Does Going to Church Keep High School Students from Drinking and Smoking?
A comparison of trends in 1976 vs today.
I have become fond of saying to people that I got into this line of work to try and figure out what in the world happened to me when I was growing up. I was born in 1982 in a small town in Southern Illinois. My family - including my parents, and grandparents were incredibly active members of the largest Southern Baptist church in town. I was there a lot. It may be the one of the places I remember most as a young person. Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. Sometimes other days during the week to work on projects or plan events.
When I got into youth group, my involvement with church accelerated significantly. It seemed like I was there every day. The youth group went to church camp every summer (usually Student Life Camp) along with a mission trip (World Changers). Add to that the lock-ins, weekend trips to concerts, and all the times just hanging around the youth room - it was a lot of Jesus.
Those experiences deeply imprinted on me. I know that for a fact. Even though I haven’t really been exposed to real evangelical theology in quite a while, that worldview burrowed deeply into my psyche. We can, of course, talk about things like purity culture - but I also remember a lot of discussion about how followers of Jesus should be different than the world around them. That manifested itself in statements like, “You shouldn’t be going to parties - that will make it more likely you will get caught up in worldly things like drinking and smoking.”
How Has Religion Changed Among High School Seniors?
I bet that when I look at a graph, I'm searching for something different from the average person. For me, it’s always a peek at the bottom corners - trying to find any information about the source of the data that was used to generate the visualization.
Well, I can test that. Or at least a close approximation of that idea. I pulled together some data about high school seniors from a terrific dataset called Monitoring the Future. It’s been asking teenagers a whole bunch of questions about their lives since the mid-1970s. And it includes questions about smoking and alcohol alongside queries about religious attendance and religious importance.
Before I throw the religion variables in the mix, let’s just take a look at the top level numbers on the share of high school seniors who have ever smoked cigarettes or consumed alcohol (beyond a few sips).
