The Nobel Prize Laureates Hall at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Visitor Center (NIH Campus, Bethesda, Maryland, USA), February 2015 (source: Hildabast, Wikimedia Commons).
Source: Religion Unplugged.
The U.S. and Utah state flags displayed in
front of the iconic Salt Lake Temple of the
LDS Church (source: Pastelitodepapa,
Wikimedia Commons).
Arkansas state Sen. Joyce Elliott speaking as a visiting lecturer in Gordon Shepherd’s Sociology of Religion class at the University of Central Arkansas, April 2012 (source: Flickr).
Source: https://www.solmexiconews.com/mexican-family-tradition-baptism/
Among the respondents in Finland, Tervo-Niemela found that religious youth had a higher sense of wellbeing than non-religious youth and that there was an increasing gender gap both in religiousness and in wellbeing. Boys were both more religious and had a higher sense of wellbeing than girls, and religiosity among boys was growing. The researcher found that boys’ belief in God grew markedly from about 36 percent in 2019 to 59 percent in 2023, with a growth of spirituality and religiosity in the younger cohort (those born in the 1990s to 2002). Meanwhile, girls’ belief in God remained stable over the same period of time (going from around 35 percent to 37 percent), with religiosity and spirituality declining in the younger cohort. Tervo-Niemela noted that these are unusual findings, since women have been seen as the traditional standard-bearers of religion and spirituality. The sharp growth in Christian faith among boys also raises questions about the effect of the pandemic on faith and, as one young male respondent indicated, the possibility that Christianity may offer an affirmation of masculinity that is missing in the rest of Western society.
Confirmation Camp in Finland (source: The Blessed Wilderness, 2015).
Australian Catholic women echoing the
global call for church reform (source: The
University of Newcastle, September 2023).