May 21, 2008
The Spirituality of American Youth Today
Kenda Dean
Associate Professor of Youth, Church and Culture,
Princeton Theological Seminary
Minutes of the 33rd Meeting of the 66th Year
At 10:15 AM President Giordmaine called to order the 33rd and final meeting of the 66th year at the Friend Center. George Hansen led the invocation. President Giordmaine extended an especially warm welcome to the large number of guests. James Deneen, read the part of the minutes relevant to last week’s program, having to do with play write, Edward Albee.
Then President Giordmaine stated that it was a tradition of the Old Guard to recognize those who had rendered significant service during the program year. The following persons were recognized and given an Old Guard blazer patch, Bob Varrin for completing a year of service as a Program Chair, Bruno Walmsley for completing a third year as website coordinator and chair. All officers, chairpersons and other persons who had served or contributed in making the 66th year a success were commended. Also, President Giordmaine was commended for an outstanding year.
Then Tom Gillespie, former President of Princeton Theological Seminary, introduced the speaker of the day with the following remarks, “it has been rightly noted that every faith community, no matter what its identity, is within one generation of extinction. Every faith community that is unable to transmit that faith to the next generation is doomed to die out.” At Princeton Seminary, some years ago, we took that fact seriously and developed a faculty position to prepare ministers to minister to young people in today’s churches. Such a person required intellectual insight and enthusiasm for young people. The Seminary found such a candidate among their own PhD students. Kenda Creasy Dean, an ordained minister in the united Methodist Church was called and installed as Associate Professor of Youth and Culture. Dr Dean then spoke on the subject of “The Spiritually of American Youth Today.”
Dr. Dean started her presentation with an exercise in hermeneutics, the science of interpretation. Each person was asked to raise their hand above their head and circle their fore finger in a clockwise motion. Then while still circling their finger, to lower it below their nose, at which point the circling motion became counter-clockwise. The actual motion did not change, but one’s point of view did. The motion is the same, but the reality is different.
The goal in education is to see facts from a different point of view. The goal in religious education is to see life from a different point of view, for adults to see the world from a teenager’s point of view, for teenagers to see their lives the way God sees them. Religious educators call this conversion, turning around, with entirely different eyes. In religions education the goal is to help teen-agers to see their lives differently.
Dr. Dean’s lecture was based on a comprehensive research project done by a cadre of scholars and professionals, including educators, sociologists, theologians, psychologists and analysts. The results and data of 3,000 interviews with teen-agers and adolescents was gathered, analyzed and categorized. The constituency of those interviewed included different religious, social and economic groups, and racial segments of the American society. The research project is believed to be the largest study of teenagers ever done. The following are the summaries of five findings. It looks like this:
Dr. Dean concluded that this is really the default religion of American teenagers. This is what they learned or retained from their Sunday School years. They are this way because this is all they learned or retained from their parents or whatever religions/faith experiences they had.
This generic religion is the dominant form of religiosity that prevails among our teens and throughout much of our society. It is what could be called moralistic, therapeutic deism. Its primary purpose is to help people get along; but it does not provide teenagers with the resources to get out of adolescence and enter into adulthood. Dr. Dean described three changes that have occurred among adolescence.
1. Adolescence takes longer than it use to. The old assumption was that adolescence was 18 to 21 years of age. The new assumption is 21 to 45; but adolescence is a cultural age not a biological age, and there are different definitions of adolescence. In 1960, adolescence was believed to be a period of about five years, from 13-18 years of age, which coincided with the high school years. Thirty years later, in 1990, the puberty age was about 10 1/2 and functional maturity became 25-30.It is not clear when one gets into adolescences today; age 10 ½ to 15 or 21 to 45. But the more important question is when does one get out, when does adolescence end? For this to occur, three things need to happen:
When these three things come together, persons are allowed to leave adolescence and progress to adulthood.
But moralistic, therapeutic deism is not the kind of faith/religion that answers these teenage questions. So they remain adolescents and do not mature.
2. Adolescents have less contact with adults, mature persons who have become adults. There are many older people, but not many mature adults. As a result we have 40-year-old adolescents raising 15-year-old adolescents.
Children want to grow up to be teenagers and too many parents want to “grow down” to be teenagers. Teenage has become the ideal age and everyone wants to be that age.
Adolescence is an age when persons abandon traditions, intuitions and religious faith; therefore they are making decisions without guidance or role models. Too often the only remaining institutions for some adolescents are the military and prisons.
But, teenagers are not anti-institutional; they have embraced the media as an institution. All other institutions have defaulted because they don’t answer their questions, in their prolonged adolescence.
3. The third change is Web 2.0 mentality. Technology and the world wide web have become the means of sharing resources. Teenagers are now able to participate, shape and influence culture. The media has become the dominant institution for teenagers. They “match-up” with it on such shows a Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show.”
It’s also a creative and social event. You don’t merely see it, you share it.
Then Dr. Dean asked everyone to hold out their left hand and put a teenager in the palm of their hand. Then close one finger at a time around the teenager. First, using the pointing finger let it express the direction and hope that you have for that person. Then, closing the middle finger, think about what that person does that really makes you crazy. Now close the ring finger and think about your commitment to that person. With the pinky finger, think about the way that teenager has wrapped you around his or her life. Then fold your thumb across your fingers and don’t let go (of that teenager). Now go home and pray for that person.
Question and Answer period:
Question: Is the problem with teenagers because Protestant Churches are no longer preaching Jesus, salvation and redemption?
Answer: To answer this question all religions and traditions must tell their faith stories that speak the language that teens understand
Question: Having to do with today’s religiosity, deism and agnosticism, rather than true believers?
Answer: Parents and adults need to become true believers and share their belief with their teenagers.
Question & Answer: This question had to do with low demand religions, which produce low levels of faith; whereas high demand religions like Mormonism, produces high levels of commitment.
Q&A A child who grows up with a low level of intellectual and moral teaching, lacks commitment and religious maturity in adulthood.
Q&A Parents who have articulated stories of their religion / faith, have adolescent teenagers and adult children who tell and live out those stories.
Dr. Dean received an enthusiastic applause, concluding at 11:30 a.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Bill Barger
Click Here for details of slides presented at the Lecture
Then President Giordmaine stated that it was a tradition of the Old Guard to recognize those who had rendered significant service during the program year. The following persons were recognized and given an Old Guard blazer patch, Bob Varrin for completing a year of service as a Program Chair, Bruno Walmsley for completing a third year as website coordinator and chair. All officers, chairpersons and other persons who had served or contributed in making the 66th year a success were commended. Also, President Giordmaine was commended for an outstanding year.
Then Tom Gillespie, former President of Princeton Theological Seminary, introduced the speaker of the day with the following remarks, “it has been rightly noted that every faith community, no matter what its identity, is within one generation of extinction. Every faith community that is unable to transmit that faith to the next generation is doomed to die out.” At Princeton Seminary, some years ago, we took that fact seriously and developed a faculty position to prepare ministers to minister to young people in today’s churches. Such a person required intellectual insight and enthusiasm for young people. The Seminary found such a candidate among their own PhD students. Kenda Creasy Dean, an ordained minister in the united Methodist Church was called and installed as Associate Professor of Youth and Culture. Dr Dean then spoke on the subject of “The Spiritually of American Youth Today.”
Dr. Dean started her presentation with an exercise in hermeneutics, the science of interpretation. Each person was asked to raise their hand above their head and circle their fore finger in a clockwise motion. Then while still circling their finger, to lower it below their nose, at which point the circling motion became counter-clockwise. The actual motion did not change, but one’s point of view did. The motion is the same, but the reality is different.
The goal in education is to see facts from a different point of view. The goal in religious education is to see life from a different point of view, for adults to see the world from a teenager’s point of view, for teenagers to see their lives the way God sees them. Religious educators call this conversion, turning around, with entirely different eyes. In religions education the goal is to help teen-agers to see their lives differently.
Dr. Dean’s lecture was based on a comprehensive research project done by a cadre of scholars and professionals, including educators, sociologists, theologians, psychologists and analysts. The results and data of 3,000 interviews with teen-agers and adolescents was gathered, analyzed and categorized. The constituency of those interviewed included different religious, social and economic groups, and racial segments of the American society. The research project is believed to be the largest study of teenagers ever done. The following are the summaries of five findings. It looks like this:
- Teen-agers are not hostile toward religion: They just don’t care. A rather depressive study from a religious educators perspective. This was a surprise to the researchers, who were primarily sociologists. They expected to find great hostility between teens and religion and parents,
- Religion played a very low role in their lives: It caused little or no conflict in their lives. The faith / religion of teenagers, primarily mirrored the faith / religion of their parents. They were whatever their parents were.
- Teen-agers are inarticulate about their faith / religion: They don’t know the basic tenants or traditions of their faith / religion. They don’t know the language, so they can’t express their faith / religion.
- 40%, a significant minority, claimed that religion was important and wanted to make religion a part of their lives.
- Most significantly – it is not that they do not have spirituality, they do. It is just not the spirituality of any of the World’s great religions.
- A God exists, who creates and orders the world and watches over life on earth.
- God wants us to be good and nice, and fair to each other (as most of the world religions teach).
- The central goal of life is to be happy and feel good about ourselves.
- God doesn’t need to be involved in our lives except when “I have a problem.”
- Good people go to heaven when they die.
Dr. Dean concluded that this is really the default religion of American teenagers. This is what they learned or retained from their Sunday School years. They are this way because this is all they learned or retained from their parents or whatever religions/faith experiences they had.
This generic religion is the dominant form of religiosity that prevails among our teens and throughout much of our society. It is what could be called moralistic, therapeutic deism. Its primary purpose is to help people get along; but it does not provide teenagers with the resources to get out of adolescence and enter into adulthood. Dr. Dean described three changes that have occurred among adolescence.
1. Adolescence takes longer than it use to. The old assumption was that adolescence was 18 to 21 years of age. The new assumption is 21 to 45; but adolescence is a cultural age not a biological age, and there are different definitions of adolescence. In 1960, adolescence was believed to be a period of about five years, from 13-18 years of age, which coincided with the high school years. Thirty years later, in 1990, the puberty age was about 10 1/2 and functional maturity became 25-30.It is not clear when one gets into adolescences today; age 10 ½ to 15 or 21 to 45. But the more important question is when does one get out, when does adolescence end? For this to occur, three things need to happen:
- Intimacy – to whom do I belong
- Vocation and work – what difference does it make
- Ideology and faith - what story makes sense of the world
When these three things come together, persons are allowed to leave adolescence and progress to adulthood.
But moralistic, therapeutic deism is not the kind of faith/religion that answers these teenage questions. So they remain adolescents and do not mature.
2. Adolescents have less contact with adults, mature persons who have become adults. There are many older people, but not many mature adults. As a result we have 40-year-old adolescents raising 15-year-old adolescents.
Children want to grow up to be teenagers and too many parents want to “grow down” to be teenagers. Teenage has become the ideal age and everyone wants to be that age.
Adolescence is an age when persons abandon traditions, intuitions and religious faith; therefore they are making decisions without guidance or role models. Too often the only remaining institutions for some adolescents are the military and prisons.
But, teenagers are not anti-institutional; they have embraced the media as an institution. All other institutions have defaulted because they don’t answer their questions, in their prolonged adolescence.
3. The third change is Web 2.0 mentality. Technology and the world wide web have become the means of sharing resources. Teenagers are now able to participate, shape and influence culture. The media has become the dominant institution for teenagers. They “match-up” with it on such shows a Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show.”
It’s also a creative and social event. You don’t merely see it, you share it.
Then Dr. Dean asked everyone to hold out their left hand and put a teenager in the palm of their hand. Then close one finger at a time around the teenager. First, using the pointing finger let it express the direction and hope that you have for that person. Then, closing the middle finger, think about what that person does that really makes you crazy. Now close the ring finger and think about your commitment to that person. With the pinky finger, think about the way that teenager has wrapped you around his or her life. Then fold your thumb across your fingers and don’t let go (of that teenager). Now go home and pray for that person.
Question and Answer period:
Question: Is the problem with teenagers because Protestant Churches are no longer preaching Jesus, salvation and redemption?
Answer: To answer this question all religions and traditions must tell their faith stories that speak the language that teens understand
Question: Having to do with today’s religiosity, deism and agnosticism, rather than true believers?
Answer: Parents and adults need to become true believers and share their belief with their teenagers.
Question & Answer: This question had to do with low demand religions, which produce low levels of faith; whereas high demand religions like Mormonism, produces high levels of commitment.
Q&A A child who grows up with a low level of intellectual and moral teaching, lacks commitment and religious maturity in adulthood.
Q&A Parents who have articulated stories of their religion / faith, have adolescent teenagers and adult children who tell and live out those stories.
Dr. Dean received an enthusiastic applause, concluding at 11:30 a.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Bill Barger
Click Here for details of slides presented at the Lecture