c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) The most comprehensive survey ever done on faith and adolescence finds a teen nation where more than four in five youths say religion is important in their lives.

But the new survey of more than 3,000 teenagers and their parents also indicated that many teens know little about their religion.

Many other activities compete for their time, but among religiously active teens _ those who attend services weekly and belong to a youth group _ their faith appears to be making a significant difference in their behavior.

The National Study of Youth and Religion, described as the most comprehensive research ever done on faith and adolescence, revealed that such teens are more likely to:

_ Do better in school.

_ Feel better about themselves.

_ Shun alcohol, drugs and sex.

_ Care about the poor.

_ Make moral choices based on what is right rather than what would make them happy.

Researchers considered variables such as the possibility that more obedient youngsters are more likely to attend church, and still found that “religious faith and practice themselves exert significant positive, direct and indirect influences on the lives of teenagers, helping to foster healthier, more engaged adolescents who live more constructive and promising lives.”

What religious groups have to worry about, the study found, is not teen rebellion, but a “benign `whateverism”’ that tends to reduce their perception of God to more of a valet _ someone meeting individual needs _ rather than an authority figure.

The result is growing numbers of teens replacing traditional faith with an “alternative religious vision of divinely underwritten personal happiness and interpersonal niceness,” said Christian Smith, the University of North Carolina sociologist who led the study.

Researchers talked to 3,370 adolescents and their parents in a national random telephone survey in 2002 and 2003.

The study also involved in-depth personal interviews with 267 of the respondents from 45 states. The project was funded by the Religion Division of the Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment Inc.

Several studies in recent years have found positive relations between mental and physical health and religious participation among adults.

But there is little research among adolescents. The first major findings of the new study have just been released in a book from Oxford University Press titled “Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers.”

The study found that four in 10 teens attend religious services weekly or more frequently.

Homework, television and other media, jobs and sports increasingly compete for teens’ time.

“Indeed, in many adolescents’ lives, religion occupies a quite weak and often losing position among these competing influences,” Smith wrote.

The study bursts a few stereotypes of teen religion, foremost among them the idea that U.S. teens are alienated from or rebelling against organized religion.

More than half of the teens surveyed said religion was extremely or very important in their lives. More than two-thirds of teens report attending services many times a year, and more than six in 10 teens say they would attend services regularly if it were entirely up to them.

Nearly eight in 10 teens who attend services say they expect to attend the same kind of congregation when they are 25. Almost none reported having bad experiences with clergy or youth group leaders.

Teen religiosity is important, researchers said, because their study also shows almost universal positive outcomes related to active religious lives, from success in school to vastly reduced rates of teen pregnancy and drug use.

Kim Martin, a 14-year-old who attends Westlake United Methodist Church in Westlake, Ohio, said students in her school are approached almost daily to smoke cigarettes or do drugs.

“I think our relationship with God gives us more of a conscience, and gives us the power to say no,” she said.

How might parents develop spiritual lives in their offspring? By being role models, the study indicates.

Among parents who said religion is extremely important to them, two-thirds of their teenage children said religion is extremely or very important in their lives.

In contrast, among the teenage children of parents who said religion was not very important, 48 percent said religion was not very or not at all important in their lives.

“They really do look to their parents,” Smith said in an interview. “We’ll get who we are, not what we tell them _ not what we wish for, but who we are.”

MO/RB/PH END BRIGGS

(David Briggs is religion reporter for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland.)