Soul Searching tells the definitive story of the religious and spiritual lives of contemporary American teenagers, revealing that religion is indeed a significant factor in their lives. This authoritative book reports the findings of the largest and most detailed such study ever undertaken, a study based on a nationwide telephone survey of teens and their parents, as well as in-depth face-to-face interviews with more than 250 of the survey respondents. Chock full of carefully interpreted interview data and solid survey statistics, Soul Searching contains many surprising findings. For example, the authors find that teenagers are far more influenced by the religious beliefs and practices of their parents and other adults than is commonly thought. They challenge the conventional wisdom that many teens today are "spiritual seekers" and they show that greater teenage religious involvement is significantly associated with more positive adolescent life outcomes. The book also reveals the complexity of contemporary teenage religious life, showing that religion is widely practiced and positively valued by teens, but also de-prioritized and very poorly understood by them, yet significant nonetheless in shaping their lives. More broadly, Soul Searching describes what appears to be a major transformation of faith in the U.S., away from the substance of historical religious traditions and toward a new and quite different faith.