Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers

This book is by no means the final say on teens and religion in the United States of America. It’s a statistical survey which attempts to get to the heart of US teens so that the readers may truly understand contemporary kids and their relationship with God and religion. However, there are some basic flaws: it does not treat Catholic fairly and it just about ignores Muslims altogether.

The surveyors use statistical categories which are inaccurate and misleading. They categorize Protestants into three categories: Conservataive Protestant, Mainline Protestants, and Black Protetants. These groups are each compared to one large dumping group called “Roman Catholics”, and “Roman Catholics” come out at the bottom of the barrel each time. No surprise. Why? Because it was an unfair comparison. Had they compared Conservative Protestants with Catholic youth who consider themselves “conservative”, it would have been a fair an accurate comparison. The percentage numbers indicating their understanding of their faith, their religious life, etc, would have been comparable. Similarly they would have produced a more accurate and fair result had they compared the Mainline Protestant youth with the average once-a-week-Cathlic who is educated at CCD, and the Black Protestant youth, who tend to be Penecostal and Baptist in many cases, with Catholic Charismatic youth who are similar in their worhship and living out of their faith. This casuses the survey to be deeply flawed in my opinion. Whether or not it was intentional is not for me to judge. I believe it simply shows ignorance of the Catholic community rather than malicious intent, but nonetheless it flaws the results.

The other categories which were thrown into the mix were Morman/Latter Day Saints, Jewish, and in some tables, No Religion at all when appropriate. Muslims were left out altogether.

It’s section on Catholic youth, while accurate in that the section highlghted three intereviews with three “Catholics”, did in fact, give a distorted image of Catholic Youth in general because among these three “representative” Catholic youth interviewed, not one was really religious, or understanding of their faith. Not one had even been EDUCATED IN A CATHOLIC SCHOOL! Why did they not at least choose ONE student who had through the Cathoic school system. That would have been fair and representative of the Catholic population. It almost seems as though they went out of their way to find the least religious, most ill-educated of Catholic youths to represent the whole group. I really believe this was an enormous flaw.

I shared one of the case studies, “Heather”, with some youth I know. They were appalled at the lack of information this young women had in terms of her faith, and were embarassed that she should have been chosen to represent them, young Catholics.

In addition to this, the treatment of contemporary Catholic adults, while, again, true in part, leaves something to be desired as well. It is true that many contemporary Catholic adults have become successful and engaged in their careers and communities. The authors imply that this demonstrates that they have,in effect, abandoned their faith. I believe that this does not mean that they have abandoned their faith at all; they have been assimilated into the society are large and “look” like the rest of the community. Isn’t that a good thing? If Catholics had not assimilated, then they would be accused of being “radical” or “fundamentalist”. Also, it is precisely because of the education they received in the CATHOLIC SCHOOLS of the nineteen fifties and sixities, AND/OR because of the Catholic Chrisitan values and ethics which formed them, handed onto them by thier religious, Catholic immigrant grandparents and parents, in some cases, that they have become so successful in the world today. How about a CHEER for Catholic schools and Catholic families??

These are just some of my criticisms. To sum up, I was disappointed and frustrated in the book. However, to give the book its due, the authors did put in a tremendous amount of statistical and research work, and it could serve as a great discussion starter. There is certainly value for those who read it, and in a sense it has accomplished its goal in that it certainly makes one search one’s soul. Thank you.

Rating: 3 / 5