Consistency in Beliefs and Behaviors of Highly Religious Christian Youth

With Christian Smith’s consent, research was conducted at a life Conference (Christian & Missionary Alliance’s national youth conference, July 2013) using a modified version of Christian Smith’s and Lisa Pearce’s interview instrument, used in the National Study of Youth & Religion (2002). Approximately two thousand life Conference attendees (close to 400 youth leaders and 1600 students) participated in the research, though this study reports only on the adolescent responses. Frequency measures and multiple regression analyses provide evidence that adolescents’ religiosity appears to be positively associated with pro-social beliefs and behaviors and negatively associated with pop-culture-religiosity (zombies, vampires, good witches, etc.) beliefs. Single items and scales represented the religiosity variable and the associations of these varying measures of religiosity to dependent variables were compared and contrasted. Implications for issues that may need more or less focus in the classroom with future youth leaders will be discussed.