I wonder what the Brits who signed that petition calling for legislation that would make it illegal for parents to instruct their children in religious belief would say about this recent study. I wonder, too, what Richard Dawkins, who claimed in his recent book The God Delusion, that religious instruction is a form of child abuse, would say about the findings contained in this report.
The study shows that teens from religiously observant families with two biological parents who are married or cohabiting ("intact families") are much less likely than other teens to engage in any of ten different undesirable behaviors.
For example, teens from intact families with frequent religious attendance were least likely to have ever gotten into a fight (27.1 percent) when compared to (a) their peers from intact families with infrequent religious attendance (32.1 percent), (b) peers from non-intact families with frequent religious attendance (34.3 percent), and (c) peers from non-intact families with infrequent religious attendance (43.5 percent).
Teens from intact, religiously observant families also had lower levels of drug use, larceny, run-aways, sexual activity, drinking, disciplinary trouble at school, and were generally the highest academic achievers.
Since the study was conducted in the U.S. the religious teens were presumably mostly Christians.
Is anyone surprised at these results? No high school teacher would be. The survey simply puts numbers to what teachers have known for years - the best kids very often come from stable, religious families. You might think this need not be said, but sadly there are some, like Dawkins and his acolytes, who see religion as a great evil which must be purged from our society. One might think that even if they're convinced Christianity is false that they would still support it on purely pragmatic grounds, but it's not just that it's false, it's that it is, in their minds, an evil so great that it must be banned.
Paul in his letter to the Romans alludes to those who, professing themselves wise, are in fact fools. For obvious reasons that seems apposite in this context.
The details of the study can be found at the link.
