Читать книгу Aging - Harry R. Moody - Страница 47

Religious involvement in old age displays a pattern that some investigators have called multidimensional disengagement. What this means is that as people grow older, they may withdraw from some activities, such as attending church, but at the same time show an increase in personal religious practice, such as Bible study or listening to religious TV and radio. The number of people who report praying “once a day” or “several times a day” increases steadily from age 55 to the highest levels among those over 75. By contrast, other empirical studies show declining frequency of church attendance after age 75, perhaps reflecting frailty and physical limitations among the old-old. Older people seem to disengage from some organized religious roles, but make up for this loss by intensifying their nonorganizational religious involvement—for example, personal prayer, meditation, and other forms of spiritual practice.

Self-reported data from Gallup (2015) about religious affiliation of adults of all ages reveal the following: 38% identify as Protestant, 23% as Catholic, 9% as “unaffiliated” Christian, and 2% as Jewish. A smaller but increasing number of people living in the United States identify as Muslim. In 2017, Muslims of all ages made up 1.1% of the U.S. population. This represents 3.4 million people, 2.15 million of whom were adults (Mohamed, 2018). Interestingly, the same survey shows that the percentage of religiously “unaffiliated” persons is increasing. This compares to long-standing data suggesting that as they grow older, Americans continue to display patterns of religious identification similar to those among younger age groups: 65% identify as Protestant, 25% as Catholic, and 3% as Jewish (Pew Research Center, 2012a). In terms of the percentage of adults in the United States identifying as Muslim, 4% are age 65 or older (Cox & Jones, 2017). According to ongoing Gallup surveys, older women tend to have higher levels of religious participation and belief than do older men. Although survey data vary, it seems that, overall, anywhere from 30% to 60% of all older adults attend religious services at least once a week, and attendance tends to be positively related to measures of personal adjustment. When we look at church attendance from a life course perspective, we see the influence of family structure. Parents with young children often get involved in church activities, but after middle age, attendance falls off.

Despite these variations, older people are still more likely to be involved with their church, synagogue, or mosque than with other kinds of community organizations. Among mainstream Protestant and Catholic churches, as well as Jewish synagogues, a large proportion of the congregation is over age 50. Adults ages 65 and older are twice as likely to attend religious services regularly as those under 30. But it is a mistake to assume that people simply become more religious as they get older. Today’s older generation appears to be more religious, but that effect may be due more to cohort or generational effects than to age. For instance, older adults may have gone to Sunday school or been involved in religious activities throughout life. Such lifelong religious identification explains higher religiosity in old age. Recent poll data suggest that these patterns may be changing over time as cohorts move through the life course and the boomers—people born between 1946 and 1964—enter into later life. For example, the percentage of religiously unaffiliated persons is increasing, and current young adults are more likely to be religiously unaffiliated than other cohorts were at the same age (Pew Research Center, 2016).

Houses of worship and religious organizations play many roles in the lives of older people: in formal religious programs, through pastoral care programs, and as sponsors or providers of social services. Older adults find fulfillment in a variety of church-sponsored volunteer activities, but ironically, organized religion has often emphasized services and activities for youth. Innovative programs—such as Bible classes geared to older people, intergenerational programs, and new volunteer roles—could change that picture in the future. Congregations represent a great, partly untapped resource for older people to find meaning, provided that religious groups recognize that later-life spirituality may take a different form than participation in the religion of youth or midlife (Atchley, 2009).