Religious development across adolescence and early adulthood.

Declines in Religiousness Dimensions across Adolescence as Predictors of Religious Deidentification in Young Adulthood

“…In line with most prior longitudinal studies on religious development (for reviews, see Hardy & Nelson, in press; Hardy et al., 2019), we found that church attendance, prayer, scripture study, religious importance, and spirituality all decreased on average across adolescence and young adulthood, with substantial variation around the general trend. While several dozen studies have reported such decreases in church attendance, this is one of the first studies to also report on changes in prayer, scripture study, religious importance, and spirituality.…”

“…Religion is increasingly seen as an important context for adolescent and young adult development (for reviews, see Hardy & Longo, 2021; Hardy & Nelson, in press). Indeed, a growing body of research suggests that religiousness is fairly consistently linked to adaptive developmental outcomes.…”

“…First is quantitative change, which involves decreases or increases in the amount of religiousness across various dimensions of religiousness, such as public religious involvement (e.g., religious worship service attendance), private religious practices (e.g., personal prayer), and self‐perceived importance of religion (sometimes called religious salience). In general, religiousness, particularly public religious involvement, tends to decline across adolescence and into young adulthood (for reviews, see Hardy & Longo, 2021; Hardy & Nelson, in press). This is potentially due to a combination of increasing autonomy, search for identity, critical thinking skills, and demands on time, as well as changes in social networks (Cheadle & Schwadel, 2012).…”

“…Lastly, decreases in church attendance are a part of the process of religious disaffiliation. Prior research has shown that five of these dimensions of religiousness (worship service attendance, personal prayer, personal scripture study, perceived importance of religion, spirituality) tend to decline across adolescence, while the sixth (religious doubt) tends to increase (for reviews, see Hardy & Longo, 2021; Hardy & Nelson, in press). However, no prior studies we know of have linked these quantitative processes of declines in religiousness to actual subsequent qualitative religious deidentification.…”

Spirituality as a key asset in promoting positive youth development: Advances in research and practice

“…Religion and spirituality have been present in the study of psychology from the beginning; however, it is only during the first part of the 21st century that research on spirituality and religiosity among adolescents has burgeoned (e.g., Hardy et al, 2019;Hardy & Nelson, 2023). At psychology's founding, William James (1902James ( /1982 would have conceptualized religion and spirituality together, as one and the same, but, at this writing, these constructs are often treated as distinct by virtue of the fact that, in some studies of youth development (e.g., in the samples of youth studies by Search Institute, e.g., Benson et al, 1998), measures of religiosity and spirituality contribute unique variance to individual development (e.g., Dowling et al, 2003Dowling et al, , 2004.…”