Howard Meltzer, at the University of Leicester, has recently analysed data from interviews with more than 4,000 young people aged 11 to 19, their parents and their teachers. One notable finding was that more than one half (58%) of young people said that they had no religion at all, implying that being non-religious is normal for this age group.
The largest religious group was Protestant (14%), although a substantial minority (40%) of these youngsters said that, although they are Protestant, they know nothing about the religion. They are effectively ‘culturally’ Protestant or ‘weakly religious’. Conversely, although only 3.3% of the total sample, some 60% of the Muslim young people said that their religious beliefs were strongly held (compared with only 20% of Christians).
Meltzer’s analysis set out to discover the extent to which the strength of religious beliefs correlates with emotional disturbances. In summary, the ‘religious’ young people were more likely to report emotional disturbances and the effect was found to be particularly pronounced (and statistically significant) for youngsters with ‘weakly held’ beliefs.
One of the researcher’s conclusions is that a loss of religion does not lead to unhappiness or other emotional problems. But loss of the social framework that religion can provide does seem to lead to conduct disturbance. The implications for a secularising society are clear – losing religion might be alright because the children can do well. But it’s important to ensure that they have a broad, engaged, mutual society to grow up in!
To find out more use this link:
There are I think weaknesses in the assumptions here about the relationship of 'religious belief' and relationship with God but the extent of secularisation and ignorance of the Gospel are sad if not surprising.
No comments:
Post a Comment