Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (review)

Soul Searching represents social science at its very best. Christian Smith, a sociologist at the University of Notre Dame, conducted an ambitious National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) through telephone surveys of a representative national sample of 3,370 English and Spanish speaking teenagers between age 13 and 17, and of their parents, the largest and most comprehensive such survey ever done of American teenagers. From their national survey, Smith and Denton paint the big picture of American teenagers' religious and spiritual lives. But surveys, even highly sophisticated ones like this NSYR survey, yield only so much.

Forced choice questions and sheer demographic data do not tell us the nuances of meaning and the narratives in the lived experience of teenagers. So, Smith and Denton followed up with in-depth personal interviews of 267 teens. They did close multi-variant analyses of the independent roles of race, class, gender, marital status of parents, denominational family, region of country, etc., on religious behavior. After giving us the big picture of the religious and spiritual lives of teenagers, Smith and Denton raise some larger cultural issues for religion and spirituality in the United States.

First, the big picture. In general, very few American teenagers are dabblers or switchers in religion. Only a small sample (roughly 2%) can be said to be "spiritual but not religious." American teens are open to other religions (most do not think only one religion is true) and permissive of others experimenting with religion; but, in fact, few do so themselves. Indeed, the most significant movement toward eclectic adoption of another religion comes from the non-Christian members of the sample, some 37% of Jewish, Muslim, or other religions' teens adapt spiritual practices from Christianity.

The majority of American teenagers are Christian, fairly conventional in their spirituality, their practice and beliefs closely mirroring that of their parents. A substantial minority practice their religion regularly (worship attendance, private prayer, or scripture reading, etc). Approximately 17% are sporadic in their religious practice. Half of the sample claim a strong identification with their religion. Among those who claim to be non-religious (16% of the sample), at least half have chosen to be non-religious for fairly passive reasons. Another 40% cite more substantive reasons based on skepticism or bad experiences with religion. In general, however, many of the non-religious still believe in God and pray. They are not anti-religious as such and admit that religion can be good for other people. Presumably, under favorable circumstances, many of these non-religious youth could be potential recruits or converts to religious organizations.

Ten or so percent of the sample are highly devoted. This sub-sample correlates strongly with the following factors: (1) parents are also highly devoted; (2) teens have a good relation with their parents; (3) parents are married; ( 4) parents are highly educated; (4) teens are socially connected in other associations, clubs, volunteer groups etc.; (5) girls are more highly devoted than boys; and (6) the highly devoted are more likely to have close friends who are also practicing and/or highly devoted. Religious families differ in the degree in which they yield highly devoted or regularly practicing teens. Mormons and conservative Protestants do best, followed by Black Protestants. Mainline Protestants anchor the middle, and Catholics and Jews and members of other religions do worse in inculcating devotedness and regular practice among their teenagers. Parental marriage status and parental religious practices are highly correlated with teen religiosity. Parents seem clearly to continue to have a major influence (even if they doubt it) on their teenagers. So strong is this correlation that Smith and Denton even suggest that perhaps the best way to get more devout youth is to work on their parents!

A chapter on adolescent religion and life outcomes correlates being devoted or regularly practicing of religion to behavioral outcomes. The devoted and the regularly practicing differ noticeably, from...