A study led by University of Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith will be the focus of a forum to be held at Fordham University in New York City on Nov. 2 (Thursday).
Hosted by the Fordham Center on Religion and Culture, “Catholic Teenagers: Faith at Risk?” will be a panel discussion featuring Smith and moderated by Rev. Edward A. Malloy, C.S.C., president emeritus of Notre Dame. The panel will discuss the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR), for which Smith serves as principal investigator and director. The NSYR was recently published in Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, an award-winning book co-authored by Smith.
Specifically, the panel will explore possible causes and consequences of what the NSYR indicated were “relatively lower levels of religiosity among U.S. Catholic teens compared to teenagers in other U.S. Christian traditions.” The panelists joining Smith will be James Davidson, professor of sociology at Purdue University; Margaret McCarty, founding executive director of the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry; and Alison Donohue, director of campus ministry at New York City’s Regis High School.
Smith joined the Notre Dame faculty this fall as William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology and director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society. He previously served as the Stuart Chapin Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Originally published by at newsinfo.nd.edu on October 18, 2006.