Is LA Where Religion Comes to Die?

Los Angeles, CA– From the Gen-Z perspective, it is a land that breeds ‘Hype’ houses full of influencers, crystals grow from the sidewalks, and the beaches are full of iced matcha lattes. This utopian perspective of young dreamers has put stars in the eyes of youth that watch their favorite Tik Tok stars reach the level of fame where they are legally allowed to move to LA. This stigma that surrounds the city has infiltrated it with a new generation of wealthy, left-aligned liberal individuals.

Though, this population does not nearly make up the true reality of Los Angeles as a whole. It is a truly diverse and progressive city; however, for the sake of my argument, I will focus on three groups: the Gen Zers mentioned above; the rich, white 1%; and the impoverished, working communities. The contrast between these groups becomes insanely obvious once one recognizes that these demographics also represent the polar ends of the religious scale. We have the push away from faith to atheism, a traditional Christian agenda, and those who lean on their category of Church as their highest priority.

So, from my own experience, why is this incoming juvenile population making a U-turn away from religion? Maybe it is the gravitation to science and hipster fads like zodiac signs and crystals. Many of these labeled adolescents look to horoscope apps to predict what their day has in store and guide their thoughts and actions. During hardship when searching for strength or hope, they clutch one of their various crystals to recharge their emotional equilibrium and manifest the anticipated outcome. All of this acts as a potential substitution for faith.

On a more serious note, much of this generation that migrates to LA is liberal or democratic for a reason. They turned to science, not necessarily on their own accord. Many choose this route because of the mistakes of our parents and use it to boycott history in some sense. The threat of unpredictable weather extremities that we have increasingly experienced thanks to climate change is a constant burden and a definite factor to note. Alongside this, I feel that our generation entered the world with the promise that we have been launched into an improved society from America’s past of racism, antisemitism, sexism, and the list goes on. We are ‘lucky’ to instead have cell phones, etc. Instead, we have witnessed, nearly first-hand thanks to these cell phones, extreme acts of injustice that have angered us deeply. I would like to think we have a lower tolerance for these discriminatory acts due to the expectation that this is only a norm of the past. Thus, when sparks do occur, the revolt across the nation is fierce as we have seen by example multiple times since the summer of 2020 BLM protests since we are now old enough to participate and lead these movements. All of this guides us away from the conservative past that was so religion-centric and used religion to excuse immoral actions.

Frankly, this age group of our parents which is a strong drive away from religion also forms the second group I mentioned as the 1% that live on the top of the hills around Los Angeles. This era of (white) baby boomers makes up the majority of the CEOs, the government leaders, the Hollywood faces; they are typically conservative, whether Catholic or Jewish (etc.), they are united by their simple love for money. I definitely would like to note that I do not mean to categorize people into this group other than the bracket of names that likely first come to your mind. This group has excused so much of the Republican initiative to Christian beliefs, like the debate on abortion, which has pushed the young liberals even further away from accepting any degree of religion.

The conversation of the lines of religion in LA began after I was in the audience of a presentation by a Catholic architecture firm. They explained how much land Churches own that can be partnered with for ethical construction. They proposed the dilemma that most churches are roughly 3 months away from bankruptcy. So I questioned why they are fighting the odds to keep this industry thriving… I mean in my eyes the majority of society is losing faith anyways. On second thought, I realized that this is just my own naiveness preventing me from realizing the truth of this city that is so populated with people who are very like-minded to me on this matter. By doing programmatic research on South Central Los Angeles, my results were extremely eye-opening. This community is mostly comprised of minority families with little education, manual labor for work, and very little aid or recognition from the government. Despite lacking SO many resources, there are churches of all different backgrounds intensely interlaced within neighborhoods. It takes around a 15-minute walk for most to access a grocery store, but churches are in abundance at nearly 1 per block as they are seamlessly sandwiched between residential housing. What really stood out to me from the firm’s presentation was this rhetorical proposal:

Where do people first go when they're becoming homeless? Where do they first show up when they can't feed their children? If they are struggling to deal with the foster system? The first place people turn to for resources when they are in need is the church.

It made me realize the true message of LA’s extreme separation of religious beliefs. It’s not about certain people having different views or holding onto hope… we have simply become too privileged for religion. We look up to those with the superficial objects or impressive houses that we do not have, not to people so “silly” to be vocal in their religious field. With such value being placed on the blind beauty of what we aspire to achieve, society has begun to discredit religion as mindless ignorance. Without personal hardship, it is easy to never step foot into a temple or church– not because of a difference of beliefs, but because we just do not feel we NEED to turn to this. Instead, our issues are small enough to be handled by a 150-word twitter complaint.