Lin. "When children forsake the very reason they came to this country, it's particularly devastating."

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The embrace of Islam by young people can be confounding to secular Muslim-Americans who immigrated to the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. "Our parents were more culturally Muslim than religious," says Farhan Latif, the former president of the Muslim Students Association at the University of Michigan's Dearborn campus and the alumni adviser to the chapter. But in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks -- and the racial profiling of Muslims that ensued -- some young people have gravitated toward their religion as a show of ancestral pride and an act of defiance against a society they see as discriminatory. Young Muslims, for example, says it has seen participation double since 2000 to more than 1,000 people. Growing up in a Pakistani neighborhood in London, Ershen Ali, 21, says he shied away from embracing his religion because, he says, he associated it with "a lot of hypocrisy." He says he routinely witnessed self-proclaimed devout Muslims drinking alcohol, a violation of the Quran. While attending Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, he joined the Muslim Students Association and began to learn more about "true" Islam, he says. He now considers himself religious, praying four or five times a day. When planning a recent road trip, he consulted Google to find a mosque in Wyoming. Mr. Ali says his father, Rashid Ali, has greeted his religious transformation nervously. "My dad is always like, 'Keep it on the down low,'" says Ershen, a management trainee at a supply-chain management company in Los Angeles.

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Young people gravitating toward orthodoxy is also an emergent issue in the Orthodox Jewish community. There is even a minilexicon of terms to characterize the movement. Baal Teshuva (Hebrew for "master of return") is the name Orthodox Jews give to secular Jews who are changing their lives to live like and among the frum -- a Yiddish word describing observant Jews. Strict Orthodox Jews tend to live in close-knit communities, dress in a conservative fashion and strive to observe all of the Torah's 613 laws. There's even an Orthodox shorthand that includes terms like "BT" (Baal Teshuva) "FFB" (frum from birth).

Few issues create more tension for families comprised of people with different religious commitments than religious holidays and family celebrations. Last year, Philip Ackerman of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., and his wife wanted to take their three children and all of their grandchildren on a cruise to celebrate his 70th birthday. Among Mr. Ackerman's children is Azriela Jaffe, who is a BT and the author of a book about how newly observant Jews can get along with their less-observant relatives, "What Do You Mean, You Can't Eat in My Home?" Because the cruise ship didn't offer kosher food, and the itinerary would require travel on the Jewish Sabbath, Mrs. Jaffe and her family declined the invitation. The Jaffes celebrate Jewish holidays separately from their extended family because they aren't observant. Secular holidays such as Thanksgiving are celebrated together when everyone travels to the Jaffes' kosher home in Highland Park, N.J. "There is no compromise. It's her way or the highway," Mr. Ackerman said during a phone interview before abruptly hanging up at his wife's urging.

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