18
Gulf Pine Catholic
•
October 10, 2014
B
ook
R
eview
Sociological studies look at beliefs of young, not
religious
REVIEWED BY DANIEL S. MULHALL
Catholic News Service
“Since its inception in 2002, the National Study of
Youth and Religion has provided church ministry prac-
titioners a goldmine of valuable information about the
religious beliefs and values of young people and their
parents. The first full report of the study was published
in
“Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives
of American Teenagers”
(2009) by Christian Smith and
Melinda Lundquist Denton. Several additional books
have followed as that data was unpacked.
The young people who participated in the original
study in 2002 have now grown into young adults. The
researchers have now gone back to these young peo-
ple to collect data on their present-day religious lives.
The data from the most recent study is presented in the
book,
“Young Catholic America: Emerging Adults In,
Out of and Gone from the Church,”
which is again writ-
ten by Smith, the lead researcher, along with several of
his research colleagues.
For those engaged in ministry within the church
or for those concerned with the state of religion in the
United States, the writing of Smith and his team remain
“must reads.” Captured here is a snapshot of where
Catholic young people between the ages of 22 and 28
currently are in their relationship with the church and
how they express their faith.
The findings are interesting. Emerging adults --
those who are of age but who have not yet moved fully
into adult responsibilities -- hold religious and spiritual
beliefs not too different from previous generations but
may lack the language to express those beliefs. They
also are much less likely to participate in weekly reli-
gious practices and have less of a commitment to the
institutional church.
While recognizing the declining church member-
ship among young people, Smith finds that marriage
and having children seems to bring young people back
to religious practice. The problem though is that many
young people are delaying or avoiding marriage en-
tirely.
While deftly written and solidly researched,
“Young
Catholic America”
feels less compelling than the previ-
ous works in the series. As with all long-term studies it
is important to remember that each “snapshot” reflects
only that period of time and not the end of the journey.
It will be interesting to follow these young people as
they move into full adulthood.
In
“Belief without Borders,”
Linda A. Mercadante
presents a qualitative study of the religious and spiritual
attitudes of adults who are “spiritual, but not religious.”
Developed from 85 in-depth interviews conducted by
the author, the book presents the thoughts of those in-
terviewed primarily in their own words.
According to Mercadante, people who are spiritual
but not religious generally fall into five categories or
types: dissenters, casuals, explorers, seekers and im-
migrants. Thus some of them reject the church and its
teachings for some reason, while others have at least
some ongoing relationship with religion.
Mercadante notes that people who are spiritual but
not religious can be found in every age and stage in
life, although a steep decline in religious practice can be
traced to the 1960s and ‘70s. One of the critical factors
for this change seems to be the developing principle that
everyone is “free to adopt, adapt, discard and change
any spiritual or religious beliefs they encountered.” The
author suggests that this phenomenon is consistent with
the findings of Robert Bellah in his 1985 seminal work
“Habits of the Heart.”
Mercadante further notes that “People ... have
claimed for themselves the authority formerly ceded
to others. This does not necessarily imply a rejection
of the social order, nor even a call for radical social
change. But it does include a taking back of authority
over what beliefs to accept and to reject, what to have
faith in, how to practice one’s faith, and what criteria by
which to judge the self.”
Mercadante provides here a fascinating look into the
attitudes of people who are spiritual but not religious.
While the author doesn’t draw many conclusions from
these interviews, the valuable data is clearly presented
for others to use and learn from on their own. While a
bit of a slog to get through, what can be learned from
the effort is well worthwhile.
Mulhall is a catechist. He lives in Laurel, Maryland.
This is the cover of
“Young
Catholic America: Emerging
Adults In, Out of and Gone
from the Church”
by Christian
Smith, Kyle Longest,
Jonathan Hill and Kari
Christoffersen. The book is
reviewed by Daniel S. Mulhall.
CNS
Sociologist’s look at RCIA can help Catholics appreciate
their faith
REVIEWED BY MITCH FINLEY
Catholic News Service
In the introduction to
“Becoming Catholic,”
author
David Yamane writes words that may take the reader by
surprise: “Since 1988, well over 2 million individuals
in the United States have entered the (Catholic) church.
... (O)n average over the past 10 years, 67,298 adults
annually have been baptized Catholic and 83,050 bap-
tized Christians annually have been ‘received into full
communion’” with the Catholic Church in the United
States.
Yamane teaches sociology at Wake Forest Univer-
sity, and his book isn’t so much about the number of
people who have become and are becoming Catholic,
however. Rather, he studies the phenomenon of con-
version to the Catholic Church and discusses in depth
the process converts go through, the Rite of Christian
Initiation of Adults. Based on years of observation and
interviews with people who were becoming Catholic,
he follows these people through the four stages of the
RCIA. He then suggests a new perspective on what it
means to choose Catholicism in the United States of
America in our time.
Yamane observes that “some of the most prominent
Roman Catholics of the modern age have been con-
verts,” including (Blessed) John Henry Newman, St.
Elizabeth Ann Seton, Dorothy Day, J.R.R. Tolkien, and
Thomas Merton. In this book, however, the author fo-
cuses on what he calls “everyday conversion,” that is,
“the hundreds of thousands of individuals who became
Catholic in America at the beginning of the 21st cen-
tury, the formal process of initiation they went through,
and what this tells us about Catholicism and religion
more generally in a late-modern society like that of the
United States.”
This is the cover of
“Becoming Catholic: Finding
Rome in the American
Religious Landscape”
by
David Yamane.” The book
is reviewed by Mitch Finley.
CNS
SEE BOOK-CATHOLIC, PAGE 19
