Stability and change of spiritual belief in later life

Traditionally older people are expected to be more religious than younger people, and there are good social and psychological reasons for this. Religious leadership is seen as an appropriate role for an older person, and advancing years are associated with increasing spirituality rather than materiality of goals. Discussion of this subject within the social science literature dates back at least as far as William James (1902) and most commentators since then have attributed the association between religion and age to the way religion answers questions about the meaning of life which become more salient as people age (Marcoen, 2005; McFadden, 2005).

Of course it is not only in later life that religion provides a sense of significance, belonging and rootedness to both individuals and societies. But increasing life experience and the growing closeness of death encourage greater reflection on the meaning of life and death. Thus it seems natural that traditional cultures have typically required older people to be the guardians of the community's spiritual values and beliefs that sustain its life, especially in times of crisis. Religion can thus provide older people with an important social function, and this role in turn promotes their sense of generativity and consequently benefits also their mental health (Gutmann, 1997; Coleman and O’Hanlon, 2004).

At the more personal level religious beliefs help to address concerns arising from increasing awareness of limitation and finitude as well as questions about loss and suffering. For example, religion provides resources in responding to questions about survival in states of growing dependency. Early work conducted by Duke University in North Carolina demonstrated the salience of religion, including the use of religious forms of coping, for older people (Blazer and Palmore 1976; Koenig et al, 1988a, b). Subsequent studies have also strongly supported the mental health benefits of religion among ill older people (for example Dillon and Wink, 2007). In fact the empirical evidence suggests that the health associations of religion, from quicker recovery from physical and mental illness to lowered mortality rates, are stronger in older age groups, suggesting an age-related benefit to continued belief (McFadden and Levin, 1996).