Lived Experiences of Non-believing Older Adults

This book investigates the lived experiences of non-believing older adults, showing how their views and identities are deeply bound up in social relationships and social contexts over their lives. Championing the intrinsic value of research with older non-religious people, this work offers important empirical data to investigate what it means to be non-believing for these older adults, how they understand it, and what role it plays in their lives.

Joanna Malone highlights how a clear break away from religion towards secularity has not always been experienced by older adults. Transitions are not linear but intermittent, changing, and transformative over a lifetime. This book sheds light on the important role social relationships play in shaping non-belief, challenging stereotypical ideas about the loss of religion with individualism.

Moving beyond binary understandings of religion and non-religion, these findings explore a more nuanced understanding of what non-belief looks like, and how it is lived. Importantly, the book delves into not just the societal, but individual religious changes that older adults have experienced over their lives. Joanna Malone engages with debates about this intergenerational change, exploring how non-religious views and practices are formed and transmitted across generations.