Longing Within

This essay on individual faith is the first in a five-part series about the value of religion

SALT LAKE CITY — 

“Faith empowers us to see the invisible, embrace the impossible, and hope for the incredible.” — Reverend Samuel Rodriguez[1]

Our modern world offers more choices and possibilities than ever before. Science and technology continually expand our knowledge, and the diversity of religious worldviews keeps growing. Our horizons seem to stretch thinner and faster than we are capable of handling. But in the end we remainthe same spiritual creatures. Throughout our journeys the longing within endures.

Religions share a common insight: there is something incomplete about us. And so we yearn for fullness. If every question had a ready answer, there would be no reaching in prayer. If every pain had an easy cure, there would be no thirst for salvation. If every loss was restored, there would be no desire for heaven. As long as these needs remain, so will religion. It is a natural part of life. To be human means to experience uncertainty, sorrow and death. Religion, however, is a school for making sense of chaos, a hospital for healing unseen wounds, a lifeline that gives us second chances.

To this point, Rabbi David Wolpe taught that religion “can go into a world in which there is a great deal of pain and suffering and loss and bring meaning and purpose and peace.”[2]

Though religion addresses these needs, it is not created by them. Religion is not merely a human response to hardship. It transcends the human; it comes from a higher source. History shows that men and women, in good times and bad, seek truth outside themselves as well as within. And they follow the answers they receive.

What is more, religion is the gathering of unique persons into a fellowship of believers. But if it cannot win the heart of the one, it cannot sustain its community. The spiritual experiences of each individual can be as different as the individuals themselves. Because we “see through a glass darkly,”[3] most things in life come down to faith. Ultimately, in those searching moments with the divine, it is the individual who filters the details, weighs the evidence, and makes decisions on matters of highest significance. This wrangling is the process of faith. Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote: “To believe in God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter.”[4]

Human life is about meaning. Our nature leads us to spiritual questioning and purpose. Religion provides a space where answers and meaning can be sought, found and passed on. That connection between religion and purpose continues today.

Whether it is healthy lifestyles, social trust or charitable giving, social science attests to a myriad of ways religion benefits individuals. According to one recent study, for example, “those who indicate that they are confident in God's existence report a higher sense of purpose.”[5]

This is particularly relevant now. Our encounter with modern life is often a flash of images that burn bright and fade away — so rich on the surface, so neglected at the roots. But religion and the spirituality it inspires digs beneath that surface and connects us to the moral foundations that undergird the best of our shared humanity.

Throughout his life Will Durant, a historian of ideas and cultures, marveled at the power of religious faith. He himself, however, came to no definitive belief about God. At the end of his life of learning and observation he turned his mind to the meaning of the church. In his reflections he showed that even an agnostic person can see the abiding appeal of religion in the face of the unknown:

"These church steeples, everywhere pointing upward, ignoring despair and lifting hope, these lofty city spires, or simple chapels in the hills — they rise at every step from the earth toward the sky; in every village of every nation they challenge doubt and invite weary hearts to consolation. Is it all a vain delusion? Is there nothing beyond life but death, and nothing beyond death but decay? We cannot know. But as long as man suffers, these steeples will remain."[6]

Institutions and ideas flourish when they fulfill real, lasting needs. Otherwise, they tend to die of natural causes. But religion has not died. Writing at a time, in the 1830s, when his home country of France was departing from religion, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that “the soul has needs that must be satisfied.”[7] He has proven correct. Over the centuries, attempts to squelch these needs have failed. Religion provides the structure for this longing, and churches are the household of faith.

Though built of wood, stone and steel, churches represent something deep in the human soul, something we long to uncover. More than anything man-made, religion gives direction and shape to the individual search for meaning.


[1] Samuel Rodriguez, “Religious Liberty and Complacent Christianity,” The Christian Post, Sep. 10, 2013.

[2] “Why Faith Matters: Rabbi David J. Wolpe,” lecture given at Emory University, Oct. 21, 2008.

[3] 1 Corinthians 13:12.

[4] Ludwig Wittgenstein, personal journal entry (8 July 1916), p. 74e.

[5] Stephen Cranney, “Do People Who Believe in God Report More Meaning in Their Lives? The Existential Effects of Belief," Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Sept. 4, 2013.

[6] Will and Ariel Durant, Dual Autobiography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977).

[7] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 510.

By Amanda Comak

It was just before noon one Sunday this summer when many Washington Nationals found their way into a nondescript room a few steps from the visitors' clubhouse at Turner Field. They shuffled in wearing shorts and T-shirts. Some had barely wiped the sleep from their eyes after a long game the night before.

They came for chapel, and for a brief interlude between one baseball game and the next.

The room itself was not set up for this purpose. It was an auxiliary room, intended mostly for news conferences, and the dropping of weights from the gym next door reverberated through the thin walls. A banner on a small podium featured the Atlanta Braves' logo. All the room held otherwise was a bunch of plastic chairs.

They talked that day about the idea that bad things can happen to good people. They talked about the devastation caused by the vicious tornadoes that ripped through Moore, Okla., and how God could let something like that happen to those people. People who lost everything — some, even their lives.

The Nationals were in the midst of a particularly poor stretch of the season. That week alone, they lost four times in a six-game span and they wouldn't play consistently the way they had expected until late August. During their time in chapel, their on-field pursuits were not mentioned once.

Some shared their thoughts; others only listened. The chaplain, a former ballplayer himself, interspersed applicable verses of the Bible with stories about his own life, perhaps as an example of how the players could relate them to theirs.

It was as far from the bright lights under which they are usually seen as they could be without leaving the stadium.

"The way this life can be structured, that reminder on Sunday is beneficial. It's calming," said manager Davey Johnson. "We're trying to make normalcy out of something — a schedule, a lifestyle — that isn't normal."

Baseball chapel services are available to players on every team, and many, the Nationals included, also hold Catholic Mass.

"It gives you a broader perspective of what's going on," said relief pitcher Craig Stammen. "Because when you get locked into the season, it's like you have tunnel vision and you're in a whole different universe from the rest of the world."

It's not part of everyone's schedule, though.

Baseball's daily rhythm is distinct, so it's sometimes easy to forget that for eight months all these men of different backgrounds and beliefs are thrown together. Some are Catholic, or Mormon, or from Protestant denominations. Some are indifferent, or apathetic. Some are Jews, or Jehovah's Witnesses, or those who have more scientific beliefs.

But this year, perhaps more than in years past, religion has become a frequent topic inside the Nationals' clubhouse. Players of differing beliefs discuss them, sometimes turning into hotly contested debates. Multiple players, regardless of whether they were actively religious or not, said they never had been on a team that talks about religion as much as this one.

"People always say, 'When you're with strangers you don't talk about politics, you don't talk about religion,'" Stammen said. "But we've all become good enough friends that I don't think we judge each other too much. We can talk about it a little bit. And there's guys who are very interested and inquisitive, because they don't know much about it."

Finding a purpose

Adam LaRoche was raised a Christian. He went to Bible study on Wednesday nights, and Sunday school, and church. But he eventually found himself doing those things out of obligation, and not desire. About five years ago, the even-tempered first baseman had an epiphany of sorts.

"I asked myself: 'Why are we here?'" LaRoche said. "I've asked a few people that over the years. 'What is our purpose on this earth?' My opinion is that it's to spread God's word and that's it. And when that finally hit me, it put baseball and all that other stuff in perspective.

"I heard one chaplain put it this way: What do you want written on your tombstone? Do you want 'Adam LaRoche: Gold Glove, batting average, hit so many homers, and has a million dollars in his bank account,' or do you want 'Adam LaRoche: Man of God, integrity, raised a great family, loving.' Let's be honest: I don't know anybody who wants their stats."

LaRoche calls himself a non-denominational Christian and tells those who ask about his church, "I am a follower of Jesus." He is probably the most vocally religious member of the Nationals. If the team is on the road and can't find a chaplain on Sunday, LaRoche could lead the group. If a teammate knocks on his door at 2 a.m. wanting to talk about "walking in the light," he's happy to oblige.

LaRoche spearheaded the team's effort to host Faith Night at Nationals Park this season. The event featured a concert by Third Day, a Christian rock band, and a handful of Nationals sharing a few thoughts with several thousand fans. Ian Desmond, Anthony Rendon, Denard Span and Stammen participated, but it was LaRoche who delivered a sermon of sorts.

He is most comfortable, though, with smaller conversations, quiet moments when teammates come to him with questions.

"What I'm very careful to do is not do it in a judgmental way, ever," LaRoche said. "Because I've had guys in the past who have come up and tried to beat the Bible over my head and tell me what I shouldn't be doing: 'You keep doing this, you're going to hell.' And that is absolutely not the way to preach. Period."

When religion emerges on the athletic stage, it sometimes can lead to an eye-roll reaction. But within the Nationals' clubhouse, LaRoche has found his beliefs allied with many peers.

"Some of the skeptics are probably those who have a misinterpretation of what a big-league ballplayer is all about," Desmond said. "I guarantee if you ask 100 people on the street, 90 percent of them think all baseball players run around and cheat on their wives, they're out late, howling at the moon. I think that's a little bit of a misconception. This is a great platform, but you have to be willing to live the life you witness."

Desmond and Stammen went through a similar process to LaRoche. Both attended Catholic school, Desmond in Florida and Stammen in Ohio, largely following the leads of their parents and doing it mostly out of habit more than any deep connection. For both, their faith grew as they matured.

Baseball, despite the view from the outside of its fast lifestyle, has helped foster that, they said.

"It's not easy to just say, 'Hey, I'm a Christian, I'm a believer in God. I need to steer myself away from the sin of this world,'" Desmond said. "But when you have a group of guys that you're basically brothers with and one of them says it, it's easier for everyone else to feel like, 'Hey, yeah, I'm a Christian, too.' You're not that lone duck out there. It's a support group."

"I think it's given me an open mind," Stammen said. "When you play baseball, you meet people from Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Florida, California, Texas, and you get all different kinds of perspectives on the same thing. You learn to appreciate everybody — how they grew up and their beliefs — and not be so closed-minded on 'What I believe is exactly right.'"

Speaking their minds

Dan Haren was raised Catholic. He went to Catholic school and then Pepperdine University. He has attended many Sunday morning chapel sessions during his 11 years in the major leagues. But it wasn't until recently that the 33-year-old pitcher began to really study religion. It is the history of human beings that interests him.

"When I've gone to chapel in the past it's for all the wrong reasons," he said. "It's probably because I've had three bad games in a row. I think when you believe in a higher power, most of the time you're always asking for something. So I stopped going because I felt like I was just going there to ask for things, or to go through the motions."

Haren spent many days in Washington exploring the National Museum of Natural History, studying the science and history of the world. He read a Time magazine poll that posed the question: If science found a fact that contradicted the tenets of your faith, what would you believe? Sixty-four percent of Americans said they would continue to hold on to their religious beliefs. He mentioned the poll to LaRoche one day this year.

"Adam is one of the more open-minded people on the team," Haren said. "A lot of people just close themselves off. You believe one way or the other, and when you hear something else you just completely block it off. [The results of that poll], I think, bother me a little bit. I don't know why, but it just does. I don't want to seem like I'm testing their faith or anything, but I like to understand it from an intellectual standpoint.

"I like to hear what they have to say and then I kind of take it all in and give a rebuttal. Then they take it all in and come back to me. If it ever gets to the point of them or me becoming upset, it stops right there because I think there's certain things that are good to talk about, but this is really a workplace."

Still, Haren and others have challenged the more ardent believers in the Nationals' clubhouse this season, bringing different viewpoints to the table. Haren is inquisitive and studious, asking outfielder Bryce Harper about his Mormon faith or engaging LaRoche and Desmond with questions about the Bible. All are willing to talk with him, even if the conversation gets loud.

"I'm sitting on the bus and I'll just [put my head in my hands] because, of course, Haren has his views and Scott Hairston has his views and Desmond and Span and [LaRoche]," said Harper, the only Mormon on the team. "But I try to stay away from it as much as I can. I just sit there and laugh and listen. It's pretty fun to hear what they have to say because they all get so heated about it."

Harper, who attended seminary classes at 5 a.m. on weekdays in high school, writes "Luke 1:37" on every autograph he signs. "For with God, nothing shall be impossible." It's his way own of spreading the Gospel.

Harper decided not to go on a Mormon mission because of his career, though he considered it. That fits for him because proselytizing isn't his style. "If somebody asks me about it, I'll tell them about it, but I'm not going to be Mr. Tim Tebow," he said, clarifying that he does not mean that in a derogatory way.

"My mom always told me, 'You can touch a lot more lives playing baseball and doing good things than you would on a mission,'" Harper said. "It's very true. Shoot, I'll tweet about God and get 1,500 retweets and it's like, that just went to 1,500 people or more.

"I'm going to try to be the best person I can off the field [and promote my faith that way]. What I say is, 'I try to be the best walking Book of Mormon as I can.'"

Diverse beliefs, mutual goal

Within the melting pot that is the Nationals clubhouse, most of those interviewed for this story agreed on a few things.

First, that the exchange of ideas and open-mindedness to listen to other opinions was important and, overall, positive.

"I'll have a debate with anybody," LaRoche said. "They may get mad, but we're still great friends an hour later. I've found, the majority of the time, if we're willing to open up about it, guys are incredibly receptive."

Second, part of why they're able to do that is because there isn't a lot of unsolicited preaching. Those who hold fervent religious beliefs stressed that timing is important, and some said they mostly avoid the topic unless approached.

"You don't ever want to push it on somebody because I've had teammates in the past, before I was walking in the light, that would," Desmond said. "It was just too much, and that pushed me away."

Setting aside each individual's religious beliefs, they agree that the common ground is where they can retreat to living their lives in a good, moral way.

"Religion or not, I'm all about being a good human being, treating people like you want to be treated," Haren said. "I'm definitely not perfect by any means. But I try my best to live by that rule: trying to be the best person I can possibly be — a good role model for your kids, a good husband for your wife."

The debates will continue to rage, and the goal is not for one to tell another, "You're right and I'm wrong." Between the scouting reports, the relentless schedule and all the rest, the exchanges of ideas will go on.

"I really think there's something inside of us that feels good to accept a higher power," Haren said. "When people say, 'God will show me the way,' or 'Things happen for a reason,' I think that feels good for people to let themselves feel like they're being guided. That's comforting for people of any religion.

"That does appeal to me too, but I just like to focus more on the reason and really understand it. What exactly does this mean?"

October 23, 2012, 12:30 pm

And God Spoke to Abraham (Lincoln)

By EDWARD J. BLUM and PAUL HARVEY

In early October 1862, Abraham Lincoln received a letter from God.

"I am your Heavenly Father and the God of all Nations," it began. God had particular explanations and instructions for the president, whose entire term of office had been defined by war. "I am the cause for the disruption between the North and the South," he continued, and the point was to destroy the "horrible state of affairs" that man's "selfish nature" had brought. "I am not partial and have no respect of persons." Coming just weeks after the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, the letter made it clear that God wanted to destroy slavery. For further instructions, God told Lincoln to gather six of his best men and meet in person "my instrument the Messenger of Peace the Christ of this day."

Conveniently, the "Christ of this day" was not only staying in Washington, but lived just a few miles from the White House, at 476 Pennsylvania Avenue. At the meeting and through the medium, God would explain "what to do that will speedily terminate this Devilish war."

Lincoln did not believe the letter was from God, of course; as he suspected, it came from a local religious devotee named Lydia Smith, who believed herself to be God's medium. For Lincoln, this kind of supernatural penetration was lunacy, not prophecy. He didn't believe that God walked the earth, inserting himself into the affairs of men. He told one group of ministers who had earlier pressed him for emancipation that these were not "the days of miracles," and that "I suppose it will be granted that I am not to expect a direct revelation."

Yet for as much as Lincoln disclaimed the possibilities of "direct revelation," writers to him thought otherwise. This was, after all, the mid-19th century, when religious fervor ran deep in the country's psyche, not to mention the middle of the Civil War. The possibility of overturning slavery had so fired spiritual sentiments across the North that self-proclaimed mediums and prophets believed that God was on the move in the nation. Throughout the war, and especially when it came to emancipation, people sent the president missives on what God was doing, where Jesus was and how the sacred could win the war for the Union.

Perhaps the most interesting spiritual letter Lincoln received was from a man named George F. Kelly. A month after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in 1863, Kelly warned the president that he was "surrounded by Spies and men of evil intentions." Perhaps, he wrote, Lincoln wondered now "if God has forsaken us." But, Kelly insisted, this was not the case. Instead, God had further demands for the president.

Kelly, claiming to be channeling God, called on the president to "adopt the plans called, Radical," which would emancipate the slaves and bring full racial equality to the nation. "I have Seen in visions," Kelly went on. The son of God, he reported, had returned and was ready to lead Lincoln's military to overthrow the South. "Have not the honest hearted been longing for the Second 'Jesus' to Save this nation and the world," Kelly asked, and then answered, "Have ye not heard that in one of the New England States 'God has raised him up in humble life'?" Did he not, Kelly asked, "do even So with His former Servant; who toiled with the people more than thirty years?" Kelly's prophetic vision concluded that in two weeks, Jesus would reveal himself and win the war for the Union.

Although Lincoln considered Kelly a "Crazy Man," as the president wrote on one envelope from him, the letter was telling. In the midst of a war where white men were killing white men in epic numbers over, in part, the institution of slavery, Kelly now envisioned Jesus to be a New Englander who would fight to free the black captives. In Kelly's eyes, Jesus looked and sounded awfully similar to John Brown. The man who had been executed for treason only a few years earlier, but who had fired spiritual sentiments himself with comparisons to Christ, seemed to be reincarnated and ready to fight.

There were other letters Lincoln received from other spiritual guides, and there were other claims about Christ's power in America at the time. Some demanded money, as was the case where one writer requested half a billion dollars to "Reveale, Christ, Jesus."

At first glance, such letters, and the millenarian spirituality they articulated, sound like vestiges of the culture modern men and women left behind. We would expect talk of revelations and prophecies from colonial Puritans, who executed one another with threats of witchcraft. But the mid-19th century was hardly the modern secular society we sometimes imagine it to be. Firsthand encounters with the sacred were commonplace claims by even respected, "modern" Americans.

Lincoln may have considered George Kelly and the others "crazy" for their visions, but their experiences were little different from those of the abolitionist and feminist Sojourner Truth, who met with Lincoln in October 1864 and bonded with him over one of his favorite Bibles. Years earlier, Truth believed that God spoke to her. According to one of Truth's friends, she said that "God revealed himself to her, with all the suddenness of flash of lightning."

Experiences like this one led Truth to join the growing Millerite movement of the 1830s, which followed the biblical calculus of William Miller toward the conclusion that Jesus was going to return in the early 1840s. When the Second Coming failed to materialize in 1844, the "Great Disappointment" left many confused. But Truth continued to believe that God and Christ could and would intervene in this world; when her fellow abolitionist Frederick Douglass spoke despairingly about the chances for justice, she interrupted him with a rebuke in the form of a question, "Frederick, is God dead?"

There was no disappointment for Joseph Smith, for whom Jesus and God were very much alive. He met with them in upstate New York around the same time Sojourner Truth was earning her freedom, and Smith's "first vision" became a central element of Mormon theology and belief. Indeed, the notion that God still intervened in this world was critical to the emergence of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and during the Civil War, many Mormons believed that the carnage was evidence of Smith's prophetic powers. In 1832, he had prophesied that "war will be poured out." It would begin with South Carolina and envelop the entire nation. "For behold, the Southern States shall be divided against the Northern States." Nat Turner's spirit would take over, and "after many days, slaves shall rise up against their masters, who shall be marshaled and disciplined for war." At the time of Lincoln's election, one Mormon diarist wrote excitedly, "The south is angry; the North is no better and from what I can see they are both hastening to fulfill the Prophecy of Joseph Smith Jr."

If we broaden our scope even further, we see that during the Civil War, more and more Northerners were searching for God's voice amid the chaos and carnage. Almost as quickly as the war began, some Northerners were pushing for the phrase "In God We Trust" to be placed on coinage. In 1864, a group of Protestant clergy formed the National Reform Association to petition Lincoln and Congress to amend the Constitution to acknowledge "Almighty God" and "the Lord Jesus Christ as the Ruler among nations."

Perhaps most famously, Julia Ward Howe imagined the spirit of Christ (who was "born across the sea") inspiring soldiers in this country. "As he died to make men holy," the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" versed, "let us die to make men free." In the decades after the war and into the 20th century, the song became a staple of American religious culture. Its most famous vocalists, in fact, have been the members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

And of course, by the war's end it was Abraham Lincoln himself who was ruminating on the spiritual meaning of the war and slavery, almost as much as the prophets and mediums who had previously written to him. During his now famous Second Inaugural on March 4, 1865, Lincoln made public his private wonders about what God was doing. He asked his audience, what caused the war? What were God's purposes for the future? Lincoln was uncertain on much of it, but he knew this: slavery was somehow the cause of the war; God hates injustice; and the nation must now bring "charity" and "right" to heal the land. Beyond that, he concluded, "The Almighty has His own purposes."

When Lincoln invoked the Almighty during his Second Inaugural, he tapped into the widespread sense in the North that something spiritual was happening during the war. For as much as he differed from people like George Kelly and Lydia Smith, he shared with them the focus on trying to discern what God had in store for the land. Some believed that the events of the war were so momentous that they were themselves evidence of the work of Jesus and God on earth. Others hoped that by invoking the sacred - either through song or in the Constitution - they could gain the Almighty's favor or empower men to continue to fight.

The songs, the letters, the prophecies, the experiences spoke to another layer of how deeply the Civil War and emancipation touched hearts, minds, and spirits of Americans in the North. Deluged in blood, but hopeful for a peaceful nation shorn of enslavement, these mystics, mediums, prophets, politicians, writers and clergy believed that the events of 150 years ago had ushered in God's intervention. They demonstrate most clearly how war changes people not only in body, but in soul, too.

Follow Disunion at twitter.com/NYTcivilwar or join us on Facebook.

Edward J. Blum, a historian at San Diego State University, and Paul Harvey, a professor of history at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, are the co-authors of "The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America."

http://www.parade.com/news/2009/10/04-how-spiritual-are-we.html

October 4, 2009 Washington Post Parade Magazine

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.

View Full Image

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.