The book is called The Millennials: Connecting to America's Largest Generation. Fortunately, it's a current free download on Amazon, CBD, and iBookstore. Fortunately, because it's so bad that even the title is a lie. The book doesn't present a survey of the Millennials—the generation born between 1980 and 2000. Rather, it presents information gathered from a representative sample of...you're not going to believe this, but it's true...1200 people in the oldest half of the "generation." A sample size of 1200 for "America's largest generation"? Why not just ask your millennial age kid what he thinks? Oh, that's in the book too.
The writing team of Thom Rainer, president and CEO of Lifeway, the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, and his son Jess Rainer, ministry partner of Ed Stetzer, the shameless ShamWow Theology shill for Lifeway Research (and Back to Church Sunday), the research arm of the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, have managed to extrapolate from 1200 interviews amazing generalizations and utter bullshit about half of the Millennial generation. Thom invited his millennial-age son Jess to contribute because he thought it would be super awesome to get an "insider's perspective" on the Millennials, a group that numbers 77.9 million (Rainer, 21), unless you're only doing the first half, and then it's obviously more than half of that, because births begin to taper near the end, thereby signaling the end of the "generation." This is, of course, fictive bullshit, because all taxonomies of this sort are made up out of thin air. However, lest you believe that you can't trust their work, the authors include this heartwarming and absolutely false reassurance:
How accurate is our study? At a 95 percent confidence level and a 50 percent response distribution, the potential sampling error on this national study is +/- 2.8 percentage points. Okay, we admit it. The previous statement is not very exciting unless you are a statistical nerd. Simply stated, this research is pretty accurate. You can trust the statistical validity of our work. (Rainer, 16)
Um, no you can't. And I think they mean statistics nerd, not statistical, unless they mean to imply a person who, based on statistics, is likely to be a nerd. In one sense their numbers are correct. You simply can't know anything with any certainty about 40 million people, especially by interviewing a representative sample of 1200. Assuming the entire 77.0 million, that makes their sample size .000015 percent. Absurd doesn't come close to describing this sort of methodology. Back in the day when I was a QA inspector for weapons systems cable manufacturing, we insisted on a 4 percent sample. That was for shit that killed people, and this is just to figure out how to get a young, hip motherfucker into your suburban Portland church, so maybe a miniscule fraction of a percent is enough. Compare this survey with one published in the Chronicle of Higher Education. It's based on 220,000 incoming freshmen at 4-year schools. Wonder what percentage that is. I suspect it ain't a decimal. Sample size aside, the numbers don't lie.
Very few of their questions led to numbers larger than 15 percent answering in a similar fashion. Here's a prime example of the voodoo bullshit they do:
Approximately 13 percent stated a spouse or partner as important in life. (Rainer, 98)Holy shit. Stop the presses. 13 out of 100 people think a spouse or partner (gay, domestic, bff?) is important in life. Let's make some extrapolations from that, shall we? For the large numbers, the game is even funnier. Enjoy:
Sixty-one percent of the Millennial Generation (they really mean half of it, btw) stated family was really important in life. (Rainer, 98)Wow. So more than half think that the vagina that whooshed them into the world or the man who beat them or the kids they fathered or the siblings they love or loathe are important. What a fucking revelation? One wonders if the other 39 percent are huffers. From these numbers the Rainers are able to deduce what the Millennials (really, only half-ish) think/hope/believe/value. Here's the vapid list of shit that Millennials think is important (not the rest of us...):
- Connected Family
- Parental Involvement
- Diversity
- Hope for the future, including "my" ability to shape it
- balance between work and play
- the importance of mentoring
- moderation in Green
- highly connected, incredibly communicative via technology
- financially confused
- not religious
There is more wrong with that list than I want to give time to. It's generic, over generalized, and descriptive of individuals, not entire generations of individuals. The Rainers try to bring individuals into the conversation, but, and I'm not accusing here, the conversations sound manufactured. Take this statement from Brandon, an interviewee, who is asked about his faith preference, as an example:
Well, most Americans are Christians, and so I guess I am too." (Rainer, 281)
Yeah, nobody talks like that. I teach college students, and I teach religion classes. I've never heard a student say anything remotely similar. They may say they were Christian because of their parents. They may mention that everyone in their town went to a Baptist church. But I've never heard someone claim his faith based on an American faith. That shit it bizarre. Either Brandon is made up, or Brandon told them what he thought they wanted to hear, or Brandon was high during the interview. If it was in Portland, it's at least even odds.
There is an excruciating and pointless "history of technology" in the book as well. I couldn't come up with a good reason for it being there other than the book needed to be a certain length. There is also the most ridiculous set of criteria to define Evangelical I've ever seen (Rainer, 286). It's almost like they made up their own definition of Evangelical. It's followed by this gem: "Obviously, the representation of true Christians in this generation is small" (Rainer, 286). Yes, because only Evangelicals are true Christians. Seriously? What the fuck? Words mean something, you know? Or maybe they don't.
Skip this piece of shit. Seriously. The whole thing reads like an exercise in making the numbers say what I want them to say. We discovered that this generation hangs out at Starbucks a lot. From that we've deduced that they love over-roasted beans. When you're doing your "eat a donut instead of pass the peace" section of the service, make sure the coffee is super strong. That'll bring 'em in. Or their mothers. They love family. But don't place recycle bins in prominent locations or you'll spook them. Millennials are the raccoons of American life.
If you would like to read a non-critical, glad-handing, dutch-rudder sort of interview, you can check out Ed Stetzer interviewing his ministry partner, Jess, about the book here.
