More Observations From "Souls in Transition"

Smith and his assistants surveyed Emerging Adults on eight religious beliefs (belief in a judgment day, belief in angels/demons, miracles, life after death, reincarnation, astrology, and recent doubts about religious beliefs).  In short, there was considerable diversity in religious commitments.  More specifically, substantially greater numbers now profess non-traditional (from the American experience) views: God is an impersonal force, Jesus was not the son of God, and God did not create the world.  “These shifts are often especially pronounced among Catholics and mainline Protestants.” (125)

Contrast the shifting content of EA beliefs with their self-perception.  A significant majority (59%) reported that their religious beliefs had remained about the same while 24% said they had become more religious.

What can account for the discontinuity between the content of the beliefs of EAs and their perception of their religious beliefs?  Perhaps the survey didn’t ask the right questions.  Or, perhaps the American penchant for dumbing down the place of cognitive content in religion has come home to roost.  It seems that many EAs believe that it doesn’t matter what they believe, only that they believe something that goes by the (self-defined) name of “religious.”

Bad news for those who don’t believe that the mind should be separated from religious belief.  But also bad news for proponents of the secularization thesis.  However we might evaluate the religion of many EAs, they have a lot of it.

“Souls in Transition” -- Peculiar Fact

Of Jewish Emerging Adults, 16% report that their religious faith is very or extremely important in their lives.  Of the self-described “non-religious,” 17% state that their faith is of those high levels of significance.  (Souls in Transition at 113)

“Souls in Transition” -- Then and Now

One could be excused for wondering how today’s Emerging Adults compare to those of yesteryears.  Chris Smith has been surveying the current EA cohort since only 2003 but the National Opinion Research Center has been conducting the General Social Survey since 1972.  The GSS doesn’t focus as much detail on the religious lives of it respondents but there’s enough data for Smith to tease out an interesting (and somewhat surprising) conclusion: “On the whole, 18- to 24-year Americans have not since 1972 become dramatically less religious or more secular.”  (Souls in Transition at 99)

Smith utilized only four factors surveyed by the GSS: belief in life after death, attends weekly services, self-identify as religiously liberal, and profession of “no religion.”  The latter two increased a bit but were largely offset by a small increase in belief in life after death.  However, as I noted here, the data becomes more interesting when religious traditions are disaggregated.  IOW, evangelical and black Protestant EAs increased their attendance in weekly religious services while Catholic and liberal Protestant EAs showed a significant decline.  Those who identified themselves as “strong” followers of their religious tradition also increased among black and evangelical Protestants while Catholics revealed a dramatic drop.  I think the single most notable change from 1972 to 2006 was the significant increase among black Protestants who believe the Bible is the inspired or literal word of God (from about 84% to 96%).  Most peculiar, I think, is the substantial increase in belief in life after death among both black Protestant and Catholic EAs.  Not quite sure what to make of that one; what were they thinking back in '72?

Given the kvetching that we regularly hear about how bad things are today, this data recalled to mind a passage from the Hebrew Scriptures: “Don’t long for ‘the good old days.’ This is not wise.” (Ecclesiastes 7:10).

Interesting Facts from “Souls in Transition”

American Emerging Adults are less “religious” than their elders in a number of respects (daily prayer, attendance at weekly services, and self-identified “strong affiliation” with a religious tradition) but equally religious in others (belief that the Bible is the inspired word of God, the Bible should be interpreted literally, and self-identification as a religious “liberal”).

Interestingly, the differences between EAs and their elders are pronounced for Catholics and mainline Protestants; the differences are much smaller for evangelical Protestants and black Protestants.  The effects, on the one hand, of the mainline identification of religion with social work and, on the other, of the liturgical “reforms” and anti-doctrinal results of Vatican II, seem apparent.

The lower rate of strong affiliation of EAs with their religious traditions is mirrored by their lower rate of involvement in other areas of social life (e.g., membership in voluntary associations, charitable donations, volunteering, etc.).  I guess churches shouldn’t feel too bad.

Some More “Souls In Transition”

Good news for at least some parents of emerging adults (per Chris Smith, Souls in Transition pp. 85-86): “When [i] parents are seriously religious, [ii] want their children to be seriously religious, and [iii] have raised them to be so, the emerging adults’ [iv] desire to have a good connection with their parents tends to encourage them to continue to affirm and practice their religious faith.”  (Enumeration added.)

Working backwards, Smith contends that many EAs want to improve relationships with parents.  Seems true to me.  Points [i] to [iii] are straightforward enough but I wonder about the many EAs whose parents have little or no concern about religion; what social factors will even slightly encourage them to consider the place of religion in their lives?  The answer would seem to be next to nil when we consider the dominant place of economic factors in contemporary life and the “black hole” of socializing (in person and distance) that occupies the lives of EAs.  Not much room for religion.

More “Souls In Transition”

Per Chris Smith on p. 51 of his newest book, Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults: “One of the apparent effects of this apparently culturally relativistic and the continual self-relativizing to which it leads is speech in which claims are not staked, rational arguments are not developed, differences are not engaged, nature is not referenced, and universals are not recognized.”

Nothing surprising here. “Emotivism,” as Alasdair MacIntyre called it already in 1984 (in After Virtue) describes the state of affairs when people no longer believe there are rational ways of securing moral agreement.  If true nearly 30 years ago, it’s hardly surprising it’s the warp and woof of the EA worldview today.

My law students may find it difficult to make the fine-grained rational arguments I’d like to see (in other words, there’s not enough “A” in the typical IRAC law school exam answer) but they certainly try; but then I suspect that pure emotivists don’t come to law school.

A bit more surprising is Smith’s conclusion on p. 67: “Interviewers could not, no matter how hard they pushed, get emerging adults to express any serious concerns about any aspect about mass-consumer materialism.”  Then, again, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.  Why should I expect otherwise from a culture whose economy subsists by causing us to want to buy stuff we don’t need and which we can’t afford?

"Souls In Transition"

Per Chris Smith on pp. 45-46 of his newest book, Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults, “Most emerging adults have great difficulty grasping the idea that a reality that is objective to their own awareness or construction of it may exist . . . . They seem to presuppose that they are simply imprisoned in their own subjective selves. . . . They simply cannot believe in--or sometimes even conceive of--a given, objective truth, fact, reality, or nature of the world is that is independent of their subjective self-experience. . . . What emerging adults take to be reality ultimately seems to consist of subjective but ultimately autonomous experiences.  People are thus trying to communicate with each other in order simply to be able to get along and enjoy life as they see fit.”  (Emphasis added.)

The Emerging Adult Catechism Q. 1 “What is my chief end?”  A. “My chief end is to get along and enjoy myself for as long as possible.”

I don’t get this sense from my largely EA students but law students (especially at Regent) are probably not representative of EAs generally.

More on Emerging Adults

Cup-half-full news and some inferences to be drawn.  The results of the interviews published in Souls in Transition reveal that public and private expressions of religion remain stable for 57% of Emerging Adults from five years earlier.  Thirty-seven percent show a decline and 7% an increase in what I’d characterize as “religiosity.”  It could easily be worse.

What factors correlate to the 7% of EAs whose religiosity increased from their late-teen years?  In order of declining significance: (1) coming to a personal faith commitment (duh), (2) the presence of religiously-connected and practicing parents, (3) the significant presence of other supporting religious adults, (4) sexual chastity, and (5) having others make fun of one’s religious faith (N.B., this is a positive factor).  Curious about non-factors?  Here they are: Sunday School attendance, missions trips, and attending a Christian school.

For Christian readers--get involved, seriously involved--in the religious lives of children, your own and others’ kids.  FWIW, I may even volunteer to teach catechism again.

Emerging Adults

And you though age-based social groups went from childhood to adolescence to young adults to middle age to seniors!  Now it turns out that at least in America there's a distinct social category of "Emerging Adults" comprising 18-29 year olds whose views on life, truth, and morality are sufficiently distinct to merit a separate status.

Following on his 2003 in-depth survey of American teens, Chris Smith and a team of researchers re-interviewed the older half of the same cohort five years later.  Smith summarized the result on Saturday at WRPC’s Renew 2010 conference.  (For those who want all the data and then some, buy Smith's Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults.)  Much--for better or worse--about these “Emerging Adults” had not changed from five years earlier but the following randomly selected conclusions seem significant to me:  Religion is not a threatening topic to EAs but neither is it a “life-driver;” EAs are largely indifferent to religion.  Religious congregations are perceived as “elementary schools for morals.”  You wouldn’t stay in 5th grade year after year, would you?  So why continue to attend religious worship?  Postmodern relativism is dominant (“What seems right to me” is the source of moral authority) except when it comes to science whose evidence trumps blind faith.  (Someone else can comment on the epistemological incoherence of this.)

Smith’s research suggests that the religious “ideal types” of Emerging Adults fall into six categories: (i) committed traditionalists (15%), (ii) selective adherents (15%), (iii) spiritually open (these are not “seekers”) (15%), (iv) religiously indifferent (25%), (v) religiously disconnected (5%), and (vi) the irreligious (a category that didn’t exist when they were late teens five years earlier) (10%).  According to Smith, these ideal types do not necessarily represent a continuum although the way they are listed might suggest EAs in, say, (iii) might eventually slip into (iv).  Smith has funding to do these interviews again in 2013 so he might then draw some conclusions about inter-type movement.

FWIW, I didn’t get a chance to ask Smith but I wonder if (ii) comprises the “emergent church.”

Enough information for now.  I’ll get to some data that suggests action next time.