2. Declining Attraction Of Religion
• Religious organisations are unattractive to young people.
• Services = boring, repetitive, old-fashioned, elderly based, and
out-of-touch with modern values.
• Different views on abortion, contraception, women
priests, gay rights, and sex before marriage.
George Carey (1991)- “The Church of England is like an elderly
lady who mutters away to herself in a corner, ignored most of
the time.”
3. Expanding Spiritual Market
• Lynch (2008)- Young people turn away from
conventional ideas of religion.
• Roof (2001)- ‘Expanded spiritual marketplace’.
Growing exposure and accessibility to wide
variety of religious and spiritual ideas;
exploration. Beliefs can be built on and
identities created to express themselves.
4. The Privatisation Of Belief
• Young people treat religion as a private
matter.
• They may not feel like they belong to a
particular religion, or hold any specific beliefs.
• Prefer not to make a public display of their
beliefs or admit them in surveys.
Davie- ‘believing without belonging.’
5. Secular Spirituality & The Sacred
• Lynch- although young people may be
diverted from religion as normally
conceived, they may be finding religious
feelings inspired in them by aspects of what
are generally regarded as non-religious or
secular life.
• Young people may not have lost all
religiosity, but find new forms.
6. Declining Religious Education
• Bruce- Church of England is unable to recruit young
people by socialising them into religious thinking
(e.g: Sunday schools or religious education.)
• Sunday schools = in decline. In 2000, 1 in 25 children
attended.
• This will continue to decrease over time.
7. Pragmatic Reasons
• Leisure = bigger part of life for young people, with
shops, clubs, and pubs open for long hours (including
on Sunday’s.)
• Young people have more demands on their time –
they have more enjoyable and interesting things to
do.
• Seen as ‘uncool’ to be religious (social pressure in
peer groups.)
8. The Generational Effect
• Each generation is becoming more secular than the
previous one.
• Young people are not socialised to be religious (born
into secular society.)
Voas and Crockett- “Each generation is half as religious
as their parents.” This is known as the ‘period effect’
where people born in a particular time are more likely
to be religious than others.