A Religionless Generation?
EVERY time I stand before my students in class and ask, "Honestly, who among you completed the full five daily prayers this week?", the raised hands are never as numerous as I imagined. However, when the question is rephrased to, "Who feels they fulfilled God's command this week?", the room transforms. Far more hands go up, accompanied by stories that do not always take the form of prescribed prayer cycles (rak'ahs).
Reflecting on life while traveling, contemplating short sermon videos played while lying in bed, engaging in long discussions with friends about community service projects after watching Korean dramas, and so forth. From there, a series of questions pound on the mind. Could it be that the questions we have been asking Generation Z (Gen-Z) are perhaps inaccurate?
We ask, "Are they still religious?" When what we should be asking is, "What kind of religiosity are they pioneering?"
Recent data, both from Indonesia and abroad, actually presents a picture that superficially appears contradictory, yet for us, becomes coherent when read through the right sociological framework.
According to the findings of a study, Indonesian Gen-Z excels in Quranic literacy and records the highest score in interfaith tolerance compared to Millennials or Baby Boomers. Yet on the other hand, they are also the ones who least frequently perform routine worship. In the United States, the picture is quite similar.
Where one-third of Gen-Z is no longer affiliated with any religion, only eleven percent attend weekly services. Nevertheless, nearly all young Indonesian respondents in the Varkey Foundation survey place faith as the most important path to happiness—the highest percentage in the world.
At first glance, this is a paradox. However, we had better read it not as a contradiction, but as a transition of form.
French sociologist of religion, Danièle Hervieu-Léger, once wrote that modernity does not erase religion. It severs the "chain of memory" (chaîne de mémoire) that has traditionally passed down religion intact from one generation to the next through institutions, rituals, and unquestioned authority.
Thus, what is happening to Gen-Z, in my view, is precisely that. The frame of that chain is not totally broken, but unraveling. They no longer accept religion as a single bundled heritage to be swallowed whole—dogma, rituals, clerical authority, and organizational structures all at once—but rather curate, take what they consider meaningful, and reassemble it personally.
Research in America calls this phenomenon by an apt term: "unbundled" faith—faith unraveled from its original bundle.
Naturally, this is fascinating to explore deeper because historically, Religion and Faith have always been connected, though not in an "immutable" physical shape and form. A simple example: in the past, people did not perform worship wearing the clothing worn by modern humans today. Social-cultural and even political contexts heavily seep into various actions designated as religious practice.
This is where a hypothesis emerges to sharpen our understanding of Gen-Z. Where Gen-Z is not preoccupied with ritual formalisms, but comprehends the meaning of religion quite well.
This is not a spiritually shallow generation, but a generation that rejects formalism devoid of substance.
Grace Davie, a British sociologist, two decades ago foresaw the pattern of "believing without belonging"—believing without feeling the need to be bound to institutional structures. In fact, Gen-Z seems to go a step further. They practice a form of "believing without exactly bundling," believing in core teachings while renegotiating the forms of their practice.
So when data indicates that 49 percent of Gen-Z leverage digital platforms to study religion, that is not a sign of ritual laziness, but a sign that they are seeking an authority of meaning relevant to their own lived experiences—not an authority imposed top-down from hierarchical structures above them.
Yet at this point, another side emerges; we also see that Gen-Z is highly critical of religion—including critical of institutions claiming to represent it.
Applying the framework of Zygmunt Bauman, who characterized our modern condition as "liquid modernity," we live in an era where all previously solid forms—including religious institutions—melt, losing the binding power that was once given and taken for granted.
Gen-Z has grown up amidst the liquefaction of that authority. Within their daily reality, they witness religious institutional scandals going viral in a matter of hours, they compare one scholar's interpretation with another simply by swiping a screen, and they do not hesitate to question why a particular ritual is mandated when its meaning is rarely thoroughly explained.
This criticism is not hostility toward religion, but a demand that religion account for itself rationally and ethically—something Charles Taylor, in A Secular Age, termed a shift toward "authenticity," where a person's spiritual validity is now measured by inner honesty, rather than mere outward compliance.
What is interesting to note is that this criticism does not always lead to rejection. Data regarding the "quiet revival" in the UK and US, which highlights a surge in the proportion of young people—especially young men—returning to view religion as important, shows that the melting of old authority can actually open up space for the formation of new, more consciously chosen authority, rather than passively inherited ones.
This perspective recalls the view of Ulrich Beck, who termed our era an era of "individualization." Not the death of social bonds, but the birth of bonds that must be continuously re-produced through personal choice.
Thus, practicing religion for Gen-Z, in other words, becomes a biographical project that must be actively worked on, rather than an automatic status attached at birth.
As someone who studies sociology, and who also happens to teach digital-based community empowerment, I see a major homework assignment for our religious institutions.
According to data, parents and religious figures still remain the most trusted spiritual reference sources for Gen-Z. In fact, far exceeding influencers themselves.
This is undoubtedly an invaluable asset, yet one easily eroded if religious communication continues to rely on one-way instruction without room for dialogue and critical questions.
Gen-Z is not abandoning religion; they are calling on religion to return to its most original meaning—compassion, justice, inner peace—and refusing to have it wrapped in formalisms hollow of deep reflection.
In this context, the statement "A Generation without Religion?" perhaps needs to be answered with a question mark retained, as the answer is neither a simple yes nor no. Rather, they are a generation rewriting what it means to be religious, with an ink that is more personal, more critical, and, if we are honest, more demanding of depth than any generation before them.
(This article was originally published on Kompas.com on Monday, September 21, 2026)