- Feb 5, 2002
- 167,794
- 56,985
- Country
- United States
- Faith
- Catholic
- Marital Status
- Married
- Politics
- US-Others
Are Bible Belt families and pastors still enthusiastic about sending children into the armed services?
Try to imagine an America in which families that have, for generations, urged their children to serve in the armed services stopped doing precisely that.
Would that be a big news story?
One would think so. With that in mind, take a look at the numbers in this chart posted on X by the Missing Data Depot Substack feed.
Here’s the written summary from that tweet:
Clearly, economic issues — think slow-rising salaries, housing costs for military families, day-care costs and more — are affecting recruiting. You can read all about that in this report by Stars and Stripes. These are logical, valid angles for reporting.Military families have soured on the military. The % of military family members who would recommend service to their children dropped from 55% in 2016 to 32% in 2023.
Relatedly the military fell 41,000 recruits short of its 2023 goal & it is now at its smallest size since 1940.
However, during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast, we focused on some of the cultural, moral and, yes, religious themes that almost certainly loom over these military recruiting woes. Are journalists asking “religion ghost” questions?
Continued below.
Crossroads -- Asking faith questions about future U.S. soldiers
Are Bible Belt families and pastors still enthusiastic about sending children into the armed services?
tmattingly.substack.com