Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers

When I looked this book up, one of the first things I noticed was the publisher: Oxford. When was the last time you Youth Pastors/Religious Educators read a book directly related to Youth Ministry that was published by such a prestigious publishing house? The answer is never. Zondervan and Thomas Nelson put out some pretty good books, but Oxford is a whole different ball game. All that to say, this book is excellent.First off, it is amazingly thorough. Unlike other books that offer statistical analyses, Smith and Denton never offer big, blind, sweeping statements that make you ask questions like, "Really?" Before making bold statements such as "More or less involvement in religion has a direct correlation with more or less positive life outcomes," the authors go into painstaking detail about how they arrived at this conclusion and what other factors may play into this. Broad, unqualified statements make the reader question reliability. Soul Searching does a better job at avoiding this problem then any book or report I have ever read.As for content, the NSYR survey results published in Soul Searching are intensely interesting. Admittedly, I'm a bit of a statistical nerd; nonetheless, the stats and analyses offered throughout these chapters often had my mind swirling with excitement. The kind of excitement where you read the book before bed and then cannot get to sleep for the next 2 hours. Some of the more interesting conclusions include:- Contrary to popular belief, teens are quite religious. Furthermore, their religious outlooks are generally quite traditional and follow a very similar pattern as what has handed to them by their parents.- The idea that large numbers of teens think of themselves as "spiritual but not Religious" is highly unsupported by the data.- Although a majority of teens are religious, at the level of subjective consciousness, religion most often operates in the background of their lives.- The single most important influence on the the religious and spiritual lives of teens is the religious and spiritual lives of their parents.This is but a small sample of some of the stunning, often counter-intuitive, conclusions that the NSYR data has shown to be true.One of the best chapters in the book, although it is a departure from the scientific reporting of statistics, is the chapter on "Social Context." In this chapter, Smith analyzes six key components of the current social context of teenagers and offers insight into how these societal influences impact the religious and spiritual lives of teens. His dissection of things like Therapeutic Individualism and Mass-Market Capitalism are outstanding. I have reread the chapter over and over and am still reeling over it.There are only two things about the book that are a downer.- It is a book about a statistical survey. As such, the chapters are very long, thick, and can be tedious at times. Although this is to be expected, it is therefore not an easy book to get through. I took my time reading the book over a 2 month period. It would be difficult to read it much quicker than that if you are actually hoping to engage your mind in all of what is said.- There is one chapter devoted entirely to Catholic teens. As a youth pastor at a Mainline Protestant church, I would have loved for the chapter to be about Protestantism. If you are Catholic or interested in the religious and spiritual lives of Catholic teens, you will love this chapter. Otherwise, you may just briefly skim this chapter like I did.In all, Soul Searching has become my new measuring stick. Whenever I read another book that has anything to say about the current state of Youth and Religion, I will instantly question their conclusions if they do not comport with the findings of NSYR.(Side Note - NSYR is planning on releasing 2 more books which will summarize their findings from Wave 2 and Wave 3 of the NSYR survey in 2009. Waves 2 and 3 are surveys of the same teens in Wave 1 at 3 and 6 years later, respectively. Keep your eyes peeled.)

A sociological analysis of conducted between 2001 and 2005 at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill under the title, "National Study of Youth and Religion."According to the research of Smith and Denton, the vast majority of U.S. teenagers identify themselves as Christian, have beliefs that are similar to those of their parents, believe in God, and have a positive general attitude about religion. About half say that faith is important in their lives, and four out of ten say they attend religious services weekly or more often. Most of them have never heard the phrase "spiritual but not religious" or have any idea what that means. "The vast majority of the teenagers we interviewed, of whatever religion, said very plainly that they simply believe what they were raised to believe; they are merely following in their family's footsteps and that is perfectly fine with them" (page 120).But wait -- there's a problem. What is it that these teenagers have been raised to believe? "Our impression as interviewers was that many teenagers could not articulate matters of faith because they have not been effectively educated in and provided opportunities to practice talking about their faith. Indeed, it was our distinct sense that for many of the teens we interviewed, our interview was the first time that any adult had ever asked them what they believed and how it mattered in their life" (page 133). Yikes! Smith and Denton argue that "we suggest that the de facto dominant religion among contemporary U.S. teenagers is what we might well call 'Moralistic Therapeutic Deism'" -- a simple belief in a god (who is not very personal), with an emphasis on moral values and feeling good about oneself. Smith and Denton argue that this "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism" is "simply colonizing many established religious traditions and congregations in the United States." (Moralistic therapeutic deism is discussed in detail on pages 162-170.)Their analysis of moralistic therepeutic deism concludes: "We have come with some confidence to believe that a significant part of Christianity in the United States is actually only tenuously Christian in any sense that is seriously connected to the actual historical Christian tradition, but has rather substantially morphed into Christianity's misbegotten stepcousin, Christian Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. This has happened in the minds and hearts of many individual believers and, it also appears, within the structures of at least some Christian organizations and institutions. The language, and therefore experience, of Trinity, holiness, sin, grace, justification, sanctification, church, Eucharist, and heaven and hell appear, among most Christian teenagers in the United States at the very least, to be supplanted by the language of happiness, niceness, and an earned heavenly reward. It is not so much that U.S. Christianity is being secularized. Rather more subtly, Christianity is either degenerating into a pathetic version of itself or, more significantly, Christianity is actively being colonized and displaced by a quite different religious faith" (page 171).Wake up, church planters and church builders! I think we've just heard the voice of a prophet speaking.