2. Summary
• Young people are less religious overall, this
may be due to the fact that they are
expressing their religion in new private ways
that are difficult to record through survey.
3. Reasons
• Declining attraction of religion
• Expanding spiritual marketplace
• Privatisation of belief (believing without
belonging)
• Secular spirituality
• Declining religious education
• Pragmatic reasons
• The generational effect
4. Declining attraction of religion
• Mainstream religions are unattractive to young people
• Services are boring, repetitive, full of old people, out of
touch with younger people’s needs and they are old-
fashioned.
• Religious rules surrounding controversial issues such as
abortion and gay rights seem bizarre to many young
people.
• George Carey “Church of England is like an old lady
muttering to herself in the corner, ignored most of the
time”, so it is unsurprising that Christianity is seen as
uncool.
5. Expanding spiritual marketplace
• Lynch – young people may be turning away
from religion due to an expanding
marketplace.
• This has opened up a wide range of spiritual
ideas and practices, which meet the needs of
young people better than mainstream
religions.
6. Privatisation of belief
• Young people tend to keep their religious
beliefs as a private matter.
• Even if they hold some spiritual beliefs, they
may not feel part of a specific religion.
• They may prefer to not make public displays of
their religion or admit to being religious in
surveys.
• Dave – believing without belonging.
7. Secular spirituality and the sacred
• Lynch – young people may not have lost all
religiosity, but simply finding new forms, many
of which are associated more with the secular
and non-religious world than with religion as it
is presently understood by most people.
8. Declining religious education
• Bruce – church of England is increasingly
unable to recruit young people through
socialization or thinking of church Sunday
schools/religious education.
• Sunday schools are in a state of decline.
• Century ago – half of all children attended
Sunday school
• 2000- this has reduced to just one in every 25
children and is still in decline.
9. Pragmatic reasons
• Leisure has become a bigger part of life, and
shops pubs and clubs are all open for long
hours, including Sunday.
• Young people have more demands of their
time and may simply have something more
interesting to do, as religion is seen as uncool.
• It also may be due to peer pressure which
exert social pressure to not be religious.
10. The generational effect
• Each generation is becoming more secular than
the previous.
• Young people are being born into a time which is
not so religious, and therefore not being
socialized into religions unlike their elders.
• Voas and crockett – each generation is half as
religious as their parents. This is called the
“period effect”, where people born into a
particular time are more likely to be religious
than others.