Young people’s attitudes to the threat of the ‘End Times’
AS A CHAPLAIN in the DCU Interfaith Centre, the only Protestant of the four, I naturally come into contact with young people a lot of the time. At the age of 36, I’m no longer a young person myself, even if I still very much feel like I’m only eighteen. But thinking about young people and their concerns about the future today, I’d say, a lot of them would claim to have no idea what the future is going to be like, or maybe feel like there won’t be a future.
AS A CHAPLAIN in the DCU Interfaith Centre, the only Protestant of the four, I naturally come into contact with young people a lot of the time. At the age of 36, I’m no longer a young person myself, even if I still very much feel like I’m only eighteen. But thinking about young people and their concerns about the future today, I’d say, a lot of them would claim to have no idea what the future is going to be like, or maybe feel like there won’t be a future.
It’s important to understand what the young people of today are generally like, or at least the young people that I come in contact with. They’re a very politically aware generation. They would have a very keen understanding of their own politics and what they like and what they dislike about politics in general. They’re a very social justice orientated generation. They tend to decide if they like or dislike a person based on their reactions to certain social justice issues. Things like the Black Lives Matter movement would have been a huge thing on the DCU campus. Anti Donald Trump feelings would have been huge too. Any of those kind of big social justice issues that come up - the war in Ukraine, the earthquake and Turkey, all these big issues - they would rally around and want things to be done. Whereas I think my generation generally liked to complain about things, but not do anything about it. But young people today are very keen to do something and they want people in power to do things.
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Eric Hughes
is Church of Ireland chaplain at Dublin City University.