By Steve Weatherbe

A WIDE rift in values, beliefs and practices has formed between conservative Christian teens and others in the same age group, according to sociologist Reg Bibby, Canada’s pre-eminent tracker of changing  teenage attitudes and religious belief.

Bibby is a University of Lethbridge sociologist who has conducted two series of surveys – on Canadian teenagers and on adults – since the mid-1980s, and written 12 books on the results.

In Victoria early in June to discuss his latest  book,The Emerging Millennials: How Canada’s Newest Generation Is Responding to Change, Bibby  told an audience at First Metropolitan United Church that, while teenagers are generally in better shape than the popular culture and news media give them credit for, there is no doubt a general trend away from religious belief and practice.

“God is slipping in the polls,” he said. Teens (aged 15 – 19) who “definitely” believe in God accounted for 37 percent of all in that age bracket in his 2008 survey, compared with 54 percent in 1984. Atheism has climbed from six to 16 percent.

Bibby said the decline in teen faith flows from the decline in faith and practice of their parents in the Baby Boom generation.

While 66 percent of  Baby Boomers definitely believed in God in 1985, only 48 percent did so by 2005, Bibby’s surveys show.

More dramatically, weekly church attendance has fallen from nearly 60 percent of all Canadians in the 1950s to 20 percent of Baby Boomers in 2000.

“God needs groups,” said Bibby. “Ideas don’t arise out of nowhere. For the most part they are learned from other people – parents and friends, authors, television, the internet.”

So if parents aren’t attending church or socializing with their fellow churchgoers, teens have few ways to acquire, strengthen or validate the belief in God.

The good news for Christians is that teens who are attending churches, especially evangelical and other conservative Christian churches – and to a lesser degree, Catholics – are demonstrating faithful beliefs and values. And the more frequently they attend, the stronger their faith.

Thus, 44 percent of weekly attending teens are firm theists or believers in a personal God, while only 17 percent of monthly attenders firmly believe in God.

While 70 percent of teens believe that right and wrong is “ a matter of personal opinion,” only 53 percent of  teenagers attending church weekly do so.

Schooling also shows a significant correlation. In terms of spirituality, 79 percent of teens (15 – 19) in Catholic schools believe in God, as do 91 percent of  private Christian (mostly evangelical) school teens, while 67 percent of all Canadian teens (15 – 19)  believe so.

What’s more, 27 percent of public school students pray weekly, 35 percent of Catholic students do so and 65 percent of private Christian school  students.

In terms of values, there is a sharp gulf between theist teens and atheists. Eighty-six percent of believing teens rated honesty as very important, compared to 75 percent of atheists; 71 percent of theists rated politeness very important, versus 57 percent of atheists; 55 percent of believers said patience was very important, while only 35 percent of atheists did so.

As for values closely linked with the Christian gospel, the gaps were even bigger. For forgiveness, 72 percent of theist teenagers rated it as very important; only 44 percent of atheists did. “Concern for others” was very important to 72 percent of  believing teens, while only 54 percent of atheists felt it was.

When some of the same responses were broken down by school systems, however, Catholic and Christian students showed only slightly higher responses than public schoolers, with Catholics putting slightly more value on trust, honesty and concern for others than the other two groups.

Bibby found a stronger link between these values and frequency of church attendance.

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Where real differences emerge among the school systems is with “hot button” social and moral issues – in a word: sex.

Bibby’s most significant finding is that Catholic school attenders hold virtually the same beliefs as public schoolers about sexual morality, and ones far different from those taught by the Catholic church.

Private Christian school students, however, hold views close to traditional Christian and Catholic teaching. Thus 72 percent of public schoolers approve of premarital sex between loving partners, as did 69 percent of Catholic students, but just 29 percent of private Christian students.

Forty-six percent of public school and forty-five percent of Catholic school students approve of homosexual relations, but only 12 percent of private Christian school students. Similar numbers emerge on same-sex marriage.

Bibby cautioned that these results did not necessarily reflect the relative impact of different school systems. “Remember, only 67 percent of the students in Catholic schools are Catholic,” he told BCCN. As well, he said, the public schools could also be teaching the importance of such values as trust, honesty and compassion.

A better measure of a school system’s impact on attitudes could be taken, Bibby said, through a longitudinal attitude survey done at the beginning of high school and at the end, with specific students tracked anonymously and retested.

Ted Paszek, president of the Alberta Catholic School Trustees Association, was in Victoria attending a national conference of Catholic trustees the same weekend Bibby gave his lecture there. He said he “would have expected to see more of an impact on our students.”

Paszek added that “we do a lot of testing in this province on the academic side, some might say too much. It probably would be good to devise ways of measuring attitudes.”

However, Doug Lauson, superintendent of the Vancouver Catholic school system, said, “There are other ways of measuring the success of a school system. Our parents can remove their children if they don’t like what they see in them. In fact, we have a waiting list.”

Lauson also suggested Bibby’s survey samples were weighted towards Ontario and Alberta Catholic systems, which are fully taxpayer-supported and where most Catholic school students in Canada live.

Bibby found that 47 percent of teenagers were open to a greater involvement in church. He suggested that churches appeal to teenagers by leading from their strong suit: addressing supernatural questions, an area in which teenagers maintain a strong interest. As well, said Bibby, churches should help teenagers deal with their personal problems and their relationships. “Friendships are the most important thing to teens, far more important than faith,” he said.

“Churches can’t just go out and throw good parties. Teens have strong BS detectors. If they see there’s nothing there but a good time, that won’t do it. What matters to teens is not so much what is actually happening at an event, as who is going to be there. Are their friends going to be there?”

July 2009