Growing Up Religious: Christians and Jews and Their Journeys of Faith.

Robert Wuthnow, Growing Up Religious: Christians and Jews and Their Journeys of Faith. Boston: Beacon Press, 1999. 249pp. $27.50 (cloth).

In Growing Up Religious Robert Wuthnow analyzes the impact upon an adult of religious influences during early maturation years. Focused primarily upon the decades of the '50s, '60s, and '70s, the book is well written in anecdotal style. The research was done with support from the Lilly Endowment through the Gallup Organization and utilizes earlier surveys by the Gallup, Harris, and National Opinion Research Centers.

In the "Introduction," Wuthnow establishes his characteristic format by telling the stories of four individuals: a Jew, Roman Catholic, evangelical Christian, and mainline Protestant. His "aim is to recapture what it has meant for a significant portion of the American public to have grown up religious" (xxxi), enhancing both personal spirituality and the ability to live productively in an "increasingly diverse society" (xxxviii).

In Part I, "The Sacred at Home," he focuses on the impact of family rituals, special religious holidays, and spirituality expressed across generational lines. Growing up religious within the home context clearly impacts the adult's understanding of God, morality, and life in general. As individuals we are truly the sum of our parts, and the influence of the sacred as experienced within the home, as through various rituals, is a crucial factor in the development of the mature personality.

Part II focuses on "Going to Services." Protestants, Catholics, and Jews learn as children what it means to be faithful members via congregational worship. Congregational participation, often more visual and/or sensory than liturgical or sermonic, enforces teaching learned though home experiences, helps one to express belief in the Creator God, and encourages one to express more effectively religious experience through prayers and singing. Finally, congregational participation helps children learn to be leaders, enhances public speaking skills, encourages team work, and aids socialization both with peers and adults. Young people also learn within both the church and the synagogue that leadership opportunities are not gender equal, thereby helping the child/adult to adjust to cultural inequities.

Part III ("Moving Away") focuses on the departure from traditional roots of home, church/synagogue, and schools, whether "to attend college, serve in the military, take a new job, or marry" (134), and the recognition that inevitably the individual discovers that religious roots have a more lasting quality and impact on later decisions than would have been supposed. He notes that "it is evident that those who grew up in such institutions carry on a continuous conversation with them" (139). He further expounds upon selective memory and how those memories may have both positive and negative impact.

Ultimately, the individual moves to spiritual practices such as prayer, Bible reading, meditation, etc., as a way of replacing what was experienced while growing up. On the positive side, the author notes that minimally these practices are person oriented, a significant antidote to the depersonalization of much of modern society and indeed of life in the modern church.

Part IV ("E Pluribus Unum?") indicates that a religious background helps one to deal with "the challenges of living with racial, ethnic, and religious differences..." (198). In the current pluralistic United States society, it is increasingly difficult to govern many aspects of life, such as the societal migration, work schedules, or the frequency of intermarriage. As a conscious corrective, the 60s and 70s ecumenical movement encouraged pluralistic views among individuals who might otherwise have been inclined toward a more narrow perspective.

Finally, the author discusses the ability to hold on to a distinctive tradition while accepting the value of the diverse world one confronts -- or dual vision, an ability which has "contributed most to the capacity to live in loyalty to one tradition while respecting the value of many others" (231).

A primary criticism of the book would be that surely there are many more negatives associated with growing up in such an environment than the author addresses. For example, it would be helpful to evaluate the impact of fundamentalism's rejection of all paths but its own or the position of so much of Christianity that there is but one way to communicate meaningfully with God. Also, the author's treatment of "spirituality" is less than satisfactory in that he does not indicate clearly what is means by "spirituality." This is a common problem in modern religious jargon. On the whole, however, Growing Up Religious makes a valuable contribution.

FRANK E. EAKIN, JR., is Weinstein-Rosenthal Professor of Jewish and Christian Studies in the Department of Religion at the University of Richmond.