ABSTRACT
Once upon a time – not so very long ago – many people assumed that religion was transmitted down the generations. Parents would socialize their children into the faith in which they had themselves been raised by their own parents, and the cycle would repeat itself. Today, as so many of the chapters in this book remind us, this assumption is no longer tenable. It is not simply that such transmission has failed, but that conditions have changed. For one thing, there are many more influences which shape young people, including real and virtual social networks. And for another, we now inhabit societies in which it is no longer the done thing to do the done thing: indeed, it is the done thing not to do the done thing.
