Audiobooks by Christian Smith

Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America

"Is traditional American religion doomed? Traditional religion in the United States has suffered huge losses in recent decades. The number of Americans identifying as 'not religious' has increased remarkably. Religious affiliation, service attendance, and belief in God have declined. More and more people claim to be 'spiritual but not religious.' Religious organizations have been reeling from revelations of sexual and financial scandals and cover-ups. Public trust in 'organized religion' has declined significantly. Crucially, these religious losses are concentrated among younger generations. This means that, barring unlikely religious revivals among youth, the losses will continue and accelerate in time, as less-religious younger Americans replace older more-religious ones and increasingly fewer American children are raised by religious parents. All this is clear. But what is less clear is exactly why this is happening. We know a lot more about the fact that traditional American religion has declined than we do about why this is so. Why Religion Went Obsolete aims to change that. Drawing on survey data and hundreds of interviews, Christian Smith offers a sweeping, multifaceted account of why many Americans have lost faith in traditional religion. An array of large-scale social forces came together to render traditional religion culturally obsolete. For growing numbers of Americans, traditional religion no longer seems useful or relevant. Using quantitative empirical measures of big-picture changes over time as well as exploring the larger cultural environment, the cultural 'zeitgeist', Smith explains why this is the case and what it means for the future. Crucially, he argues, it does not mean a strictly secular future. Rather, Americans' spiritual impulses are being channeled in new and interesting directions. Why Religion Went Obsolete is a tour de force from one of our leading chroniclers of religion in America."

Christian Smith (Author), Chris Sorensen (Narrator)

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Handing Down the Faith: How Parents Pass Their Religion on to the Next Generation

"The most important influence shaping the religious and spiritual lives of children, youth, and teenagers is their parents. A myriad of studies show that the parents of American youth play the leading role in shaping the character of their religious and spiritual lives, even well after they leave home and often for the rest of their lives. We know a lot about the importance of parents in faith transmission. However we know much less about the actual beliefs, feelings, and activities of the parents themselves, what Christian Smith and Amy Adamczyk call the “intergenerational transmission of religious faith and practice.” To address that gap, this book reports the findings of a new national study of religious parents in the United States. The findings and conclusions in Handing Down the Faith are based on 215 in-depth, personal interviews with religious parents from many traditions and different parts of the country, and on sophisticated analyses of two nationally representative surveys of American parents about their religious parenting. Handing Down the Faith explores the background beliefs informing how and why religious parents seek to pass on religion to their children; examines how parenting styles interact with parent religiousness to shape effective religious transmission; shows how parents have been influenced by their experiences as children influenced by their own parents; reveals how religious parents view their congregations and what they most seek out in a local church, synagogue, temple, or mosque; and explores the experiences and outlooks of immigrant parents including Latino Catholics, East Asian Buddhists, South Asian Muslims, and Indian Hindus. Smith and Adamczyk step back to consider how American religion has transformed over the last 100 years and to explain why parents today shoulder such a huge responsibility in transmitting religious faith and practice to their children. The book is rich in empirical evidence and unique in many of the topics it explores and explains, providing a variety of sometimes counterintuitive findings that will interest scholars of religion; social scientists interested in the family, parenting, and socialization; clergy and religious educators and leaders; and religious parents themselves."

Amy Adamczyk, Christian Smith (Author), Samara Naeymi (Narrator)

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