Question for a Tuesday Afternoon

Why is it that, for young people bent on moving out of their sheltered evangelical upbringing, the next stop on the train is so often cynicism?

We live in a world in which many people are asking many good questions about the assumptions of the past century's christendom. Many are rightfully calling the church to task for errors we have made in our past. The Rob Bells, Erwin McManus's, Brian McLarens, and Donald Millers of the world are pushing the church into some new areas it needs to address. And part of that process is opening up to places we've been wrong in the past. Perhaps we did allow the trappings of modernity and white european males to dominate the Church for too long. Perhaps we did make some mistakes in attempting to create christianized versions of all-things worldly back in the 1980s (note: this tendency is still alive and well).

But where I hear Bell and Miller and McManus and McLaren poking and prodding in healthy directions, I keep coming across angry young Christians who are into full-blown cynicism. It's like they get the critique of the emergents or the postmoderns or the (insert critiquer here), but they stop there, right at the "here's everything that's wrong with the church" part. They don't seem to take the next step of "But the Church is the Bride of Christ, so I will do all I can to make her beautiful"

When MLK jr decided enough was enough, he set out to make a difference. When the Dalai Lama decided enough was enough, he began to work for change. But istm that many young Christians, when they tire of the Bibleman Jesus junk and schlocky Christian Music, simply give up, preferring to hang out at bohemian coffee shops and complain about "the church is just so hypocritical, man. It's just too modernistic for a pomo like me."

Is there something about Christianity that breeds cynicism? Or is it just kids these days?