age and social class

• What age group is more religious?

  the elderly, half of UK churches have no under 20s attending
• The aging effect- Voas and Crockett


  -As people come closer to the end of their lives, their interest in spirituality and what comes next increases due to looking for answers about after life etc.

  -Also want to socialise their children into religious beliefs so end up becoming religious themselves
• Generational effect - Voas and Crockett


  -The current elderly generation may be more religious due to their upbringing which was less secure that that experienced by todays youth due to war and massive social change.

  Norris and Inglehart - calls this an existential security theory
• Why are the young less religious- socialisation (Arweck and Beckford)


  -The current elderly generation may be more religious due to their upbringing which was less secure that that experienced by todays youth due to war and massive social change.

  -Voas - could be due to the growth of inter-faith marriages
• AO2- why are the young less religious- ritualism and tradition (Brierley)


  87% of 10 –14 year olds in 2015 felt that church was boring and that they couldn’t relate to the rituals and traditional teachings so they avoided attending
• Why are the young less religious - individualisation (Collins-Mayo)


  -religion has become more of a personal choicein postmodern society.

  -Therefore the young do not feel pressured or obligated to affiliate themselves with a particular church or religion and choose to spend their weekends and free time on leisure and hobbies
• Trends and social class and religion (Marxist view)

  -suggest that religiosity and religious participation is more prominent in the most deprived of society as religion provides a way of coping with deprivation and oppression

  -whereas ruling class use religion as a means of justifying their authority and ideology.

  -Evaluation- there is not much in the way of reliable data on social class and religiosity due to the complex nature of social class.
• Churches and denominations (Farthing)


  -The upper and middle classes(especially women) tend to be over represented in churches.

  -found that church attendance tends to be more of a middle class activity, with the upper classes were more fringe or occasional church goers and the manual working class were the least likely to be regular attendees.
• Sects, cults and New age-

  Sects- appear to gain the majority of their support from among the most deprived and marginalized groups in society

  Cults- tend to attract their membership from a cross section of society including deprived and marginalised groups.

  Evaluation- Bruce and Heelas- New Age Cults and World Affirming NRM’s have more appeal to the more affluent in society due to the consumer nature of the group

  New age- Heelas- more attractive to Middle Class movements who can afford it