Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 176:704 (Oct 2019)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Matthew S. DeMoss

BSac 176:704 (October-December 2019) p. 489

Book Reviews

By The Faculty And Staff Of Dallas Theological Seminary

Matthew S. DeMoss

Editor

The Twentysomething Soul: Understanding the Religious and Secular Lives of American Young Adults. By Tim Clydesdale and Kathleen Garces-Foley. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. 256 pp. $29.95.

“Failure to launch.” “Late to ‘adult.’ ” “Snowflakes.” “The lost generation.” “Pampered.” These and other negative words often abound when people describe young adults in the United States. Additionally, a reigning narrative about twentysomethings’ spiritual lives is that interest in religion and spirituality on the part of these young men and women is in decline. But, as the authors of The Twentysomething Soul argue, such assumptions about young adults fail to stand up under scrutiny.

The authors, a professor of sociology and a professor of religious studies, include in their research their own interviews with more than two hundred young adults in addition to findings from an existing national survey of 1,880 twentysomethings. The process and conclusions, including summary graphs in most chapters, make up the optimistic story that is The Twentysomething Soul.

In their seven-chapter book, Clydesdale and Garces-Foley begin with “Meet the Twentysomethings” and a sampling of narrative portraits highlighting individuals from their interviews. The authors’ storytelling approach here (and throughout) makes for engaging reading that allows readers to envision conclusions drawn from their statistics—and there are plenty of statistics—not as numbers but as flesh and blood.

In chapter 2, “Young Adulthood and Religion,” the authors describe the “core economic and cultural factors that have combined to create emerging adulthood.” For example, while it’s true that transitioning to adulthood on the whole now takes longer than in the past, the authors explain that, “secure jobs with living wages and good benefits provided by America’s manufacturing dominance are gone; the global economy relocated manufacturing to developing nations where labor is cheap and regulations minimal. In its place is a service economy that largely offers two kinds of work: low-skill, low-wage jobs or high-skill, high-wage jobs” (21). Consequently, “adulting” may be delayed as the slower path to autonomy is not necessarily due to laziness but rather due to the longer time required to earn enough to achieve independence. Student debt often plays a role here.

BSac 176:704 (October-December 2019) p. 490

Such a cultural shift may adversely affect religious practice. For...