Smith, Christian 1960–

PERSONAL:

Born October 23, 1960. Education: Gordon College, B.A., 1983; Harvard University, M.A., Ph. D., 1990.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Sociology & Center for the Study of Religion & Society, 816 Flanner Hall, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556. E-mail—chris.smith@nd.edu.

CAREER:

Gordon College, Wenham, MA, instructor, 1987-89, assistant professor of sociology, 1989-94; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, assistant professor, 1994-99, professor, 1994-2003, Stuart Chapin Distinguished Professor of Sociology, 2003-05, associate chair of department, 2000-05; University of Exeter, Exeter, England, Leverhulme Fellow, Visiting Professor, and Lecturer, 2006; University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, William R. Kennan, Jr., Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society, 2006—.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Outstanding Book Award, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, 2001, for Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America; Distinguished Book Award, Christianity Today, 2005, for Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers; Gordon College Alumnus of the Year, 2007.

WRITINGS:

The Emergence of Liberation Theology: Radical Religion and Social Movement Theory, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1991.

(Editor) Disruptive Religion: The Force of Faith in Social-Movement Activism, Routledge (New York, NY), 1996.

Resisting Reagan: The U.S.-Central American Peace Movement, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1996.

(With Michael Emerson and others) American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1998.

(Editor, with Joshua Prokopy) Latin American Religion in Motion, Routledge (New York, NY), 1999.

Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 2000.

(With Michael O. Emerson) Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2000.

(With Robert Faris) Religion and the Life Attitudes and Self-Images of American Adolescents, University of North Carolina, National Study of Youth and Religion (Chapel Hill, NC), 2002.

(With Robert Faris) Religion, American Adolescent Delinquency, Risk Behaviors, and Constructive Social Activities, University of North Carolina, National Study of Youth and Religion (Chapel Hill, NC), 2002.

Moral, Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2003.

(With Mark Regnerus and Melissa Fritsch) Religion in the Lives of American Adolescents: A Review of the Literature, University of North Carolina, National Study of Youth and Religion (Chapel Hill, NC), 2003.

(With Philip Kim) Family Religious Involvement and the Quality of Family Relationships for Early Adolescents, University of North Carolina, National Study of Youth and Religion (Chapel Hill, NC), 2003.

(Editor) The Secular Revolution: Power, Interests, and Conflict in the Secularization of American Public Life, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 2003.

(With Melinda Lundquist Denton) Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2005.

(With Michael Emerson and Patricia Snell) Passing the Plate: Why American Christians Don't Give Away More Money, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2008.

The Religious and Spiritual Lives of America's Emerging Adults: Soul-Searching Five Years Later, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2009.

Contributor of essays to collections, including Latin America: A Panorama, edited by Gladys Varona-Lacey and Julio Lopez-Arias, Peter Lang (New York, NY), 1998; Religion and Democracy in Latin America, edited by William Swatos, Transaction Publishers (New Brunswick, NJ), 1995; The Culture Wars Debate, edited by Rhys Williams, Aldine (New York, NY), 1997; God at the Grassroots: 1996, edited by Mark Rosell and Clyde Wilcox, Rowman and Littlefield (New York, NY), 1997; The Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion, edited by Robert Wuthnow, CQ Books (Washington, DC), 1998; The Blackwell Companion to Sociology, edited by Judith Blau, Blackwell (Cambridge, England), 2001; Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements, edited by Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2001; Oxford Handbook of Religious Diversity, edited by Chad Meister, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2009; and The Believing Primate: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Perspectives on the Evolution of Religion, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2009. Contributor to journals, including Social Forces, Review of Religious Research, Sociology of Religion, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Applied Developmental Science, Sociological Forum, Social Problems, and Gender and Society.

SIDELIGHTS:

Christian Smith, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has developed significant expertise in the study of movements for social change and American religion. He has written or edited several texts that explore key elements of this subject across a wide political spectrum, and has concentrated in particular on religious movements.

Smith's first book, The Emergence of Liberation Theology: Radical Religion and Social Movement Theory, is a revision of his Ph.D. thesis that examines the development of religious movements that advocated for social justice in Latin America. Using Doug McAdam's model of social change, Smith argues that liberation theology arose because three necessary conditions were present: favorable opportunities for change existed; facilitating organizations—in this case, the Catholic Church—were strong; and an "insurgent consciousness" had emerged. Smith provides extensive historical context for his analysis, which some critics admired both for its rigor and for its unbiased approach. In Social Science Quarterly, James E. Beckford welcomed Smith's "dispassionate and finely focused analysis" of a subject often mired in polemical arguments, and ventured that the book would attract the interest of scholars in several fields. Marie Augusta Neal commended the book in American Journal of Sociology as being "carefully researched and methodologically integrated." She recommended the title for both pastoral ministers and sociologists, noting that "the former will discover how pragmatically a sociologist approaches the holy and may be disenchanted; the latter will be challenged to try to add a variable that measures faith commitment and will probably conclude that it cannot be operationalized."

Smith again deals with Latin America in Resisting Reagan: The U.S.-Central American Peace Movement, a book critics welcomed for bringing scholarly attention to a relatively neglected subject. Hailing the book as a "major accomplishment," Contemporary Sociology writer James Hannon praised Smith's thorough research and skill at integrating a wide array of sources, including interview excerpts, into a coherent and readable analysis. Hannon also noted that, though Smith honestly acknowledges his own sympathy for the peace movement, he "successfully subordinates his own perspective" and considers the movement's failures as well as its successes. Though Hannon wished that the book had provided more answers to questions that the movement raised, he concluded that "Smith has written a definitive history of the Central American peace movement and provided a foundation for activists and students of the movement to build upon."

In American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving, Smith presents an analysis of contemporary evangelical movements in America. As with Resisting Reagan, Smith uses interview material to construct a text reviewers found lucid and engaging. Arguing that "evangelicalism flourishes on difference, engagement, tension, conflict and threat," Smith shows that religions can flourish in the pluralistic conditions of modern societies. "Evangelicals will find the book helpful in understanding themselves," wrote George Westerlund in Library Journal, while "academicians, politicians, and others will find that it unravels confusing ideas current in the field."

In Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, Smith published the results of a survey he performed for the Lilly Endowment between 2001 and 2005. Based on hundreds of telephone surveys and interviews, Soul Searching shows that Americans between the ages of thirteen and seventeen—contrary to trends reported by many media outlets—actually are quite traditionally religious, and the majority of them describe themselves as Christian. In the opinion of many thinkers, Smith told Tony Jones in an interview for the Youth Specialties Web site, "the U.S. is more religiously pluralistic than it actually is. Some of my college students, for example, think that 25% of Americans are Jewish, and are shocked to find out that the actual number is 2%. Some advocate-scholars who evidently wish not only to describe but also to promote religious pluralism push the religious diversity story, which isn't really accurate." "Minority religions do have a cultural importance and influence disproportionate to their numbers," Smith continued, "but when it comes to actual numbers, the vast majority of Americans, including teenagers, are either Christian—practicing or nominal—or simply not religious at all."

Smith further reported that those teens who described themselves as highly believing Christians were doing particularly well, engaging in fewer risk behaviors and having better relations with their parents. However, the majority of teens who claimed to be Christian actually had little background in their religion and instead practiced something that Smith called "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism_—a belief system in which, Smith told Jones, "God functions as a combination divine butler and cosmic therapist." Popular opinion to the contrary, Smith told Michael Cromartie in Books & Culture, "youth actually want to be taught something, even if they eventually reject it. They at least want to have something to reject, rather than an attitude of anything goes. Teens need an opportunity to articulate, to think and to make arguments in environments that will be challenging to their faith. And I don't think they are getting that. In general," Smith concluded in his Books & Culture interview, "religious traditions that expect more and demand more of their youth get more. And those that are more compromising, more accommodating, more anything-goes, end up not getting much." In Soul Searching, declared Karen Gabriel on the Higher Things Web site, Smith and his coauthor Melinda Lundquist Denton "admonish the church to ‘better attend to their faith particularities,’ as well as observing the trend ‘that many youth, and no doubt adults, are getting the wrong messages that historical faith traditions do not matter, that all religious beliefs are basically alike, that no faith tradition possesses anything that anybody particularly needs.’" "Scholars will surely agree," a Publishers Weekly reviewer concluded, "that this study advances the conversation about contemporary adolescent spirituality."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Journal of Sociology, January, 1993, Marie Augusta Neal, review of The Emergence of Liberation Theology: Radical Religion and Social Movement Theory, pp. 965-967.

Books & Culture, January 1, 2005, "What American Teenagers Believe: A Conversation with Christian Smith," p. 10.

Christianity Today, April 1, 2005, "Compliant but Confused: Unpacking Some Myths about Today's Teens," p. 98.

Contemporary Sociology, September, 1997, James Hannon, review of Resisting Reagan: The U.S.-Central American Peace Movement, pp. 600-601.

Library Journal, October 1, 1998, George Westerlund, review of American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving, p. 98.

Publishers Weekly, March 27, 2000, review of Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want, p. 76; May 29, 2000, review of Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America, p. 76; January 24, 2005, review of Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, p. 238.

Social Science Quarterly, December, 1992, James E. Beckford, review of The Emergence of Liberation Theology, p. 954.

ONLINE

Catholic Books Review, http://catholicbooksreview.org/ (May 10, 2008), Kafkazli Seyyed Javad, review of The Secular Revolution: Power, Interests, and Conflict in the Secularization of American Public Life.

Christian Ethics Today, http://www.christianethicstoday.com/ (May 10, 2008), Darold H. Morgan, review of Divided By Faith.

Christian Odyssey, http://www.christianodyssey.com/ (May 10, 2008), review of Divided by Faith.

Higher Things, http://higherthings.org/ (May 10, 2008), Karen Gabriel, review of Soul Searching.

Human Nature, http://human-nature.com/ (May 10, 2008), Mark Daims, review of Moral, Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture.

Orthodox Presbyterian Church Web site, http://www.opc.org/ (May 10, 2008), James W. Scott, review of Moral, Believing Animals.

University of Notre Dame Web site, http://www.nd.edu/ (May 10, 2008), author profile.

Youth Specialties, http://www.youthspecialties.com/ (May 10, 2008), Tony Jones, "Youth and Religion: An Interview with Christian Smith."