Baby boomers lose religious faith faster than other generations
Baby boomers are losing their religion faster than any other generation, figures show, with the proportion who believe in God dipping below 50 per cent for the first time.
Faith in God across Britain has fallen from 75 per cent in 1981 to 49 per cent in 2022, making the UK one of the least religious countries out of 24 analysed by researchers at King’s College London.
When the figures are broken down into five generations — those born before the Second World War, baby boomers born after the war, generation X, millennials and generation Z - it reveals that baby boomers are less likely than any other generation to believe in life after death, heaven and hell, scoring lower than their parents’, children’s and grandchildren’s generations.
Only those in Gen Z, born after 1997, score lower than baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, for belief in God.
In 2022, 32 per cent of baby boomers said they considered themselves to be a “religious person”, falling from 52 per cent in 2005, the steepest drop of any generation over that period.
The study has been asking Britons about their religious faith for more than 40 years.
In 1990, 66 per cent of baby boomers, or two thirds, believed in God. By 2022, this has fallen to 48 per cent, dipping below half for the first time.
Professor Bobby Duffy, director of the Policy Institute at King’s College London, said that baby boomers had lived through “lots of social and cultural revolutions”, adding: “[We see] more of that effect on the baby boomers as their formative years were shaped much more by the … speed of cultural change that we had in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.”
He said that baby boomers are entering “later stages of life [where] you start to think more seriously about where you are” on questions of spirituality and mortality.
The pre-war generation is most likely to believe in God, but this too has fallen, from 82 per cent in 1981 to 59 per cent in 2022.
Among baby boomers, belief in hell is at 18 per cent, heaven at 34 per cent, and life after death at 35 per cent, each lower than any other generation.
All generations were less likely to consider themselves a religious person in 2022 compared with 2005, with millennials and Gen Z least likely, both at 27 per cent, followed by baby boomers at 32 per cent.
When asked about belief in God, baby boomers scored the same as millennials, born between 1981 and 1996. Millennials’ belief in God appears to be on the rise, however, having increased from 38 per cent in 2018 to 48 per cent in 2022, an opposite trend to that seen in baby boomers. It is thought that there is more religious diversity among millennials, with religious faith generally stronger among young people from non-Christian backgrounds.
Duffy said he expected the figures for millennials to plateau rather than continue to increase in future surveys.
Hard to question the facts to be honest. All the non-believers are dying. The believers are dying too.
No reports of any being saved either!
Importantly, no attempt to tell us those religions that ARE growing because in a generation Christianity will be trailing in the distance behind, for instance, Islam as a practiced religion in the UK. Sports washing and other initiatives will also have had years of great success in winning over the wealthier, decision making classes -- with real consequences.
The atheist in me worries about what will replace the void caused by Christianity's decline in the West.