Growing Up Religious : Christians and Jews and Their Journeys of Faith [Hardcover]

Robert Wuthnow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1999

How do Christian and Jewish Americans recall their religious upbringing and how does it affect their adult lives? Growing Up Religious offers a fascinating portrait of how Americans think about, reflect on, recapture, and reproduce the religious experiences of their childhoods. Exploring personal stories gathered in interviews with more than two hundred people from a variety of ethnic, religious, and economic backgrounds, Robert Wuthnow discovers that what brings adults back to religious life often has less to do with religious institutions than with the way family and other relations formed around religious practice: memories of mothers, fathers, and neighbors whose everyday acts were imbued with religious meaning. We read about people like Bruce Gallahue, whose relationship to religion changed as he went from growing up in a mainline Protestant home, where his image of God was based on fear and strict rules, to an adult struggle as a recovering alcoholic, when he was able to receive comfort by returning to Protestantism with a new vision of God as compassionate and forgiving

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Princeton professor Wuthnow's latest study of American religion is an account of interviews with 200 respondents conducted over a three-year period. Subjects were chosen by a system of quotas rather than randomly because, Wuthnow notes, he "wanted to obtain information from a diverse group of people who had undergone relevant religious experiences while they were growing up." His interviews sample the American experience of "growing up religious" in a period of five decades cut from the middle of the 20th century, with particular emphasis on the 1950s. Wuthnow focuses in the final two chapters on the relationship between global and local experience and multiculturalism. The author breaks no new theoretical ground here, but readers will be interested in the interviewees' stories. Moving from family rituals to experiences of public worship, he emphasizes a spirituality that is at home between a homogeneous past and an anticipated diverse future. Wuthnow provides substantial documentation of religion's contribution to the American genius for living comfortably in contradictory worlds while constructing a consistently integrated culture.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This fascinating study, based on interviews with over 200 subjects covering a wide range of ethnic, age, social, and religious backgrounds, examines religious practice by contrasting experiences with religion throughout childhood with adult practice. Wuthnow (social sciences; director, Ctr. for the Study of American Religion, Princeton Univ.) brings his considerable scholarship to bear on a complex topic. Readers both religious and nonreligious will appreciate the readable and clear style of this study as well as the simple, but not simplistic, insights offered. As Wuthnow concludes, "Athough the details vary, the common dimension is that deliberate conversations with the past play a vital role in the hard work of spiritual development." Highly recommended for both general and specialized collections in public and academic libraries.?Olga B. Wise, Compaq Computers Inc., Austin
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press (March 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807028061
• ISBN-13: 978-0807028063
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,818,303 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must-read if you care about passing on a religious heritage, December 4, 2006

By 

Stuart Dauermann "Bookaholic" (Los Angeles Area) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Growing Up Religious: Christians and Jews and Their Journeys of Faith (Paperback)

Robert Wuthnow is Gerald R. Andlinger Professor of Social Sciences and Director of the Center for the Study of American Religion at Princeton University, a well respected and published sociologist of religion with over ten books published. In this one he examines and compares how Jews and Christians experience spirituality in the context of their families of origin, He focuses on the factors fostering inter-generational persistence or erosion of religious commitment.

Wuthnow compares the experiences of people in three broad contexts In Part I, "The Sacred at Home," he considers the home--"Family Rituals [Chapter 1], Home for the Holidays [Chapter 2], and Generations of the Spirit [Chapter 3]. In Part II, Going to Services, he considers the impact of communities and houses of worship: Houses of Worship [Chapter 4], The Ties That Bind [Chapter 5], Learning to be a Leader [Chapter 6]. In Part III, Moving Away, he considers what happens when the subjects moved away from home: Points of Departure, Chapter 7], Remembering the Past [Chapter 8], and The Move to Spiritual Practice [Chapter 9].

Finally, in Part !V, E Pluribus Unum, he considers how these diverse communities in America can live together in productivity and peace: Bridging Diversity [chapter 10], and Seeing with Four Eyes, [Chapter 11].

The book was written to discover the nature of the new winds blowing in the spirituality of Americans. As one friend of his put it, "The one thing I am sure of...is that things are changing profoundly--and the clergy don't have a clue that it's even happening" [xi]. He gathered data through a variety of national surveys and interviews, with respondents ultimately numbering two hundred: 107 woment and 93 men, intentionally very diverse in religious background and practice. Forty three of the respondents were not Judaeo Christian in their outlook.

Wuthnow represents his purposes as follows:

"My aim is to recapture what it has meant for a significant proportion of the American public to have grown up religious. I am interested in how people conceive of their religious upbringing, and in understanding what seems memorable and significant to them, more than I am in abstract theories of religious socialization. My methodology has been to ask ordinary people to talk at length about their experiences and memories and to encourage them to tell the stories they use to make sense of their spiritual journeys.

"Effective religious socialization comes about through embedded practices that is, through specific, deliberate religious activities that are firmly intertwined with the daily habits of family routines, of eating and sleeping, of having conversations, of adorning the spaces in which people live, of celebrating the holidays, and of being part of a community. Compared with these practices, the formal teachings of relgious leaders often pale in significance. Yet when such practices are preetn, formal teachings also become more important.

" The past is not static. It is a remembered past and thus one that people are continually revising, making sense of, and reinterpreting. Many people of course hae little in their childhood to remember about religioun. But those who grew up in a religious household continue to have a very substantial impact on the Character of American religion" [xxxi-xxxii].

Personal journeys play a significant role in his research, as this is a common and contemporaneously appropriate way of examining religious character-formation and the trajectories of people's lives.

His emphasis is upon "the particularity of religious traditions, paying special attention to the distinctive local practices that encouraged people to fee that is was special to be growing up Jewish or Irish Catholic, or to take pride in being African American Baptists or Asian American Presbyterians" [197]. Despite such pride in one's own way of religious life, pluralism and respect for others is possible so long as people see their way as best for themselves rather than best for all. "Loyalties are thus local, imbedded in th customs of one's family and community, and their localism is evident to participants even at an early age" [197]. He also discusses how his respondents are able to live pacifically with other religions due to a deep pluralistic mindset, something which is uncomfortable to me but seems endemic to the post-modern age. Closely related but more palpable is his discussion of multi-culturalism which he rightly distinguishes from old-line Liberalism [219-220].

In the final chapter, his discussion of fundamentalism and how its adherents regard themselves and are regarded by others is fascinating. While pointing out the stridency of fundamentalist rhetoric, the commitment to holding to and advocating a superior truth, the insularity and tendency to reject the wider culture, Wuthnow points out how popular and media portrayals of fundamentalists are biased and inaccurate. He sees a wider divergence among fundmentalists than is usually noted. In reference to all his respondents and the groups they represent, he neatly parses the inner gyroscopes and ways and means such persons navigate between the own strong convictions and commitments and their ability to both respect and understand others.

Finally he comes to the summation statement that "spirituality has been a significant feature of the American past and that it remains so for many people, albeit in different versions than those of their parents and grandparents. Spirituality has ben most effecive in shaping the values of children when it has been practiced at home as well [as] in formal organizations. In the past, people practiced spirituality at home under the most diverse (and adverse) conditions. The lesson from this history should be that spirituality is likely to survive as a feature of American childhood--if parents and grandparents are committed to its importance" [235-236].

This very readable book is a must-read for all concerned with effectively and faithfully transmitting their religious heritage from generation to generation, or seeking to understand the genesis of their own religious convictions or lack of same. Wuthnow is perhaps America's premier sociologist of religion. Read this book and find out why the title is well-deserved.