Southern Seminary Magazine (Vol 90.1) The Light of Truth: Apologetics in the 21st Century

y dustin bruce
reaching history’s most
secular generation:
apologetics and gen-z
In the West, the demand for the church to
do the work of an apologist compares only
I
with the task of reaching the pagan culture
which the church faced in the second and
third century AD. Report after report testify to the fact
that Gen Z (those born between 1997 and 2012 according
to Pew Research Center) is the most secular generation
in history.
In recent findings by Barna, the rates of atheism among
Gen Z were double that found in older generations. Anecdotal
evidence confirms the statistics and survey results.
In a recent conversation with a ministry leader,
he relayed to me that his teenage daughter often had to
explain what a “pastor” was after sharing her father’s vocation
with classmates in a suburban public school. That
a young person would have such a lack of familiarity with
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