A Child’s Spiritual World: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

Though much has been written about adolescent spirituality and how adults should deal with it, far less has been written by adolescents themselves, or by adults from the adolescent perspective. This study of four twelve-year-old girls takes the adolescent’s position, and tries to understand spirituality in their own terms, and from their point of view. The four girls chosen from this study are all students in Seventh-day Adventist schools, but their home lives are each different. This study seeks to explore the effects of those influences on the lives of each of these girls, but more importantly, their conceptions of God, religion, andspirituality. These conceptions are qualitatively analyzed for each girl, as well as across the four cases. Results showed that family influence is stronger than church or school influence, but that the relationship is not necessarily simple. Schools do not (at least in these cases) have much effect on the development of an adolescent’s devotional life, for example. Church seems to have even less effect on their lives. At this point, the girls respond strongly to friends, members who relate to them, and whether the service is interesting or not. Recommendations are that schools could do more to develop spirituality, that parents need to be aware that they are strong role models, and that a longitudinal study could give more stable results.