Lived Non-Belief: Non-Religion, Religion, and Relationality in Older Adults' Worldviews and Identities

This thesis investigates the lived reality and experiences of 'ordinary' non-believing older adults recruited from the community, rather than through non-religious organisations. It highlights how the worldviews and identities of non-believing older adults are deeply bound up in social relationships and social contexts over their lives. They are emergent and intersubjective, meaning worldviews and identities are experienced, developed, and co-produced in relation to others and to wider contexts and ideas. Whilst research on non-religious and non-believing populations is growing, older adults are largely ignored and empirical data with this age group is scarce. Their inclusion in studies is often based on the premise that older adults are only significant in telling us something about death. This thesis presents an exploratory study in 'lived non-religion' which 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 daily lives. Through this we can understand non-belief as a messy and complex lived reality, bound up in relationships, negotiations with others around religion and non-religion, and subsequent choices that produce performances of a religious or non-religious nature. It shows that people do not exist in 'pure' religious or non-religious states, nor change from religious to non-religious in a linear or clearly defined fashion, as over-generalised secularisation arguments imply. Rather, non-believing older adults have connections to several religious and non-religious cultural forms which can have a transformative impact upon their non-believing worldviews and identities. The findings move us beyond binary understandings of belief and non-belief, and religion and non-religion, towards a more interconnected and complex understanding of lived non-belief.I present findings from life-history interviews with 37 adults over the age of 65 living in Canterbury and Liverpool. Through their stories, we are given insight into the worldviews and identities of non-believers and the intricate ways in which these are related to social and cultural practices, values, and positions which can be religious and non-religious. Situations surrounding non-belief over older adults' lifetimes are varied and bound up in relationships with, and understandings of, the past, present, and the future. Despite varied experiences, liberal ideals have become the foundation stone for developing non-religious worldviews and encompass positions on religion and non-belief, as scholars who explore modern society and non-religion suggest. However, how these common and, sometimes ideological, liberal threads play out in practice is not monolithic. Where non-believing worldviews and identities might emphasise the importance of the personal autonomy of the individual, lived non-believing for these older adults is embedded in social relationships which can influence, but also constrain, participants in several ways. I show how the non-believing worldviews and identities of these older adults are not fixed or structured entities that exist in their lives; rather they are malleable, can change and are contextually contingent. This is demonstrated through exploration of key life events over participants' lifetimes, the contexts around these events, and the social relations bound up in them. These life events highlight the ways in which participants conform, perform, challenge, and negotiate religion and non-religion around them through their non-believing worldviews and identities.