Conservative Protestant teenagers are as likely as their mainline and black Protestant counterparts to engage in some socially risky behaviors, according to an ongoing national study of youth’s social and religious practices.
But data analyzed by the National Study on Youth and Religion revealed that the conservative and black youth are much less likely to embrace moral relativism than teens in mainline denominations, according to researchers.
“Most Protestant teens report relatively high levels of moral clarity,” the report said, but “moral awareness…does not always produce moral actions.”
The data were culled from a survey of almost 2,000 Americans between ages 13 and 17, and is part of a four-year research project at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, based at the Odum Institute for Research in Social Science. The report released on Monday is titled, “Portraits of Protestant Teens: A Report on Teenagers in Major U.S. Denominations.”
NSYR reported that roughly 37 percent of teens in conservative denominations and 36 percent of black Protestants believe “that morals are relative, (and) that there are no definite rights and wrongs for everybody.” Fifty percent of mainline Protestant youths agreed with that statement.
However, a much larger number of conservative teenagers (72 percent) believe in sexual abstinence until marriage, compared to mainline (50 percent) and black Protestant (54 percent) teens. Those beliefs did not always correspond with actions, as a larger percentage of conservative Protestants (18 percent) answered that they had sex in the previous year, compared to mainline Protestants (15 percent). Twenty-six percent of black Protestant teens reported engaging in sex during the previous year.
The three major groupings that were measured showed little variance with regard to other immoral or “risk” behaviors, including cheating in school, lying to parents, drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, and using marijuana. Of those individual behaviors, with the exception of cheating in school, no more than 13 percent of any Protestant group that was measured answered that they had engaged in that “risk” behavior. However, 63 percent of all Protestant teenagers — almost equally distributed across conservatives, mainliners, and blacks — said they had cheated on schoolwork in the previous year.
On the positive side, 51 percent of black Protestant teens reported helping needy people in the prior year, compared to 43 percent of conservatives and 38 percent in mainline denominations. Thirty-five percent of mainliners volunteered for community service in the previous year, while 31 percent of conservatives and 23 percent of blacks reported similar activities.
The report on also examined Protestant teens on their religious participation, their religious beliefs, practicing their faith, sharing their faith, and how they evaluate their church. Some responses within individual denominations in each grouping were also studied.
Paul Chesser is associate editor of Carolina Journal. Contact him at [email protected].