Hellfire and Delinquency Revisited

While Hirschi and Stark conclude that religiosity is unrelated to delinquency, their findings and a replication of their study in the Pacific Northwest (Burkett and White) may not be generalizable to other areas of the country. Using self-report data from 1,383 Atlanta tenth graders in 1970, we found a moderate negative relationship between church attendance and delinquent behavior. Our data also suggest a causal structure in which respect for the juvenile court system links church attendance with delinquency. We suspect that church attendance may be a truer reflection of adolescents' religious experience in the South than the West, so accounting for the differences between our findings and those of previous research.