ABSTRACT
Personal theologies begin with perceptions and impressions of the world in which people find themselves living. They do not emerge in a vacuum or begin with abstract, disembodied notions of the good. They are. American young adults participating in the "Making the Transition" study were asked to articulate their beliefs about the world by responding in individual interviews. American young adults at the turn of the twenty-first century varied widely in their worldviews. Nearly half of young adults with negative worldviews were exclusively negative in their clausal statements but no young adults with positive worldviews were exclusively positive. Most young adults discussed more specific reasons for both negative and positive worldviews. Reasons cited for negative worldviews were most frequently moral-interpersonal, or political, with some economic examples as well, such as poverty, or inequity of distribution. Political images and examples were four times more frequent among young adults with negative worldviews than among those with ambivalent or positive worldviews.
