Religious Experience in Childhood and Adolescence

A Summary of:

Tamminen, K. (1994). Religious Experiences in Childhood and Adolescence: A viewpoint of Religious Development Between the Ages of 7 and 20. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 4(2), 61-85.

Introduction

Kalevi Tamminen, the author of the present article was a professor at the University of Helsinki. He received the William James Award (Div 36/APA), in 1995. He has authored several articles and his major works include, Tamminen, K. (1991). Religious Development in Childhood and Youth: an Empirical Study.

This article, that reports only one aspect of a larger research project, is similar to other works that have been carried out elsewhere in the world. A few salient ones among them are,

Elkind, D. & Elkind, S.F. (1962). Varieties of religious experience in young adolescents.

Goldman, R. (1964). Religious Thinking from Childhood to Adolescence.

Cavalletti, S. (1992). Religious potential of the Child.

Hay, D. & Nye, R. (2006). The spirit of the child.

Tamminen himself fittingly cites some of the above works in his literature review. In the module on Psychological approaches to Religious Development (PSY 502) we have considered most of the above listed works and this article needs to be considered within that context. The present article is very relevant to our study of religious development!

Rationale and background for the research

“Children’s religious experiences have been studied only infrequently,” the author observes (p.62). Often research works in religious experience was associated with puberty and adolescence, but the religious experience of children requires attention by its own right. Tamminen goes on to review some of the works:

Bovet (1925, in French) suggested similarity between religious experience of adolescents and children;
Klingberg (1953) analysed 630 Swedish essays by 9-13 year old, and claimed that 90% reported religious experience;
D. Elkind & S.F. Elkind (1962) is based on a sample of 144 fifth grade students; most reported direct experience of God;
Tamminen’s own study of 1969, considered 67 children (6-7 years), and out of whom 61% reported an experience where they felt the presence of God close to them.
Greer (1981) studied 1,872 participants, 18-19 year old, from N. Ireland, out of whom 1/3 of boys & ½ of girls claimed having had experience of God.
Greer (1982) again in another sample of 1,970 (12-17 year olds) reported that 35% of RC & 31% of Protestant boys and 64% RC & 40% protestant girls gave an affirmative answer to the question if they had an experience of God.

What is Religious Experience?

There are a variety of definitions. Humanist psychologists identify them as peak experience or an experience of the unification of the world and life, or a deep experience of the meaning of personal existence (Maslow, 1964). Sometimes they are also associated with nature-related experiences – feeling of unity with nature and aesthetic experiences (Hay, 1979; Martin, 1972).

Glock & Stark, (1965) consider religious experience as normal phenomena, with an element of contact with supernatural consciousness, ultimate reality or God. Finally Tamminen (1991) offers his own definition: “religious experience is an experience to which a sense of dependency on or a link with God/the divine and the transcendent is connected” (p.34). One can notice an influence of the German philosopher of religion, Schleiermacher, in this definition. The latter defined religion as, the feeling of absolute dependence on God, the spirit of the world (weltgeist).

This study of Tamminen is concerned with religious experience among children. This exercise poses various problems. First, interview and survey cannot capture the subjectivity of the experience. The uniqueness of the subject’s feeling & interpretation could be lost. Secondly, the individual’s interpretation of the religious experience depends on their own religious frame of reference, traditions, concept of God. This needs to be duly understood. Finally, this type of research relies heavily on the capacity of children to remember and recall; memory and recall, in turn, depends on the intensity of the experience, situation of recall (presence of companions), and the child’s skills in expression. The influence of these factors on the present research cannot be ruled out.

Research Questions

Following were the research questions:

To what extent do children and adolescents of different ages (7 to 20 years of age) have religious experience?
To what external and internal contexts are their personal religious experiences related?
How do these experiences relate to their other aspects – religiousness and to their gender, personality, school, and home background?

Research Design

This article reports one dimension (Experiential dimension) among the five aspects that were studied in three sub-studies. The research design was based on the five dimensions of religiousness according to Glock & Stark (1968):

Experiential dimension (religious experience)
Ideological dimension (religious beliefs)
Intellectual dimension (religious thinking, knowledge)
Ritual dimension (religious practice)
Consequential dimension (life questions & morals)

Samples:

The three sub-studies had varying number of participants. In the 1974 study there were 1,558 children and adolescents. In the longitudinal study: (that was carried out in three years: 1974, 1976 & 1980) there were 277 in 1974 & 1976; and 60 samples in all three years; in 1980, there were 242 additional participants. It is important to note that one of the difficulties of longitudinal study is the high drop-out rate or the varying numbers. Another problem with longitudinal study in this case was the difficulty in making out if the participants were reporting the same God experience in repeated studies.

There was also a replicate Study carried out in 1986, at the same location and same schools as in Study 1, this had a sample of 582 girls and 594 boys.

The participants were Finnish Children, aged 7 to 20 years; 95% Lutheran; 1% Orthodox church; 4% others.

Measures:

Two questions were used in enquiry (and answers were analysed; as for the first graders, they were asked only the first question in a private interview):

Q1 – God’s nearness: Have you at times felt that God is particularly close to you?

Follow up question: Would you like to tell me about it, when and in what situations?

Q2 – God’s guidance: Have you at times felt that God is guiding, directing your life?

Follow up question: Can you tell me about it, when and how?

Note that there is a multiplicity of Independent Variables (IV), because the above two questions have two parts each, and these questions sought answers for the five dimension of Glock & Stark above.

Procedure:

The written tests were administered to the participants in classroom environment, and the answer sheets were collected by outside researches (not teachers). First graders were also interviewed personally; they did not answer Q2 (regarding God’s guidance).

My opinion is that in younger children interviews would have been better, as shown by a complementary study by Jyrhama (1991, in Finnish), and another study by Hay, D & Nye, R (1998). However, interpretation of transcribed interviews is a tedious task, and note that the age of participants in this study ranged from 7 to 20.

Summary & Discussion

The salient finding is that religious experience (RE) is relatively general, especially among children, but also among adolescents; religious experience decreased as pupils moved from childhood to adolescence; Clear decrease took place at age of puberty (13-15 years); Development lines of experiences of God’s nearness and those of God’s guidance were rather same.

Religious experience highest reported among age group of 7 to 11 years. The context of religious experience is in time of danger and emergency; God’s closeness is felt more when they prayed. Overall the results fit in with the picture we have of the lives of children at this age. That is, their lives are centred around immediate surrounding and marked by concrete thinking!

Among children in the age group of 11-13 years: many aspects are similar to 7-11 year age group. The context of RE includes also solitude and loneliness. Development aspect: they begin to develop more abstract thinking, but this is not evident in RE.

Age group 13-15 years: Puberty brings clear turning point in religious development; doubts about God’s existence increases; God’s presence seems very remote; doubts are raised about prayers being answered. The context of RE is not much loneliness, but experiences of death of a dear one!

Age Group 15-20 years (adolescence): Clarification & stability in Rel development is noticed. This stage is marked by a search for identity, meaning of life & death, abstract religious thinking; They perceive that God answers prayer more indirectly.

The context of RE is prayer, worship, congregational activities. There is an attempt at internalization of faith, and focus on generalities. Their reports RE have been affected by their improved skills in expression.

(Note: Are the 15-20 year old reporting experience of that time of five years or are they reporting experience of earlier times?)

It is interesting to consider the role of memory in reporting the RE. Intense experiences are better remembered! Longitudinal study shows how some childhood experiences are forgotten, or reinterpreted differently. The interpretation of RE depends on the religious frame of reference of the person. In general RE identified not with fear, but with comfort, even those related to emergencies.

Remarkable difference in the reports of RE between samples of 1974 and 1986 was also noticed. The difference was in the number of reported experiences, and not in their contents and contexts.

Conclusion: My own evaluation and questions for discussion:

1. I wonder if the participants understood the subtle difference between God’s presence and God’s guidance. I think, this could account for low reports in the second category. This is a bit too much to expect especially from younger children. Only 17% of participants reported the experience of God’s guidance in the 1974 and 1986 studies (p.75).

2. Research work among children, how much is it prejudiced by the religious understanding of adults?

3. In the reported research, attention was paid to concrete and abstract thinking between the samples of different age groups, but what about symbolic thinking?

4. Overall, this was a complex study – given the number of samples, IVs, and the cohorts. This report, complex in itself, is dealing with only one aspect of the whole study. A praiseworthy contribution!

References

Cavalletti, S. (1992). Religious potential of the child. (2^nd ed.) U.S.: Liturgy Training Publications.

Elkind, D. & Elkind, S.F. (1962). Varieties of religious experience in young adolescents. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 2, 103-111.

Goldman, R. (1964). Religious Thinking from Childhood to Adolescence. London: Routledge & Kegan

Greer, J.E. (1981). Religious experience and religious education. Search, 4, 23-34.

Greer, J.E. (1982). The religious experience of Northern Irish pupils. The Irish Catechist, 6, 49-58.

Hay, D. & Nye, R. (2006). The spirit of the child. (Rev.ed.) London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Hay, D. (1979). Religious experience amongst a group of post-graduate students. A qualitative study. Journal of the Scientific Study of Religion, 18, 164-182.

Martin, F.D. (1972). The art and the religious experience: The “language” of the sacred. Lewisberg, P.A: Bucknell University Press.

Maslow, A. (1964). Religious Calues and Peak Experiences. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

Stark, R., & Glock, C.Y. (1968). American piety: the nature of religious commitment. Berkeley: University of California.

Tamminen, K. (1969). The first graders and religious education. Department of Education. University of Helsinki.