c. 2007 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Michele Dillon and Paul Wink have interviewed scores of septuagenarians about their faith _ or lack thereof _ and compared their answers to those they gave during their teens and middle age.

Their discovery? People really don’t change much over time _ religiosity in early adulthood is comparable to that in late adulthood, with a dip in middle age.

Other data include: religiosity peaks during teenage years; “spiritual seekers” (those who remain interested in religion while not being tied to one particular faith or tradition) and more church-oriented people are equally altruistic; and religion serves as a psychological buffer only for the elderly in poor health.

Dillon, professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire, and Wink, professor of psychology at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, are the husband and wife co-authors of “In the Course of a Lifetime: Tracing Religious Belief, Practice, and Change.” The book uses statistical analysis and personal narratives to tell the story of religion in everyday lives.

The study is unusual, in part, because of the interdisciplinary collaboration of its authors but also because of its longevity, which enabled the authors to examine religion over time, and its breadth, with extensive interviews and detailed narratives.

Beginning in the 1920s, the University of California-Berkeley social science study interviewed more than 400 people, many of whom were subsequently interviewed about a range of topics, including religion, during their adolescence and again in the 1950s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. The last round of interviews in the late 1990s included almost 200 people.

Dillon said the data had not been mined in detail for its religious content. When she and Wink started going through the reams of research, they realized they had a treasure trove.

“I was really taken with this data, by the richness of their individual lives rather than just looking at the aggregate patterns,” she said.

The study lacked racial, geographic and religious diversity. It consisted primarily of white people in Northern California’s Bay Area who were predominantly Protestant and Catholic. But it was socioeconomically diverse, Wink said.

Wink said he was surprised by the stability of religion in individuals over time.

“There are changes, but the changes are … more like a gentle ebb and flow rather than drastic changes,” he noted.

The findings challenge the dominant theory that older people become more religious when faced with death and health issues. The study also shed some light on middle age, which typically suffers from a paucity of psychological research, Wink said.

“Midlife is like sort of the Midwest, you drive and drive and drive, and there isn’t a lot happening,” he said. “As a psychologist interested in adult development, I’m interested in all phases of the life cycle.”

Previous studies examining people from their 50s to their 70s indicated a significant increase in religiosity. Taking a longer view showed that people actually return to levels of religiosity experienced in early adulthood.

Having school-age children tended to increase religious involvement, but it decreased, according to the study, when people reached their 40s and 50s and their children left home.

The study also challenges the idea that religious freedom became more commonplace in the 1960s. Interviews with participants and their parents indicate that before the 1920s and even during the 1950s Americans shopped around for churches and exercised religious choice.

In recent years, as the numbers of unchurched Americans have grown, sociologists and psychologists have clashed about whether spiritual seekers shun civic responsibility and whether religious people are more altruistic, Wink said. Their findings indicate that both groups are equally civic-minded and altruistic, he said.

“That’s something I would really like to get more people to know about because I think that that finding itself could heal certain discomforts that the two groups have about each other,” Wink said.

But attitudes about feminism and homosexuality continue to be divisive. In late adulthood religious people are more likely to oppose both, while spiritual seekers take a more unconventional, anti-authoritarian stance, according to the study.

Wink acknowledged that the finding may fuel the culture wars, but added that he and Dillon took pains to put the information in perspective and to emphasize commonalities among spiritual seekers and more traditional church-goers.

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More religious participants fared better psychologically, Wink and Dillonsaid. Precisely why being religious helps is difficult to determine, they said, but it may provide a sense of meaning in the face of adversity.

“I think religion does really give people what you might call a deeper sense of meaning, a deeper way or a frame by which to interpret some of the stuff that happens in life,” says Dillon.

And when it comes to death, those who fear it the most are people who say they are religious but who don’t actually practice their religion. The disconnect may lend itself to uncertainty about the hereafter, unlike those with a solid belief that they are going to heaven or will return to dust, said Wink.

Despite their differences, having both spiritual seekers and the traditionally religious participate in American society is essential, and personal autonomy seems to contribute to religious vitality, the authors said.

“The marketplace in America at the moment, is such that it allows for both types of religion to flourish. And it will create certain tension … but I think it’s a healthy tension,’ said Wink.

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