New Dimensions in Spirituality, Religion, and Aging 1138614815, 9781138614819

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New Dimensions in Spirituality, Religion, and Aging

New Dimensions in Spirituality, Religion, and Aging expands the traditional focus of religiosity to include and evaluate recent research and discoveries on the role of secular spirituality in the aging process. Contributors examine the ways conventional religion and other forms of spirituality affect human development, health and longevity, and they demonstrate how myth-creation enables humans to make meaning in their lives. Taken together, the book points to further research to enhance current knowledge, approaches to care, and social policies. Vern L. Bengtson is Research Professor in the USC Edward R. Roybal Institute on Aging at the University of Southern California (USC). Prior to his current appointment, Dr. Bengtson held the AARP/University Chair at USC and was past president of Gerontological Society of America. He is a MERIT awardee from the National Institutes of Health. He has written extensively on theories of aging, sociology of aging, and religion, publishing 17 books and over 250 research papers. Merril Silverstein is Marjorie Cantor Professor of Aging Studies and the inaugural holder of the Marjorie Cantor Chair in Aging Studies at Syracuse University. Dr. Silverstein’s research has focused on aging in the context of family life in over 150 research publications, with added emphases on life course and international perspectives. He is a Brookdale Fellow and Fulbright Senior Scholar, and between 2010–2014 served as editor-in-chief of Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences.

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New Dimensions in Spirituality, Religion, and Aging

Edited by Vern L. Bengtson and Merril Silverstein

First published 2019 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Taylor & Francis The right of Vern L. Bengtson and Merril Silverstein to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-61480-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-61481-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-46389-1 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Taylor & Francis Books

Contents

List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgements 1 Emerging Developments in Spirituality, Religion, and Aging

vii viii ix 1

VERN L. BENGTSON, SAMANTHA L. C. KANG, CAMILLE G. ENDACOTT, GABRIELLE G. GONZALES, AND MERRIL SILVERSTEIN

2 The Current Landscape of American Religion: Diversity, Individuation, and the Implications for an Aging Population

27

RHYS H. WILLIAMS

3 Spiritual Journeys: Elders’ Stories of Spiritual Development

45

ROBERT C. ATCHLEY

4 Meaning Making Narratives among Non-Religious Individuals Facing the End of Life

59

CHRISTEL MANNING

5 Uncertain Faith in Later Life: Studies of the Last Religious Generations in England (UK)

86

PETER G. COLEMAN AND MARIE A. MILLS

6 Religion and Health in the US Context of Secularization and Aging

113

ELLEN IDLER

7 Cognition and Culture: Implications for Understanding Religion/Spirituality LINDA K. GEORGE

134

vi Contents

8 How Religion Affects Health: Views from Midway Through an Odyssey

159

NEAL KRAUSE

9 Spirituality and Wisdom: Their Differential Effects on Older Adults’ Spiritual Behavior, Well-Being, and Attitudes Toward Death

183

MONIKA ARDELT AND KIMBERLY WINGARD

10 Religion and Spirituality over the Life-Cycle: The Boomer Generation

214

WADE CLARK ROOF

11 Spirituality and Life Review at the End of Life in Old Age

237

MALCOLM JOHNSON

12 Stages on Life’s Way: Life Review Through Dreams

256

HARRY R. MOODY

13 What Does It All Mean? Observations and Takeaways by a Practical Theologian

273

H. PETER KANG

Index

287

Figures

1.1 Age Structure of United States: Population Pyramid Showing Changes since 1990 1.2 Changes in United States Life Expectancy at Birth, 1900–2010 1.3 The Changing American Religious Landscape, 2007 to 2014 1.4 Attendance at Religious Services, by Age Group: Percentage of Adults who Attend, by frequency 1.5 Religious Intensity: Trends by Age (Historical Period, Gender, and Education Controlled) 1.6 Religious Service Attendance: Trends by Age (Historical Period, Gender, Education Controlled) 6.1 Frequencies for Religious Attendance, Importance, and Affiliation by Age, HRS 2004 6.2 Frequencies for Various Health Indicators, by Age, HRS 2004 6.3 Coefficients for Significant Health Correlates of Attendance at Services, by Age Group, HRS 2004 6.4 Coefficients for Significant Health Correlates of Importance of Religion, by Age Group, HRS 2004 6.5 Coefficients for Significant Health Correlates of Having no Religious Affiliation, by Age Group, HRS 2004 8.1 Religion, Stress, and Health 8.2 Social Relationships in the Church and Health 8.3 Spiritual Struggles and Health 8.4 Full Model of Religion and Health 9.1 Curvilinear Associations between Religious Spirituality and Dependent Variables 11.1 Changing Trajectories of Dying 12.1 The Deserted Church 12.2 Helen Luke 12.3 The Light that Fills the World

3 5 6 8 10 11 121 122 126 127 128 169 172 174 177 194 244 265 267 270

Tables

1.1 Sample Characteristics of Older Adult Respondents 1.2 Sample Characteristics of Clergy Respondents 5.1 Role of Religious Faith in Final Members of Southampton Ageing Study (1977–2002) 5.2 Religious Difficulties and Resolutions Expressed by Subjects in the Spousal Bereavement Study (2000–07): interviewed after first, second and eighth year anniversary after bereavement 6.1 Descriptive Statistics for Religion, Demographics, and Health Status, Health and Retirement Study 2004 6.2 OLS/Logistic Regression for Frequency of Religious Attendance, Importance of Religion, and No Religious Affiliation, Health and Retirement Study 2004 9.1 Bivariate Correlations; Pearson’s r 9.2 Effects of Religious Spirituality and Wisdom on Spiritual Behavior; Multivariate OLS Regression Analyses 9.3 Effects of Religious Spirituality and Wisdom on Psychological and Subjective Well-Being; Multivariate OLS Regression Analyses 9.4 Effects of Religious Spirituality and Wisdom on Death Anxiety, Death Avoidance, and Neutral Acceptance of Death; Multivariate OLS Regression Analyses 9.5 Effects of Religious Spirituality and Wisdom on Approach and Escape Acceptance of Death; Multivariate OLS Regression Analyses 10.1 Views About Systems of Meaning by Baby Boomers’ Exposure to Counterculture of the 1960s 10.2 Dropouts, Returnees, and Loyalists, by Religious Tradition 10.3 Religious Preferences of Boomers Compared to Total Population, 2017 10.4 Indicators of Religious Activity and Beliefs by Generation of Respondent 10.5 Spiritual Practices and Beliefs by Generation of Respondents

13 14 92

97 119

124 190 193

196

197

198 216 222 223 228 231

Acknowledgements

This project was supported by grant #56497 from the John Templeton Foundation, “Religious transitions, transmission, and trajectories among baby boomers and their families.” We want to acknowledge the encouragement and support throughout the project of Dr. Kimon Sergeant, Director of Research for the Foundation. We are grateful to Hannah Gruhn-Bengtson for editing the papers in this volume and managing the overall project. The book is the outcome of a conference held in Washington, DC, in October of 2017, in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. This book is the product of many individuals’ efforts. At the University of Southern California’s Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, we thank Dean Marilyn Flynn for her support. We are grateful to Mita Patel, Iris Aguilar, Dr. William Vega, and Dr. Maria Aranda of the USC Edward R. Roybal Institute on Aging, and Kamilah Mayfield and Sherin Samaan of the Hamovitch Research Center, for administrative and financial assistance. At Syracuse University, we are grateful to Debra Gamble for grant management. At the University of California Santa Barbara, Samantha Copping Kang assisted in implementation of the conference, and Camille Endacott and Gabrielle Gonzales provided useful comments on papers. We appreciate the help of Roman Williams, Executive Director of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, in setting up our conference in conjunction with the SSSR meetings.

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Chapter 1

Emerging Developments in Spirituality, Religion, and Aging Vern L. Bengtson UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Samantha L. C. Kang, Camille G. Endacott, and Gabrielle G. Gonzales UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA

Merril Silverstein SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

Interest in spirituality, religion, and aging is certainly not new, and literature discussing their connections goes back thousands of years. In the Hebrew Bible we read “Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life” (Proverbs 16:31). An ancient Islamic text contains a similar passage: “Gray hair is the light of a Muslim. No one turns gray in Islam but for every gray hair he will receive one reward and his status will be raised by one degree” (in Silsilat al-Ahaadeeth al-Saheehah, 1242). Today the interplay between spirituality and aging is emerging as the focus of a considerable body of research. Many thousands of research papers have been published in the past few decades about connections between age or aging and religious behavior, beliefs, and related issues. Indeed, a Google Scholar search resulted in 186,000 citations of materials published under these titles since 1980. The topics have ranged from religion and health to psychological well-being, the meaning of death and dying, and the role of churches in meeting the needs of older adults. But the overwhelming number – perhaps 80 percent – of the recent empirical research has focused primarily on health, and on relationships between health, aging, and various aspects of religious practice. In a variety of ways, these studies have examined whether, and how, religiosity is related to health in later life. The Acknowledgements This research was supported by the John Templeton Foundation, grant ID-56407. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Hannah Gruhn-Bengtson in editing numerous drafts of this manuscript, and also the 146 older adults and clergy who provided the interview data for our project.

2 Bengtson, Kang, Endacott, Gonzales, Silverstein

answer from this vast body of research is that there is certainly a connection; but, as reviewed in the chapters by Krause, Idler, and George in this volume, it is complex, and the causal relationships are not entirely clear. Moreover, there are many more dimensions in addition to health status in which spiritual and religious expressions are involved with the process and outcomes of aging. Examining the linkages among aging, religion, and spirituality may be particularly relevant today because of three worldwide developments – revolutions might be a more appropriate word – that have significant implications for the early decades of the 21st century. In this chapter, we first present an overview of these developments, which taken together constitute the changing context of aging and religion and which have many implications for churches and religious organizations as well as older individuals themselves. Next we summarize findings emerging from our own research program reflecting four issues: To what extent does religiosity change with age? What are the changes – trajectories – in religious and spiritual development in later life? Are churches – with their youth-centric focus – meeting the needs of their growing numbers of older members? And how do non-religious older adults look at their beliefs as they face the end of life?

Three Transforming Changes: Demographics, Denominations, and Doctrines Examining the linkages among aging, religion, and spirituality has become perhaps more urgent than ever before because of three worldwide and revolutionary changes to the population structures and religious attachments in human societies. These involve the aging of societies, the increasing longevity of persons living within them, and the growing diversity of religious and spiritual expression among their inhabitants. Societies Are Aging Across the world societies are aging, and the shape of nations’ populations by age has changed remarkably over the past century. For most of human history, a graph of the number of individuals in a group or society by age would result in a shape resembling a pyramid, with many individuals at the bottom (the very young and young, ages 0–10 and 11–19) and very few individuals at the top (above age 55). However, during the past century every industrialized society across the globe has experienced a radical re-shaping of its age distribution, with a growing number of individuals at the top of the population pyramid and a diminishing number at the bottom. This can be seen very clearly in the United States (Figure 1.1) where the population age distribution changed in its shape from a regular pyramid to something like a pillar in less than a century, from 1900 to 1995. In addition, something interesting occurred around the mid-point of the century, starting in 1946: there was a boom in births, resulting in larger birth cohorts

Females

1900

Males

Baby boom

Males

1970 Females

Baby boom

Males

1995 Females Baby boom

Males

2030 Females

Figure 1.1 Age Structure of United States: Population Pyramid Showing Changes since 1990 Source: Baby Boom 1900, 1970, 1995, 2030 (est.). Adapted from Colby & Ortman, 2014. Retrieved from https://www.census.gov/prod/ 2014pubs/p25-1141.pdf. Adapted with permission.

765432101234567 765432101234567 765432101234567 765432101234567 Percent Percent Percent Percent

85+ 80–84 75–79 70–74 65–69 60–64 55–59 50–54 45–49 40–44 35–39 30–34 25–29 20–24 15–19 10–14 5–9