Young Britons see religion as “irrelevant”

Most young people in the think religion is largely irrelevant, for whom a “secular trinity” of themselves, their family and their friends to give meaning to their lives, according to a new book.

The book, The Faith of Generation Y, published by the Church of England also found that most young people are not looking for answers to “ultimate questions”.

The study concludes that people born after 1982 – known as “Generation Y” – have only a “faded cultural memory” of Christianity, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph.

Sylvia Collins-Mayo, principal lecturer in sociology at Kingston University, said a majority of the 300 young people questioned for the study were not interested in answering questions about issues such as the meaning of life.

For this generation, religious observance extends no further than praying in their bedrooms during moments of crisis, on a “need to believe basis”.

“For the majority, religion and spirituality was irrelevant for day-to-day living,” she said. “On the rare occasions when a religious perspective was required, for example coping with family illnesses or bereavements, they often ‘made do’ with a very faded, inherited cultural memory of Christianity in the absence of anything else.”

The authors described this approach as “bedroom spirituality”. Some teenagers prayed for the health of loved ones or for success in relationships and exams, while others made “confessions” in an attempt to express their anxieties.

But most young people today define themselves by a “secular trinity of family, friends and the reflexive self”, giving them an “immanent faith” based on relationships in this world, the study found.

Fewer than one in five young people believe in a God “who created the world and hears my prayers”, and teenagers were more likely to believe in the “nicer” parts of religious doctrine than those about the devil and punishment.

Their images of God tended to be of “an old man with a beard”, while pop songs were played at memorial services “because the young congregation did not know any hymns”.

The book suggested that the “chain of Christian memory” has become “eroded” in Britain, particularly as the authority of the church has declined, society has become more interested in technology to solve problems, and globalization has led to a “spiritual market” of competing beliefs.

“It is undoubtedly the case that the Christian memory is very faint and in many respects Generation Y are a largely unstoried and memoryless generation,” the study said.

The 2001 census found that 62 per cent of young Britons still call themselves Christian, although in a more recent survey only 27 per cent of 18 to 24 year-olds felt they belonged to a Christian denomination.

Only two-fifths of children are being baptised into the faith as “fewer and fewer young people are being brought up in households with religiously inclined parents”.

However, despite their distance from traditional religion, the young people interviewed were not actively hostile to Christianity.

The book points out that about one in three schools in England has links to a church, while all state schools are supposed to provide “acts of collective worship”. Without school religion the Christian memory would be “much weaker than it currently is”.

But there was a risk that the “compulsory nature” of religion in schools could “undermine” pupils’ interest in Christianity.

 

The Iona Institute
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