RELIGION AND DELINQUENCY - THE RELATIONSHIP AFTER CONSIDERING FAMILY AND PEER INFLUENCES

This study of 724 adolescents from four public high schools indicated that any relationship between religion and delinquency is complex. Ind eed, it indicates that the significance of the relationship depends on what measures of religion are used, on whether other important famili al and peer influences are considered, and on the form of delinquency analyzed When only controlling for demographics, while examining measu res of church attendance and religiosity, the present study supports t he usual conclusion that religion is related to status offenses and no t to crime (see reviews, Burkett 1993; Cochran et al. 1994). However, evangelism is not related to either form of delinquency when only cons idering the effects of demographic variables. On the other hand, when elements of control theory were added to demographic factors with hier archical regression procedures, church attendance and religiosity ceas ed to be relevant to status offenses and remained irrelevant to crime, whereas evangelism was related to crime. The implications of those fi ndings for future investigations were discussed.