Do people become more religious as they move into old age? We see differences between older and younger adults in religiousness; how much are these due to processes of ageing, and how much to differences between age cohorts? When people from different age groups speak about their religious and spiritual lives, do we see cohort contrasts related to their having different historical experiences? Is there a “retirement surge” in religiosity?

There is an uncertain assumption, encouraged by biographies, biopics, fictional literature and accounts of the great and the good, that as they faced death their certainty about the love of God, their place in the world beyond and the warming prospect of meeting their loved ones in heaven, remains strong. As McConnell and Lang (2001) put it in their book Heaven: A history, ‘The expectation of being re-united with family and friends in heaven is so prevalent throughout Christian history that it is not surprising that contemporaries see it as the “natural” notion of life everlasting’ (p.xiv). Theological writings continue to cite extensive Biblical and Quranic references to heaven and the life beyond ‘if you have faith’.

Everlasting life in all the world religions is conditional, on the one hand, on having lived a good and faithful life and on the other the boundless mercy and forgiveness of God. So being among the faithful and the observant (within or beyond a worshipping community) is a known prerequisite. In this chapter the focus is on if, and in what ways, current older people continue to practice religious belief; how they have re-formulated those beliefs as they have lived their lives and how those that have left religion behind feel about life and death.

Many writings on these topics are informed by examining writings about religion and belief from a personal, theological or psychoanalytic basis. Others draw on findings from small interpretive studies. Comparatively few have used findings from large-scale investigations, which enable a more cultural and population based analysis. Here we are able to draw upon 35 years of repeated enquiries which examine the lives of individuals and families as they have aged. The latest of these lifespan studies has focused on the significance of belief to older people and how religion is transmitted across generations. The wider body of findings are reported in Bengtson, Putney and Harris (2013).

From a faint glimmer in the eyes of the editors a plan was evolved to bring together international experts on ageing and spirituality and provide them with surroundings and a structure sufficient to enable significant discussion of their current thinking. The vision gained support, sponsorship and interest in a potential publication of the invited papers – all of which we are most grateful to acknowledge, since nothing could have taken place without them. The Symposium on Spiritual Dimensions of Ageing took place in Cumberland Lodge, Windsor Great Park in the UK, with sixteen scholars from Europe, America and Australia.

Abstracts and first drafts of chapters had been received and shared, and the arrangement of the presentations was not dissimilar to the eventual order of appearance in this volume, as their common interests or approaches seemed to suggest. The huge value, as well as the pleasure, of hearing papers delivered lies in the interaction that ensues. This process was orchestrated both on the days of the symposium and extended as far as possible through recording, transcribing and further circulation of responses and suggestions. Participants were asked to identify key points of their own papers, and links with others’, and to suggest themes for the book. All of this has fed into the chapters now before the reader.

The accumulation of expertise, combined with long experience and the wisdom that knows the limits of such knowledge, was powerful indeed and has left a lasting impression on those who participated, not least the editors whose dream had come to reality. We were grateful for the continued generosity of the participants, all of whom have subsequently revised their papers in the light of the discussions and made them available for this publication.

We are aware that spirituality and ageing is a field of study that draws on many disciplines, professions and philosophical approaches. It is also becoming more visible as an academic enterprise, though still widely distributed, so it seemed timely to bring together some excellent, but similarly diverse contributions. Our hope for the book is the encouragement and inspiration of contributions yet to come; for the benefit of our ageing societies, and the older people we wish not only to live alongside but also to become.

Introduction

A fundamental underlying theme of this book is that the later years are a significant time for the spiritual dimension of life, both as a resource for facing the challenges of ageing and for the potential it offers for growth and development. Spirituality is, of course, as much a part of human experience as any other normal kind of thought or behaviour, although this has not always been the view of scholars or practitioners. Furthermore, both spirituality and religion are widespread phenomena, being part of many cultures and of the lives of people of all ages and statuses. Spirituality continues to adapt and evolve new forms because it addresses people's human needs to connect meaningfully with themselves, with each other and to a higher power or larger source of meaning and purpose. Thus, the sources of spiritual inspiration and sustenance are internal, drawing on and making sense of experiences and interactions in the world as well as through any perceived transcendent connection.

However, until recently, this inner life of older people has been largely ignored or treated as problematic by gerontologists. Research is heavily directed towards physical and economic well-being and the political economy of ageing populations. The unseen dynamics of living are investigated principally in terms of physical and psychological pathologies within conventional disease paradigms or the policy challenges that they pose. This volume offers a more detailed map of the way individuals in later life experience and manage their psychological and spiritual self-identities, especially when finitude intensifies the process of life review.

Much of the current rise in interest in spirituality is related to its traditional link with health and well-being, making it a potential contributor to interventions or therapies that can improve people's lives. For instance, spiritual experiences and practices that are capable of helping establish an integrated personality are being recognised as playing a part in mental health. Older people with a developed spiritual dimension to their lives are said (in various experimentally established situations) to deal better with negative life events and their attendant stress, and to recover more quickly from illness or trauma (Mohan 2001). Such research is based on, and gives rise to further investigation of, ideas about spirituality being involved in coping, adjusting, social inclusion, mature self-identity and esteem, meaning and purpose, death awareness and so on.

The human spirit is capable of responding to the whole range of emotions and experiences that form the lifespan of an individual. It is the agency that registers emotions across the whole spectrum; from the elation of joy at wondrous experiences, events, achievements and relationships, to the despair and degradation of profound pain and loss. Whilst most of us are treated to great pleasures and exquisitely lofty emotional highs on occasions, some live lives of endless oppression and cruel misuse. So reflecting on our past lives, as we all do, may be affirming and pleasurable. It may be harrowing, painful, full of guilt and anger. Or it may be a mixture of these two extremes, with the mix changing at different times and in different circumstances. As we get closer to the end of life this life review and self-evaluation becomes more frequent and more problematic.

In his prize winning novel, The sense of an ending (2011) Julian Barnes plots the lives of four bright eighteen-year-old young men as they prepare themselves for university. They are bonded friends who are being taught history and philosophy by an exceptional teacher. So they compete to be reflexively clever. Their tangled student lives and an unexplained suicide receive detailed attention. But their adulthood, the middle part of their lives, is passed over with only the merest of narratives. The heart of the book focuses on Tony, who says of himself in old age:

Social divisions in human societies have preoccupied social scientists in general, and sociologists in particular, since the beginning of these disciplines. From the original writings of Auguste Comte in the founding of sociology and the great giants of the nineteenth century, Karl Marx, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, social class became a central and enduring theme. The class struggle characterised by Marx as between the owners of capital and those who sold their labour to them, ran through his entire published work. Weber's challenge in his seminal essay Class, status and party (1961) to Marx's dominating bifurcation of societies in Capital (1970) set the framework of discourse and analysis for a hundred years. In it Weber details the human desire for social power and how, through class, certain forms of power are achieved. Nevertheless, he shares with Marx the belief that property is the basic category that defines class situation.

The debates about class formation and the hierarchies of status and power continued in full force throughout the post-Second World War explosion of sociological enquiry. In the 1960s, when departments of sociology were flowering in many new universities across North America and Western Europe, the academic journals and textbooks were preoccupied with class, family and community. Economic growth and democratised modern societies developed new middle classes and gave rise to studies of social mobility and embourgeoisement. But as the 20th century moved into its final quarter, enthusiasm for social stratification waned. Modernism, postmodernism and feminism, among other new domains of interest, nudged class out of the way and until recently its proponents have spoken with small voices.

Two of the ‘new’ subdisciplines which became prominent as class lost its salience were the overlapping fields of gerontology and medical sociology. Both had roots in the inequalities of health and longevity which had grown out of public health and epidemiology. They were fuelled by the needs of governments and the desire of health professionals to understand the social, economic and lifestyle correlates of ill health at different stages of the lifepath. These imperatives generated empirical and public policy oriented enquiries which recognised social class as an important variable, rather than a subject of independent enquiry.