The stereotype of teenagers being rebellious may well hold true in matters of clothing, music and parental authority, but it fails to capture the religious lives of American teenagers, according to a recent nationwide telephone survey.
"Teenage religiosity for the vast majority is highly conventional," said Christian Smith, who co-wrote "Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers." The book, to be released in March by Oxford University Press, is based on findings from the National Study of Youth and Religion. "That may mean that compared to previous generations, teenagers today are more conventional and bound to mainstream values and cultures compared to, say, the '60s," said Smith. "They seem pretty content just going with how they were raised."
More than 3,000 English- and Spanish-speaking American 13- to 17-year-olds were surveyed and 267 in-depth interviews were conducted over a nine-month period in 2002-03 by Smith, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a team of researchers, including doctoral candidate and coauthor Melinda Lundquist Denton.
Three-quarters of the teens surveyed said they were Protestant or Catholic. The next-largest group, 16%, said they were not religious. Seven percent said they were affiliated with another religion, including 2.5% who said they were Mormon and 1.5% who said they were Jewish. The remainder didn't know or declined to answer.
Smith, who belongs to the Episcopal church and has a son, 13, and two daughters, 11 and 6, said he was heartened by studies that show parents still play a key role in teenagers' religious lives.
"After doing this research, I feel more authorized as a parent to teach my kids," he said. "A lot of parents tell me, 'My kid doesn't listen to me anyway.' It really just lets them off the hook."
The survey, funded by the Lilly Endowment, found that teenagers are not flocking to "alternative" religions such as Wicca. Less than one-third of 1% acknowledged such affiliation. They are also not experimenting with a mixture of religions, the poll found.
Instead, three in four religious teens said their beliefs were somewhat or very similar to that of their parents. Only 6% considered their beliefs very different from their mothers' and 11% very different from their fathers'.
Merari Ramirez, 17, identified in part with the survey results. The Sylmar High School senior was not involved in the study but said she considered her faith very similar to her mother's. For them, that means a mixture of religions.
"Most kids stick to what their parents do because they are really influenced by them, and they feel like they don't want to betray them," she said in a recent interview.
Though baptized a Roman Catholic, Ramirez said she and her mother attended a Hindu temple in Pacific Palisades for a few years. When it proved too far from home, they switched to a nearby Christian church.
"Religion itself is not like a huge role," she said. "Just the fact of believing in God and reading the Bible."
Like Ramirez, 80% of teenagers responded that they believed in God. Thirteen percent professed a view of God as having created the world but not being involved in it now, and 14% saw God as more of an "impersonal, cosmic life force."
For Ramirez, God is "someone that's there for you, that can listen to you and hear your problems when no one else does, a friend that protects you and helps you out."
Teenagers were split roughly into thirds about their relationship with God, ranging from feeling intimate to distant or somewhere in the middle.
"God functions for most teenagers as a combination cosmic therapist and a divine butler," Smith said. "God isn't part of history or everyday life. He is distant until you need him to solve a problem or make you feel better."
Church attendance among teens varied, with 40% saying they attend once a week or more, 19% saying one to three times a month, 22% saying a few or many times a year and 18% saying not at all. Two-thirds said that being in a congregation isn't necessary to be religious or spiritual.
"In American culture, there is a strong anti-institutional sentiment, an individualist approach toward religion dating back to the American Revolution. And it's reflected in teenagers," Smith said.
Teens fear being perceived as too religious and possibly weird, said Smith. "What they have in mind is the kid walking down the hall with two Bibles under his arm and a lot of religious patches. Every school has at least one, and they are the model of what teenagers don't want to be."
One of the driving forces behind the survey, Smith said, was the general shortage of information about teenagers and religion, compared with a wealth of material about adults.
