March 17, 2005
by Daphne Mack

Sociologist Christian Smith said that in researching for his book "Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers," he was "surprised" at "how inarticulate most teenagers were about their religious faith."

"They think of themselves as religious and go to church and many will say that their faith is important, but if you go beyond that and ask anything about what they believe, how it is important and what difference does it make, the majority are just really helpless at articulating what they believe or what difference it makes," he said.

Smith, a professor and associate chair of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, received a $3.9 million grant from the Lilly Endowment to fund the National Study of Youth and Religion. For nine months in 2002-2003 a national telephone survey was conducted by Smith, coauthor Melinda Lundquist Denton and a team or researchers using a random digit dial methodology that produced a probability sample of all houses with telephones in the U.S.

He said the sample represented "different racial groups, different religious groups, not religious, etc." and by using this method a "nice cross section of all teenagers" was produced.

There is ‘a hole'

Smith said the lack of data on teenagers and their religious experience was the catalyst for this study.

"I'm a sociologist of religion with an interest in studying American religion in particular and it was clear to me that there had not been a lot of really good work done on the religious life of teenagers," he said. "There was sort of a hole in what we knew and there had been a fair amount of focus on young adults and Baby Boomers as they age but not much on adolescents."

He felt that looking at the whole American religious scene or even our entire culture through the lens of teenagers would provide "a really interesting angle on things."

‘Personal dimension'

Smith, an Episcopalian, is a member of the Church of the Holy Family, in Chapel Hill. He said being a father of three was the "personal dimension" in doing this research. "I realized that they were going to be teenagers soon so why not do a research project that would allow me to do a lot of reading and thinking and preparing for this before it all hits," he said.

Smith explained that 3,370 teenagers, aged 13-17 years, participated in the 30 minute telephone survey and their parents in a 52 minute portion. Next, 267 of those teens were asked to be a part of a face-to-face in-depth interview.

"We traveled to 45 states where we'd sit with them for two to two and a half hours in libraries and restaurants elaborating on our findings," he said.

‘Young people are not being educated that well in their faith'

They discovered similarities in terms of adult and teen females being more religious than their male counterparts and "that young people are not being educated that well in their faith."

"There's almost this sense by congregations and families that they'll [teenagers] pick it up by osmosis, which to some degree they do but there are extreme limits to what osmosis can do," Smith said. "At some point teens need to be more directly instructed."

‘Not be too directive'

Smith said the intention of the team was "to create a baseline of knowledge that we thought didn't exist already about young people today." As sociologist "our hopes are that we can put this topic on the radar screen, provide people an informed set of findings that they can think about, and not be too directive about what people should do with it," he said.

"I also believe that what we could learn from such a study could be really useful and helpful to lots of different communities, people and institutions that work with or have in their membership teenagers," Smith said. This way "it wouldn't just be an academically interesting thing on a shelf, but that it could be useful and practical in the real world."

Tracking for the future

Smith said sociologists are interested in understanding how social life works and as sociologist of religion, how the religious dimension of social life works.

He said that revisiting these young people in their environment, with their families, at school, and in peer networks and congregations is a way to obtain that information.

"We will be tracking these same teenagers this summer re-surveying and re-interviewing them again to see how they have changed over three years," he said.

"With that said, I think that especially with Christian churches, given the goals they say they have for their youth that what our findings point to is they need to do a better job of paying attention to teens, engaging them, teaching them and not just expecting them to pick it up by osmosis and hope they come back to church one day after they have children of their own," Smith said.

Episcopal News Service
Daphne Mack is staff writer for Episcopal News Service.