Divergent Paths, Unexpected Results: The Integration of Young People into Faith Communities, the Comparative Experience between the Anglican Church (UK) and the Catholic Church (MX).

Faith communities worldwide are committed to integrating young people into social support and community solidarity programs, especially from a faith-based approach and from belonging to the Church that promotes it. This strategy was relevant for the Anglican Church diocese in Liverpool, UK, and the Catholic diocese in Mexico City. Both churches started from the diagnosis of a low participation of young people, not only in social activities but also in religious services, a low membership in their Church. To reactivate the commitment to the Gospel, these churches implemented 2014 a strategy of youth participation in community support and social assistance, religious or evangelical issues. The Anglican Church promoted and financed community centers, administered by secular people appointed by the Church to which they had to report the activities. The topics were varied: care for the elderly, migration, ecology, etc. For its part, the Catholic Church recovers the experience of the Ecclesiastical Base Communities. It articulates the actions of young people from the parishes, attending to the community's needs and acting as mediators with governments in the demands of the parishioners. All this from the perspective of the committed Catholic. However, in both cases, the unintended consequences of the action led to unexpected results. The Anglican community centers grew with the participation of young people from a civic and non-religious ethic as the Church supposed. The young Catholic leaders distanced themselves from the Church and became political leaders, parliamentarians and leaders of secular struggles. This work recovers the experience with young people from both churches through interviews, documents, and images that account for the change in pastoral action in the cities and, above all, a change in the evangelization of the communities of faith.