New Dimensions in Spirituality, Religion, and Aging

Vern Bengtson, Merril Silverstein

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138614819
• eBook ISBN: 9780429873997
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Gerontología

New Dimensions in Spirituality, Religion, and Aging expands the traditional focus of religiosity to include and evaluate recent research and discoveries on the role of secular spirituality in the aging process. Contributors examine the ways conventional religion and other forms of spirituality affect human development, health and longevity, and they demonstrate how myth-creation enables humans to make meaning in their lives. Taken together, the book points to further research to enhance current knowledge, approaches to care, and social policies.

Chapter 1

Emerging Developments in Spirituality, Religion, and Aging

Vern L. Bengtson

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Samantha L. C. Kang, Camille G. Endacott, and Gabrielle G. Gonzales

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA

Merril Silverstein

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

Interest in spirituality, religion, and aging is certainly not new, and literature discussing their connections goes back thousands of years. In the Hebrew Bible we read “Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life” (Proverbs 16:31). An ancient Islamic text contains a similar passage: “Gray hair is the light of a Muslim. No one turns gray in Islam but for every gray hair he will receive one reward and his status will be raised by one degree” (in Silsilat al-Ahaadeeth al-Saheehah, 1242).

Today the interplay between spirituality and aging is emerging as the focus of a considerable body of research. Many thousands of research papers have been published in the past few decades about connections between age or aging and religious behavior, beliefs, and related issues. Indeed, a Google Scholar search resulted in 186,000 citations of materials published under these titles since 1980. The topics have ranged from religion and health to psychological well-being, the meaning of death and dying, and the role of churches in meeting the needs of older adults.

But the overwhelming number – perhaps 80 percent – of the recent empirical research has focused primarily on health, and on relationships between health, aging, and various aspects of religious practice. In a variety of ways, these studies have examined whether, and how, religiosity is related to health in later life. The answer from this vast body of research is that there is certainly a connection; but, as reviewed in the chapters by Krause, Idler, and George in this volume, it is complex, and the causal relationships are not entirely clear. Moreover, there are many more dimensions in addition to health status in which spiritual and religious expressions are involved with the process and outcomes of aging.

Examining the linkages among aging, religion, and spirituality may be particularly relevant today because of three worldwide developments – revolutions might be a more appropriate word – that have significant implications for the early decades of the 21^st century. In this chapter, we first present an overview of these developments, which taken together constitute the changing context of aging and religion and which have many implications for churches and religious organizations as well as older individuals themselves. Next we summarize findings emerging from our own research program reflecting four issues: To what extent does religiosity change with age? What are the changes – trajectories – in religious and spiritual development in later life? Are churches – with their youth-centric focus – meeting the needs of their growing numbers of older members? And how do non-religious older adults look at their beliefs as they face the end of life?

Three Transforming Changes: Demographics, Denominations, and Doctrines

Examining the linkages among aging, religion, and spirituality has become perhaps more urgent than ever before because of three worldwide and revolutionary changes to the population structures and religious attachments in human societies. These involve the aging of societies, the increasing longevity of persons living within them, and the growing diversity of religious and spiritual expression among their inhabitants.

Societies Are Aging

Across the world societies are aging, and the shape of nations’ populations by age has changed remarkably over the past century. For most of human history, a graph of the number of individuals in a group or society by age would result in a shape resembling a pyramid, with many individuals at the bottom (the very young and young, ages 0–10 and 11–19) and very few individuals at the top (above age 55). However, during the past century every industrialized society across the globe has experienced a radical re-shaping of its age distribution, with a growing number of individuals at the top of the population pyramid and a diminishing number at the bottom.

This can be seen very clearly in the United States (Figure 1.1) where the population age distribution changed in its shape from a regular pyramid to something like a pillar in less than a century, from 1900 to 1995. In addition, something interesting occurred around the mid-point of the century, starting in 1946: there was a boom in births, resulting in larger birth cohorts than ever before. These “baby boomers” changed the age population distribution of society as they grew and now they are growing old. Every day 10,000 Americans turn age 65, one every 32 minutes (Erber, 2015). Keep these statistics in mind; we will return to them later to consider their implications for religion and aging.

Figure 1.1 Age Structure of United States: Population Pyramid Showing Changes since 1990

Source: Baby Boom 1900, 1970, 1995, 2030 (est.). Adapted from Colby & Ortman, 2014. Retrieved from https://www.census.gov/prod/2014pubs/p25-1141.pdf. Adapted with permission.

Individuals Are Living Longer

The contributors to societal aging, and the reason that societies around the globe have been increasingly changing the shape of their age distributions from pyramids to pillars since the 1900s, can be traced to two main factors: decreased fertility and increased life expectancy. Families have been having fewer children at the same time that individuals have been living longer. Increased life expectancy has been accomplished by reducing childhood infectious diseases, granting survivors the chance to live to adulthood. In addition, life-sustaining medical techniques have prolonged lives much longer than ever before, benefiting heart disease, stroke, and cancer patients in their middle and later years.

The pattern of expanding life expectancy over the past century is striking (see Figure 1.2). In 1900, life expectancy for infants of both sexes born in the United States was 47 years. By 1940 this had climbed to 61 years, and by 1970 to 72 years. In 2000, life expectancy at birth was almost 76 years (Arias, 2010). Within the span of one century, the life expectancy of Americans increased by an astonishing 29 years of life. Put another way, American society had added the length of one generation to the average length of life.

Figure 1.2 Changes in United States Life Expectancy at Birth, 1900–2010

Source: From Arias (2010), United States Life Tables 2006. Reprinted with permission.

Religious Attachments Are Changing

In the past three decades, a third remarkable trend has attracted attention: the changing religious landscape of societies around the world. This is more difficult to chart than the first two trends, since the evidence involves data from individuals responding to long surveys rather than data from census records. Nevertheless, these shifts have captured the attention of the mass media because of their suggestion of a profound cultural change. Nowhere has this been more evident than in American society.

For example, headlines appeared in May of 2014 saying, “Religion on the decline in the US” (Lauter & Branson-Potts, 2015). A CNN story proclaimed, “Millennials leaving church in droves, study finds…Americans considering themselves Christians drops 8%” (Burke, 2015). These stories – and there were thousands like them – were in response to the Pew Religion and Public Life report on the “America’s Changing Religious Landscape” (Pew Research Center, 2015). This was based on nationwide surveys in 2007 and 2014 concerning how Americans identified themselves religiously. The comparisons were striking: In a very few years the proportion of those identifying themselves as Christian dropped from 78% to 71%, with each category of Christian faiths (Catholic, Mainline Protestant, Evangelical) losing members. Meanwhile those saying they were unaffiliated had increased from 16% to 23%. Moreover, these trends were very much age-, or cohort-, based: Declines in Christian faith identification were much higher in younger cohorts. Among Millennials, for example, the percentage of unaffiliated was higher than in other age groups (33%), having increased from 24% in 2007. But among those 65+ the unaffiliated represented 13% and 15%, respectively.

Figure 1.3 The Changing American Religious Landscape, 2007 to 2014

Source: Reprinted from the Pew Research Center, 2015. Retrieved from http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/. Copyright (2015) by the Pew Research Center. Reprinted with permission.

However, there are two important aspects of these data that have been primarily ignored and can lead to misinterpretation. First, the focus of data collection was on church membership and attendance, which was interpreted in these survey reports as “religiousness.” However, there are many other aspects to religion than belonging to a church or attending its services, so a headline like “Religion on the Decline in the US” may be misleading if based only on church affiliation. Second, the focus of popular attention has been on the younger cohorts in these samples – religion is on the “decline” because a smaller percentage of young persons than in previous years indicate involvement in churches. Another look at these data, however, focusing on respondents who are beyond young adulthood, provides a different message: they are very, very much involved; and since these constitute an increasing majority of Americans, it is not accurate to proclaim that “religion is on the decline.” At least not for the foreseeable future.

As can be seen in Figure 1.4, seniors represent the backbone of churches today, forming their most reliable constituency (Pew Research Center, 2015). Of respondents in the 50–64 age range, 38 percent attend religious services at least once a week, with an additional 34 percent once or twice a month or so. Of those 65 or older the number is even higher: 48 percent attend at least once a week, with an additional 25 percent twice a month or so. These are high rates of religious involvement. Religion does not seem to be “dying out” for these people, and they represent a majority of their age demographic group.

Figure 1.4 Attendance at Religious Services, by Age Group: Percentage of Adults who Attend, by frequency

Source: Reprinted from Pew Research Center, 2015. Retrieved from http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/attendance-at-religious-services/. Reprinted with permission.

There is another factor that should be considered, one not mentioned by the Pew Report authors: maturation effects – change over time during the course of life in religious orientations and expressions. The data reported by the Pew pollsters are cross-sectional, comparing responses of those in one age group – 18 to 35 year olds, for example – to another, in surveys made ten or so years apart. But what if people change, in systematic ways as they grow up and grow older? What about possible trajectories in religiosity across the course of life? Only long-term longitudinal data following individuals through time, not cross-sectional poll data, can provide answers to this.

To sum up: Three worldwide developments are changing the configurations of religion, spirituality, and aging. First, nations today have higher percentages of older people, compared to other age groups, than ever before. Second, people are living longer, and with more years of healthier lives, than ever before. Third, seniors are the most religiously involved of all age groups. And if we take a perspective on religion that encompasses the entire life course, following the life development of individuals as they adapt over time, we may see a different picture than we do when we look at age cohorts in cross-section. What do we know about the religious and spiritual needs of older adults? What are churches and religious organizations doing to meet these needs? We next explore some new developments in this area with data from our own studies.

Religiosity and Cohort Differences Across the Course of Life

Does religiosity increase with age? To what extent does religiosity change after adolescence? Do those who left institutional religion at one time return?

With longitudinal data over a long period, we can see the career of religious expression over the course of life. The survey data by Pew and other studies reported earlier are based on cross-sectional assessments, which are good for showing age differences, such as between younger and older birth cohorts, but not age changes. In a previous analysis (Bengtson, Silverstein, Putney, & Harris, 2015) we examined the interplay among three time-related effects on religiosity: (1) individual aging and religious development over the life course; (2) cohort influences; and (3) effects of historical trends in religion. Data were from the 35-year Longitudinal Study of Generations (LSOG), which over eight survey waves involved over 3,400 individuals from an original 417 multigenerational families (for details about the design of the study see Bengtson, Putney, & Harris, 2013). These families were recruited in 1969 from a southern California health care plan that served primarily union members (Bengtson, 1975). The original sample was representative of the region’s economically stable middle and working class families in the area, though minorities were under represented. Surveys were first mailed to the grandparents (G1s), their adult children (G2s), and then to grandchildren who were age 16 or older (G3s). Data were collected usually in three-year increments. Response rates averaged 80 percent between waves. Starting in 1991 the great-grandchildren (G4s) were recruited into the survey as they reached age 16. To assess changes in religiosity as individuals aged and across historical time we examined both objective and subjective aspects of religiosity: frequency of religious service attendance, self-described religious intensity, and beliefs about the Bible and the place of religion in public life. To assess changes in these three dimensions of religiosity over time we employed a three-level latent growth curve analysis using HLM (for details about procedures see Bengtson et al., 2015). To aid in the interpretation of statistically significant aging patterns by generational cohort we plotted the predicted values. Results are shown in Figures 1.5 and 1.6. (In these figures G1 refers to the oldest generation, those who had an average age of 67 in 1971 at the start of the study; G4 refers to the youngest generation, the Millennials, average age 17 who began entering the panel in 1991.)

Figure 1.5 Religious Intensity: Trends by Age (Historical Period, Gender, and Educati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Emerging Developments in Spirituality, Religion, and Aging
• 2. The Current Landscape of American Religion: Diversity, Individuation, and the Implications for an Aging Population
• 3. Spiritual Journeys: Elders’ Stories of Spiritual Development
• 4. Meaning Making Narratives among Non-Religious Individuals Facing the End of Life
• 5. Uncertain Faith in Later Life: Studies of the Last Religious Generations in England (UK)
• 6. Religion and Health in the US Context of Secularization and Aging
• 7. Cognition and Culture: Implications for Understanding Religion/Spirituality
• 8. How Religion Affects Health: Views from Midway Through an Odyssey
• 9. Spirituality and Wisdom: Their Differential Effects on Older Adults’ Spiritual Behavior, Well-Being, and Attitudes Toward Death
• 10. Religion and Spirituality over the Life-Cycle: The Boomer Generation
• 11. Spirituality and Life Review at the End of Life in Old Age
• 12. Stages on Life’s Way: Life Review Through Dreams
• 13. What Does It All Mean? Observations and Takeaways by a Practical Theologian
• Index