A Faith of Their Own

Lisa D. Pearce is Associate Professor of Sociology and Fellow at the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is the co-author, with William G. Axinn, of Mixed Method Data Collection Strategies.

Melinda Lundquist Denton is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Clemson University. She is the co-author, with Christian Smith, of Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers.

"A Faith of Their Own is a terrific and succinct introduction to the NSYR. Its analysis is clear, its exposition is clean, and its interpretative typology merits wide adoption." --Sociology of Religion

"A Faith of Their Own moves the conversation on adolescent spirituality significantly forward by examining, not a static snapshot of teenagers' religious lives, but the ways in which these lives change during adolescence; the authors' conclusions will surprise and challenge you. Pearce and Denton write with the confidence of people who know, and love, their subjects, making A Faith of Their Own a dynamic, accessible, and often unexpected map of adolescents' spiritual terrain. If you know and love a teenager, you're going to need this book." --Kenda Creasy Dean, author of Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church

"This nuanced, comprehensive book will become the standard reference for anyone seeking a sensitive and rigorous analysis of the religious lives of American adolescents. Dispensing with the hand-wringing that accompanies many accounts, the authors take a multidimensional approach to religiosity, emphasize stability and normal development processes, and explore the effects of religious consistency on well-being as teenagers transition into young adulthood--a smart take on American religiosity and American youth." -- Penny Edgell, author of Religion and Family in a Changing Society

"Pearce and Denton bring the content, conduct and centrality of religion to life for youth today. They successfully integrate rich person-centered accounts of the meaning and practice of religion among teens using in-depth conversations with youth themselves, combined with variable-centered analyses of a national survey study of youth and religion. A Faith of Their Own thus makes an important contribution to the use of mixed methods, in addition to its path-breaking findings regarding the religious life of American youth." --Thomas S. Weisner, Professor of Anthropology, Departments of Psychiatry & Anthropology, UCLA

"The book is filled to the brim with fascinating new data as well as helpful categories for both reframing scholarly understanding and evaluating adolescent religiosity." --Publishers Weekly

"...the book will prove rewarding to all--whether parents, youth leaders, students or academics--who have an interest in teen religious behavior." --Library Journal

"...AFOTO is simultaneously sophisticated yet simple for readers to grasp."--Jenny Trinitapoli, Pennsylvania State University