Jan 18, 2011

The National Study of Youth and Religion gathered data showing that youths of the United States hold varying beliefs about what it means to be religious. CPC Fellow and Associate Professor of Sociology at UNC-Chapel Hill Lisa D. Pearce discussed the meaning of these diverse results in a recent Huffington Post article with co-author Melinda Lundquist Denton. Within the article, they highlight the difficulty of designating one person’s beliefs and practices as “religious” or “not religious” in comparison with those of another individual. Pearce and Denton point out that trying to measure religiousness on a scale of low to high is relatively futile because of the differences in what it means to be religious from person to person. The authors say varying religious beliefs can be more easily understood by classifying individuals in specific profiles of religiousness. The profiles Pearce and Denton use are based on qualitative measures, such as whether or not a person attends religious services regularly and whether they hold any belief in God. The article discusses three distinct profiles, which are discussed in more detail in a recently published book Pearce and Denton co-authored. The book, A Faith of Their Own, further analyzes the religious beliefs of the United States’ young people and discusses five different profiles of religiousness.

The full article can be read here. To visit Lisa D. Pearce’s website, click here.