Study: Religious kids are better off

By Laura Sessions Stepp
Washington Post

WASHINGTON — Here's a crazy idea: After all our ambitious child-rearing with Discovery toys, Suzuki piano lessons, conflict-avoidance classes, 4 a.m. swim practices, SAT prep classes, driver education and summer flights to study folk music in the Republic of Georgia, we might have done as well (and saved a lot of money) by just sending our kids to church, temple or mosque.

Late last year, a commission convened by Dartmouth Medical School, among others, studied years of research on kids and concluded young people who are religious are better off in significant ways than their secular peers. They are less likely than nonbelievers to smoke and drink and more likely to eat well; less likely to commit crimes and more likely to wear seat belts; less likely to be depressed and more likely to be satisfied with family and school.

"Religion has a unique net effect on adolescents above and beyond factors like race, parental education and family income," says Brad Wilcox, a University of Virginia sociologist and panel member. Poor children who are religious will do better than poor children who are not religious, he adds — and in some cases better than nonreligious middle-class children.

Meanwhile, a social groundswell may be under way, as a larger proportion of teenagers than a decade ago say religion is important. In 2001, about three out of five teenagers said religion was "pretty important" or "very important" to them — a significant increase, according to Child Trends, a research organization that analyzes federal data. The biggest jump occurred not among poor and unambitious teenagers — the stereotyped believers — but among young achievers who anticipated finishing four years of college.

Such teenagers have helped make a hit out of "Joan of Arcadia," a CBS show about a 15-year-old who talks to God; it has been renewed for a second season. They've sustained a decade-long growth in the number of high-school Bible clubs to about 15,000. They are swelling the enrollment at Christian colleges at three times the rate of other schools. Religion is getting bigger in teenagers' lives, and the Dartmouth panel's findings may suggest to some that it should.

Though one of its sponsors, the Institute for American Values, publishes a good bit about God and faith, the commission was no conclave of religious conservatives. It included professors and researchers at the medical schools of Harvard and UCLA as well as experts on child-rearing practice including T. Berry Brazelton and Robert Coles.

The commission members said that religious congregations benefit teenagers by affirming who they are, expecting a lot from them and giving them opportunities to show what they can do. These are not exactly earthshaking observations; as the panel noted, the same could be said of clubs, sports teams and other youth organizations (such as the YMCA, which helped pay for the study). What sets religious groups apart, however — and makes a surprisingly big difference to kids, according to the panel — is that they promote a "direct personal relationship with the Divine."

Adolescents, said the Dartmouth group, are "hard-wired to connect" to people and God.

Panels of academics and medical practitioners don't usually refer to "the Divine." But these experts couldn't ignore what the data suggested, in particular two things: Religion or spirituality may influence young people's brain circuits, reducing levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and personal devotion is twice as likely to protect them from risky behavior as it would adults.

"Their brains are changing, their relations with family, friends and the opposite sex are changing, and they're beginning to figure out what their purpose in the world will be," Wilcox says. "We know that people often turn to God in the midst of momentous changes. Adolescents are no different."

Kimbrey Pierce, a Columbia, Md., high-school senior, puts it more simply. "God isn't just a part of my life, He's the whole thing," she says. "I like knowing he is making the best decisions for me. That way I don't worry too much."

Teen ministry helps church grow

WASHINGTON — On Sundays you can find 100 or more young people hanging out at Glen Mar United Methodist Church, an Ellicott City, Md., congregation that doubled its membership in the 1980s and again in the 1990s and now counts 1,500 active members.

Senior pastor Anders Lunt realized long ago that the way to grow a church was to attract baby boomers and the way to attract boomers was through their kids. The church youth program took off six years ago when its first full-time youth director, D.C. Veale, was hired.

Veale, a bearded, Tolkienesque figure in his early 30s, recruited adults to help him with a struggling group of fewer than 20 regular members. Today he calls on about 30 adult volunteers to lead a youth choir, handbell choir and rock band, a video tech team, plays and scavenger hunts, Bible groups, community service projects and mission trips.

Kids also play major parts in more traditional worship, teaching Sunday school, reading Scripture, and three times a year preaching sermons so popular that people squeeze in at the back of the sanctuary and spill out into the front hall.

Lunt has instructed his congregation that no place is off-limits to the young. When babies cry during a sermon, he has been known to stop mid-sentence to assure parents it's OK.

"I have been in churches where there are no children," the congenial, sandy-haired pastor will say, "and those are awful places."

It is Veale's job to keep the children coming, and coming back, even when they wander away as teenagers are wont to do. He drops by soccer games, wrestling matches and school plays. Several years ago, he noticed that a quiet middle-school boy named Andrew Flanigan had been absent for a while, so he called Andrew's mother, Brenda, and asked, "How's Andrew doing? Would he like to go on a trip?"

Andrew, now a high-school senior, is telling this story. In his frayed jeans, T-shirt and fuzzy goatee, he'd easily go unnoticed in any group of kids. Which is how he likes it.

In elementary school he had a stutter and learning problems. "Everyone made fun of me," he says. "Everyone." Then one afternoon in sixth grade he came home to hear Brenda sobbing. His father had walked out on the family without warning.

His grades tanked. Brenda stopped taking him to Glen Mar for a year. (The No. 1 reason kids say they go to church is because their parents take them.)

"I'd be long gone if it weren't for this church," he says. He remembers the night he returned to the youth group after having been away. "Several people said, 'Hey, you're back!' The love I felt coming out of everyone was amazing. The hurt went away for a while."