New MRC resources on teens and religion
Ed Seely, director of the Ministry Resource Center, a CICW ministry partner, comments on two significant additions to the MRC. Also see this 7-point overview of the MRC.
The National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) is the largest and most detailed survey of teenagers and religion ever undertaken. This project surveyed 3,290 teenagers and their parents, 1,988 of whom are Protestant.
The first of the two books to come from this survey is Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, by Christian Smith with Melinda Lundquist Denton (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). Smith is Stuart Chapin Distinguished Professor and Associate Chair of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and principal investigator of the NSYR.
The other book is Portraits of Protestant Teens in Major U.S. Denominations, by Phil Schwadel and Christian Smith (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2005), the purpose of which is to follow up on Soul Searching in order to help church leaders and religion scholars and observers more accurately and completely understand the NSYR data. “The NSYR provides a baseline, descriptive map of the religious character of adolescents in the United States.” (Portraits, p. 12)
Major findings of the NSYR pertaining to youth and worship include these results:
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