A Congregation of One

TLDR

The study examined religious beliefs and practices among 140 emerging adults aged 21–28 using quantitative and qualitative methods. Participants displayed diverse, individualized religious beliefs—distributed across agnostic/atheist, deist, liberal Christian, and conservative Christian categories—with little link to childhood socialization or current attendance, and many expressed skepticism toward religious institutions, reflecting broader American individualism.

Abstract

Religious beliefs and practices were examined among 140 emerging adults aged 21 to 28, using quantitative and qualitative methods. There was great diversity in the importance they ascribed to religion, in their attendance at religious services, and in the content of their religious beliefs. Overall, their beliefs fell into four roughly even categories—agnostic/atheist, deist, liberal Christian, and conservative Christian—but there was also considerable diversity within each category. In combination, the quantitative and qualitative results showed that the participants’beliefs were highly individualized, that there was little relationship between childhood religious socialization and current religious attendance or beliefs, and that the participants were often skeptical of religious institutions. The results reflect the individualism of American society as well as the focus in emerging adulthood on forming one’s own beliefs.