Religion and civic engagement among America's youth

Scholars of civic engagement are noticing the consequences of religiosity. Scholars have seen the influence of religiosity on political and charitable behavior among adults. But does this pattern hold for adolescents? In this study, I use a new survey of American teenagers, the National Study of Youth and Religion, to assess the impact of intense religiosity on adolescent volunteerism and political activities. Evidence from multivariate logistic regression analyses indicate that intense religiosity, measured in terms of behavior (frequent church attendance) and beliefs (theological conservatism) significantly increase the likelihood that teens will volunteer. However, adolescent political involvement is not related to religiosity.