In the Course of a Lifetime: Tracing Religious Belief, Practice, and Change

3. Adolescent Religion in the 1930s and 1940s

40 3 Adolescent Religion in the 1930s and 1940s We’ve tried to give her everything she wanted—trips, parties. She’s had swimming lessons, diving lessons, dancing lessons, art lessons, has gone horseback riding. We’ve explored all the areas around San Francisco . . . [we’ve taken] car trips up and down the coast, and on the riverboat to Sacramento. Mother of Melissa White, 1943 From this opening quote, we might well presume that Mrs. White was summarizing the social activities of a teenager in today’s era of the overscheduled child. But she was referring to the recreational activities of her fifteen-year-old daughter, Melissa, in Berkeley in the early 1940s. Not all families had the economic resources and social ambitions of Melissa’s upper-class parents. But many of our participants as adolescent boys and girls kept hectic schedules—studying several subjects in school; taking piano, guitar, and public-speaking lessons; participating in high school social and service clubs; and undertaking various sports and hobbies. It was evident that, by the mid-1930s and 1940s, many families, and adolescents in particular, were taking advantage of the expanding social and recreational activities becoming increasingly available during this era in America. Eight out of ten adolescents reported going for car rides with their families, and two out of three liked browsing in the area’s department stores. A common weekend routine for adolescents was to go ice-skating at a local rink and to movies, dances, and ball games.1 And like teenagers today, some also had part-time jobs, working weekends or for a few hours after school in Woolworth’s or other stores or offices, or they had daily paper routes. One friendly and very responsible boy ADOLESCENT RELIGION 41 held several seasonal jobs while in high school—he sold Christmas trees, worked for a fruit market, and parked cars and sold programs at baseball games. Along with school and friends, church was a vibrant part of adolescent life in the 1930s and 1940s. Attendance at religious services and Sunday school, and participation in church-based youth groups and events, was routine in the lives of many of our adolescents. A quarter of the participants had high levels of religiousness (24 percent), an additional one-third were moderately religious (31 percent), another one-third were somewhat religious (32 percent), and just over one in ten (13 percent) were not religious.2 If we combine those who received a high or a moderate score on our religiousness scale, the results mean that, in adolescence, religion played a salient role in the lives of 55 percent of our participants. This figure corresponds closely to rates of religious involvement among today’s teenagers. A recent nationwide study of thirteen- to seventeen-year-old American adolescents found that the majority, 52 percent, attend religious services at least twice a month, 29 percent do so occasionally, and 18 percent never attend church (Smith and Denton 2005: 37). Similarly, 51 percent of contemporary adolescents say that religious faith is very or extremely important in shaping their daily lives, 31 percent see it as somewhat important, and for 18 percent it is not very or not important (Smith and Denton 2005: 40). It is clear from the interview transcripts that many of the IHD adolescents took religion seriously. One highly religious girl attended morning services and the Christian Endeavor program at the United Presbyterian Church every Sunday and also participated in “Singspiration ” once a week at someone’s home. One highly religious boy went to Sunday school at the Baptist Church every week and read a couple of verses from the Bible every night. He also went to the church’s social hour every Sunday afternoon and participated in some of the church’s periodic skiing trips. Another boy, Karl Harper, had been attending Sunday school at the Lutheran Church since he was six, was confirmed there, and continued regular attendance right through adolescence. Karl liked the preacher at his church because he was calm and “never shouts when he preaches.” Though Karl didn’t care much for reading, when he was at home sick with the mumps before confirmation, he read Boy’s Life and memorized the books of the Bible. At seventeen, he enjoyed being the organist for the church’s choir practices. 42 ADOLESCENT RELIGION For the majority who were religious, it was also evident that...