Collin Hansen looks at the National Study of Youth and Religion and extracts 5 myths about “emerging adulthood,” the period between the ages of 18 and 29.
Sociologist Christian Smith and Patricia Snell analyzed the National Study in Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults, a follow up to the groundbreaking 2005 book, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers.
Myth #1: Emerging adults serve the common good. “Emerging adults are far less likely than their parents or grandparents to volunteer or contribute to charitable causes. They share no qualms about materialism and long to someday live the American dream with a large salary and large home.”
Myth #2: Emerging adults reject their parents’ religious influence. Most emerging adults fall into their parents’ religious patterns one way or another.
Myth #3: Emerging adults behave similarly, whether seriously committed to religion or not. The good news: This is largely a myth and young adults who take their faith seriously are much less likely to engage in destructive behavior. The bad news: “Only 5 percent of emerging adults are so devoted to their faith that they attend religious services weekly or read scripture as much as once or twice per month. And that group includes Mormons, Muslims, Jews, and all Christian denominations.”
Myth #4: Emerging adults have abandoned liberal Protestantism.
Myth #5: Emerging adults tend to fall away from faith in college. In reality, young adults who do not attend college are more likely to drop out of religious involvement. Why? “There are a greater number of evangelical faculty members who support like-minded students. The modernist enterprise with its secularizing agenda has all but collapsed. And evangelical campus groups flourish.” On the other hand, college ministries are much more successful at retaining a faith that students bring with them than they are at making new disciples on campus.
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