Christian Smith, Soul
Searching: the Religion and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford;
New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Christian Smith with Patricia Snell, Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging
Adults (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
The following is my review of two volumes presented by
Christian Smith on the sociology of religion for “young people” in a
longitudinal study (the first volume discussing teenagers (ages 13-18) and the second
emerging adults (ages 18-23). One hopes that when time provides, a third volume
will appear that covers religiosity in ages 24-29 (the stated goal of the
volumes). I should present as a caution that I am not a sociologist and that
this study on modern religion is formally outside my field (being a historian
of early Christianity and Judaism). However, this topic is one that matters
much to me and I find myself continually exploring it in sociological contexts.
I feel there is much merit in sociological analysis (and I find myself
frequently reading key elements of it for my own research as can be found by
figures such as Rodney Stark), but also some limitations. This review is more a
case study of the merits and limitations of sociology than it is a true review
of the books.
The greatest merit in these volumes, as stated by Christian
Smith, is that it does an excellent job dispelling popular myths about the
generation of “young people.” There
are many myths that he takes on such as that the younger generation are
generally not religious, that they are spiritual seekers who look for truth
from every walk of life, that education was linked with irreligiosity, that
they are reacting to their parents and have abandoned all that they were
teaching, and that the meme of being “spiritual but not religious” is among
them. Smith does a good job of dispelling all of these arguments. He measures
whether these memes are true (as he says he finds them frequently in
literature) and shows why they are simply false. The “spiritual but not
religious” meme, for example, is shown that participants did not even understand
what the term meant much less supported them.
The hypothesis he presented, then, was that many frequent
discussions about the movement of younger adults in religious settings are
inaccurate. He then proves this through careful observation of the trends. Second,
he proves this by not only showing that these are false, but also supplementing
them with the positive statements that can be made about this generation
concerning its view of religion. For this alone, these books are a very helpful
resource for anyone interested in the topic (and I highly recommend this for
any readers who work in ecclesiastical or social worlds where the views of
people aged 13-23 is of primary significance).
With these valuable aspects, I now move to the critiques and
limitations that a sociological study has. First, sociology is in the social
sciences and as such, needs to present a hypothesis that will be proved true or
false. In this case, the hypothesis was that teenagers and young adults do not
hold many of the key memes that are present in rhetoric about this group. This
was accomplished well. However, a problem occurs when a sociological study
attempts to do anything more than that. Because the study was discussing a
particular age group, for instance, any continuity between the age group
studied and other age groups would not be sampled (after all, the point was to
prove that such views were not present in one age group – the view of others
was not important). However, when trying to present the alternate case and come
to conclusions about “what these subjects actually are” the agility of the data
is insufficient for the task. These volumes illustrate this point well – they
have a primary purpose that is done well, but their secondary purpose of trying
to present an alternate is awkward at best due to the constraints of
sociological inquiry.
First, sociology finds a predictive theory that is true of a
social movement, often across boundaries – this often can lead to a “lowest
common denominator” type of approach to descriptive analysis. In this study,
the major predictive theory was what Smith calls “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism
(MTD).” Smith argues that MTD is the primary belief structure of students ages
13-18. It has the following 5 characteristics:
1. God exists who created and
orders the world and watches over human life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good,
nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world
religions.
3. The central goal of life is to
be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God does not need to be
particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a
problem.
5. Good people go to heaven when
they die.[1]
While this is definitely predictive – that if a new student
group were interviewed, then they would probably hold most of these views.
However, while it is a prediction, it is insufficient description. Of course,
do hold this view, but that is not the only
view they hold. Smith has shown us what can be proven and measured as far as social science goes. Diversity builds
from there. This type of lowest common denominator thinking is not a bad thing
– it is a necessary component of sociology and (as mentioned above) does do a
good job answering the proposed hypothesis. It simply has limits and one who
reads this as the only view held (seeing it as sufficient for description) is
not correctly reading it.
The problem that arises next is not one for all of sociology
– only a study that attempts to analyze the whole of a group – there is no
control group. In any study where there are no boundaries on the number of
people, it is difficult to effectively find a control. This study examined all
of the people in America ages 13-23. While it was done through sampling, the
point is that the whole of the people were meant to be included. Therefore, the
only way to find a control would be to go beyond the bounds of America (where
cultural factors might skew results) or a different age range (where
generational factors might skew results). My own preference would have been if
Smith had simply used a different generation as a control, but the challenge
would be present. Therefore, the value of the study was still there in proving
the hypothesis, but the lack of a control made some of the descriptive
conclusions seem more telling than they might actually be.
One of the
major problems of this study for descriptive analysis was the age range
presented. The data was set for this group alone (ages 13-23). However, there
is no data present as to why these figures were so different from other age
ranges. This would not be a major concern if there were very good reasons for
this age constraint. However, the study has as its hypothesis that the reasons
for considering this age group as distinct are not accurate.
Not only is the age constraint not given a proper discussion
as to why it is being considered in isolation, there is even data presented
that challenges the category. First, the study has as one of its most important
points is that the religious view of the teenagers and emerging adults were
gained from their parents – making this the view not only of the younger
generation but also of the older.[2]
Secondly, Smith trumpets the study of N. Jay Demerath which argues that liberal
Protestantism as a whole is very prevalent among adults (which would, in many
ways, be quite similar to the MTD described above).[3]
Therefore, this age constraint makes it seem as if these views are unique. In
reality, the views presented are held by the group they study, but the study
does no job whatsoever about discussing whether this is common to other groups
or not (and it should be noted does it claim to do so – this is a simple
limitation of sociology – a sample population has to be selected and the study
cannot discuss any other population with accuracy).
The results, however, are challenged beyond the relatively
reasonable question concerning the age range. First, the first volume covering
the ages of 13-18 does not take into account the unreflected faith of many
teenagers. Not surprisingly, when asked about more advanced theology, teenagers
did not know their own faith system. They had trouble articulating what it was
that made them distinct with the exception of ethics. However, when looking at
the correlation between actual life choices and religious devotion, the
correlation showed that there was a significant difference.[4]
Therefore, the lack of articulation might not be as much a lack of holding the
views as much as simply teenagers struggling to articulate anything given their
relative age and probable lack of reflection on their own beliefs (as it was
presented that they did usually take their view from their parents).
Another challenge is the ridiculous goal of finding a single
voice for an entire generation of people in America. The millions that would be
presented are so diverse that it is not surprising that many of the results are
mundane. A much more meaningful study might have focused on a smaller group
that could be more easily studied and nuanced to give a full description. I understand
that this is not the goal of this particular study, but as a historian, this is
precisely what is required to be able to speak with confidence rather than
vague generalities.
The above challenges might be subsumed by Smith’s desire to
be a competent sociologist. The reason he does not look into the unreflecting
nature of teenagers is that he does not want to dismiss the view of teenagers –
their view needs to be taken seriously on its own. Therefore, while it might be
true that they haven’t reflected on their faith, that lack of reflection is
component of what they believe – it should not be dismissed. However, the
second volume of the series, because it was a longitudinal study, took as its
main focus a comparative tactic (did 18-23 year olds change their view from the
view they had when they were 13-18). This comparative tactic made it difficult
for the second volume to respect the subjects as much as the first volume did.
The 18-23 year olds did not have their own descriptor of how they viewed religion,
instead, the question was if MTD was still the primary way of expressing their
religiosity. The answer was that it was mostly true with many caveats.[5] The fact that all of these caveats were
in place suggests that if Smith were to simply describe the religiosity of this
group with no preexisting idea at all, he might well have come to a different
solution. However, because it was comparison, the second volume was dominated
by the first. The results then are skewed and amazingly the views expressed by
teenagers (even with their challenge of articulation and lack of understanding)
are going to frame the conversation with people well into their twenties
(particularly if the third study uses this same comparative tactic, and there
is no reason to think that it will not).
The second critique is not in method, but one of the
conclusions that Smith draws. While discussing MTD, Smith briefly calls this
type of faith “parasitic” meaning that it only can exist if larger full
religions are present. His argument seems to be that this is the case because
it exists across the religious spectrum (Protestantism, Roman Catholicism,
Judaism, LDS, etc.).[6] However, he
does not spend the time to prove why this is the case, it is simply his logical
inference that could be challenged easily. Why is it that the five principles
described above could not be held in isolation? There is no real reason other
than that they have developed from a larger worldview. However, the sustaining
power of the MTD (if it even truly exists as a complete worldview) could well
continue without the larger religious systems (just as many religious movements
derive from another religion while abandoning many of its original tenets, e.g.
Christianity separated quite easily from Judaism).
The final
section of this post are not critiques of Smith, but ways that someone not
familiar with this type of writing could misconstrue the data. The first one
has been covered at length – that is the “lowest common denominator” type of
analysis that sociology finds itself in. The second is the ease at which the
second volume of the book can be understood poorly if not seen as a comparative
work, and the third is the misconstrual of the phrase “feeling good” as a
characteristic of MTD.
If one does not understand comparative longitudinal studies
(and I will be the first to point out that I am not an expert in them), it is
possible to misunderstand what Smith says in the conclusion. Smith argues that
there is essential continuity between religiosity in the teen age years with
religiosity in the emerging adult years.[7]
However, this is not suggesting that
the religious views of teenagers are identical (or necessarily even close) to
the religious views of emerging adults. All it is saying is that those who are
religious in their teen years are also likely to be religious in their emerging
adult years and vice versa. Not only do their views shift to be more
reflective, but it is possible that the religious tradition could even change
in those years – it is only the case that they are more likely to be religious
in some sense.
The second piece that is easy to misconstrue is the concept
that one of the goals of MTD is to “be happy and feel good about oneself.”
There is no reason to think that this is simply superficial or primarily
different than other adherents’ view of religion. Most religious movements have
as their center profound meaning for the adherents. Peter Berger discussed it
in terms of identity and meaning as a society in response to the chaos of the
world (that which humans cannot deal). This meaning is the way humans manage
the world and find a place in it (in addition to solving the problem of
theodicy).[8]
How is this meaning so fundamentally different than “feeling good?” I do not
think Smith was trying to express a superficial sense of this, but it would be
possible for readers to get the wrong impression if they were not familiar with
sociological discussion of religion.
In all, Smith’s work is quite valuable and should be read.
It only needs to be understood in a sociological context with sociological
constraints. He very convincingly proves his hypothesis – caution should be
taken on how far this data can prove alternate hypotheses.
[1] Smith, Soul Searching, 162-3.
[2] Ibid., 166.
[3] N. Jay
Demerath, “Cultural Victory and Organizational Defeat in the Paradoxical
Decline of Liberal Protestantism” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 34.4 (1995): 458-69.
[4] Smith, Soul Searching, 218-258.
[5] Smith, Souls Transformed, 103-142, 180-256.
[6] Smith, Soul Searching, 166.
[7] Smith, Souls Transformed, 282.
[8] Peter
Berger, The Sacred Canopy.
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