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Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers Reprint Edition
Purchase options and add-ons
- ISBN-100195384776
- ISBN-13978-0195384772
- EditionReprint
- PublisherOxford University Press
- Publication dateApril 13, 2009
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions1 x 6 x 9.1 inches
- Print length368 pages
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Book Description
About the Author
Melinda Lundquist Denton is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Clemson University.
Product details
- Publisher : Oxford University Press; Reprint edition (April 13, 2009)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 368 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0195384776
- ISBN-13 : 978-0195384772
- Item Weight : 1.15 pounds
- Dimensions : 1 x 6 x 9.1 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #175,909 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #117 in Sociology & Religion
- #213 in Comparative Religion (Books)
- #304 in Parenting Teenagers (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Christian Smith is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of many books, including What is a Person?: Rethinking Humanity, Social Life, and the Moral Good from the Person Up (Chicago 201); Passing the Plate: Why American Christians Do Not Give Away More Money (OUP 2008); Soul Searching: the Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (OUP 2005), Winner of the 2005 "Distinguished Book Award" from Christianity Today; and Moral, Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture (OUP 2003).
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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.)
The major themes and findings of the book are worth reading and reflecting on. Here are some of the findings:
1. Religion is still a significant presence in the lives of American teens.
2. The characteristic religiosity of teens in the U.S. is extraordinarily conventional.
3. The single most important social influence on the religious and spiritual lives of adolescents is their parents. (This is supported by innumerable other books, and I wish parents would more fully grasp this truth!) In fact, it's uncanny how much the spiritual lives of teens reflect that of their parents, which suggests that if we want to change the lives of teens we must first change the lives of parents.
4. U.S. teens have a difficult time explaining what they believe.
5. A distinct faith which the authors call "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism" has established a significant foothold in American youth, especially those whose engagement with their religious communities is weak. Moralistic Therapeutic Deism may be summarized by the beliefs that: 1) God created the world and watches over humans. 2) God wants people to be good, nice, and fair. 3) The central goal of life is to be happy and feel good about oneself. 4) God doesn't need to be involved in one's life except when there's a problem 5) Good people go to heaven when they die.
This may sound good to many, but it is not, for example, the teaching of Christ and Christianity. In addition, the majority of American teenagers appear to espouse inclusive, pluralistic, and individualistic beliefs. In the U.S., teens aren't being secularized: rather, the Trinity, holiness, sin, grace, church, heaven and hell are being replaced with the language of happiness, niceness, and an earned heavenly reward. "Christianity is actively being colonized and displaced by a quite different religious faith."
6. There are significant differences between more and less religious teens in the U.S. In other words, while there is a lot of negative news out there, many U.S. teens are still strong in their faith.
Smith and Denton have arrived at these conclusions, and others, through a rigorous process of sociological investigation. The book is a minefield of data and interpretation - more than most readers will want!
For anyone interested in the spiritual lives of teenagers today, I can't recommend this book highly enough.