Caregiving Thrives at an Intersection of Faiths

Image via CrunchBaseby Jane Gross

Amid the fiery national debate over the limits of religious tolerance — and a veteran myself of the never-ending frustration of family caregivers that aides are often too overwhelmed to do their jobs properly, assigned too many patients and sometimes just plain not cut out for the work — I was touched by their solicitude. Aides of all denominations — Baptist, Roman Catholic, Seventh Day Adventist — tended lovingly to these elderly Jewish men and women, Holocaust survivors among them, although fewer with each passing year.

One would like to think that caring for the elderly universally brings out the best in people, and always transcends religious and cultural barriers. That has been my experience most of the time but, alas, not always. This holiday lifted my heart.

“God created people,’’ Rabbi Hirschhorn reminded me. “God did not create religion. People created religion.’’
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Baby Boomers Are 40 To 50 Percent More Likely To 'Disaffiliate' From Their Faith

Generation X, the set of Americans who came of age in the late 1980s and early 1990s, is often branded as a rules-rejecting, authority-questioning group.

But when it comes to religion, new research has revealed that Gen-Xers are surprisingly loyal to their faith - a finding that also suggests the rising non-religious tide in the United States may be leveling off.

In a study published in the latest edition of The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, University of Nebraska-Lincoln sociologist Philip Schwadel showed that Gen-Xers are, in comparison with their Baby Boomer predecessors, far more likely to adhere to their religion. In fact, Boomers are 40 to 50 percent more likely than Gen-Xers to "disaffiliate" from their faith.

As Generation X continues to grow older, this loyalty may translate into a more stable nation in terms of its religiosity, he said.

Schwadel examined General Social Survey responses from more than 37,000 Americans from 1973 to 2006. Using age, period and cohort models, the research zoomed in on two aspects of U.S. religious behavior through the decades:

• Non-affiliation, which is the total percentage of Americans not involved with any particular religion; and
• Disaffiliation, which measures those who had a religious affiliation while they were adolescents but then had no affiliation at the time they were surveyed.

"The proportion of Americans with no religious affiliation doubled in the 1990s and has continued to rise in the 21st century," Schwadel said. "With the decline in religious disaffiliation among post-Boomer cohorts, it is possible that this growth in non-affiliation may soon level off."

Though Generation X's religious adherents are relatively durable, the generation as a whole is still more likely than previous ones to be raised with no religious preference, according to the research. Religious non-affiliation in the United States grew from between 6 percent and 8 percent in the 1970s and 1980s to nearly 16 percent by 2006.

Like previous researchers, Schwadel attributes this to the so-called "1960s effect" -- Americans who were children and young adults in the 1960s were disproportionately likely to disaffiliate with religion compared with previous generations. Consequently, many Boomers raised their Gen-X children in a non-religious environment.

Schwadel's research, however, shows that Gen-Xers are behaving differently than their parents. Although Gen-Xers are relatively likely to be raised with no religious affiliation, those who are raised with a religious affiliation are considerably less likely than their parents to separate from religion.

So why are religious members of Gen-X so much less likely to leave religion? For one, Schwadel said, the American religious scene is more dynamic and textured than it was when Baby Boomers were coming of age in the '60s and '70s, which has left the younger generation more choices. If they aren't happy with a particular religion, they can more easily find a substitute instead of falling away entirely.

"Social scientists have noted that what we call the 'religious marketplace' has greatly expanded in recent decades," Schwadel said. "Historically, it was thought that this religious pluralism was detrimental to the vitality of American religion. While many still hold this view, others suggest that more choices lead to greater religious affiliation and commitment."

The long-term impact of the decline in disaffiliation among post-Boomers remains to be seen, he said.
"While this trend is good news for those who worry about declining religious adherence, the Boomers' enmity toward organized religion is still evident in the relatively large proportion of their children and grandchildren who are raised with no religious affiliation," Schwadel said.

Source: Philip Schwadel - University of Nebraska-Lincoln

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• Space For Spiritual Growth (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
• Generation X More Loyal To Religion Than Previous Generation (scientificamerican.com)
• May 2010 Gallup poll: More Americans choose "no religion" (secularnewsdaily.com)

Comparing Types of Strong Belief in Old Age

by Richard Shank

As older adults move into later stages of life, they are faced with the increased likelihood that they will experience the death of close loved ones, declines in their health, and a progressive decline in their functional capacity. Despite these potentially negative experiences, many people are capable of adjusting to them and maintain a high quality of life. A substantial body of research indicates that older adults who face these experiences increasingly turn towards religion as a source of understanding and comfort. In fact, religiosity tends to increase later in life. These trends have led researchers to focus very narrowly on the role that religion plays in the coping process related to old age. This has left a wide gap in knowledge about the psychological coping resources of older adults who do not turn to religion late in life. They believe that comparing religious and non-religious older adults will help them pinpoint how belief systems function, such as religion or atheism, as older adults face the typical changes of old age.

To explore this topic in depth, the researchers designed a qualitative-comparative study that matched two groups (Religious vs. Atheist) of older adults (60 years or older) on the nature of loss and stress they had experienced in their life. The study had three main aims: 1) to find out the extent to which people considered their beliefs about the nature of religion to be relevant in helping them cope with aging related changes in their life, 2) to assess the successes of each group’s coping methods, and 3) to ascertain whether religious coping provided a unique resource compared to non-religious forms of coping.

Participants were recruited from various religious organizations in south England, as well as from the British Humanist Association.

The research was carried out in two phases. First, each participant was engaged in one to two hour long in-depth interviews. Second, participants were enrolled in follow-up interviews and asked to complete the Royal Hospital’s Beliefs and Values Scale and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale.

The researchers found that both religious and non-religious coping was effective for the participants in their sample. In fact, there were no clear differences in how each group coped with aging or loss. The content of their beliefs may have been different; however the explanations they used provided them all with a coherent narrative for why things were happening as they were. For example, when comparing two older adults faced with the possibility of death, the researchers discovered that while the participant from their religious group turned toward prayer and religious texts for answers, their non-religious participant turned toward his favorite works of literature and poetry for words of wisdom. Both sources worked well for the purposes of each individual. Furthermore, none of their participants showed differences in their risks for anxiety or depression.

The researchers conclude that a firm atheistic belief provides as strong a psychological coping mechanism as a firm belief in religion. It appears then that the presence of a solid belief system is what is most important for coping. It is the individuals who waiver between religious and non-religious belief systems may be less able to handle bereavement, stress, and other changes related to aging.

This study has numerous limitations. The most important of which is that its small sample size makes it hard to generalize to a wider group of people. More extensive research is needed on this topic.
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TIME GOES BY | GAY AND GRAY: Gay and Blessed with Holidays

Gay and Gray is a monthly column at Time Goes By written by Jan Adams (bio) in which she thinks out loud for us on issues of aging lesbians and gay men. Jan also writes on many topics at her own blog, Happening-Here, and you will find her past Gay and Gray columns here.]

Ah - the holidays! That season that begins with Thanksgiving and ends with New Years (or for some, the college football "national championship" game a week later) is a time when it is almost mandatory for us to be enjoying fun and family. When this ideal crashes into our real lives, it can be painful. Holiday induced stress and depression is so common that the Mayo Clinic posts 10 tips for coping.

For people who find the holidays hard, being gay can make it harder. Most obviously, if we don't have children (and many of us do), it can be difficult to fit into family-centered celebrations. But holiday depression can have a lot of other features. Consider this story from an advice site called The Body:

”I'm a 55-year-old, recovering alcoholic, HIV-positive, single gay male. Over the last 20 years I've lost many close friends due to AIDS and I have not been able to regain the kind of social life I once had. I have no family; they rejected me due to my homosexual orientation. My romantic involvement with men has always been very limited and now, with my HIV status and my age, it is non-existent.

“In addition, I'm not a religious man; I have never found any comfort from or motivation to seek out religion due to punitive religious views on homosexuality. My point is that during the holiday season this all seems to hit me harder and I become seriously depressed.”

Summing up his story, if your circumstances leave you already lonely and outside the comforts that many of us find in our various communities, the holidays can be especially tough for gay folks.
***
On the other hand, as all online helping tip sheets will tell us, the holidays are what we make of them. Here's the story of how my partner of 30 years and I have learned to cope.

When we were first together, though none of our parents were outright rejecting of our homosexuality and our relationship, they also didn't take us seriously as an established couple. As women in our late 20s and early 30s, considered unmarried (as much by ourselves as everyone else), we were each expected to spend at least part of each holiday season with our families of origin.

This was complicated in the contemporary way as one set of parents had bifurcated. So for the first ten years or so, each of us would spend large parts of the holiday season traveling, separately, to be with family; we each sometimes felt deprived by not being able to be with each other on these festivals that epitomize "family.”

In the second decade of our relationship, parents and family had more or less gotten used to our being a couple. Now, when we did the holiday travel, we often did it together, visiting families in turn. Since our parents were aging and slowing down themselves, being together with them came to feel that much more urgent.

In the same time period, our women's support group - ten or so middle-class lesbians without children - became self-consciously aware of itself as an alternative family. Gathering every six weeks, we have stuck by each other through break-ups and recouplings, through physical and mental health traumas, through the deaths of parents and difficult job transitions.

Gradually we began to celebrate some holidays. The group had started out evenly divided between mostly secular persons of Jewish and Christian origin. As we aged, we adopted two Jewish celebrations, the Passover seder and Hanukkah, as our annual feasts.

In 1991, my father died. In the same year, my partner's increasingly less independent mother had moved near us to have more support. My mother became the one who traveled; she'd join us all in San Francisco for Christmas. Our holiday pattern was then that of a more conventional family, though one without young children.

This had its difficulties; the two mothers disliked each other on sight and didn't often make for good company; were we losing the great benefit of "chosen" alternative families which is that if you don't want to be with particular individuals, you have no obligation to them? Yes.

About ten years ago, as a couple, we also joined a friendly little Episcopal Church, a return to parts of our childhood spiritual roots for both of us, though my partner is also Jewish (she can explain; I'm not going to speak for her). That gay-friendly environment gave us yet another community in which to celebrate another set of religious holidays.

Though running back and forth between the secular, familial, Jewish and Christian observances can be strenuous, all of them involve loved communities that enrich our lives.

The last of our four parents, my partner's father, died two years ago and since then, we've realized we've acquired yet another set of family that draws us for holidays. My partner's father's unmarried (woman) partner of 43 years (can you untangle that? - you can do it) comes with five children and various younger relatives. We're now part of the core of this group that celebrates Thanksgiving with her. This is new. It's slightly astonishing this late in life to realize we're part of yet another family grouping - delightfully astonishing.

Is it perhaps the experience, as gay outsiders, of needing to choose affirmatively to nurture "family" and community that has enabled us find such a richness of connections? Or just luck?

And sometimes it is all too much. We have to get away with each other. This year, as you read this, we're spending Christmas literally at the end of the earth trekking in Patagonia. Greetings from the summer solstice!
TIME GOES BY | GAY AND GRAY: Gay and Blessed with Holidays