The commentary below was taken with permission, from the Newsroom website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/relevance-religion).


COMMENTARY —  25 JULY 2013The Relevance of Religion

SALT LAKE CITY — “Over the long haul, religious faith has proven itself the most powerful and enduring force in human history.” R. R. Reno[1]

Resilience amid Change

How relevant is religion? It’s a question each new generation asks itself. As times change, new circumstances present new challenges and possibilities. And yet, through it all, this immemorial longing we call religion continues on.

In the 1960s, sociologists came to a consensus that religion was fading. As knowledge and freedom increased, they theorized, so modern society would outgrow religion. Thirty years later, however, that hypothesis was reversed. One of these sociologists, Peter Berger, explained the miscalculation this way: “Religion has not been declining. On the contrary, in much of the world there has been a veritable explosion of religious faith.”[2] He concluded that just because the world is becoming more modern doesn’t necessarily mean it is becoming less religious. Religion, it can be said, is just as relevant now as it has ever been.

The value of religion speaks less through sermons and more through the soup kitchens, hospitals, schools and countless other humanitarian works it nurtures. Simply put, religion builds social capital. Research shows that more than 90 percent of those who attend weekly worship services donate to charity, and nearly 70 percent volunteer for charitable causes.[3] Such giving also benefits the giver. According to the landmark study American Grace, “the correlation between religiosity and life satisfaction is powerful and robust.”[4]

Religiosity, however, does not remain static. It might surge in one part of the world and decline in another. In America, for example, religion is in a state of flux. The number of those who claim no religious affiliation nearly doubled from 8.2 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2008.[5] Now that number has crept to nearly 20 percent. And among those under 30 years old, disaffiliation jumps to 32 percent.[6]

In many ways religion finds itself on the margins of society, where one’s beliefs and values may be expressed privately but are often dismissed publicly. Conflicts sometimes arise when religious organizations or individuals share their views of right and wrong in the public sphere. Tension can be seen, for example, in rules banning religious clubs from college campuses or in regulations curbing the conscience of health care practitioners. Public figures and regular citizens often hesitate to articulate their religious values to avoid controversy.

This separation of religion from public life is a feature of what is often called secularism. Philosopher Charles Taylor describes the current environment as a shift “from a society in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is one human possibility among others.”[7] Meanwhile, the broader questions of religion get lost in narrow cultural divisions. What does religion mean in the actual lives of people? What role does religion play in forming communities? And how do religious beliefs address life’s most difficult problems? Such matters cannot be reduced to mere politics; they are perennial concerns, deeply interwoven in humanity’s rich fabric.

The Good of Religion

Human beings are religious by nature. They seek a higher purpose outside themselves. Whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist or other, religion offers a framework by which people find meaning, belonging and identity. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has written, religion gives us “a feeling of participating in something vast and consequential.”[8] And this feeling tends to flow into civic interactions. American Grace found that religious observance is linked to higher civic involvement, connected to trust and correlated with the neighborly virtues of charitable giving, volunteerism and altruism.[9] Churches of all kinds bring communities together and provide a space and setting for individuals to serve people they otherwise would not. According to Rabbi Sacks, religion “remains the most powerful community builder the world has known.”[10]

Religion and the search for transcendence are integral to the human experience. Though they take many forms, religious beliefs help us make sense of life’s mysteries and provide answers to deep philosophical challenges. Professor Brian Leiter, who normally disagrees with privileging religion in public life, concedes that faiths “render intelligible and tolerable the basic existential facts about human life, such as suffering and death.”[11]

Religion and secularism, though, do not always have to be at odds. Faith and reason are not mutually exclusive. Each can benefit from the other. The encounter between the two can be a productive tension that provides opportunities to learn, not contradictions to avoid. Mormons, for example, believe that "the glory of God is intelligence."[12] People of faith reject the notion that religious faith and practice are devoid of rational thought. Science can explain much of the human experience, but without faith we lack ultimate meaning.

Modernity in Fragments

With its teeming plurality of choices and possibilities, our modern world presents unique challenges to religion. Endless philosophies, ideologies and truth claims clamor for attention, magnified by instantaneous media. Globalization pushes peoples and cultures together. Different religions and worldviews interact and collide. Personal preferences alone become a guide in dealing with moral dilemmas. In this flux individuals can feel isolated and become disconnected from their communities.

Modernity, therefore, is not just one thing; it is a commotion of many things. But it can tend toward fragmentation. In this competition of choices, according to Charles Taylor, living a religious life can be “an embattled option,” making it “hard to sustain one’s faith.”[13] In such an atmosphere, he continues, many will “feel bound to give [their faith] up, even though they mourn its loss.”[14] In much the same spirit, novelist Marilynne Robinson laments how the religious self is often reduced to “a sort of cultural residue needing to be swept away.”[15]

Even so, during the millennia of human existence nothing has been able to replace religion. Skeptics have misread and underestimated the religious impulse in the human spirit. It is part of who we are, and it won’t go away. Secular thinker Terry Eagleton describes the situation over the past century this way: “Culture made a bid for power, a bid as it were to oust God, to oust theology and religion. … But it didn’t work.”[16]

Religion’s Place in the Whole

People of faith have cause to believe not only in the good of their own religion but also in the good of religion in general. The conclusion of William James is fitting: “The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, bravery to which the wings of human nature have spread themselves, have been flown for religious ideals.”[17] Religion can also be a powerful source of ethical reflection and orientation toward the moral.

The roots of religion are so deeply planted in the values of society that to pull them up would unsettle the whole. Virtually all of us, believers or not, practice values laden with religious meaning. Our modern aspirations toward human rights and humanitarian aid, for example, have long religious pedigrees. Religion’s reservoir of moral ideas spills over for everyone to drink. Reflecting on what they called “the lessons of history,” scholars Will and Ariel Durant asserted, “There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.”[18]

All societies have some moral basis, whether derived from religion, philosophy, custom or any number of sources. Religious values should not be dismissed from the public square any more than the vast array of other positive values. Prominent thinker on religion and society Jurgen Habermas wrote that among the modern societies of today, “only those that are able to introduce into the secular domain the essential contents of their religious traditions which point beyond the merely human realm will also be able to rescue the substance of the human.”[19]

Religion is worth upholding and honoring in our society. It has both tremendous capacity andresponsibility to lift individuals, support communities and uphold the dignity of all God’s children. Faith and society, therefore, are intertwined in important ways. As Christian Pastor Rick Warren has affirmed, “A truly free society protects all faiths, and true faith protects a free society.”[20] With mutual respect and civility we can all live, even flourish, with our deepest differences. As long as we continue to seek meaning, purpose and community, religion will remain not only relevant but an essential part of what it means to be human.


[1] R. R. Reno, “Religion and Public Life in America,” Imprimis, Apr. 2013.


[2] Peter Berger, “Secularization Falsified,” First Things, Feb. 2008.


[3] Arthur C. Brooks, “Religious Faith and Charitable Giving,” Policy Review, Oct. 2003. Similar statistics are found in the “Faith Matters Survey 2006,” as cited in American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us.


[4] Robert A. Putnam and David E. Campbell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010), 491.


[5] Barry A. Kosmin, Ariela Keysar, “American Religious Identification Survey,” 2008, 3.


[6] Cary Funk, Greg Smith, Pew Research Center, “’Nones’ on the Rise: One in Five Adults Have No Religious Affiliation,” Oct. 9, 2012. It is worth noting here that though religious unaffiliation is not the same as irreligion — two-thirds of the people in this group say they still believe in God — it does indicate a diminished confidence in churches and religious institutions.


[7] Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007), 3.


[8] Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning (New York: Schocken Books, 2011), 101.


[9] Robert A. Putnam and David E. Campbell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010).


[10] Jonathan Sacks, “The Moral Animal,” New York Times, Dec. 23, 2012.


[11] Brian Leiter, Why Tolerate Religion? (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2012), 52.


[12] Doctrine & Covenants 93:36


[13] Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007), 3.


[14] Ibid.


[15] Marilynne Robinson, Absence of Mind (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2011).


[16] Terry Eagleton, Intelligence Squared, “Terry Eagleton in Conversation with Roger Scruton,” Sept. 13, 2012.


[17] William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: The Modern Library, 1902), 254.


[18] Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 51.


[19] Jurgen Habermas, et al, An Awareness of What Is Missing: Faith and Reason in a Post-Secular Age (Malden, Massachusetts: Polity Press, 2010), 5.


[20] Rick Warren, “A truly free society protects all faiths, and true faith protects a free society.” (#NationalDayofPrayer), May 2, 2013, 8:05 p.m. Tweet.

By Michelle Boorstein, Published: July 11

Religion is in trouble in the United States. The word, that is.

Sociologists say that we are increasingly divided over religion’s place in public life but that when it comes to language, Americans are moving in one direction: toward a new vernacular.

We’re no longer “religious.” We’re “holy.” We’re “faithful.” We’re “spiritual.” We talk about what “the gospel compels us to do” or “gospel living.” Or “sabbatical living” and “God-oriented behavior.”

This is true across the ideological range, but for different reasons.

On one side of the spectrum are people such as prominent liberal scholar Diana Butler Bass, author of last year’s “Christianity After Religion,” who says the word “religion” is laden with negative, hurtful and political baggage. The 20 percent of Americans who now call themselves unaffiliated with any religious group see religion as much too focused on rules.

On the other side are people such as super-popular shock pastor and writer Mark Driscoll, an evangelical conservative whose sermons have such titles as “Why I hate religion.” He preaches that the institutional church has wrongly let people feel good about themselves for their actions (such as going to worship services) instead of what they believe (which should be the Bible’s literal truth, in his view).

A member of Driscoll’s church produced one of early 2012’s most shared videos, “Why I love Jesus but hate religion,” which has been watched more than 25 million times. Set to cool music, it opens with a young man asking, “What if I told you Jesus came to abolish religion?” Later, it characterizes most churchgoers as hypocrites and religion as a Band-Aid and “like spraying perfume on a casket.”

Last month, the president of the country’s largest “ex-gay” ministry blamed “religion” for the failure of his organization, Exodus International, which had claimed that its programs could make gay Christians straight.

“I believe the major failure of Exodus is that it promised to be completely different from the religious system that caused so many of us so much pain and yet became a religious institution of rules and regulations focused on behavior, sin management and short on grace,” Alan Chambers said in announcing Exodus’s end.

Jon Acuff, a popular evangelical motivational speaker, wrote in his blog a couple of years ago about a quest for new language, and he remarked on what he does if someone he doesn’t know describes him as “into religion.”

“Like any good Christian, I immediately said what we’re supposed to: ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, I’m not into religion, I’m into Jesus. I’m a Christian,’” Acuff wrote in the popular blog Stuff Christians Like.

Hundreds of Christians responded on his blog with words they use when asked their religious preference on Facebook. “Jesus is in charge of Everything.” “Jesus is my saving grace.” One person cited John 3:16, which says God gave his “one and only son.”

What’s going on? Is this about semantics or something more important?

Experts say a bit of both. Polling shows that young Americans are considerably less apt to have religious affiliations than earlier generations were at the same age. They attend religious services less often, and fewer of them say religion is important in their lives.

But more than nine in 10 people believe in God, according to a recent Gallup poll, a statistic unchanged for decades, and there is a booming market for transcendent and spiritual experiences.

“People are walking away from institutional expressions of church. They’re trying to renegotiate man’s relationship to God,” said David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group, a major research firm on religion.

Kurt Fredrickson, professor of pastoral ministry at the evangelical Fuller Theological Seminary, said on one hand, the push-pull about institutionalism has been going on forever.

“The bottom line is: Christianity is a religion. You can’t get away from it,” he said. “If it walks like a duck, with doctrines, dogma, structures, everything a religion has, it’s a duck.”

On the other hand, Fredrickson said, many people are walking away from anything they associate with institutional religion because they question its value and authenticity.

“There is this question: If Jesus was here, would he be stuck here in this dull, boring institutional setting?” Fredrickson said. “He’d be out there doing good and telling people about God’s love. Now we’re saying: Would Jesus like this? Before, we just said: This is the way it is.”

William D’Antonio, longtime Catholic sociologist and researcher, said the percentage of Catholics who say they are “religious” has dropped from 74 to 60 percent in just the past five years.

“It’s more than semantics. [Decades ago] we really, really believed if you didn’t go to Mass, you’d go to hell. There was a belief that the church had a structure that would get you to heaven if you followed the rules. . . . Now more and more people look to their conscience, however it’s formed, to decide for themselves.”

Although some reject the word “religion,” others simply ignore it.

“Tomorrow, I’ll speak to a room full of teens, and I won’t use the word ‘religion’ once,” Acuff said.

But would he call himself religious?

“I’d say yes, and then, ‘What do you mean by the word?’ ”

By Sohrab Ahmari

Leon Kass was born in Chicago in 1939 to a family of Jewish immigrants. His childhood home was "Yiddish-speaking, nonreligious, lower middle class." At age 15, he was admitted to the University of Chicago where, he recalls, "I did very well on my science placement tests so my adviser made me a science major."

He entered University of Chicago's School of Medicine upon graduation, but not before "acquiring a prejudice in favor of reading old books slowly, a certain taste for philosophical questions, and a keen interest in liberal education."

While he was a medical student, he met and married his wife of nearly 52 years, the classics scholar Amy Kass. The couple went on to Boston, where he completed an internal-medicine internship and earned a biochemistry Ph.D. at Harvard.

"A funny thing happened to me in graduate school," he recalls. "My wife and I spent part of the summer of 1965 in Mississippi doing civil-rights work." The couple lived with a black farmer in Mount Olive, Miss., in a home that had no toilet or indoor plumbing. "I came back from this place with this conundrum: Why was there more honor, goodness and decency in these unschooled black farmers than I found in my fellow graduate students at Harvard, whose enlightened and liberal opinions I shared?"

The answer, he eventually concluded, was that his black hosts displayed "the dignity of honest work and religion"—things he didn't often find among his highly educated peers, most of whom "were only looking out for Number One." 

By MICHAEL I. MEYERSON Americans of all political stripes invoked the Declaration of Independence this Fourth of July week. Some read the document and found, as Harvard Prof. Alan Dershowitz has, that it "rejected Christianity, along with other organized religions, as a basis for governance." Others saw the same language proving the opposite, that our nation was founded on "Judeo- Christian values." Such definitive statements do not tell the full story. The American Framers, in their desire to unite a nation, were theologically bilingual—not only in the Declaration of Independence but beyond.

That document was the work of many hands. As is well known, the first draft was written by Thomas Jefferson. That version began with a religious reference that largely remained in the final version, stating that the United States were assuming the independent status, "to which the laws of nature and of nature's god entitle them."

The phrase "Nature's God" is not a product of traditional religious denominations, but is generally associated with 18th-century Deism. That philosophy centered on what has been called "natural theology," a belief that while a "Creator" started the universe and established the laws of nature, the modern world saw no divine intervention or miracles.

The most famous religious phrase in the Declaration—that people are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights"—was not included in Jefferson's original draft. He had written that people derive inherent rights form their "equal Creation." The iconic language was added by a small committee, including Benjamin Franklin and John Adams.

"Creator" was a theologically ambiguous word. Most Deists used it, but it was also commonly spoken by the most orthodox religions of the day. Timothy Dwight, a Congregational minister who served as president of Yale College from 1795-1817, delivered a sermon stating that the Bible contained "as full a proof, that Christ is the Creator, as that . . . the Creator is God."

Often overlooked in discussing the Declaration of Independence are two more religious references, both added to its closing paragraph by other delegates in the Continental Congress. The delegates described themselves as "appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions," and they affirmed their "firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence."

These phrases were widely regarded as being far more traditionally religious than the earlier language. Ashbel Green, a Presbyterian minister and Jefferson critic who served as chaplain of the House of Representatives in the 1790s, cited these sections to assert that had they not been added, Jefferson would have permitted the American call for independence to be "made without any recognition of the superintending and all disposing providence of God."

But even after the congressional editing, the language of the Declaration wasn't limited to a particular faith. Deliberately designed to be as inclusive as possible, it was a quintessentially American achievement—specific enough to be embraceable by those with orthodox religious views but broad enough to permit each American to feel fully included and equally respected.

George Washington maintained this adroit balance when he became president. In his first inaugural address, written with the assistance of James Madison, Washington declared that it would be "peculiarly improper to omit in this first official Act, my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the Universe."

Even Jefferson and Madison, often described as believing in a total separation of religion and government, continued the practice of using inclusive religious language. Jefferson urged in his first inaugural, "May that infinite power, which rules the destinies of the universe, lead our councils to what is best," while Madison stated that, "my confidence will under every difficulty be best placed . . . in the guardianship and guidance of that Almighty Being whose power regulates the destiny of nations."

The Framers didn't see such nondenominational language as divisive. They believed it was possible—in fact desirable—to have a public expression of religion that is devout, as long as it recognizes and affirms the variety of belief systems that exist in our pluralistic nation.

Mr. Meyerson, a professor of law at the University of Baltimore School of Law, is author of "Endowed by Our Creator: The Birth of Religious Freedom in America," recently published by Yale University Press.

Couples who share religious practices tend to be happier than those who don't, study says
By Donna St. George
Thursday, August 12, 2010; B01




African American couples are more likely than others to share core religious beliefs and pray together at home -- factors that have been linked to greater happiness in marriages and relationships, according to a study released Tuesday.

In what is described as the first major look at relationship quality and religion across racial and ethnic lines, researchers report a significant link between relationship satisfaction and religious factors for whites, Hispanics and African Americans. The study appears in this month's issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.

True to the aphorism, couples who pray together stay together, said study co-author W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, and "African American couples are more likely to have a shared spiritual identity as a couple."

The study found that 40 percent of blacks in marriages and live-in relationships who attended religious services regularly had a partner who did the same, compared with 29 percent of non-Hispanic whites and 29 percent of Hispanics.

White couples, in general, reported greater relationship satisfaction than other groups, presumably because of income and educational advantages, the study says. But the racial gap lessens when religious similarities come into the mix.

"What this study suggests is that religion is one of the key factors narrowing the racial divide in relationship quality in the United States," Wilcox said.

The strongest difference-maker for couples was spiritual activities such as praying or reading the Bible at home. "Praying together as a couple is something that is very intimate for people who are religious," Wilcox said. "It adds another level of closeness to a relationship."

Such findings bear out in the four-year marriage of Sade and Charles Dennis, who live in Bowie. "Our relationship with the Lord has definitely been the glue that has held it together," said Sade, 34, an author and artist.

Sometimes the couple prays by phone as Charles commutes to his job as an accountant, or as Sade is just waking up and Charles reads her a devotional from his BlackBerry. At times of disagreement, when one can't see the other's point of view, one will interrupt and say: "Let's just pray," Sade said.

"Prayer is the great reconciler," she said. The Dennises attend monthly fellowships as part of a couples ministry at First Baptist Church of Glenarden.

In the whirlwind of daily life, prayer is also a moment to connect, she said. "We pray over every important milestone," she said. "We just really feel that God is the third person in this marriage. It's me, Charles and the Lord."

Cheryl J. Sanders, senior pastor at Third Street Church of God in Northwest Washington and a professor of Christian ethics at Howard University, said that with marriage in apparent decline, it is important to know what works in a relationship. "I welcome that kind of information," she said.

Deenice Galloway, 54, said faith has helped her marriage span 30 years, as she and her husband have raised two children in Bowie. "You have to use your faith to work through a whole lot of ups and downs and difficult moments," she said. "It makes it a whole lot easier."

Still, the study shows that religion did not have positive effects for all.

When one partner attends services regularly and the other does not, relationship satisfaction is lower.

Two nonreligious partners are more content together than partners with different practices, the study says.

"When couples do things together -- whether it's bird-watching, playing tennis or attending church -- they tend to do better," Wilcox said, and "when they don't share these activities, particularly when they are important, couples are more likely to suffer."

Still, experts such as Frank Fincham, director of the Family Institute at Florida State University, question whether the "active ingredient" that leads some couples to report greater satisfaction is really faith-based.

Fincham suggests maybe it's not religion but something else about the people who embrace it, or some other activity that couples do together.

The study's results are based on a recent analysis of a 2006 U.S. survey of 1,387 adults ages 18 to 59. Nearly 90 percent were married, and the others were living together.

The authors noted limitations of the study, such as relying on interviews with one partner rather than both. They controlled for income, age and education but not for other factors that might lead to relationship satisfaction, such as personality traits.

The Rev. James E. Terrell, pastor of Second Baptist Church in Northwest Washington, said that among his members he has observed shared beliefs as a source of marital unity.

"People seem to do better when they think there is a spiritual aspect to their marriage," Terrell said. That includes services and praying but also "seeking the Lord in terms of resolving problems and differences," he said. "Without a doubt, it helps to keep a marriage together."

The Fate of the Spirit The wobbly religious lives of young people emerging into adulthood.

By NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY College professors have been complaining about their students since the beginning of time, and not without reason. But in the past several years more that a few professors—to judge by my conversations with a wide range of them—have noticed an occasional bright light shining out from the dull, party-going, anti-intellectual masses who stare back at them from class to class. Young men and women from strong religious backgrounds, these professors say, often do better than their peers, if only because they are more engaged with liberal-arts subject matter and more inclined to study with diligence.

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The Country Today/Associated Press Teens gather at a worship ceremony in Green Bay, Wis.

If you want to get a sense of why this might be so, look no further than "Souls in Transition," by Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith. Examining the data from his vast longitudinal National Study of Youth and Religion, "Souls" uses statistics and face-to-face interviews to paint a picture—not necessarily a pretty one—of the moral and spiritual lives of 18- to 24-year-olds in America.

Religion, of course, does not make people smart—as Richard Dawkins and other atheists will tell you. But it does seem to save young adults from a vacuous and dispiriting moral relativism. The study's interviews with nonreligious or semi-religious "emerging adults" tend to show vague powers of moral reasoning and a vague inarticulateness. Take this all too typical explanation from one respondent of how one might tell right from wrong: "Morality is how I feel too, because in my heart, I could feel it. You could feel what's right or wrong in your heart as well as your mind. Most of the time, I always felt, I feel it in my heart and it makes it easier for me to morally decide what's right and wrong. Because if I feel about doing something, I'm going to feel it in my heart, and if it feels good, I'm going to do it."

Mr. Smith notes that the persistent use of "feel" instead of "think" or "argue" is "a shift in language use that expresses an essentially subjectivistic and emotivistic approach to moral reasoning and rational argument." He concludes that such young adults "are de facto doubtful that an indentifiable, objective, shared reality might exist across and around all people."

By contrast, young religious people have been made to think seriously and speak publicly about Big Questions from a young age. They do believe in a reality "out there" that can be studied and apprehended. Their answers to the study's questions are crisper and surer than those of their nonreligious counterparts. Amanda, a young woman from a conservative Christian denomination, tells her interviewer: "First and foremost, I believe that there is a God who is all-powerful and all-knowing, who created the whole universe. I believe what the Bible says about him."

The core of reality for students like Amanda is of course religious, but their belief in the very possibility of a nonrelativistic truth may well give a boost to their classroom seriousness, not to mention their verbal clarity.

But Amanda is unlike most members of her generation. Emerging adults in America, Mr. Smith says, are "the least religious adults in the United States today." Only about 20% attend religious services at least once a week, a 22% decline from Mr. Smith's survey, five years ago, of the same group of young people.

In the absence of any firm religious belief or clear idea of morality, many of the study's subjects have decided that "karma" is the best way to make sense of the universe. By this term they mean that, as Mr. Smith puts it, "good attitudes and behavior will be rewarded in this life and bad will get what it deserves too." The gist seems to be: "What goes around comes around." As one student says: "Karma's a bitch."

It had better be, because there is apparently not much else motivating nonreligious young adults toward charitable behavior. As Mr. Smith summarizes: "Any notion of the responsibilities of a common humanity, a transcendent call to protect the life and dignity of one's neighbor or a moral responsibility to seek the common good, was almost entirely absent among the respondents."

Souls in Transition
By Christian Smith, with Patricia Snell
(Oxford, 355 pages, $24.95)
Read an excerpt

Mr. Smith concedes that the young people interviewed in his study don't appear to be "dramatically less religious than former generations of emerging adults." It is traditionally a stage in life when, without parental guidance or child-rearing responsibilities, religious ties are loosened. But the period of emerging adulthood—between young people leaving home and their marrying and setting up a home of their own—is growing longer these days, because people marry later and remain financially dependent on their parents well into their 20s. The time without steady religious observance is thus prolonged as never before.

And the costs could be high. Not only does religion concentrate the mind and help young people to think about moral questions, it also leads to positive social outcomes. Religious young people are more likely to give to charity, do volunteer work and become involved with social institutions (even nonreligious ones). They are less likely to smoke, drink and use drugs. They have a higher age of first sexual encounter and are less likely to feel depressed or to be overweight. They are less concerned with material possessions and more likely to go to college.

So why are most emerging adults so morally unmoored and religiously alienated? Mr. Smith suggests that religious institutions haven't done a very good job at educating kids in even the most basic tenets of their faiths. And religious parents often shirk their duties, too, perhaps believing the "cultural myth" that they have no influence over their children once they hit puberty. Mr. Smith has found, to the contrary, that, when it comes to religious faith and practice, "who and what parents were and are" is more likely to "stick" with emerging adults than the beliefs and habits of their teenage friends.

Oddly, most of the respondents in Mr. Smith's study, despite their own drifting away from religious belief, say that they expect to be more observant when they reach full adulthood and that they plan to rear their own children in their faith tradition. One young college student who spends a lot of time drinking and smoking pot tells her interviewer: "I think you should give them that, kind of rear them in some religious direction."

—Ms. Riley is the Journal's deputy Taste editor.