I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you pesky kids.
tweeted by @mikegalsworthy
My wife Maggie still refers to ‘young people’ when
describing some of our friends who are now in their mid-thirties … I’m usually
exasperated by her comments, which are never just ignored! I guess it’s a sign
of growing older, but have we institutionalised this perspective? In Church and
politics.
Everyone appears surprised at the results from this General
Election. Many political commentators made massive assumptions when Teresa May
called for the recent General Election and most of them have proved to be
wrong. I’m hearing echoes of conversations with many church leaders and people
belonging to our Baptist Churches. The particular assumptions I’m thinking
about are around the ‘young’ … I hear similar huge assumptions made by people
in our Baptist Churches.
"The ‘youth’ are getting older!"
I
find it very interesting to dig down a little under statements about ‘youth’,
because as the average age of the UK increases, it seems the youth are getting
older. In Christian youth work circles we’ve long talked about ‘youth’ as up to
25, but that’s including teenagers. Of course, when it comes to voting in a
General Election you need to be 18 and
by definition an adult, so to talk about ‘youth’ is interesting to say the
least.
Across church life, it appears as the
‘youth’ bracket gets wider, so the missing gap grows bigger. An increasing
number of church congregations have no people under 40 among them.
"Those younger ‘are not interested these days’!"
Hopefully one
result from this election will be to highlight we disregard those with the
smallest voices at our peril. Politicians appear to have become accustomed to the idea
younger voters were disenfranchised from the system and not voting, but on the day the general election was called, 57,987 people
under 25 registered to vote - more than any other age group. The second largest
group was people aged between 25 and 34, with a further 51,341 registering. Articles are already appearing, the morning after the long night before, asking 'was it the youth who caused the hung parliament?'
I’ve
become tired of hearing a similar chorus within churches. However, wherever
churches are directly engaging a younger population there are people becoming
Christians. It is simply not true those younger are less likely to become
Christians. Neither is it true the younger generations are so influenced by
post-modernity they have no convictions, around right and wrong, light and
darkness, values and integrity. Jeremy Corbyn’s appeal to the 18-24 age group
would appear to have much to do with ideals and conviction and in my experience
younger Christians have largely rejected the liberal theology experiments of
the twentieth century. They want conviction, truth, integrity and action.
PS.
According to the Office for National Statistics we are still
getting older in the UK:
In mid 2015 the adjusted estimates from the 2011 census
suggest:
11.6 million, or 17.8% of the population are over 65, with 1.5
million, or 2.3% over 85.
The median age of the UK population (the age at which half
the population is younger and half the population is older) is 40.0, which is
an increase from 38.7 in mid-2005.
The future projections available look like:
|
Year
|
UK
population
|
0 to
15 years (%)
|
16 to
64 years (%)
|
65
years & over (%)
|
|
1975
|
56,226,000
|
24.9
|
61.0
|
14.1
|
|
1985
|
56,554,000
|
20.7
|
64.1
|
15.2
|
|
1995
|
58,025,000
|
20.7
|
63.4
|
15.8
|
|
2005
|
60,413,000
|
19.3
|
64.7
|
15.9
|
|
2015
|
65,110,000
|
18.8
|
63.3
|
17.8
|
|
2025
|
69,444,000
|
18.9
|
60.9
|
20.2
|
|
2035
|
73,044,000
|
18.1
|
58.3
|
23.6
|
|
2045
|
76,055,000
|
17.7
|
57.8
|
24.6
|
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