Why Baby Boomers Turned From Religion Shaping Belief And Belonging 19452021 Abby Day by Abby Day 9780192866684, 0192866680 instant download after payment.

Mocked, vilified, blamed, and significantly misunderstood—the ‘Baby Boomers’ are members of the generation of post-World War II babies who came of age in the 1960s. Their parents of the 1940s and 1950s raised their Boomer children to be church-attenders and respectable, and yet in some ways demonstrated an ambivalence that permitted their children to spurn religion and to eventually raise their own children to be the least religious generation ever. The Baby Boomers studied here, living in the UK and Canada, were the last generation to have been routinely baptised and taken regularly to mainstream, Anglican churches. So, what went wrong—or, perhaps, right? 

This book, based on in-depth interviews and compared to other studies and data, is the first to offer a sociological account of the sudden transition from religious parents to non-religious children and grandchildren, focusing exclusively on this generation of ex-Anglican Boomers. Now in their 60s and 70s, the Boomers featured here make sense of their lives and the world they helped to create. They discuss how they continue to dis-believe in God yet have an easy relationship with ghosts and did not, as theologians are wont to argue, fall into an immoral self-centred abyss, but forged different practices and sites (whether in ‘this world’ or ‘elsewhere’) of meaning, morality, community, and transcendence. They also reveal the kind of values, practices, and beliefs they transmitted to the future generations, helping shape non-religious identities of Generation X, the Millennials, and Generation Z.