Beyond Nice: Spiritualities of Adolescent Girls

Patricia H. Davis is Assistant Professor of Pastoral Care and Counseling, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. She is author of Counseling Adolescent Girls in Fortress Press' Creative Pastoral Care and Counseling series.

In this denuded dissertation, Davis eschews sustained analysis and engagement with relevant scholarship in favor of excerpting interviews she conducted over four years with adolescent girls about church and spirituality. Reading more like an extended journalistic feature than qualitative research, this book targets an audience of church workers seeking a better understanding of adolescent girls. Five topically organized chapters feature quotations from girls about God, their churches, sexuality and violence. In the first chapter, Davis explains that her responsibilities as an interviewer include sharing girls' insights without putting her own spin on them. This may explain why she does little more than quote and rephrase what informants tell her. Unfortunately, this strategy does not erase her influence, but rather allows it subtle power. For example, her chapter about violence highlights a tendency she has noticed among adolescent girls to protect others but not themselves. While Davis does voice some concern about this, her troubling admiration of such self-abnegation is evident as well. She seems to be rewriting an old feminist story, in which women are equal parts noble, innocent, victimized and wise. For a book that transcends these clich s in its exploration of girls coming of age in spiritual communities, see Carol Lakey Hess's Caretakers of Our Common House. Davis's book may serve her fellow church workers adequately, but her shallow valorization of girls does not, despite its title's promise, venture far beyond nice. (Dec.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.