Loading...
Please wait, while we are loading the content...
Similar Documents
A Faith of Their Own: Stability and Change in the Religiosity of America’s Adolescents
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Sikkink, David H. |
| Copyright Year | 2012 |
| Abstract | Clear, thorough, and parsimonious: three distinguishing characteristics of Pearce and Denton’s report on the second wave of the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR). Insightful not only for its description of five adolescent religious types and their “religious refinement” from 2002 to 2005, but also for the report’s evidence of maturing scholarship on youth and religion. Gone is “moralistic therapeutic Deism,” religious “inarticulateness,” and the alarmist tone of the first-wave NSYR report (i.e., Smith and Denton’s Soul Searching). In their place, one finds a streamlined exposition of the second-wave survey findings, along with a nuanced ability to hear what adolescents say about the content of their religious beliefs, their conduct as religious persons, and the centrality of religion to their lives. It is, in short, a strikingly different book from the NSYR than those authored by its principal investigator, Christian Smith, and it deserves a place alongside every copy of Soul Searching and Souls in Transition. Using latent class analysis, whose details they graciously relegate to an appendix, Pearce and Denton create a typology of five adolescent religious types. Two are clearly identifiable and internally coherent: atheists and religious “abiders.” The former comprise 3–5 percent of U.S. teens, the latter 20–22 percent, and the authors take pains to show both types are progressing well in a number of important life outcomes. Falling in-between are “avoiders,” “assenters,” and “adapters”. The avoiders, 17–24 percent of American teens, resist identification as atheists or religious. The assenters and adapters, 20–28 and 30–31 percent, respectively, occupy the margins of American religion—with the former extrinsically oriented to religious affiliation and the latter intrinsically oriented to faith but structurally hindered from ongoing affiliation. The analysis of all three in-between types will be of keen interest to readers, who will gain much insight into the internal and external factors that influence adolescent connections to faith communities. The book’s introduction takes the reader along with Pearce and Denton as they re-interview two teens and reflect on how they have and have not changed over three years. The first chapter places adolescent religiosity into life course and lived religion frameworks, which are the right ways to situate the analyses that follow. The second chapter introduces Pearce and Denton’s typology and illustrates each with a representative teen’s story. While the whole book could be used in an American religion course, Chapter 2 in particular deserves inclusion. The third chapter relays the social origins and life outcomes of the five types, while the fourth chapter discusses the modest changes in teen religiosity from the first to second wave. The fifth chapter explains the discrepancy between lower rates of religious participation with teen reports of equal or greater religiosity. The first and fifth chapters are most significant for scholarly readers, as they respect the complexity of teen religiosity and use that respect to offer insightful resolutions to several empirical puzzles. The sixth chapter uses a metaphor of scaffolding to describe how parents, religious organizations, and friends variously support the religious refinement processes of teens. Chapter 6, along with the conclusion, will be of particular interest to |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.1177/0094306112443520bb |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://afaithoftheirown.web.unc.edu/files/2011/01/SORreviewClydesdale.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.1177/0094306112443520bb |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
