Are Older People More Religious?

Analysing religious change during the life course

Abstract

As personal religiosity shows a high degree of stability during the life-course, secularization in Western Europe is, to a great extent, a result of generational replacement processes, as recent studies concluded. In Hungary, however, in addition to the decline of traditional, church-affiliated religiosity, individual forms of religious practice gradually became more common among young people after the turn of the Millennium. It
can be assumed that in the latter case, the change is also of a biographical nature. Thus, the question is how apparent changes in the individual religiosity of members of contemporary Hungarian families are affected by the religious pattern observed in the family, the immediate social context and the wider culture of the society. Our paper focuses on the following research questions: 1) What factors influence personal religiosity apart from the primary socialisation agents? 2) How does the change of personal religiosity influence world-view and personal values? 3) Which aspects of personal religiosity (i.e. formal religious practice, religious identity, personal faith) are affected, and to what extent, by life-course change in religiosity? Based on qualitative data collection in Hungary, during which we conducted 36 life history interviews in the summer of 2017, we analyse the background factors and effects of religious change within the life-course. We interviewed members of different generations of families where members of three generations could be found, thus forming a sample
of 12 families.