In their book A Faith of Their Own: Stability and Change in the Religiosity of America’s Adolescents (Oxford University Press, 2011), the authors follow up with 2,530 young people, age 16 to 21, surveyed about their faith and religious practices at two points in time. The authors identified five types of religious identity among these young persons.
- Abiders (20 percent). These are the adolescents with the highest levels of religious interest and practice. They not only believe in God; they pray regularly, attend services, volunteer, and are most likely to say their religion is the only true faith.
- Adapters (20 percent). This group shows high levels of personal religiosity. But compared to the Abiders, they are more accepting of other people’s faiths and attend religious services more sporadically. The Adapters are most likely of all the groups to help others in need.
- Assenters (31 percent). These teens say they believe in God, but they are minimally engaged with their faith. Religion is tangential to other aspects of their lives.
- Avoiders (24 percent). They believe in God but do not engage in any religious practice. Their God is a distant one, and they often do not name a religious affiliation.
- Atheists (5 percent). They do not believe in God and do not attend services.
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Praying for the next generation.
I have no answers, but numerous questions.
In looking chronologically at the information provided, I would ask:
1. What are the additional demographics of the research group — gender, race, socio-economic, education, ethnicities, religious affiliations — and are the groups represented equitably and/or appropriately?
2. What and when are the two occasions on which each in the research group was surveyed? Are either of those occasions during and/or around major church-calendar holidays such as Advent and Easter? Do either of those occasions occur during and/or around a major life-transforming event such as death, divorce, etc.?
3. Are those in the research group questioned about the “faith and religious practices” of their parents/guardians?
4. The Abiders:
a. “…they volunteer…” Doing what? Church activities? What motive? A senior class project for which he or she receives a grade?
b. “…they are most likely to say their religion is the only true faith…” Is this a self-righteous response? “…faith…” Is the term “faith” synonymous with the word “denomination”?
5. The Abiders and the Adapters: The Abiders “volunteer,” and the Adapters “accept other people’s faith” and “are more likely to help others in need.” Are volunteering and helping others the prime criteria for defining “young adult Christians”? What about the assumption of their responsibility for sharing their faith with those like the Assenters, the Avoiders, the Atheists, and the Lost in order to “make disciples and make a difference”?
But I can’t help but wonder if the most critical question is the one that asks:
1. “What about the parents”?
2. How many adolescents at one point or another, frequently or infrequently, declare and even perhaps scream to one parent or both, “I don’t ever want to be like you”; only to find that in many ways, they end up being the “spitting image” of their mother, father, or both?
3. So, is it possible that the parents of the Abiders are Abiders themselves? Is it possible that the parents of the Avoiders are Avoiders themselves?
4. How can an an evaluation of the adolescents in each of these groups occur in isolation?
a. Should not the church to which they are affiliated also be evaluated in terms of such things as service opportunities, age-appropriate Bible study classes, youth leadership, etc.?
b. Should not their “world” influences also be evaluated?
5. Consider these quoted defining criteria: “Religion is tangential to other aspects of their lives” and “they believe in God but do not engage in any religious practice. Their God is a distant one.”
Sound familiar?
a. How ’bout soccer? How ’bout ballet? How ’bout guitar lessons? How ’bout anything that insidiously and almost like a cancer becomes an idol for us without our realizing it, taking us away from the God with Whom we should be spending time, the God Whom we should be worshiping, and the God Whom we chose to “put on the back burner” even though He demands of us “to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind”?
b. How ’bout the comment, “I work all week; God understands; He doesn’t mind if I sleep-in on Sunday morning”? How ’bout the comment, “I can find God anywhere, especially on the golf course on a Sunday morning”? How ’bout the family members who never pray together, who never see a parent pick up the Bible and read in it? How ’bout the parents who don’t turn to prayer in the midst of conflict, turmoil, tragedy, and in thanksgiving?
What are the adolescents’ role models?
Yes, the adolescents need to, for themselves, “feel strangely warm,” as did John Wesley.
Yes, “we need to offer them a mission that will challenge them to go farther, dig deeper and radically change their world view.”
…but not in insolation.
“We need to offer all — children and adults, as well as adolescents — a mission that will challenge them to go farther, dig deeper and radically change their world view.”
Perhaps the answer lies not in targeting one group for improvement and “engagement” but in “thinking long and praying hard” and surrounding the critical adolescent years by “beginning at the beginning” with “engaging” activities for them when they were children as well as offering “engaging” activites for their parents.
“…thinking long and praying hard” won’t come overnight; it involves vision and envisioning, it involves patience and leaps of faith; but if “offering them the Gospel” is what it is all about, then “offering the Gospel” so that it, through the church, becomes, not a perfunctory but a desired and chosen way of life for all ages and for all, no matter the age, is, most assuredly, a worthy and required goal for all adult Abiders.