{"id":844904,"date":"2025-02-06T05:00:24","date_gmt":"2025-02-06T11:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/?p=844904"},"modified":"2025-02-05T10:23:43","modified_gmt":"2025-02-05T16:23:43","slug":"do-non-religious-people-grow-up-differently-than-religious-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/blog\/do-non-religious-people-grow-up-differently-than-religious-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Non-Religious People Grow Up Differently Than Religious People?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t<div class=\"content-restriction-preview\"><p>One of the most important debates in social science is nature versus nurture. We can observe all kinds of behaviors in adults, but trying to understand the series of events that led to that outcome is really difficult. In psychology, there\u2019s something called \u201cTrait Theory,\u201d the idea that people are born with fairly stable dispositions. Things like introversion, extroversion, or desire to be in control are innate qualities of an individual. While circumstances can affect a person, you can\u2019t make a shy person enjoy being the center of attention, no matter what happened to them in their formative years.<\/p> <p>There is some evidence of a genetic component to religious affiliation. In a study of twins separated at birth, Thomas Bouchard found that about 50% of religiosity was genetically influenced, while the other half relied on environmental factors. But, as you might expect, this issue is more significant than a DNA<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t<div class=\"content-restriction-block\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"content-restriction-block-login login-toggle\">Already a member? <a href=\"#\">Log in<\/a><\/div>\n\t\t\t<div class=\"content-restriction-block-content\">\n\t\t\t\t<h2>Unlock premium content!<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\t<p>Get access to all Church Answers premium content from our expert contributors plus many other membership benefits.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<h3>$9.97 per month<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t<p>Unlimited access<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/join\/\" class=\"button\">Join Now<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n\t\t<div class=\"content-restriction-preview\"><p>One of the most important debates in social science is nature versus nurture. We can observe all kinds of behaviors in adults, but trying to understand the series of events that led to that outcome is really difficult. In psychology, there\u2019s something called \u201cTrait Theory,\u201d the idea that people are born with fairly stable dispositions. Things like introversion, extroversion, or desire to be in control are innate qualities of an individual. While circumstances can affect a person, you can\u2019t make a shy person enjoy being the center of attention, no matter what happened to them in their formative years.<\/p> <p>There is some evidence of a genetic component to religious affiliation. In a study of twins separated at birth, Thomas Bouchard found that about 50% of religiosity was genetically influenced, while the other half relied on environmental factors. But, as you might expect, this issue is more significant than a DNA<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t<div class=\"content-restriction-block\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"content-restriction-block-login login-toggle\">Already a member? <a href=\"#\">Log in<\/a><\/div>\n\t\t\t<div class=\"content-restriction-block-content\">\n\t\t\t\t<h2>Unlock premium content!<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\t<p>Get access to all Church Answers premium content from our expert contributors plus many other membership benefits.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<h3>$9.97 per month<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t<p>Unlimited access<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/join\/\" class=\"button\">Join Now<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t","protected":false},"author":17635,"featured_media":844907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"publish_to_discourse":"0","publish_post_category":"1","wpdc_auto_publish_overridden":"","wpdc_topic_tags":"","wpdc_pin_topic":"","wpdc_pin_until":"","discourse_post_id":"","discourse_permalink":"","wpdc_publishing_response":"","wpdc_publishing_error":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,183,184,190,175,186,177,178,191,14796,180,194,18058,176],"tags":[20184,20185,19090,20186,20187],"class_list":["post-844904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-answers","category-communications","category-discipleship","category-family","category-grow","category-health-and-metrics","category-lead","category-membership-and-assimilation","category-mind-body-and-spirit","category-monday-wednesday-featured","category-outreach-and-evangelism","category-preaching","category-premium","category-revitalize","tag-do-non-religious-people-grow-up-differently-than-religious-people","tag-non-religious","tag-nones","tag-religious","tag-religious-affiliation","membership-content","access-restricted"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Do Non-Religious People Grow Up Differently Than Religious People? | Church Answers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"One of the most important debates in social science is nature versus nurture. We can observe all kinds of behaviors in adults, but trying to understand the series of events that led to that outcome is really difficult. In psychology, there\u2019s something called \u201cTrait Theory,\u201d the idea that people are born with fairly stable dispositions. Things like introversion, extroversion, or desire to be in control are innate qualities of an individual. While circumstances can affect a person, you can\u2019t make a shy person enjoy being the center of attention, no matter what happened to them in their formative years. There is some evidence of a genetic component to religious affiliation. In a study of twins separated at birth, Thomas Bouchard found that about 50% of religiosity was genetically influenced, while the other half relied on environmental factors. But, as you might expect, this issue is more significant than a DNA profile. For non-religious individuals, the religious environment of their youth can help us understand what factors can lead someone to leave faith behind or become an active member of a house of worship. In 2024, Tony Jones and I (using Templeton Foundation funding) surveyed over 12,000 non-religious Americans. We asked all kinds of questions about their religious history to try and build a more complete picture of how the nones navigate their adolescence. For instance, we asked, \u201cAt any point in your life would you have described yourself as a born-again or evangelical Christian?\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/blog\/do-non-religious-people-grow-up-differently-than-religious-people\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Do Non-Religious People Grow Up Differently Than Religious People? | Church Answers\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One of the most important debates in social science is nature versus nurture. We can observe all kinds of behaviors in adults, but trying to understand the series of events that led to that outcome is really difficult. In psychology, there\u2019s something called \u201cTrait Theory,\u201d the idea that people are born with fairly stable dispositions. Things like introversion, extroversion, or desire to be in control are innate qualities of an individual. While circumstances can affect a person, you can\u2019t make a shy person enjoy being the center of attention, no matter what happened to them in their formative years. There is some evidence of a genetic component to religious affiliation. In a study of twins separated at birth, Thomas Bouchard found that about 50% of religiosity was genetically influenced, while the other half relied on environmental factors. But, as you might expect, this issue is more significant than a DNA profile. For non-religious individuals, the religious environment of their youth can help us understand what factors can lead someone to leave faith behind or become an active member of a house of worship. 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For non-religious individuals, the religious environment of their youth can help us understand what factors can lead someone to leave faith behind or become an active member of a house of worship. In 2024, Tony Jones and I (using Templeton Foundation funding) surveyed over 12,000 non-religious Americans. We asked all kinds of questions about their religious history to try and build a more complete picture of how the nones navigate their adolescence. 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For non-religious individuals, the religious environment of their youth can help us understand what factors can lead someone to leave faith behind or become an active member of a house of worship. In 2024, Tony Jones and I (using Templeton Foundation funding) surveyed over 12,000 non-religious Americans. We asked all kinds of questions about their religious history to try and build a more complete picture of how the nones navigate their adolescence. 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He served as a pastor in the American Baptist Church for over twenty years, leading First Baptist Church of Mount Vernon, IL for 17.5 years until its closure in July 2024.","url":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/blog\/author\/ryanburge\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17635"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=844904"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":844913,"href":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844904\/revisions\/844913"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/844907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}