From angels to aliens: teenagers, the media, and the supernatural

Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the Left Behind series are but the latest manifestations of American teenagers' longstanding fascination with the supernatural and the paranormal.

In this groundbreaking book, Lynn Schofield Clark explores the implications of this fascination for contemporary religious and spiritual practices.

Relying on stories gleaned from more than 250 in-depth interviews with teens and their families, Clark seeks to discover what today's teens really believe and why.

She finds that as adherence to formal religious bodies declines, the willingness to believe in 'superstition' grows accordingly.

Ironically, Clark argues, fundamentalist Christian alarmism about the forces of evil has also fed belief in a wider array of supernatural entities.

Offering provocative insights into how the entertainment media shape conmteporary religious ideas and practices, From Angels to Aliens paints a surprising - and perhaps alarming - portrait of the spiritual state of America's youth.