This can be classified as a major church FAIL. It is not that all teens are functionally illiterate, but most teens indeed are. They have not acquired and thus have not practiced using the tools to articulate their religion. This was a finding Christian Smith reports in the book Soul Searching where data from the National Study of Youth and Religion is presented. The following is worth quoting in full.
We do not believe that teenage inarticulacy about religious matters reflects any general teen incapacity to think and speak well. Many of the youth we interviewed were quite conversant when it came to their views on salient issues in their lives about which they had been educated and had practice discussing, such as the dangers of drug abuse and STD's. Rather, our impression as interviewers was that many teenagers could not articulate matters of faith becuase they have not been effectively educated in and provided opportunities to practice talking about their faith. Indeed, it was our distinct sense that for many of the teens we interviewed, our interview was the first time that any adult had ever asked them what they believed and how it mattered in their life…Religious language is like any other language: to learn how to speak it, one needs first to listen to native speakers using it a lot, and then one needs plenty of practice at speaking it oneself. Many U.S. teenagers, it appears, are not getting a significant amount of such exposure and practice and so are simply not learning the religious language of their faith traditions (p. 133).
Yet what is also clear from the same study, is that teenagers by a great majority think religion is important and foundational for life in general. They are more conservative with their desire to stay with the traditions of their parents than research of baby boomers has shown. Yet they are not being acculturated well enough, if at all. The data shows us that the mainline traditions are perhaps doing the worst at this simple task of educating youth to be religious people. Of course, I would suspect that we have an entire generation of adults who are unable to articulate basic understandings of the bible, Christian theology, and that which differentiates their tradition from others.
How would you characterize the religious literacy of your youth, and your adults in church? And then, what are you going to do about it?
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