Smith writes, "The purpose of this chapter is place the religious and spiritual lives of contemporary emerging adults in the historical context of the last quarter century and to compare them, in the area of religion, to older adults in more recent years" (p. 88). The findings are both interesting but not. Smith finds that "beliefs" of the age group are consistent with older groups -- the difference is in the tangible, empirical practices: "when it comes to prayer, strong affiliation, religious service attendance, and religious identity among American adults, emerging ones are much less religious than older ones" (p. 89). Here one finds the privatization, the internalization of "religion" -- a separation of "beliefs" and "practices" that ultimately, Smith will argue, undercuts the ability of the church to sustain and transmit its life.

Smith does find, however, a striking difference when he looks at four Christian traditions in the United States: evangelical Protestant, black Protestant, mainline Protestant, and Catholic (all other groups were not sufficiently represented to make conclusions). While Smith claims he studies "religious and spiritual lives," he is actually measuring the vitality of historically-formed traditions within the United States within the life of the church as it has been malformed in the United States. Evangelical Protestant and black Protestants have kept adherence up much better than mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics: "the gap in strength of affiliation between black Protestant and evangelical Protestant adults, on the one hand, and Catholic and mainline Protestant emerging adults, on the other, is sizeable - roughly 20 percent" (p. 91). There are underlying social and theological causes for this. The post-Vatican II North American church has embraced an American liberalism that mainline American Protestantism has always in the 20th century embodied. Only the United States can make Roman Catholic liberal Protestants. Of course, the inability of Protestant liberalism to sustain the life of the church is historically well documented -- what I call the Protestant liberal institutional death-wish.

The second half of the chapter gives consistent data when contemporary "emerging adults" are compared to emerging adults from 1976 and after (a group that includes me!!!). Smith asks, "How religiously different, if at all, are American emerging adults today from their counterparts in previous decades?" (p. 94). One notices shifts within a greater stability. Smith's data crunching shows "12 percent growth in emerging adults identifying themselves religiously as liberal (from 23 percent in 1972-76 to 35 percent in 2004-6) and a 12 percent increase in the number of emerging adults who say they have no religious affiliation (from 14 percent in 1972-76 to 26 percent in 2004-6). Finally, we note a slight decline in weekly or more frequent religious service attendance among emerging adults, dropping from 19 percent in 1972-76 to 15 percent in 2004-06. In these ways, emerging adults in the United States have become slightly less religious over the last quarter century' (pp. 94-5).

One point that Smith does not discuss. With the relatively statistical stability of the evangelical young adults and the demise of mainline Protestant young adults, this data may suggest that evangelical emerging adults are becoming the new Protestant liberals -- which means in another generation, they will become the next generations non-affiliated. I think data that Smith shows in chapter 4 shows this as well.

Smith concludes his analysis of the data discussing a related trend:

This backward historical glance at the religiousness of emerging adults reveals that, on the whole, 18- to 24-year-old Americans have not since 1972 become dramatically less religious or more secular. When viewed as a single group, they have on most measures changed by only a few percentage points in either direction. . . . What these data do show with greater certainty, however, is that varying levels of religious strength or vitality among emerging adults are evident in different major American religious traditions. Evangelical Protestant and black Protestant emerging adults generally reflect higher levels of religious commitment and practice and more allegiance to at least certain theological beliefs than do Catholics and mainline Protestants" (p. 100).

Even evangelicals, with their weak ecclesiology, end up with higher empirical adherence rates from mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics. Of course, African American congregations know from experience to be wary before acculturating into the racism of the surrounding culture. They know their life depends on the witness of the saints who have sustained them through the explicit racism to the current implicit racism.

Smith wonders if this is because of an implicit "church-is-okay-if-you-find-your-kicks-there culture, from a more antagonistic, scientistic modernist culture of the 60s and 70s. Perhaps. He also concludes with the following suggestion: "If there has been any form of increasing religious decline, weakening, or decay in the past quarter century, it has to have been of a more subtle, cultural, or internal nature--for example, a growth in more social club-oriented motives and in less God-or religious convictions-oriented motives for attending church at the same frequency, a decline in the overall shared cultural standards for what counts as a 'strong' religious faith, or an increase in the selfish and instrumental use of personal prayer" (p. 102).

If this is so, the emerging adult generation is a stepping stone. As Protestant liberal/mainline churches fade into their institutional obsolescence, evangelical churches have moved to ride the wave at the very point between resistance and accomodation to the underlying liberal democratic social formation of its members that allows it to pick up the strength of these cultural presuppositions before being carried over the falls, so to speak, into the liberal logic that undercuts the witness of the church. While transformations continue, God somehow sustains the church even amid its own sinfulness and accomodation --but not without it ultimately finding judgment.