Churches said to help poor youth

A study by a Michigan professor finds that church involvement helps low-income youth make progress in school.

“Churches in poor and crime-ridden neighborhoods are often the primary functional communities in an otherwise dysfunctional world,” wrote Mark Regnerus, director of the Social Research Center at Calvin College in Grand Rapids.

“And for the youth who frequent them, such churches reinforce messages about working hard and staying out of trouble, and orient them toward a positive future.”

Regnerus based his findings on an analysis of more than 9,700 responses to the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.

In general, he found the importance of church attendance and religious faith was not much different among youth from a range of neighborhoods. He also learned church attendance generally helped teens stay on track in school.

However, he noted, “As the level of poverty rises within the neighborhood, the relationship between church attendance and being on track in school becomes more positive, indicating a uniquely protective influence of church attendance among youth in more impoverished neighborhoods when compared with their counterparts in more prosperous neighborhoods,” he wrote.

Regnerus also studied the influence of church attendance on academic performance of youth in poor environments.

“Church attendance indeed strengthens the educational progress among children in high-poverty neighborhoods,” he said.

The study was funded by a grant from Pew Charitable Trusts.