I don't want my great-grandparents' churches if they're 1/4 full. An empty liturgical space looks sad and discourages me from attending again (a church that seats 500 but the congregation meets in the choir). I think the 1979 BCP also asks some questions about space and what is important about architecture and the what we do in liturgy, not just what we say. I don't think there's one right way of doing it, but I definitely like spaces where I can see other people and be reminded that we're a community not riding a bus together.

The methodology (and sponsor!) of this survey seem rather fuzzy, but as a member of the so-called "Gen Y," these survey results do actually speak very clearly to me and those around me. The lifestyle being described is a somewhat nostalgic, to be sure, and there is presumably a lifestyle correlation here with those who try to eat local, are into crafts, and generally do try to live something close to the life of their great-grandparents. But unlike other nostalgic movements, there is actually something of a left-wing basis in all of this. Most obviously it comes from environmentalism, but also from those of us who took to heart Marx's fundamental critique of capitalism--that "all that is solid melts into air." In our late capitalist moment, rebuilding kinship structures in areas that were left behind by parents and grandparents who fled to the suburbs has some real political worth.

And so there is indeed a religious implication. When I moved to my current neighborhood here in Philadelphia, I thought it important to join my local church, despite the fact that it was small, gray-haired, and decidedly unsexy. I thought about attending some of the bigger and more exciting churches elsewhere in the city, but my desire to be part of the local (and by local, I mean about five square city blocks) community won out, and I've grown to love the decaying elegance of my church. This is just my experience, but not an uncommon one amongst friends and family of my age.

As a gen-y person myself, I'd have to say that it seems people my age really do want to move into the type of area that is walking distance to a, "downtown" which should have a lot of nice family run shops selling local items, and then be able to walk home, and have a bbq with all your friends in the front yard. Also, we, myself included, would pay more for that. Our parents lives based around constant work and material things, and how every other of my friends parents are divorced, and never having time off for anything, and how they constantly talk politics sort of wears on you. So even though we might not like how our parents live, I have to say, the sort of idealised lives of what we think our grandparents and great-grandparents lived, of white picket fences, front porches to talk with the neighbors, walking to, "bob's market" where theres an actual guy named, "Bob" Well, inject that with our current viewpoints on things, and it all seems pretty grand. Think, "Leave it to Beaver..." same type of house and family and attitudes, but he has two gay dads, and no one cares