Transformations in Parent and Friend Faith Support Predicting Adolescents’ Religious Faith

Both parents and peers have been validated by previous research as being important contributors to the development of religious faith. The purpose of this study was to elucidate the contributions of the transmission (e.g., parent church attendance) and transactional (e.g., discussions about faith) models of socialization, as well as explore the possibility that a third model, the transformation model, exists as a meaningful construct contributing to our understanding of social factors and their influence on religious faith. More than 4,000 Christian adolescents (M = 16.2) completed measures of perceived support from parents and friends (e.g., faith modeling, faith dialogue) as well as a measure of religious faith. Results indicated that both parent and friend transmission and transaction variables significantly and positively predicted the measure of religious faith, with friends’ constructs accounting for more variance in religious faith than that of parents. Mediated regression analyses also revealed that perceived faith support from friends mediated the influence of perceived faith support from parents on religious faith. Results are discussed within the framework of the transformation that takes place in parent–friend relationships during adolescent religious faith development.