Wednesday, September 14, 2011

David Brooks highlights Christian Smith's research

New York Times columnist David Brooks' most recent opinion piece highlighted the research of Dr. Christian Smith, a Notre Dame professor of social science who will be speaking at our annual Fall Conference, "Radical Emancipation: Confronting the Challenge of Secularism," Nov. 10-12. Christian Smith's research focuses on the religious experience of teenagers and young adults in the United States, and on what guides their moral reasoning.

An excerpt:
"Smith and company found an atmosphere of extreme moral individualism — of relativism and nonjudgmentalism. Again, this doesn’t mean that America’s young people are immoral. Far from it. But, Smith and company emphasize, they have not been given the resources — by schools, institutions and families — to cultivate their moral intuitions, to think more broadly about moral obligations, to check behaviors that may be degrading. In this way, the study says more about adult America than youthful America."

Read the full article here.

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