Since Soul Searching’s publication, I have recommended that parents, church leadership teams and youth/campus ministers prayerfully read, consider, and develop structural adjustments taking into consideration “Summary Interpretation: Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” (161-71) and the “Concluding Unscientific Postscript: Observations and Implications of NSYR (National Study of Youth and Religion) Findings for Religious Communities and Youth Workers” (259-271).
christian smith
Book Review: Souls in Transition
Souls in Transition: The Religious & Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults (Oxford University Press. 2009) is chock-full of insights and all the graphs and tables you could ask for. Some of the most significant to me were the commentary on emerging adult culture — which the authors saw as governed by an intuitional morality — one just […]
Book Review: Soul Searching
Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers by Christian Smith (now William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society, University of Notre Dame) with Melinda Lundquist Denton (now Assistant Professor, College of Business and Behavioral Science, University of Clemson) is an important study of […]
Book Review: The Bible Made Impossible (Christian Smith)
Once again “Thank-you!” to Bob Trube, Senior Area Director for InterVarsity’s Graduate & Faculty Ministry in the Ohio Valley, for his contribution to the Emerging Scholars Network (ESN) Blog! Consider these thoughts on Christian Smith’s The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture to some degree an extension of ESN’s […]
Emerging Adults’ View of Education
I’ve just begun reading Christian Smith’s new book (with Patricia Snell), Souls in Transition: The Religious & Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults, and it’s already proving to be a useful resource. This is the follow-up to Smith’s last book (with Melina Denton), Soul Searching, which examined the religious lives of teenagers (ages 13 to 17). […]