The Relative Influence of Youth and Adult Experiences on Personal Spirituality and Church Involvement

Autor: Thomas P. O'connor, Estrelda Alexander, Dean R. Hoge
Rok vydání: 2002
Předmět:
Zdroj: Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 41:723-732
ISSN: 1468-5906
0021-8294
DOI: 10.1111/1468-5906.00157
Popis: We surveyed 206 young adults who had grown up in middle-class churches in three denominations-Baptist, Catholic, and Methodist-who were first studied at age 16 in 1976. The goal was to assess the relative strength of youth and adult influences on their personal religious and institutional church involvement at age 38. The deteriminants of these two outcomes at 38 varied widely. For personal spirituality such as private prayet; attending Bible classes, and r-eading r eligious mater-ial, we found strong youth and adult determinants such as the denomination of one's youth, church youth group participation, having an experience since high school that changed their feelings about the church, and attending church with one's spouse. For church involvement, however; all but one of the determinants occurred after age 16, mainly the experiences of being inactive in chur-ch after high school, switching denominations, having children, and going to chur-ch with one's spouse. Social learning theory was the best theory for explaining these findings. Church leaders of all Christian denominations want to know what factors produce Christian adults who have an active spirituality and are engaged in their churches. How important are childhood experiences for determining adult church involvement and personal religiosity? What kind of adult experiences have the most long-lasting spiritual effect? What causes some young adults to remain involved in church and others to depart? Do adult experiences supersede or build on youthful influences in determining adult spirituality and church behavior? Do structural influences such as denomination or gender interact with individual factors to produce greater or lesser involvement in religious practice? Questions such as these have stimulated much research, including the present article. We report results of a longitudinal study of youth in Baptist, Methodist, and Catholic denominations who were studied at age 16 and 22 years later at age 38. To explain the importance of our study and situate it theoretically we need to review prevailing ideas of religious change and commitment during youth and early adulthood. These are basically nascent theories based on past findings about the importance of different influences on adult religious practice, especially church involvement. They can be categorized into three types: family life cycle theory, social learning theory, and cultural broadening theory. Family life cycle theory states that the needs and tasks an individual must address during different parts of the family life cycle determine his or her church involvement. Research has found that church disaffiliation occurs most often in the teenage years and the early 20s, with less disengagement after the early 20s and often a reentry into church life later when the young adult is building a family (Roozen 1980). Adult church involvement is stronger for married persons than single persons and stronger for persons with children than for those without (Mueller and Cooper
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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