Conclusion

Sylvia Collins-Mayo started this book by outlining some of the preoccupations of sociologists of religion regarding age and religion. She noted that:

young people growing up in late modern Western societies tend to be less religious than older people, at least in terms of institutional religion. Young people are less likely to identify with any one religious tradition than their older contemporaries, less likely to subscribe to the creed of a major world religion and less likely to attend a place of worship on a regular basis (Davie 2000; Voas and Crockett 2006). This observation immediately raises questions. The first is concerned with the extent to which an interest in religion may be dependent on the life cycle. Is it the case that young people are ‘naturally’ less religious than older people because religion tends to deal with ‘ultimate concerns’ and experiences that are more likely to arise later in life – in the words of Cyndi Lauper, do ‘girls just wanna have fun’? Perhaps with the accumulation of significant life events non-religious young people will become religious older people. Or is it the case that young people generation on generation are ‘losing their religion’? A second question follows. If there is a generational trend away from institutional religion, are young people basically succumbing to the forces of secularisation (a perspective that seems to have gone out of fashion), or are there sacralising influences running parallel which are changing the way young people relate to religion thereby keeping the sacred alive and meaningful? If the latter, then what significance does religion in its new forms have both for the individual and for wider society? A third set of questions relates to the transmission of faith. If young people are less religious than older people is it because older people have failed to pass faith on effectively?