Finalist for Christianity Today’s Book of the Year Award, Marriage & Family Category.
Handing Down the Faith: How Parents Pas Their Religion on to the Next Generation
The most important influence shaping the religious and spiritual lives of children, youth, and teenagers is their parents. A myriad of studies show that the parents of American youth play the leading role in shaping the character of their religious and spiritual lives, even well after they leave home and often for the rest of their lives. We know a lot about the importance of parents in faith transmission. However we know much less about the actual beliefs, feelings, and activities of the parents themselves, what Christian Smith and Amy Adamczyk call the "intergenerational transmission of religious faith and practice." To address that gap, this book reports the findings of a new national study of religious parents in the United States.
The findings and conclusions in Handing Down the Faith are based on over 200 in-depth, personal interviews with religious parents from many traditions and different parts of the country, and sophisticated analyses of two nationally representative surveys of American parents about their religious parenting.
“Parents wanting their children to practice the same religion as they do or to seek spirituality in other meaningful ways are values that many families cherish. Curiously, though, social scientists have paid less attention to how these values are transmitted than might have been expected. Smith and Adamczyk present valuable information from qualitative interviews and surveys that addresses this topic. This is sociology of religion at its most informative. Scholars, religious leaders, and parents will benefit from digging into the insights it provides.”
“In this fascinating study, Smith and Adamczyk—with nuance and a good deal of daring—show how raising young people with faith is not just a matter of parental resolve. Handing Down the Faith—the final and most religiously diverse book to emerge from the team behind the massive National Study of Youth and Religion (of special note: a section focusing on immigrant parents)—shows how cultural shifts have revolutionized the already outsized role parents play in their children’s faith. Smith and Adamczyk do not varnish their sociological conclusion: Going forward, it will be parents—not religious traditions or institutions—who influence our children’s faith. An urgent “must read” for anyone invested in the religious lives of young people.”
“Handing Down the Faith represents a comprehensive and compelling analysis of religious parenting. The rich data enlisted here, focused principally on interviews but also coupled with various surveys, are most impressive. This book provides a critical contribution to a vitally important area of scholarship.”
