Age

Question 1

What are the 3 reasons for older people being more likely to be religious?

Answer 1

1) Disengagement from wider society
2) Religious socialisation
3) Ill health and death

Question 2

1) Disengagement from wider society

Answer 2

• become detached from integrating mechanisms of society
  e.g. participation in the workplace through paid employment
• loneliness and increasing social isolation
• partners and friends die
• religious organisations provide support
• religion is a comforter

Question 3

2) Religious socialisation

Answer 3

• greater emphasis is put on religion throughout the socialisation process
• brought up attending Sunday school and church
• influenced their early beliefs
• may return to religious beliefs as they get older
• the ageing effect

Question 4

3) Ill health and death

Answer 4

• ageing process often brings the elderly to religion
• comfort, coping, meaning and support
• face declining health and death
• begin to think bout their own funeral

Question 5

What are the 6 reasons for younger people being less likely to be religious?

Answer 5

1- Pragmatic reasons
2- Social stigma
3- The generation effect
4- The expanded spiritual marketplace
5- The privatisation of belief
6- Secularisation and the decline of metanarratives

Question 6

1- Pragmatic reasons

Answer 6

Leisure has become a bigger part of life
- shops, clubs, pubs are open for longer
- including Sundays
- younger people have more demands on their time

Question 7

2- Social stigma

Answer 7

The image of religion may sometimes be seen as ‘uncool’
- exerts social pressure not to be religious

Question 8

3- The generation effect

Answer 8

Each generation is becoming more secular than the previous one
- due to cultural amnesia, decline in RE
- now born in a time where religion isn’t popular
- not socialised into being religious

Question 9

What do Voas and Crockett say about the generation effect?

Answer 9

The main explanation for generational differences
- note that each generation is half as religious as their parents
- ‘period effect’
- people are born in a particular time (cohort) are more likely to be religious than others

Question 10

4- The expanded spiritual marketplace
LYNCH

Answer 10

Young people are turning away from the conventional ideas of religion
- now more sources for young people to draw on to build on religious and spiritual beliefs, identities, lifestyles

Question 11

4- The expanded spiritual marketplace
ROOF

Answer 11

Now an ‘expanded spiritual marketplace’
- growing exposure and accessibility to diversity, spiritual/religious ideas
- result of immigration- Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, NRMs, NAMs
- exposed through media and internet, new avenues for exploring

Question 12

5- The privatisation of belief

Answer 12

• YP treat religion as a private matter
• may have general spiritual or religious belief BUT may not belong to any particular religion or hold any specific religious belief
• prefer not to make a public display of belief through involvement in religious organisation, or admit them in surveys

Question 13

5- The privatisation of belief
DAVIE

Answer 13

Expressed this in the words
‘believing without belonging’

Question 14

6- Secularisation ad the decline of metanarratives

Answer 14

General decline of religious thinking, practise and institutions
- growing disenchantment with the world

Question 15

6- Secularisation ad the decline of metanarratives
POSTMODERNIST LYOTARD

Answer 15

Metanarratives like religion have lost their power to influence
- how YP think about, interpret, explain the world
- no longer believe old religious explanations
- pick, mix or reject any beliefs they choose