OCT. 24, 2005

TEENS
OMG: It's a multimedia generation

Teenagers and college-age young adults know all kinds of things others don't: Cool, unheralded musical artists. Fascinating web sites. Scintillating new books. How? They are so wired into one another - through cell phones, email and instant messaging - that they seem to absorb information through their pores. And it's clear many are looking for spiritual meaning outside their parents' tradition.

The new buzzword for reaching out religiously to this group is multimedia - using music, videos, the web, print and more, often all at the same time. The feel is energetic and edgy. The theology ranges from conservative to liberal. Will these efforts help ground this generation in age-old faiths? Will it help them form their own traditions? Time will tell.

Why it matters

Young people may not want information so much as meaning. In most cities, congregations are using multimedia, lights and sound to appeal to "Generation Net." And ministries and outreach programs using cutting-edge technology are proliferating.

Questions for reporters

• What are congregations in your area doing to attract teenagers and college students? What is edgy and new? What's working?
• Is religion flavored with hip-hop a trend in your region? What about geek-tinged hipsterism? Or alternative rock, or straight-out pop?
• What religious web sites, webzines, blogs and other multimedia are teens favoring?
• How does the presentation change the message?

Click the map for interview sources in your state and region

National sources

CHRISTIAN
• Cameron Strang is president and founder of Relevant Media Group of Orlando, Fla., which targets 18- to 34-year-old Christians across denominations. He publishes RELEVANT magazine, a daily web site and Relevant Books. Read a June 23, 2004, USA Today story. Contact 407-660-1411, Cameron@relevantmediagroup.com.
• Pastor Rob Bell is featured in the NOOMA series of 10- to 14-minute films on DVD with spiritual teachings aimed at teenagers and college-age adults. Bell's Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., meets in a former shopping mall that can seat 3,500. Bell wrote Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith (Zondervan, 2005); Zondervan also is distributing the films. Contact Karen Campbell, 616-698-3246, Karen.campbell@zondervan.com.
• Tommy Kyllonen, who also goes by Urban D., is a hip-hop artist and lead pastor at the Tampa, Fla., Crossover Community Church. The church's ministry is the hip-hop culture, and worship combines music, dance, visual arts and other media. He has recorded five albums, performs concerts and is writing his first book, about hip-hop and the church. Contact 813-935-8887, urband@flavoralliance.com.
• The Rev. Paul B. Raushenbush, an American Baptist minister, is associate dean for religious life at Princeton University. He is the author of Teen Spirit: One World, Many Paths (HCI Teens, 2004) and writes a teen spirituality advice column on Beliefnet.com - "Ask Pastor Paul" - in which he answers teens' questions on subjects from the spiritual implications of tattooing to abstinence to interfaith dating. Contact 609-258-6245, praushen@princeton.edu.
• The Rev. Kenda Creasy Dean is assistant professor of youth, church and culture at Princeton Theological Seminary. A United Methodist minister and parent of two teenagers, she served on the research team for the National Study of Youth and Religion. She is the author of several books on youth and the church, including Practicing Passion: Youth and the Quest for a Passionate Church (Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2004) and co-author, with Ron Foster, of The Godbearing Life: The Art of Soul-Tending for Youth Ministry (Upper Room Books, 1998). Contact kenda.dean@ptsem.edu.
• Chap Clark is an associate professor of youth, family and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena and directs the seminary's youth ministry programs. Clark immersed himself in the life of a public high school in Los Angeles County, working as a substitute teacher and conducting ethnographic research there, and convened discussion groups with teenagers around the country for his book Hurt: Inside the World of Today's Teenagers (Baker Academic, 2004). Contact 626-584-5608, cclark@fuller.edu.
• T. Suzanne Eller of Muskogee, Okla., an author and speaker with a ministry to teens and college students, has a blog and a web site. Contact tseller@daretobelieve.org.
• Laurie Whaley Roe is vice president of Thomas Nelson's Nelson Bibles, which publishes youth-oriented BibleZines, including REVOLVE, the complete New Testament for teenage girls in a magazine format, and REAL, a similar product for the hip-hop crowd. Contact Cameron Conant, 615-902-1284, cconant@thomasnelson.com.
• Jennifer Swanson is spokeswoman for LIFE TEEN INC., an international Catholic youth ministry that produces videos and a web site. Contact 480-820-7001, jswanson@lifeteen.com.

JEWISH
• Jewish rocker Rick Recht of St. Louis considers himself an educator as well as a musician. He plays more than 125 concerts a year, has recorded four Jewish albums and one secular one, and is at work on a movie and web sites. Contact 314-991-0909, rick@rickrecht.com.
• Yosef I. Abramowitz is publisher of JVibe, a new magazine for Jewish youth that is produced by Jewish Family & Life Media. Abramowitz is founder and CEO of JFL. Contact 617-581-6804, yabramowitz@jflmedia.com, or Michelle Cove, editor, mcove@jflmedia.com.
• Amy L. Sales is associate director of the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University in Massachusetts. She has studied Jewish life on college campuses and the experience of teenagers at Jewish summer camps. She is co-author of How Goodly Are Thy Tents: Summer Camps as Jewish Socializing Experiences (University Press of New England, 2003), for which she visited 20 summer camps in 2000. Contact 781-736-2066, sales@brandeis.edu.
• Rabbi Hayim Herring is director of STAR (Synagogues: Transformation and Renewal), an organization based in Minneapolis that works to renew the American Jewish community through congregational innovation and leadership development. He helped conduct a study called "Shema: Listening to Jewish Youth," examining the attitudes of Jewish teens in the Minneapolis area toward Judaism. Contact 612-381-8840, hherring@starsynagogue.org.

MUSLIM
• Abdul Malik Mujahid is founder and president of Soundvision.com, a web-based resource for Muslims with a teen section and multimedia products. Read a 2000 Dallas Morning News article posted by Soundvision. Contact 708-430-1255 ext. 405.
• Amir Hussain is a professor in the religious studies department at California State University, Northridge, but during the 2005-06 academic year will be teaching in the theological studies department at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Hussain has taught courses about contemporary Islam and about religion and film, and can speak about the role that faith plays in the lives of Muslim young people. Contact 818-677-2741, amir.hussain@csun.edu.
• Ted Swedenburg is a professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Arkansas. He has done research on popular music, including Islamic and Middle Eastern influences on rap and hip-hop music, and he hosts a world music show on the radio. He can speak about the impact that Muslim young people are having in the world of music. Contact 479-575-6624, tsweden@uark.edu.
• Visit the web site for the Muslim Students Association, which lists chapters on college campuses across the country.

BUDDHIST
• Diana Winston of Berkeley, Calif., teaches meditation at Buddhist retreat centers and to classes of teenagers. She also leads retreats for Buddhist teenagers and young adults and is the author of Wide Awake: A Buddhist Guide for Teens (Perigree Books, 2003). Contact 510-527-4729, info@wide-awake.org, or through Adrienne Biggs, 415-453-4474, Adrienne@biggspublicity.com.
• Buddhist Gateway has a teen area. Contact Press-Ads@Faith.com.

HINDU
• Hindu Gateway has a teen area. Contact Press-Ads@Faith.com.
• Visit the web site for the Hindu Students Council, which links to chapters at colleges across the country.

NEW AGE/NEOPAGAN
• Sarah M. Pike is an associate professor of religious studies at California State University in Chico. She has written about New Age and neopagan religions and is working on a project about teens on the margins of American culture. Contact 530-898-6341, spike@csuchico.edu.

ACADEMICS
• Lynn Schofield Clark is an assistant research professor in the school of journalism and mass communication at the University of Colorado at Boulder and directs the Teens and the New Media@Home Project, which studies how young people use new media technologies. She also is the author of From Angels to Aliens: Teenagers, the Media and the Supernatural (Oxford University Press, 2003), which is based on extensive interviews with U.S. teens and considers how presentations of the supernatural in the media help shape the religious views of teenagers. Contact 303-735-5632, Lynn.Clark@Colorado.edu.
• Christian Smith is a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and co-principal investigator for the Youth and Religion Project. He is the author, with Melinda Lundquist Denton, of a new book summarizing major findings from that study called Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford University Press, 2005). Contact 919-962-4524, cssmith@email.unc.edu.

Background

WEBZINES, ETC.
• Focus on the Family publishes Brio for teenage girls and Breakaway for teenage guys, and broadcasts a live call-in radio show, Life on the Edge.
• Christianity Today publishes Campus Life, which is available by email subscription.
• Beliefnet hosts teen discussion boards about a range of faiths.

POLLS AND SURVEYS
• See summaries of research findings from the National Study of Youth and Religion, funded by the Lilly Endowment and based at the University of North Carolina. From July 2002 to March 2003, the researchers conducted a random nationwide telephone survey of 3,370 teenagers ages 13 to 17 and their parents, and followed that up with 267 in-depth interviews with teenagers in 45 states. Among the findings: Teenagers seemed remarkably conventional in their religious views, and there wasn't much evidence of "spiritual seeking" or exploration. But even teenagers who considered religion important were not very articulate in talking about their faith - they have a hard time explaining what they believe.
• Read the preliminary results of a national study of spirituality in higher education. A pilot survey released in 2004 found strong interest in spiritual matters among third-year college students. It is part of a broader, longer-term study funded by the John Templeton Foundation. The survey, conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California in Los Angeles, included the responses of 3,680 undergraduates at 46 diverse colleges and universities from around the country.
• "OMG! How Generation Y is Redefining Faith in the iPod Era" -- a survey of almost 1,400 youth ages 18 to 25 that included Christian, Muslim and Jewish youth and a mix of races and ethnicities - explored attitudes about faith, politics and volunteer service. It found a "strong and intimate" connection between religious faith and volunteerism. Fifty-six percent of those surveyed volunteered in their community in the last year, but only 14 percent did so regularly. The 2004 survey was conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research.

WEB SITES
• A 2003 ReligionLink tip on teens and the Internet includes national and regional interview sources.
• Learn about a road trip that a group of reporters ages 11 to 16 took in 2002 to talk to teenagers across the country about spirituality - interviewing, among others, Maggie, a Buddhist teen in Texas, about reincarnation; Vidisha, an 11-year-old in Nashville, about Hindu prayer; and Alexis, a 15-year-old Baptist-turned-Catholic from New Orleans who was the only person in her family who went to church. The trip was organized by Children's PressLine, a media organization in New York City that trains young reporters.
• The Youth Ministry and Spirituality Project, based at San Francisco Theological Seminary and funded by the Lilly Endowment, worked with more than a dozen Christian congregations - Baptist, Catholic, Mennonite, Lutheran and others - as well as youth ministry leaders to explore contemplative practices such as centering prayer and walking labyrinths in working with teenagers.
• The Center for Parent/Youth Understanding is a nonprofit group that tries to help parents and other adults better understand youth culture.

ARTICLES
• Read a 2004 Religion News Service story explaining some of the research findings from the National Study of Youth and Religion. It's posted by Beliefnet.
• Read a Sept. 3, 2004, Associated Press story about Seventeen magazine starting a new section on faith. It's posted by TheFashionSpot.com.
• Read a Sept. 26, 2004, Indianapolis Star story (posted by ReligionNewsBlog.com) about techniques congregations are using - from basketball to fire pits - to try to draw more teenagers to worship.
• Read an Associated Press story about the religious views of the "millennial generation" (born starting in 1982). It's posted by Beliefnet.com.
• Read a June 2002 story from AsianWeek.com about Generation M, an annual interfaith conference organized by Muslim youth that uses hip-hop music and poetry to teach people about Islam and tolerance.
• Read an account of a Hindu Global Youth Conference held in Washington, D.C., in 2000 and interviews with teenagers who attended a Hindu summer camp outside Chicago.