Studies show that a child’s perception of God is influenced by their parents:
When parents are more supportive of a child’s autonomy– giving her a sense that she is control of her own life – a child is more likely to see God as a more forgiving God. God is an authority figure tobe respected, but He is less fearsome.
On the other hand, if parents are extremely strict and punishing – dictating every moment of a child’s life – their children are more likely to believe that God is punishing, angry, and powerful. Girls are more affected by this dynamic than boys, and the way Mom disciplines has more of an affect in this direction than the way Dad does.
And for children who have extremely strained relationships with parents – or when a parent is absent from their lives– scholars have found that children in those relationships increasingly think of God as a surrogate parent. God as the Ultimate Father Figure. They endow God with the traits of an idealized version of the missing parent – someone who is caring, attentive, and highly involved in their day-to-daylives. He’s an understanding, patient confidant, always there to offerencouragement and support.
While those kids may be missing a parent’s influence,most adolescents are struggling to get out from under a parent’s authority. Teens’ need to carve out a domain under their own control is very real. And they bring their frustration with their parents to their relationship with God.
In a recent study by Clark Universityprofessor Lene Arnett Jensen, conservative Protestant adolescents had some very mixed things to say about God.
The God of Adolescents is judgmental, disapproving, andunforgiving. He isn’t very loving. His supernatural gifts are akin to those ofthe Devil. On the whole, adolescents seem more negative – almost hostile– to God than at any other time in their lives.(Sounds to me like their God is a crossbetween a parent, a popular Mean Girl, and a college admissions officer.)
October 21st, 2010 | 3:53 pm
Good collection of studies.
I can understand adolescents’ idea of God being quite harsh. Developmental research indicates that adolescents are only just beginning to acquire the cognitive ability to seriously deal with abstract concepts like moral principles, with the result that they tend to overgeneralize and over-absolutize their moral judgments. There is little room for complexity or sophistication or the recognition of valid alternate points of view, and so their morality can be legalistic and judgmental. As Gordon Allport put it in “The Individual and His Religion”: The religion of maturity makes the affirmation “God is,” but only the religion of immaturity will insist, “God is precisely what I say He is.”
October 21st, 2010 | 4:40 pm
Along the same lines, Paul Vitz found that a child’s relation to their father has a huge impact on their belief in God. If that relationship is severely damaged, then they are more likely to reject God and embrace atheism.
October 21st, 2010 | 5:46 pm
The book “Almost Christian”, is concerned with the failure of Christian parents to socialize their teenage children to the religious beliefs of the parents. The one major exception, the book notes, are Mormons, among whom teenagers have much higher levels of positive relationships with their parents’ religious faith.
There is no reason that the methods Mormons use to raise children in their parents’ faith cannot be adapted to teach the beliefs of other churches. They include an unpaid , lay ministry with small congregations in which members, including teens, are asked to be actively involved in the work of operating the congregation’s programs. Among Mormons, the persons who conduct the ordinance of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper (Communion) are teenage boys ages 12 to 18. Boys 16 to 18 are ordained priests, who kneel and pronounce a blessing on the emblems of bread and water. Boys 14 to 15 (“teachers”) prepare the trays with bread and small cups of water, and boys 12 and 13 (“deacons”) carry these out to the entire congregation. The priests are allowed to perform baptisms, and to ordain younger boys as deacons, teachers and priests. The Teachers and Priests accompany adult men to visit each home in the congregation at least monthly as “home teachers”, and in many congregations (especially where Mormons are more concentrated) the Teachers visit homes to collect monthly contributions for assistance to the poor. These teenage boys are directly involved in vital functions of the congregation.
There are many other ways in which teenage boys and girls are involved in LDS Church religious activities, in a way that makes them understand that they are making meaningful contributions to the welfare of the entire congregation.
Mormon Teens are able to go to a Temple and serve as proxy for their ancestors in receiving the ordinance of baptism, giving personal service toward the eternal salvation of others, especially their ancestors, whom they are taught to expect to meet someday because they are “sealed” to their ancestors in other Temple rites that hark back to the promise of Elijah in Malachi 4.
Mormon Teens have the opportunity to meet daily with their peers and study the scriptures for an hour before they go to a regular (usually public) high school. Such classes meet at 6 AM, entailing a specific, daily sacrifice by teenagers. The LDS Church invests in this specific religious education rather than in entire parochial schools.
The Mormons have established that giving teens meaningful responsibilities for their own religious welfare and for the needs of their congregation can enlist teenage hearts in religious devotion.
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