Attachment Predicts Adolescent Conversions at Young Life Religious Summer Camps

Abstract

The correspondence hypothesis maintains that people with secure parental attachments will experience gradual religious conversions, with internal working models of childhood attachment figures forming the basis of attachment to God. The compensation hypothesis predicts that people with insecure attachments will experience sudden and dramatic conversions as they seek a relationship with God to compensate for insecure attachment relationships. In Study 1, faith narratives from 162 adolescents were analyzed; associations between parental attachment and the type of conversion reflected in the narrative support both hypotheses. In Study 2, data were prospectively collected from 240 adolescents attending religious summer camps; after camp, 138 participants reported a gradual conversion and 21 reported a sudden conversion. Participants who rated themselves securely attached to their parents before camp were more likely to report a gradual conversion, supporting the correspondence hypothesis. Precamp insecure parental attachment did not predict the subsequent incidence of a sudden religious conversion.

Notes

¹Note that whether or not a god can serve well as a compensatory attachment figure is variable across religious traditions. Many gods are not immutable, perfect, or even interested in a personal relationship with a human.

²Many of the religious commitments or recommitments at camp take place or culminate during an “altar-call” type invitation from a speaker at the end of the camp week. Participants fill out the T2 questionnaire on the bus ride home from camp (typically the next day), so we are measuring the religious change nearly immediately after it occurs at camp. This is a strength of our study in that participants are directly reporting on their experiences before they have much opportunity to reconstruct them to fit normative scripts of the religious community. However, the immediacy of the religious change makes it difficult for participants to reflect on the qualities and nature of the change, which is why we refrain from asking if the change was sudden, gradual, slow, and/or intense. In addition, most participants would probably endorse their camp experience as intense and personal because of the intensive nature of the camping environment. Thus, we have modified the standard measurement procedure to increase its applicability to our participant sample and reflect the language actually used in the Young Life context.

^a N = 240.

^b n = 138.

^c n = 21.

^d n = 81.

Note. ^aNajelkerke R ² = .03; −2 Log-likelihood = 364.13; Cox & Snell R ² = .02.

^bNajelkerke R ² = .01; −2 Log-likelihood = 168.38; Cox & Snell R ² = .01.