Study shows religious tradition influences teens

Intermountain Catholic

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Christian Smith speaks at Brigham Young University saying, ?The faith lives of teenagers are powerfully shaped by the faith lives of their parents in many ways for better or worse. IC photo by Christine Young

PROVO — "The intensity of teen religion varies greatly by religious tradition," said Christian Smith. "I thought this would be gender differences, race differences, and region of the country differences," said Christian Smith.

Smith delivered the Marjorie Pay Hinckley Endowed Chair Lecture in Social Sciences Feb. 7, in the Joseph Smith Building Auditorium on the Brigham Young University (BYU) campus. His talk was "Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers." Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton co-authored the book "Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers."

Smith’s research focuses primarily on religion in modernity, adolescents, American evangelicalism, and culture. The late Gordon B. Hinckley, former president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was reading Smith’s book and made a comment about it at a General Conference, which prompted an invitation for Smith to speak.

Smith is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame, director of the Center for Sociology of Religion, and principal investigator of the National Study of Youth and Religion. He received his Master’s Degree in 1987 and his Doctorate Degree in 1990 from Harvard University and has studied Christian historical theology at Harvard Divinity School and other Boston theological institute schools.

"The main purpose of my talk is to describe the research project I wrote about in the book, which deals with the religious and spiritual lives of contemporary American teenagers today," said Smith. "It is an 11 plus year project, which began in the year 2000 and will go until about 2012."

Smith said the research so far has been conducted through the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (from 2000 to 2005) where Smith served as Associate Chairman of the Department of Sociology. The teens selected for the study represent all religious traditions, different regions of the United States including urban, suburban, and rural areas, both male and female genders, younger and older teens, and a variety of dimensions and religious positions.

Smith said to collect data they used a national telephone survey and an in-person interview for each student. This was a longitudinal study meaning the students are being tracked as they grow up. The national telephone survey is being conducted in three waves, and the students are being tracked developmentally throughout the years. The students are now between the ages of 18 and 23. They were re-surveyed in wave 2 in 2005, and they will be re-surveyed in wave 3 this summer. One parent, usually the mother, was surveyed as well.

"The students were surveyed on the telephone for 30 minutes," said Smith. "After the survey, we conducted follow-up, in-person interviews. The interviews were in-depth discussions about their religious, spiritual, family, and social lives, which lasted about two hours. They were conducted in public places like libraries, study rooms, and restaurants, not in places of worship and not in their homes. We wanted the teens to feel comfortable and confident, so we could build a rapport with them.

"We were looking for an analytical approach as to what happens developmentally in their lives as they go from middle school to young adulthood," said Smith. "Also, we were looking for what factors were present in the early part of their lives that helped to determine the direction, which they ended up going as they grew older.

Smith said they found the most religious teens were LDS teens, then white, conservative Protestants, Black Protestants, mainline Protestant, Catholics, Jewish, and last, non-religious teens.

Smith said presumably there is a connection between church attendance, the understandings of God, and religious practices, which lead to a more religious teen. Religion requires basic commitment, intentionality, a readiness to teach people, an effort to socialize people, and adults taking an interest in their teens’ lives.

Another major finding was that most U.S. teens are not religious rebels, alienated, from or disgruntled with the churches in which they are being raised. Smith said teens basically want relationships, they are divinely positive about religion in all traditions. The vast majority are exceedingly conventional in their religious views. They are not spiritual seeking, meaning their radar screen is set on that which they were raised. The majority of teens are moralistic.

"From our interviews, we came up with five basic beliefs from teens," said Smith. The first is God exists, who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth. Second, God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other. Third, the central goal in life is to be happy and to feel good about one’s self. Fourth, God does not need to be completely involved in one’s life, except when he is needed to resolve a problem. Fifth, good people go to heaven when they die.

"Conclusion is we organize our lives in different stages and religion to most adolescents throughout the country is something you do when you get older, or after you get married," said Smith. "Being too religious is weird. Most teens say they pray, but it is usually when they did not study for a test."

Smith said they concluded from the teens, religion helps people make good moral choices, and can help people live morally.

Smith said he was shocked at how many teens could not give a canned answer as to what they were supposed to believe. He found the older teens are not any more articulate than the younger teens.

"The teens were basically frank in the survey," said Smith. "They were happy to talk about God. He found the religious teens are doing better in their lives than the non-religious teens in school.

"Most adults are terrified of teens and afraid to teach them. Adults want to be a teen’s friend," said Smith. "If teens realize adults care about them, they become eminently teachable."