Teen Spirituality and Religion

Teen Spirituality and Religion supports Areas 5, 6, and 7 of Young Adults Deserve the Best: Competencies for Librarians Serving Youth.

Online Resources

Beliefnet, a multi-faith e-community, hopes to help people meet their own religious, spiritual and moral needs by providing information, inspiration, community, stimulation and products. Among the popular features of this site are the Belief-O-Matic, which uses 20 questions to determine the user’s spiritual style and the Teens section of its well-developed directory of religious and spiritual Web sites.

Adherents.com is a growing collection of over 41,000 adherent statistics and religious geography citations—references to published membership, adherent and congregation statistics for over 4,200 religions, churches, denominations, religious bodies, faith groups, tribes, cultures, movements, ultimate concerns, etc.

The Internet Sacred Text Archive is a freely available non-profit archive of electronic texts about religion, mythology, legends and folklore, and occult and esoteric topics. Texts are presented in English translation and, in some cases, in the original language. When few or no primary texts are available for a given religion, secondary texts have been included. In many cases, there are no primary texts for a given religion because the tradition is primarily oral. In this case, texts which contain transcriptions or retellings of these traditions have been used.

The Secular Web is a comprehensive website devoted to the defense of metaphysical naturalism, the view that our natural world is all that there is, a closed system in no need of an explanation and sufficient unto itself. It includes the world's largest library of secularist literature online, links to other sites and organizations, and many useful resources for atheists, agnostics and freethinkers.

Model Programs

The Teen Spirituality Page of the Missouri River Regional Library (serving Cole and Osage Counties, MO) includes information and links on different kinds of religions practiced around the world.

The Spirituality section of the Westport (CT) Public Library’s Teenscene Web site has selected resources on Buddhism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism, as well as a link to Beliefnet.

Bibliographies

Chicago (IL) Public Library’s Teen Edition has a Reading List for Inspirational Fiction, which includes book descriptions and series titles.

The Library Network’s Jennifer Hubert wrote a “Reading Rants” Web page, Gods and Monsters: Teen fiction that deals with spiritual issues, with reviews of several YA titles.

The Berkeley County (SC) Library has compiled a bibliography, Faithful Fiction (and Other Genres) for Teens, which includes inspirational fiction, science fiction, westerns, biographies and nonfiction on spirituality and religion for young adults.

Enoch Pratt Free Library (Batimore, MD) Fiction and Young Adult Department Booklist: Teen Spirit and Religion Titles 1999.

Plymouth District Library (Plymouth, MI) Teen Zone Religious Fiction for Teens.

The Salt Lake County (UT) Library System has a list, LDS Young Adult Fiction, of young adult books by members of the Church of Latter Day Saints (commonly referred to as Mormons). The books on the list all include some mention of LDS beliefs or customs.

Earth-centered spirituality is the focus of the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans booklist, Recommended Reading: Teens and Young Adults.

Selected Print Resources: Articles and Reviewing Journals

Kiesling, Angie. “Tuning in to the teen soul.” Publishers Weekly 249, no. 10 (Mar 11, 2002): p. 30-32.

Martin-Morris, Debi. “What makes you spiritual?” Teen 43, no. 12 (Dec 1999): p. 74-77.

Sullivan, Ed. “Wrestling with Faith in Young Adult Fiction.” Booklist 100, no. 3 (Oct 1, 2003): p. 331.

Neff, LaVonne ; Garrett, Lynn. “Selling like hamburgers.” Publishers Weekly 248, no. 38 (Sep 17, 2001): p. S2-S11.

Campbell, Patty. “The Sand in the Oyster: Wrestling with God.” Horn Book Magazine 76, no. 3 (May/Jun 2000): p. 353-356.

Kniffel, Leonard. “Getting into the spirit.” American Libraries 34, no. 5 (May 2003): p. 36-40, 42.

The October 1 issue of Booklist is an annual Spotlight on Religion and Spirituality.

Publishers Weekly issues a quarterly Religion Update in February, May, August and November.

Additional Resource

"What do you Believe?-the Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teens." A YALSA Best Video of 2003. Further information can be found at http://www.whatdoyoubelieve.org/.