Baptism is another bone of much contention. Catholics believed that infant baptism was necessary for salvation, which led to increasingly complicated theories about limbo because of people having trouble buying into the idea of throwing day-old babies into the fires of hell. This is something that evolved over time, since there's no mention of infant baptism in the Bible.

Infant baptism was one of the things that early Protestant movements were protesting against. Both the Anabaptist and the Baptist movements believed in baptism of adult believers. Adult baptism signified becoming part of the church membership, but most sects that believe in adult baptism don't believe baptism is necessary to salvation. Depending on the church, you can be saved by faith alone or be saved by faith and good works. Other Protestant groups (Calvinism, for one) believe in infant baptism, but they believe its purpose is to mark as child as a Christian, not for the purpose of salvation.

IIRC, Elsie's beliefs reflected the evangelical beliefs of the Second Great Awakening, which focused both on a personal relationship with god and on social justice.

(This is very off the top of my head and some beer.)

Question for reading hive-mind. Can y'all give me titles of young adult novels where the lead character is either just out of high school or in college proper? (Or, like in Adiós, where the lead is the youngest in the cast and the story doesn't revolve around school society.)

I'm trying to make the argument that there's a real gap in popular literature with characters in this age range and I'm trying to parse out why.

I'm having a hard time coming up with any, although in Scott Westerfeld's Peeps, the characters are out of high school. Most of Holly Black's characters are at the older end of the range, too.

Traditionally, kids who read, read *up* in terms of plot and character. When I was doing The Big Empty, which was post-flu sort-of-apocalypse, with kids on their own, one of whom was pregnant, I was startled to find out the pub was putting the target readership as ten and up. But it's usually true, and the problem is, by the time kids are older teens, they're reading adult books instead of stuff about their own age group.

Part of the lure of YA fiction, too, is that pull between finding your own identity and the child you've been in your parents' home. High school settings are perfect, because they provide the *other* society of school, but the protagonist still has to deal with Mom and Dad. If you put a character in college, that leap's already been made.

High school settings are perfect, because they provide the *other* society of school, but the protagonist still has to deal with Mom and Dad. If you put a character in college, that leap's already been made.

BtVS S3 vs. S4.

I actually loved S4 for a lot of reasons, but point taken.

Look at One Tree Hill. They took the characters from high school graduation, jumped forward four (five?) years, and put them all back in their hometown. It's like they're playing happy families, but still in that enclosed high school microcosm, and some of them are *still* dealing with parent issues. It works for their target market (and, um, idiots like me who sometimes watch it for the pretty fantasy factor).

I actually loved S4 for a lot of reasons, but point taken.

I think you're exactly right, though. I love S4 too, but the high school setting was especially resonant and generated stories in a way that the college setting didn't.

Er, let's see..>I just read one called "Sophomore Switch" where the characters were in college (they "switched" lives for ...what I *would've* assumed was part of junior year abroad if it weren't for the title of the book?)

If you want ones where the protagonist just...isn't in school, for whatever reason (on vacation, not the setting of the book, what have you), I've got plenty. But usually there's some assumption that the character would go to school at some point, or has been. And not that the parent isn't around at all--in many cases the parent is very there (ie, one I read recently "Beige" is about a kid (16? 17?) who is dumped on her aged punk rocker dad for the summer meeting him for the first time and figuring out who she is, sorta)

I think the Traveling Pants girls are in the summer of their freshman year of college in the last book.

I saw this book at the bookstore today:

I am the Messenger - ZUSAK After capturing a bank robber, nineteen-year-old cab driver Ed Kennedy begins receiving mysterious messages that direct him to addresses where people need help, and he begins getting over his lifelong feeling of worthlessness.

That was a great book.