God? Sure, whatever

A new book says that 80 percent of American teens believe in God -- but their God is a buddy who props up their self-esteem, and many don't even know who Jesus was.

By Carlene Bauer

Apr 29, 2005 | Between the real-life stories of lonely kids shooting their way out of despair, and culture makers who can't stop fetishizing teen disaffection, it's hard to imagine adolescence as anything other than a time of surly skepticism. But according to the National Study of Youth and Religion, a random survey of nearly 3,300 American teens aged 13 to 17 from all across the country and from varying socioeconomic backgrounds, most kids aren't quarreling with the cosmos -- 80 percent of them believe in God, and only 3 percent of them don't. More than six in 10 kids say they'd attend church several times a month if it were entirely up to them. They like their congregations -- but they don't want to be confused with Ned Flanders.

The survey was conducted over the phone and in person in 2002 and 2003 by a team of sociologists headed by Christian Smith, a professor at the University of North Carolina. Their findings can be found in the book "Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Teenagers," which Smith coauthored with Melinda Lundquist Denton.

Smith and his colleagues discovered that while three-quarters of their subjects professed to be Christians, they're dazed and confused when it comes to articulating their beliefs. "We go to church, and ... God is coming back again and he'll take us to heaven. And what was the other one?" was a typical attempt. One 14-year-old girl, through barely contained yawns, pointed to her Internet and cable connections as proof of God's goodness. And she wasn't the only one who saw God as a big cable guy in the sky. Most kids' faith, says Smith, takes the form of what he calls moralistic therapeutic deism -- God is an undemanding, all-fulfilling entity existing only to help us feel better about ourselves.

Salon talked to Smith, who has also written extensively about evangelical Christianity, about the inner lives of teenagers and the potential costs of their slacker spirituality.

You found that when teens do experiment with religion, they're not flirting with Buddhist or Wiccan practices -- in fact, less than one-third of 1 percent of the kids you spoke to identified themselves as either Buddhist or Wiccan. They're trying on Christianity instead. Did that surprise you?

Yes, very much. There's a lot in the media and books about spiritual seeking and people identifying themselves as "spiritual but not religious," so we expected to see that more. But if you stand back and think about it, mathematically Christianity is the dominant religion, and if you're any minority religion you're going to be surrounded by Christianity.

Do you think, mathematics aside, teens are looking into it because they think they might find community or because their Christian peers seem happier?

Well, any of that would go along with the mathematics. Say your parents were immigrants from East India and you have a Hindu background. It's not necessarily that your Christian friends are happier, but activities are going to be more available -- summer camps, friends going on a retreat. And so it's not like Christians are always smiling, it's that there are just so many opportunities to get involved with Christianity and those opportunities connect with friendships. Let me put it another way -- if you're a minority religion, especially one that isn't super well-organized, it's just harder to construct a whole life that the religion makes sense in.

There are two basic options when you're a minority religion. One is to construct an isolated subculture or counterculture that you can center your whole life on -- so you would have to be like the Amish, or Orthodox Jews in New York. You'd have to be part of an encapsulated community. But most people can't or don't do that and so that means that they are constantly exposed to values and practices of cultures different from their religion, and then that presents a challenge that they have to continually evaluate -- they have to continually decide how to respond. Do they resist? How? Do they acculturate? It could also be, and I don't have data on this, but most teens just want to fit in. They want acceptance, and so with teens of minority faiths, who have to deal with the ubiquity of Christianity, and have these cultural markers that are basically like neon signs that say, "I'm different, I'm weird," many of them don't want that.

There are so many accessories for Christian kids -- Christian rock, T-shirts with cheeky slogans, niche-marketed Bibles. Nearly half of the teens you surveyed said they'd worn jewelry or clothing with a religious message and nearly half listened to religious music. How did these accessories figure into their faith?

The percentages of kids having a favorite rock band or wearing a cross or clothing in meaningful ways were higher than I imagined. But again, these things were just part of the general fabric of their lives. I would connect this to, as I do in the book, living in a mass consumer capitalist society where everything gets commodified. Some of us sociologists think of our country's religious system as a religious economy. And it's competitive. There isn't a state church that you need to go and pay your taxes to. You can choose where you want to go, so congregations and pastors are in a market where they're trying to get followers. The believer is the consumer, essentially.

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