This book is a rich product of a fascinating and diverse research project in which different voices interweave, sharing narratives that cast light on the part that religious and non-religious beliefs and values play for older people who have lived through social change and increasing secularisation.
Despite increasing research into ageing, and the popular perception (in the United Kingdom (UK) at least) of ageing congregations in the majority of mainstream churches, the editors make the point that there is relatively little work done bringing together the two themes of ageing and religion. This research was an attempt to do so. It involved a team of 13 people, drawn from the fields of social gerontology, oral history, social anthropology and psychology, interviewing 60 participants from the UK, Romania and Bulgaria on the nature of their religious belief and practice. This enabled a number of comparisons to take place – between the increasingly secular culture of the UK, and more traditional religious communities; between former socialist countries where religion has been seen very differently; and between Orthodox and non-Orthodox forms of religious belief and practice. The use of an oral history approach and a focus on rituals allowed for research in which the participants' own expressions and understandings of faith took precedence over religious dogma or institutional norms.
The first part of the book sets the scene, giving an introduction explaining the background of the research and the choice of focus. A second chapter, by Joanna Bornat, looks at the methodological issues facing a research team engaging in comparative oral history. Here there is an honesty about the difficulties of a research process aiming to make comparisons when the team are working in different cultures, with different languages and different religious presuppositions: ‘It was the range of stories, different voices and conflicting narratives that make the RASC project so challenging, but it is also those same stories, voices and narratives that will add texture to our understanding of non-religious and secular narratives' (p. 85).
The rest of the book is divided into three major sections. Part II, on ritual and story, contains four chapters looking at the role which religious and secular rituals play in the lives of participants in their different contexts. Part III has two chapters on death and loss, looking at how the participants have found meaning and identity in loss and bereavement, and ways in which religious belief (or humanist values) sustain people in coping with loss. Part IV introduces a gendered dimension, looking at the place of religion for some of the older male participants in Bulgaria, and the place of religion in older women's stories.
Clearly, in an edited book of this nature, there is a variation of content and style, and a wealth of specific detail; but there is a consistent faithfulness to the narratives and personalities of the research participants which breathes life into the academic rigour of the writing. Certain themes weave in and out of the stories. The Bulgarian and Romanian material raises questions of what it means to be ‘religious’ in socialist and post-socialist countries, and the link between belief and religious/cultural identity; and the nature of religious belief and practice in contemporary secularised and post-Christian Britain is discussed.
The final part of the book reviews some of the major themes highlighted in earlier chapters: the importance of historical context, the significance of rituals in negotiating life transitions, the role of beliefs and values in later life, and the importance of a gendered focus. Perhaps not surprisingly given the complexity of the project, the book concludes with a recognition that there are no simple answers, and a return to the reflexivity of the research process, with a series of quotes from members of the team on the impact of the project on them at a personal level.
This book offers a valuable contribution to researchers in gerontology, the sociology of religion and to the wider social sciences more generally. Although it is not, and makes no claim to be, a work of theology, there is much in here that would also be of interest to clergy and church leaders who encounter the religious beliefs and practices of elderly members on a day-to-day basis. I found it a fascinating book, with a depth of scholarship and a genuine commitment to the research process and the stories of elderly people living out their lives, their faith and their values in the context of social change.
