Souls in Transition: What Research Tells Us about the Religious Lives of Emerging Adults www'youthan

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Souls in Transition What Research Tells Us about
the Religious Lives of Emerging
Adultswww.youthandreligion.orgChristian Smith,
Department of Sociology University of Notre
DameOct 29, 2009 Religious Practice the
Family What the Research Says
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Purpose of my Talk

• Describe research I have conducted on the lives
  of contemporary U.S. teenagers and emerging
  adults (NSYR)
• Share some research findings about emerging adult
  culture and religion

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Questions I Address

• What are the dominant features of religious
  culture among EAs?
• What are the major types of EA relations to
  religion?
• What teen-year factors most robustly correlate
  with stronger EA religious outcomes?

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• Big picture results of Wave 1 published in our
  first book on 13-17 year-olds
• (OUP, 2005)

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• Also made a DVD documentary based on our
  Wave1 findings,
• available on Amazon.com

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• Big picture results of Wave3 just published, on
  18-23 year- olds

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Wave 1 In-Person Teen Interview Locations
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Emerging Adulthood

• Because of massive socio-cultural changes in last
  50 years, being an 18-29 year-old today is a
  quite different experience than in the past
• more amorphous, complex, self-focused
• transient, confused, disjointed
• unstable, exploratory, anxious

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Big Question What happens to religious faith
and practice in emerging adulthood?
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General Answer

• Most of the cultural and structural features of
  emerging adulthood tend to undermine or
  marginalize serious, committed religious faith
  and practice.
• Only a few factors during these years work to
  strengthen religious faith and practice.
• But to get the details on that, youll have to
  read the book

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That said, it is not the case that religion has
disappeared among EAs. ? So then what are the
shape and texture of the dominant religious
culture among EAs?
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Dominant Cultural Structures of EA Religion

• Not a Very Threatening Topic
• Less Typical I Have No Idea
• Indifferent
• The Shared Central Principles of Religions are
  Good
• Religious Particularities are Peripheral
• Less Typical Actually, my Religion is True
• Religion is for Making Good People

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Cultural Structures, Continued

• Religious Congregations are Elementary Schools of
  Morals
• Not a Place of Real Belonging
• Friends Hardly Talk about Religion
• Religious Beliefs are Cognitive Assents, not Life
  Drivers
• What Seems Right to Me is Authority

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Cultural Structures, Continued

• Take or Leave What You Want
• Evidence and Proof Trump Blind Faith
• Less Typical Im Open to Some Kind of Higher
  Power
• Mainstream Religion is Fine, Probably
• Less Typical Mainstream Religion is a Problem
• Personalnot Social or Institutional
• No Way to Finally Know Whats True

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Summary

• Emerging Adulthood is culturally and structurally
  not especially friendly to traditional religious
  faith and practice
• sidelined, minimized, irrelevantized
• moralized and simplified
• homogenized, de-particularized
• individualized, privatized, de-authorized

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? What are the major types of EA relations to
religion?
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Six Major Religious Types of EAs

• Committed Traditionalists (15)
• Selective Adherents (30)
• Spiritually Open (15)
• Religiously Indifferent (25)
• Religiously Disconnected (5)
• Irreligious (10)

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? What teenage-year factors most robustly
correlate with stronger EA religious outcomes?
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(No Transcript)
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Consistently Important Factors During Teenage
Years

• Personal faith commitment, devotion, experience
• - personal prayer, importance of faith,
  religious experiences, read scriptures, have few
  doubts, believe in miracles
• Religiously committed and practicing parents
• Other supportive religious adults (not parents)
  in congregation (youth ministers, mentors,
  friends)
• Sexual chastity (behavioral)
• Being made fun of by others for religious faith

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? Key Influence of Parents in Teenage Years for
EA Outcomes

• Parents who attended religious services weekly
• 70 percent high stable group
• 39 percent of steep decline
• 11 percent of low stable
• Parents who reported their faith to be extremely
  important in their lives
• 71 percent of high stable group
• 36 percent of steep decline
• 16 percent of low stable

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CONCLUSIONS

• ? Communities of faith face major challenges in
  connecting to, engaging, and retaining todays
  EAs.
• most have other places to be and things to think
  about
• ? It is not clear that many communities of faith
  have even understood the facts of emerging
  adulthood and thought about possible faithful
  responses.
• most congregations cater primarily to settled,
  traditional nuclear families with children

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CONCLUSIONS

• ? Sociologically, continuity rules. So the best
  time to strengthen the religious faith and
  practice of EAs is when they are children and
  teenagers, during the two decades before they
  leave home.
• ? Parents continue to be the most important
  measurable factor shaping the religious and
  spiritual lives of their children, an influence
  that continues even after they have left home.

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CONCLUSIONS

• Many EAs will eventually settle down, and some
  will likely return to their communities of faith,
  with toddlers in tow, looking for their
  elementary schools of morals.

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CONCLUSIONS

• If and when that happens, they will bring with
  them assumptions, outlooks, experiences, scars,
  and expectations formed largely outside the
  influence of religious faith and life during the
  EA years.
• Q What then will faith formation have to look
  like for them?

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• All this and much more in our new book

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Questions?Clarifications?Discussion?www.youthan
dreligion.org
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(No Transcript)
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Ages 13-15 in 2002
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Conservative Protestants, 13-15 yrs old
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• The National Study of Youth and Religion is
• The most extensive sociological research project
  on youth and religion ever undertaken
• Being conducted jointly at the University of
  Notre Dame and UNC Chapel Hill
• Under the direction of Dr. Christian Smith,
  professor in the Department of Sociology
• Funded by Lilly Endowment Inc.
• An 11 year research project (2000-2013)

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National Telephone Surveys

• Nationally representative telephone surveys of
  U.S. households with teenagers
• Wave 1 conducted 2002 into 2003
• 30-minute survey with one parent
• 52-minute survey with one 13-17 year old youth
  randomly chosen within the household
• 3,370 completed parent / teen pairs
• English and Spanish language versions
• Waves 2 3 conducted in 2005 and 2008 with same
  sample of youth
• Wave 4 just funded by Lilly for 2013

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In-Person Interviews

• Conducted in the summers of 2003, 2005, and 2008
  with (mostly) the same youth
• Sampled from NSYR telephone survey respondents
• Follow-up, in-depth discussions about their
  religious, spiritual, family, and social lives
• 267 personal interviews with teens in wave 1, 230
  conducted in wave 3
• Conducted in 45 states around the U.S.
• Interviews were on average about 2-4 hours long

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? The Rise of Emerging Adulthood

• Expansion of higher education in latter 20th C
• Delayed age of first marriage and childbirth
• Macro-economic changes requiring flexibility and
  mobility
• Substantial parental support well into the 20s
• The Pill and other accessible contraceptives
• Cultural saturation of mass-consumer
  entertainment
• Vague influence of postmodern relativism and
  skepticism

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ResultEmerging Adulthood (EA)

• Ages 18-29 a relatively new phase in the life
  course with own characteristic features
• Not merely an extension of the teenage years, nor
  the early stages of real adulthood
• More complex, disjointed, confused, unstable,
  compared to same ages in previous generations
• Extensive life transitions, identity exploration,
  instability, focus on self, feeling in limbo, and
  sense of vast opportunities and hope for personal
  (not social/political) life
• Also plenty of transience, confusion, anxiety,
  self-obsession, melodrama, conflict,
  disappointment, and sometimes emotional
  devastation

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? What religious change happens between the
teenage and AE years?

• ? This analysis focused on combination of
• Religious service attendance
• Importance of personal faith
• Frequency of prayer
• ? Focusing on 16-17 yr-olds, across 5 years

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Comparing Stability and Change

• Religious Stability the majority experience
  (57)
• Religious Decline more than one-third (37)
• Religious Increase a small minority (7)

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Teen Factors Associated With Different
Trajectories

• High Stable group disproportionately (as teens)
• conservative white Protestants black
  Protestants
• parents attended religious services frequently
• parental high importance of faith pray often
  for children
• many non-parental adults in church enjoyed
  talking to
• adults in church easy to talk with and get to
  know
• prayed and read scripture more frequently
• believed in miracles, waiting till marriage for
  sex
• African Americans, females

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Teen Factors Associated With Different
Trajectories

• Shallow Decline more likely conservative
  Protestants, mainline Protestants, black
  Protestants, Catholics, and females.
• Steep Decline more likely mainline Protestants,
  Catholics, whites.
• Moderate Stable more likely Catholic and Jewish.
  
• Low Stable more likely Jewish, nonreligious,
  white, male.
• Religious Increase more likely not-religious (as
  teens), African Americans, Hispanics, women.

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What about Evangelical/Conservative Protestant
Teens?EAs?

• Pattern of major trajectories looks very similar
• More in high stable
• Fewer in low stable
• Roughly similar numbers in decline and increase

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Conservative Protestants, 16-17 yrs old
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Somewhat Less Important Factors

• Frequent religious service attendance
• Rely on religion to make moral decisions
• High proportion of friends were religious
• Likes church congregation and youth group
• Regular Sunday school attendance
• Teen relational closeness to parents

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Summary, Reflections, Conclusions

• 7. The most important teen-year factors
  sustaining strong religious faith and practice
  during emerging adulthood concern important
  relationships and personal commitment/belief/pract
  ice
• parents!
• non-parental adults in congregations
• personal beliefs, devotions, practices in
  younger years (usually formed by parents)

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Summary, Reflections, Conclusions

• 3. Emerging adults include a wide range of
  religious types of qualitative difference, from
  Committed Traditionalists to the Religiously
  Disconnected and Irreligious, with various,
  non-linear complexities in between.
• not a simple liberal-conservative or high-low
  scale of religiosity

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Summary, Reflections, Conclusions

• 4. More than a few EAs (Committed Traditionalists
  and some Selective Adherents) demonstrate that it
  is entirely possible to remain serious about and
  committed to ones religious faith and practice
  during the EA yearsit is not hopeless or
  impossible or necessarily even rare.

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Summary, Reflections, Conclusions

• 5. Still, the vast majority of EAs remains either
  highly selectively involved in or simply
  unconcerned about matters of religious faith and
  practiceeither selectively defining it in their
  own terms, postponing it for when they settle
  down, or simply not caring or knowing about it
  at all.

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Summary, Reflections, Conclusions

• 6. Stability rules the majority of emerging
  adults (57) remains at the same level of
  religiousness (attendance, importance, prayer) as
  during their teenage years.
• A large minority (37) declines.
• A small minority (7) increases.
• different religious trajectories are shaped by
  diverse religious and demographic factors