The Age Gap in Religion Around the World

[trotsky]

http://www.pewforum.org/2018/06/13/the-age-gap-in-religion-around-the-world/

In the United States, religious congregations have been graying for decades, and young adults are now much less religious than their elders. Recent surveys have found that younger adults are far less likely than older generations to identify with a religion, believe in God or engage in a variety of religious practices.

But this is not solely an American phenomenon: Lower religious observance among younger adults is common around the world, according to a new analysis of Pew Research Center surveys conducted in more than 100 countries and territories over the last decade.

Although the age gap in religious commitment is larger in some nations than in others, it occurs in many different economic and social contexts – in developing countries as well as advanced industrial economies, in Muslim-majority nations as well as predominantly Christian states, and in societies that are, overall, highly religious as well as those that are comparatively secular.

Basically the only thing keeping the stats from skewing even more is that the highly religious tend to have more children, and indoctrinate them more uncritically. However the X factor here in our modern age is the Internet, I think. Information and ideas that are critical of religion are so much more easy to come by compared to when I was a child.

[zipplewrath]

1. Sorta

I'll admit that communications has had an impact on this stuff. But we have gone through these trends before. Strangely, around the time of the American Revolution there was a trend in this direction. Without having done any rigorous academic study, my personal guess is that organized religion relies extensively upon social/governmental pressures to sustain itself. Otherwise, people merely move into the personal concept of "spirituality" which doesn't really require organized religion at all. But communities often revert to organized religion to enforce social norms and so about the time we see a movement away from them, there will be something of a backlash as those communities grope for a way to re-enforce social norms.

[Act_of_Reparation]

2. But religion has been with mankind for a brazillion years.

I guess the future holds no obligation to the past.

[MineralMan]

3. I'm a boomer. My parents, who were and are atheists

sent their kids off to Sunday school each week to learn about the dominant religion in this country. Fewer of my peers sent their children to Sunday school than was common in the previous generation. I suspect that trend has continued to grow. What that means, I think, is that Gen Z, the current youngest generation, has not, for the most part, been subjected to that religious indoctrination.

The churches are emptying out, in many, many cases. If children are not being indoctrinated, it's only natural that fewer of them will be religious.

That's my opinion about the decline in religiosity over time.

[The Genealogist]

5. I went to Sunday School quite a bit when I was a kid

I mostly remember watered-down Kool-Aid served with graham crackers, songs about Jesus and the Bible, and a Bible with terrible line drawings. I think most of the kids, myself included, were less than enthusiastic about the whole affair.

The church itself, as I remember it, was heavily skewed toward an elderly demographic. Much later, the congregation had to attempt a consolidation with another of the same denomination nearby, just to survive. This didn't work out, and the two went their separate ways. Now, my old church is still operating, but I have no idea about what the congregation looks like.

The last time I was there, it was for a rally to support keeping an LGBTQ non-discrimination law on the books. The minister spoke during the rally. In favor of keeping the law. Times have changed, at least at that church.

[MineralMan]

6. What Sunday School is like varies widely, depending on

denominations, an even individual churches. Religious education is often carefully planned and very effective. It truly can be indoctrination.

[The Genealogist]

7. Most attempts at indoctrinating me happened with grandparents

My experience was in a United Methodist church. Sunday School, and church, frankly, had little to do with any religous formation for me. Mostly it was my maternal grandmother. She flitted from kooky church to kooky church and watched 700 Club, PTL and their ilk. Big into laying on of hands, praying away illness. She was very condemnatory of most other people's religious beliefs. I went through a very brief period of her brand of delusional religious nuttery. Then, when told that people who had never even heard of Jesus were to be cast into hell for not believing in Jesus, I began questioning the whole mess and soon concluded that religion is a crock.

[MineralMan]

8. I stuck with my church through high school.

As the largest congregation in my small town, it offered many social opportunities and I was heavily involved in its musical activities. Those high school years and my familiarity with the membership let me see the hypocrisy that was rife in the congregation. I learned a great deal about the actual impact of Christianity on most people's lives in those four years. Minimal would be the word I'd use.

After moving away from that town, I began to explore other avenues, and was an atheist within a couple of years.

[Pope George Ringo II]

4. There are some historical cycles out there

Americans have moved in the right direction before, and then fallen back in a "Great Awakening." The overall trend is certainly positive, but there are going to be some mis-steps and regressions along the way. For crying out loud, we just put Mike Pence in national office based largely on the fact that he's crazy.