Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. Oxford University Press, 2009.
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- Sequel: Smith, Souls in Transition
- Companion volume: Dean, Almost Christian
- Referenced in: Generational Issues in Churches
LifeandLeadership.com Summary
This is a massive, encyclopedic look into the faith of America’s teenagers, based on one of the most extensive studies ever conducted among this age group. First published in 2005 (now reprinted), it represents data from over 3,000 teens ages 13-17 that is refined by 267 in-depth interviews. It is the prequel to a volume co-written by Christian Smith on emerging adults (EAs) ages 18-23 entitled, Souls in Transition. The research is also the base for Dean, Almost Christian.
This text comes comes highly acclaimed:
“This book is, quite simply, the best book ever on the best study ever on the topic of adolescents and religion. It is exemplary social science, combining the best of qualitative and quantitative methods, not only empirically strong but theoretically rich.”—Journal of Adolescent Research
“For scholars as well as parents, teachers, relatives, mentors, and other persons interested in the well-being of teens, this is and will likely be the definitive book on teens and religion for years to come.”—Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
“This book is a landmark study of the religious attitudes and practices of American teenagers. While the study demonstrates that there is a strong correlation between religious commitment and positive social behavior, there are also disturbing trends related to this theologically illiterate generation of teens who primarily think of God as their private butler. The authors offer a number of concrete suggestions in a concluding postscript that will be of value to youth workers and religious communities. Drawing on a national survey of teens and their significant caregivers, as well as several hundred in-depth interviews, this book is the most comprehensive study of teenage religiosity that has ever been done.”—Donald E. Miller
“This is an extremely important book. In presenting the results from the most ambitious national study ever conducted among American teenagers about their religious and spiritual lives, it sheds new light from start to finish. I highly recommend it.”—Robert Wuthnow
“The most comprehensive and reliable research ever done on youth and religion. For the next 50 years writers on the topic will be referring to their book.”—The Christian Century
“No book in recent memory has as much potential to transform the practice of youth ministry…[T]he results overturn nearly every piece of conventional wisdom about teens and faith.”—Christianity Today
The sheer weight of such testimony makes it an important volume for parents, educators, and youth ministers.
The findings are both encouraging and disturbing. The encouraging piece is that today’s teens are very religious, and usually quite responsive to their parents’ influence.
What we learned by interviewing hundreds of different kinds of teenagers all around the country is that the vast majority of American teenagers are exceedingly conventional in their religious identity and practices. Very few are restless, alienated, or rebellious; rather, the majority of U.S. teenagers seem basically content to follow the faith of their families with little questioning. When it comes to religion, they are quite happy to go along and get along. They popular images of storm and stress, generation gap, and teen rebellion may describe the religious orientations of most teenagers of prior generations, but they do not accurately portray the religious realities of most teenagers in the United States today. (120)
The most discouraging piece is in the chapter entitled “God, Religion, Whatever: On Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.” Here they reveal a disturbing trend:
It appears that only a minority of U.S. teenagers are naturally absorbing by osmosis the traditional substantive content and character of the religious traditions to which they claim to belong. For, it appears to us, another popular religious faith, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, is colonizing many historical religious traditions and, almost without anyone noticing, converting believers in the old faiths to its alternative religious vision of divinely underwritten personal happiness and interpersonal niceness. …We have come with some confidence to believe that a significant part of Christianity in the United States is actually only tenuously Christian in any sense that is seriously connected to the actual historical Christian tradition, but has rather substantially morphed into Christianity’s misbegotten step-cousin, Christian Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. …The language and therefore experience, of Trinity, holiness, sin, grace, justification, sanctification, church, Eucharist, and heaven and hell appear, among most Christian teenagers in the United States at the very least, to be supplanted by the language of happiness, niceness, and an earned heavenly reward. It is not so much that U. S. Christianity is being secularized. Rather more subtly, Christianity is either degenerating into a pathetic version of itself or, more significantly, Christianity is actively being colonized and displaced by a quite different religious faith. (171)
This is a densely packed collection of research findings. Perhaps the best way for the average person to read it is to flip through and mark the many bullet-point summaries and then read before and after to get a more complete picture.
From the Publisher
In innumerable discussions and activities dedicated to better understanding and helping teenagers, one aspect of teenage life is curiously overlooked. Very few such efforts pay serious attention to the role of religion and spirituality in the lives of American adolescents. But many teenagers are very involved in religion. Surveys reveal that 35% attend religious services weekly and another 15% attend at least monthly. 60% say that religious faith is important in their lives. 40% report that they pray daily. 25% say that they have been “born again.” Teenagers feel good about the congregations they belong to. Some say that faith provides them with guidance and resources for knowing how to live well.
What is going on in the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers? What do they actually believe? What religious practices do they engage in? Do they expect to remain loyal to the faith of their parents? Or are they abandoning traditional religious institutions in search of a new, more authentic “spirituality”?
This book attempts to answer these and related questions as definitively as possible. It reports the findings of The National Study of Youth and Religion, the largest and most detailed such study ever undertaken. The NYSR conducted a nationwide telephone survey of teens and significant caregivers, as well as nearly 300 in-depth face-to-face interviews with a sample of the population that was surveyed. The results show that religion and spirituality are indeed very significant in the lives of many American teenagers.
Among many other discoveries, they find that teenagers are far more influenced by the religious beliefs and practices of their parents and caregivers than commonly thought. They refute the conventional wisdom that teens are “spiritual but not religious.” And they confirm that greater religiosity is significantly associated with more positive adolescent life outcomes. This eagerly-awaited volume not only provides an unprecedented understanding of adolescent religion and spirituality but, because teenagers serve as bellwethers for possible future trends, it affords an important and distinctive window through which to observe and assess the current state and future direction of American religion as a whole.
About the Author
Christian Smith is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame, Director of the Center for the Sociology of Religion and Society, and Principal Investigator of the National Study of Youth and Religion. He is the author of Moral, Believing Animals (OUP, 2003), co-author of Divided by Faith (OUP, 2000) and the co-author of the forthcoming Passing the Plate (OUP).
Melinda Lundquist Denton is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Clemson University.
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