Do people become more religious as they enter into late life? Does the approach of old age make them gravitate toward religion and its practices?

As so frequently with complicated questions, the answers are not simple. To both, the response would seem to be yes and no.

At least, that is the conclusion of a visiting researcher whom I recently heard discussing her findings at Boston College. Michelle Dillon is an Irish-born sociologist who teaches at the University of New Hampshire.

Professor Dillon reported on a long-term study of Californians born in the early and late 1920s. Over their lifetime they have been repeatedly surveyed to find out their attitudes toward religious practice.

Partway through her presentation Dillon offered a generalization that she considers a valuable rule of thumb: “We tend to exaggerate how religious people were in the past and we also tend to underestimate how religious they are today.” However, on the basis of her research she does believe that the year 1958 was the highpoint of religious participation in the United States.

The answer she gives to the questions posed at the beginning of this column is two-fold. As they approach later adulthood, Americans tend to return to the level of religious practice that marked their years of early adulthood. But, in general, they do not become more religious than they were then.

This latter conclusion can be taken as contradicting widely held impressions. You can easily suppose that, for most people, the prospect of death makes them think more about God and the afterlife. From this viewpoint, the issues connected with the end of life would seem likely to provoke a more active religious practice.

But Dillon’s research does not support this impression. Instead, she believes late adulthood to be a time when people are likely to return to whatever level of activity was theirs at an earlier stage but not to go further.

Also, you have to distinguish male and female. At every stage of life women are religiously more active than men. They take to worship and other forms of practice with greater devotion than do males.

A large factor that complicates this discussion, however, is the question of spirituality. The latter ranks as notoriously difficult to define and frequently is associated with some kind of vague interest in non-material reality.

In her research, however, Dillon takes the kind of spirituality that includes putting into practice the encounter with the holy, a higher power than oneself. This experience of transcendence triggers activity that characterizes meaningful spirituality.

As people approach later life, their interest in spirituality does increase. This may or may not be connected with religious practice. After all, the goal of religion is to support and stimulate the spiritual life and that is the way it works for many people.

For others, however, the institutional aspects of religion have become alienating, even obstacles to their spirituality. They may break with their church, synagogue, or temple in order to find inner freedom. In doing so, they may surrender social involvement and other values offered by institutions.

A question I posed to Professor Dillon drew from her a somewhat jocular response on a serious issue. Does fear of death provoke older people to become more religious?

In general, no; Dillon finds that those who don’t go to church and yet half believe in an afterlife are in the worst position. What she calls “half believing” combined with completely secular living makes one vulnerable to this fear.

Of course, almost everyone dreads the prospect of a long-drawn-out and painful death.

Among the values brought by both religion and spirituality Dillon cites generativity as one of the most significant. Generativity helps people to grow and to share themselves with others. This value can give you a broad approach to society that supports the impulse to help other people.

My own views on about religion and spirituality have been shaped by the experiences of my first career. Mine was an intense experience of a religiously oriented community of men closely connected to the institutional church. I never drew a sharp distinction between religion and spirituality because the two were united in my daily life as a Jesuit.

In later adulthood, I continue to profit from the habits formed when I was young. To me, religious practice has long been congenial despite the bitter travail that has come over the church in recent years. There is much that I do not approve of in the institution that has given me my spiritual life but this disapproval does not incline me to turn away from it.

This does not make me complacent, I hope. I stand prepared to take action to help reform the ways of my church whenever possible. But my perspective remains that of a person who expects fallibility in every human institution, even or perhaps especially in those that consider themselves sacred.                               

Richard Griffin