4 Surprises about the Religious Practice of 20-Somethings

The sky is not falling when it comes to religiosity among 20-somethings. No matter how many breathless blog posts and scary headlines you read about religious decline among young people, you should know that religious practice remains steady even as religious affiliation has declined.

Tim Clydesdale and Kathleen Garces-Foley’s new book from Oxford University Press, The Twenty-Something Soul: Understanding the Religious and Secular Lives of American Young Adults, combines qualitative and quantitative analysis, providing context and coloring in some of the details through individual stories that easily get overlooked in the sea of statistics.

Today, I’ll lay out four takeaways from their research, and later this week I’ll offer a closer look at those who now identify as “None” or “unaffiliated.” Read More