1.
Age and religious belief
Younger people
According to census data
36% of people in the age group
between 18-34 in Britain define
themselves as atheist or agnostic
Young people in Britain: Attitudes and experiences of
12-19 year olds
65% of young people are not religious

2.
Most religious organisations are
unattractive to young people
because:
• They find the services boring
• Old-fashioned
• Full of old people
• Out of-touch with the styles and attitudes of
younger people
• Controversial opinions held by religions of
topics such as abortion and women priests
seem alien to the values of young people

3.
Archbishop of Cantebury, George
Carey
Saw the Church of England as
like
‘an elderly
lady, who mutters
away to herself in
a corner, ignored
most of the time.’
If even the head of the Church of England saw it
the way, then it is not surprising many young
people find mainstream Christianity unattractive.

4.
Expanding Spiritual Marketplace
Lynch (2008) Suggests young people turning away from
conventional ideas of religion as there is now what Roof (2001)
called and ‘expanded spiritual marketplace.
Involves growing exposure and accessibility to a wide
diversity of religious and spiritual ideas. These have
opened up new avenues for exploring religion and
spirituality.
Lynch suggests that these have meant there are now more
sources for young people to draw on to build religious and
spiritual beliefs, identities and lifestyles, and these may be
finding expression outside traditional religions and religious
organisations.

5.
Privatisation of belief- believing
without belonging
• Young people may chose to treat their
beliefs as a private matter
• May hold some general beliefs
but not feel that they belong to
any particular religion, or hold
• May prefer not to make public
and specific religious belief
displays of their
beliefs, through involvement
with organisations
• Davie (1994) expressed this as
‘believing without belonging’

6.
Secular spirituality and the sacred
• Lynch – although young people may be diverted from
religion, they may also find religious feelings inspired in
them by aspects of what are generally regarded as non-
religious or secular life.
• Lynch – young people may not have
lost all religiosity, but have found
new forms, many of which are
associated with the more secular
and non-religious world

7.
Declining religious education
• Bruce – Church of England is increasingly able to recruit young
people by socialising them into religious thinking at Sunday
schools or in religious education
Sunday schools are in decline
Christian Research says that a
century ago over half of all
children attended a Sunday
school, but by 2000 this had
reduced to 1 in 25 children.
If the current rate of decline
continues, there will be hardly any
Sunday schools left by 2016

8.
Pragmatic Reasons
• Leisure has become a bigger part of life, and
shops, clubs and pubs are open for
longer, including Sundays
• Young people have more demands on their
time
• May have more interesting and enjoyable
things to do
• Religion may sometimes be seen as
‘uncool’, which exerts social pressure not to be
religious

9.
The generation effect
• Each generation is becoming more secular than
the previous one
• People now born into time where religion isn’t
popular, so aren’t socialised into being religious
Voas & Crockett – this is the main explanantion
for generational differences and note that each
generation is half as religious as their parents.
They describe this as the ‘period effect’ where
people born in a particular time (cohort) are more
likely to be religious than others.