Religious Involvement Among
Youth:
An ecological & Life-course
Perspective
Article by
Valarie King, Glen H.Elder Jr. & Les B. Whitbeck
Introduction
In farming communities of American Midwest
• Local churches are powerful institutinal forces for young and old
people.
• Farm families play a leading role (church establishment)
• Lutherans : villages
• Catholics : cities
The role of rural churches are:
• behavior control
• social capital
and
• socialize children into a community of like-minded adults
Introduction
• Benson et al. 1989; Brownfield et al. 1991 & Sutker 1982
• Children who raised in religious communities;
• more successfull in avoiding problem behavior
• they are good on pro-social behavior
• lower risk of drug and acohol abuse
• lower risk of deviance
• Thus, religious involvement is positively related with;
• well-being
• longevity
• life satisfaction
• competence (Ellision & Sherkat, 1995)
A longutudinal Study on Religious
Involvement
• King, Elder & Whitbeck (1997)
• Participants and Design
• 365 adolescents from North Iowa.
• 7 grades to 10. (4 waves) – Longitudinal Study
• Also their parents’ involvement
 Region;
 economically weak
 lack of opportunity.
 King et al. (1997) looked at, over time if farm youth will involve than
adolescent in small towns and parent’s education make differences in
these variation.
Relevant Studies
• Relevant studies on religious involvement in different areas
(urban vs rural – young and adult)
• Religion is more central for rural life (Chalfant & Heller, 1991)
• top rate on level of church attendance
• Urban residents; (Fisher, 1982)
• Less likely to attend to church
• Less religious
• Or religious is not necessarily important
Findings
 Religious and local churches play a greater role for small
communities
 Network based on church and church-based settings, it
helps to keep alive traditional way of life.
Religious Development, Disaffection, and
Commitment
• To understand the decline in religiosity, previous studies brought
evidences based on cross-sectional studies but these studies were
only age levels to infer developmental trajectories.
• But, as limitations of past studies, looking one or two age group to
understand whether there is a change (involvement) over time
might mask other individual variations.
• Two important influences of religious development
• A) Social identities and their context (gender, class, religion or farm based)
• B) Religious practice and parents’ belief
Social Identity and Context
• In four way, social identities and related context of
adolescents influence religious development
1.
Gender
 Female adolescent have higher score on religious involvement based
many
factors.
(upbringing
style,
socialization,
psychological
differences or difference in temperament, lack of status and less
work opportunities.
 Because of this void, religious associations fill it.
Social Identity and Context
2. Education and SES
a.
Adults with higher education are more involved in church
activities and have higher rates of attendance.
b.
On the other hand, expression of religion’s importance decline
by education.
3. The born-again concept.
a)
Religiousness is the experience of a conversion.
b) Rates of involvement are high in born-again Christians
(protestants)
Social Identity and Context
4. Farm Status
a)
Salamon (1992) describes farm families as an active people in
church activities and involvements (churchgoers)
b) Main roles of these families; establishment, maintenance of
churches and care.
c)
The have distance to large urban population and rural residents
because of their traditional and conservative beliefs
Hypothesis : Farm adolescents will have stronger ties to religious
institutions and will express more religiosity in beliefs and personal
identities than nonfarm rural adolescents.
Parent – Child Relationship
Parents are the most important source of influence on
adolescent religious behavior.
As a model for children, parent’s intensity of involvement and
expression what they believe.
Factors such as identification of children with parents,
closeness, parental warmth enhance adolescent’s religiosity.
If parents experience decline in involvement and
religiousness, children will also experience same decline.
Results
• Four measures of religious involvement
 Church attendance
 Church activities
 Religiosity
 Value of being a religious person
Results
• As a social identity factor, gender was significantly different in
females on involvement in church activities than males.
• Adolescent in farm families exhibit higher levels of attendance in
both 7th and 10th grades
• Adolescent church attandance decline over time.
• There were significant difference in decline compare to farm
status.
Results
• The pattern of religiosity showed that:
Religiosity
• 41 % highly religious
• 12 & low
• Under 25 % either increase or decrease in religiosity
Wanting to be a religious person
• 28 % high
• 20 % low
• 28 % experience an increase and 29 % showed decline
• Farm adolescents score only slightly higher on the religiosity
• Greater importance to value of being religious person were also
higher for farm adolescents than non-farm youth
Results
• Correlates of Religios Change and Continuity
• Highly religious youth are more likely to be a members of a farm
family, and identify themselves as born again christians and also
their families are religious too.
• Youth who became more religious over time, the are more likely to
live on a farm, parents (father) have high level of education and
religious.
• Adolescent who experience decline in religiosity are more likely to
live in a non-farm family and have less religious parents.
Results
• For church activities, gender is a strong factor on involvement
 Female
 Male
• In general, farm adolescents and boys who have religious
parents are less likely to experience a decline in religious
activities than others (non-farm adolescents and females)
Conlusion
• During the transition from childhood to adulthood, religios
practice and belief’s of parents was important as an important
component
• Parents and adolescents who are engaged in a religios
community, they are less likely to exposed risky problems such
as problem behavior, alcohol and drug abuse, in contrast, they
are more likely to enhance their social and academic
competence.
• Also, religios involvement is important in competence.
Conlusion
• Farm youth stand out were on the strength of their ties to
religious institutions and they express more religiosity and
attachement to religious values than rural adolescents in nonfarm communuties.
Conlusion
• Being «born again» is a powerful influence on religios continuity over
time.
• Family SES in the form of parental education, it has a little significance
for patterns of developmental change.
• Strong family ties and parental religious involvement go together in
predicting the religious involvement of adolescents.
• Those who engage with other youth who also engaged in religious
activities, they were more likely to fallow prosocial behavior such as
respect for parents and a sense of responsibility.