Emerging Adults' Religiousness and Spirituality
Meaning-Making in an Age of Transition
Edited by Carolyn McNamara Barry, Ph.D. and Mona M. Abo-Zena, Ph.D.
Reviews and Awards
"This groundbreaking book brings together a distinguished group of scholars, including pioneers in the exciting new field of emerging adulthood, to address the fascinating issue of religion and spirituality in the third decade. Authors provide a holistic developmental perspective on a number of important and interesting contexts. This volume provides scholars and students with a state of the art look at how emerging adults navigate the connections between their faith and the rest of their lives."-David C. Dollahite, PhD, Professor of Family Life, Brigham Young University
"Emerging Adults' Religiousness and Spirituality is a skillful distillation of a diverse body of work, represented by a wide range of experts from diverse disciplines. The result is an enriching, thought-provoking, and comprehensive analysis of emerging adults and their religious and spiritual development. The discussion acknowledges individual variation without compromising patterns related to thriving and floundering. The book is required reading for researchers, students, and clinicians alike. There is no comparable book in the field."-Varda Konstam, PhD, Professor Emerita, Department of Counseling and School Psychology, University of Massachusetts Boston, and author of Emerging and Young Adulthood and Parenting Your Emerging Adult
"This wonderful volume represents an exciting moment in our study of emerging adults. I'm especially impressed by the balance of both familiar issues such as family influences with the novelty of fascinating topics including legal issues, sexual minorities, nonreligious/atheist youth, and digital media."-Chris Boyatzis, PhD, Professor of Psychology, Bucknell University
"This book takes up the challenges of exploring the doubly under-explored: the religious and spiritual challenges of the third decade of life. An exciting tour both for lifespan developmentalists and those fascinated by religious change and growth. Higher education, gender, and the internet are among the varied areas of influence which will capture readers' interest."-Kate Loewenthal, PhD, Professor Emerita of Psychology, Royal Holloway College, University of London
"This anthology is essential reading for anyone who cares about the spiritual lives of today's young adults--which should be nearly everyone. Professionals and scholars alike will find the range of topics covered excellent for both an introduction to the conversation as well as a deepening of one's knowledge of the kind of research that's out there--and who's talking about it." -Donna Freitas, author of Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance and Religion on America's College Campuses
"Barry and Abo-Zena began their volume with an explicit recognition that the field itself is emergent and in transition, grappling with a range of epistemological, theoretical, methodological, and analytical issues and questions. The contributions they assembled not only bring the field up to its current state, but they foreshadow future prospects for 682 research and practice. One hopes that future efforts can build on this contribution to move the field forward within the dynamic domain of spiritual and religious development within this pivotal period of human development." --Eugene C. Roehlkepartain, Journal of Youth Adolescence
"Overall, Emerging Adults' Religiousness and Spirituality provides an excellent resource for scholars and practitioners to gain an overview of emerging adults and their meaning-making processes. ... Even in fifteen chapters focused on a range of concepts, the overall punch line is that we need to know more than we do. In the end, this volume does more to stir a hunger for what needs to come than it does to quench a thirst, but as such it accurately represents the dearth of our understanding on this important topic. I hope the content of this book serves as the roadmap for a thousand grant proposals and studies investigating the many remaining questions on emerging adulthood religiousness and spirituality." --Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
"This volume helpfully outlines what scholars do know about religious development in these years, calls attention to gaps, and sets a framework for moving the scholarship forward. While the book focuses primarily on developmental psychological understandings, it is consistently and critically attuned to the possibility of cross-cultural and contextual variation. ... The book is an excellent resource for reviewing a range of social scientific hypotheses and models about the influences that affect religiosity in this age group. ... Unlike many multi-author volumes, this one is exceptionally well integrated, with authors regularly connecting ideas in different chapters. ... Readers will be grateful for the clarity and expansiveness they bring to the subject, and this reader hopes that the work will yield new research to answer many of the questions they raise." --Thomas M. Landy, PhD, Director, McFarland Center for Religion, Ethics, and Culture, College of the Holy Cross
"There are gems to be found in these accounts... Readers of all backgrounds will find the tone of epistemological humility alternatively comforting (the book is relatively free of unwarranted judgments)."--Brett C. Hoover, Loyola Marymount University
