Young Catholic America: Emerging Adults In, Out of, and Gone from the Church

by Christian Smith, Kyle Longest, Jonathan Hill

Best Review at the Catholic Press Association Convention

Studies of young American Catholics over the last three decades suggest a growing crisis in the Catholic compared to their elders, young Catholics are looking to the Church less as they form their identities, and fewer of them can even explain what it means to be Catholic and why that matters.

Young Catholic America , the latest book based on the groundbreaking National Study of Youth and Religion, explores a crucial stage in the life of Catholics. Drawing on in-depth surveys and interviews of Catholics and ex-Catholics ages 18 to 23--a demographic commonly known as early "emerging adulthood"--leading sociologist Christian Smith and his colleagues offer a wealth of insight into the wide variety of religious practices and beliefs among young Catholics today, the early influences and life-altering events that lead them to embrace the Church or abandon it, and how being Catholic affects them as they become full-fledged adults. Beyond its rich collection of statistical data, the book includes vivid case studies of individuals spanning a full decade, as well as insight into the twentieth-century events that helped to shape the Church and its members in America.

An innovative contribution to what we know about religion in the United States and the evolving Catholic Church, Young Catholic America is the definitive source for anyone seeking to understand what it means to be young and Catholic in America today.

Genres: Religion, Theology

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Christian Smith is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame. Smith's research focuses primarily on religion in modernity, adolescents, American evangelicalism, and culture.

Reviews

[Paul H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I seriously wish I had entered this field, lol . . . all you have to do to become an "expert" is run a single survey, package the data into tables, and then spend 300 pages writing a dry straightforward summary of the tables. I'm being completely serious when I say that any halfway-intelligent 19-year-old could have written this book; it should be a pamphlet, literally, with data tables and then a two-page executive summary.

Anyway, as for the content itself; some interesting conclusions, certainly. Not exactly counter-intuitive in most cases (parental religious commitment was obviously going to be the most important factor, etc.), but there were enough unexpected survey results that I found it to be worth reading -- e.g., that youth group participation had zero positive effect.

The main thing that struck me is the all-encompassing influence of culture; there's always going to be 5%-10% of people who actually understand what they believe, I guess (no matter what the culture is like), and then everyone else is just so easily shaped by the dominant culture that it's almost hopeless to proselytize.

The fact that virtually all of the young Catholics interviewed in this book were thoroughly brainwashed by vague/ambient anti-religious sentiment from the Internet and their peer group is honestly hard for me to comprehend, at some level; I've taught Catholic undergraduates and should know better, but, just, how? Are people really this unreflective? I guess they are.

[And to be clear, if this book were entitled Young Atheist America and showed that 90-95% of children raised atheist could be so easily influenced by a dominantly Christian culture, it would be equally depressing.]

[Caitlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent methodology and descriptions of the findings from their research. As a new professor at a Catholic institution, this book helped give me insight to my own students and their religiosity. I am looking forward to seeing what the authors find in future waves!

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book looks at the lives and faith of American Catholics ages 18-23 and considers the influences that have made them the way that they are. It is OK, but I think the authors focused too much on statistics and mathematical models and too little on their interviews with the participants. Also, the authors have too small a sample of Hispanic and Latino Catholics to draw any inferences, which I think is problematic, since this is a quickly growing segment of the Church. Finally, the authors do not consider any converts to Catholicism, which I also think is a missed opportunity.

[Danna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lots of statistics. But helpful for a big picture idea of how different factors affect the probability of staying involved in your faith as you enter adulthood.
TLDR: most people simply do not maintain their faith into adulthood.
Question from the TLDR: what can the church emphasize/focus on to influence a gospel value for adults?

[Denise Theresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for anyone in youth ministry or faith formation.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not my usual fare, but I became curious about it as (a) a revert to the Catholic faith (in 2017) in a world in which, anecdotally, that seems to be more the exception than the rule; (b) the godfather of an emerging adult (the demographic that this book is most focused on) who has lapsed for now, and so I was curious what the statistical likelihood of him returning to the fold might be; and (c) the parent of three amazing children who will, if they stay on their current track, be attending Catholic school at least from K-8 and likely K-12, but whose home environment is a diversity-of-cult marriage with a non-Catholic (and in fact almost completely nonreligious) mother.

This is a dense sociological work and also inevitably outdated probably the moment it was published, since it's (c) 2014 but even its third wave of surveys of the generational cohort it surveyed was conducted between 2006 and 2008, so its insights for 2022 involve assuming the trendline of the generational cohort it surveyed continued. Even the authors caution that that can't necessarily be assumed. To the extent the statistics from 2006-2008 hold up today, they confirmed my intuitive or anecdotal perceptions in some ways and challenged them in others, particularly vis-a-vis my perceptions of more ostensibly observant or orthodox Catholic families with two-Catholic-parent households. The authors recognize that there is a definitional challenge that underlies the entire work--defining who is Catholic at all, and who falls into their various sub-categories of Catholics that they use for subdividing the cohort from birth into "early emerging adulthood," i.e., 18-23 years old at the time of the later (2006-2008) surveys. Nevertheless, qualitatively, the general rubrics they use for "Completely Catholic," "Mostly Catholic," "Moderately Catholic," "Nominally Catholic," and "Family Catholic" (the latter of which encompasses a lot of the people who colloquially self-identify as "raised Catholic" or "culturally Catholic") make as much sense as any other set of necessarily semi-arbitrary category divisions would.

I won't share the specific insights or impressions regarding my own family that I gleaned from the statistics and research here. However, even if those statistics were already almost a decade and a half old, it was worthwhile to read a more systematic sociological treatment of the broader picture of which my family is part.

[K Kriesel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very dry and statistic-heavy. A great book to have on hand for current trends among Catholic and ex-Catholic young adults but not a book to read cover-to-cover