In fact, religious involvement is good for kids moral development not bad. Though liberals are certainly willing to lie to convince people of the opposite of the truth.
One shouldn't assume everyone in someplace like Lubbock is religious. One should also be aware that "protestant" is a catchall term in America and everyone so described is not necessarily religiously active.
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Study: RELIGION is Good for Kids
By Melinda Wenner, Special to LiveScience
Kids with religious parents are better behaved and adjusted than other children, according to a new study that is the first to look at the effects of RELIGION on young child development.
....
livescience.com
lifesitenews.com
Religious upbringing found to aid children
boston.com
A unique body of sociological research confirms the positive effect of familial religious involvement on overall health and well-being for adherents. ....
allacademic.com
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How Family Religious Involvement Benefits Adults, Youth, and Children and Strengthens Families
Authored by: David C. Dollahite, Ph.D.
Professor of Family Life
Brigham Young University
Jennifer Y. Thatcher
M.S. Student, Marriage, Family, & Human Development
Brigham Young University
September 28, 2005
150 East Social Hall Avenue Suite 650 Salt Lake City, Utah 84111
801-355-1272 www.sutherlandinstitute.org
Cite as Dollahite, How Family Religioius Involvement Benefits, 2005
Sutherland J. L. & Pub. Pol’y L28, at
sjlpp.org
ABSTRACT: A growing body of empirical research demonstrates that a family’s religious involvement directly benefits adults, children and youth in many ways. .... Religious involvement promotes involved and responsible fathering and is associated with more involved mothering. Greater religiosity in parents and youth is associated with a variety of protective factors for adolescents. Rigorous meta-analyses conducted by scholars in various disciplines and examining populations from several different religious traditions have demonstrated that many of the salutary mental, physical, and marital correlations between religiosity and well-being are quite robust and not attributable merely to selection effects or explained away by socio-demographic factors.
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209.85.173.104
Message 24941819
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... Christian Smith, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, led a massive, authoritative study called the National Study of Youth and RELIGION. The results were published in the 2005 book, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Eyes of American Teenagers (with co-author Melinda Lundquist Denton), published by Oxford University Press (yes, that’s Dawkins’s university). It is the best study of its kind to date.
This study sorted its 3,290 participants into levels of religious involvement: the Devoted, the Regulars, the Sporadic, and the Disengaged. Because America’s predominant religious groupings are Christian, the “Devoted” and “Regulars” were predominantly Christian—Protestant and Catholic. Therefore these results can fairly be taken as relating specifically to Christianity. (Results for other religions are hard to determine from the data.)
The closer teenagers were to “Devoted” rather than “Disengaged,” the less they engaged in these negative behaviors:
Habits: Smoking, drinking, marijuana use, TV watching, pornography use, “action” video game use, R-rated movies;
At school: Poor grades, cutting classes, getting suspended or expelled;
Attitude: Bad temper, rebellious toward parents;
Sex: Early physical involvement, including number of partners and age of first sexual contact.
Those more “Devoted” on the scale showed more of these positive outcomes:
Emotional well-being: Satisfaction with physical appearance, planning for the future, thinking about the meaning of life, feeling cared for, freedom from depression, not feeling alone and misunderstood, not feeling “invisible,” not often feeling guilty, having a sense of meaning to life, getting along well with siblings;
Relationships with adults: Closeness with parents, number of adults connected to, feeling understood by parents, sensing that parents pay attention, feeling they get the “right amount of freedom” from parents;
Moral reasoning and honesty: Belief in stable, absolute morality; not pursuing a “get-ahead” mentality; not just pleasure-seeking; less lying to parents and cheating in school;
Compassion: Caring about the needs of the poor, caring about the elderly, caring about racial justice;
Community: Participation in groups, financial giving, volunteer work (including with people of different races and cultures), helping homeless people, taking leadership in organizations.
The findings are overwhelming. On page after page, chart after chart, on every one of the ninety-one variables studied, the closer teens were to the “Devoted” end of the scale, the healthier their lives were.
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This article was originally published in the Hampton Roads Daily Press.
Tom Gilson is director of strategic processes in the Operational Advisory Services team for Campus Crusade for Christ. He maintains a blog at www.thinkingchristian.net.
For Further Reading and Information
BreakPoint Commentary No. 061129, “A Cultural Cold Front: Bashing RELIGION.”
BreakPoint Commentary No. 070102, “Brooking No Debate: Scientism, Crowbars, and Bats.”
Regis Nicoll, “Faith under Fire,” BreakPoint Online, 8 December 2006.
Regis Nicoll, "The Science of Design: Part I - A Dangerous Idea," BreakPoint Online, 15 September 2006.
Travis McSherley, “RELIGION, Believe It or Not,” BreakPoint Online, 12 June 2006.
Travis McSherley, “The Season for the Reason,” The Point, 13 November 2006.
Catherine Claire, “An Unsurprising Revelation,” The Point, 14 November 2006.
Catherina Hurlburt, “Easterbrook on Dawkins,” The Point, 14 November 2006.
breakpoint.org
Message 25575431 |
