The spirit of generation Y: Young people's spirituality in a changing Australia

The current generation of youth, Generation Y (born 1981-95), are growing up in a world vastly different from that of their Baby-Boomer parents, featuring the cultural pluralism of late modernity, increased anxiety about personal and environmental risk, precarious employment, rampant consumerism, the information deluge, greater individualisation and increased instability in families. Much has been written about the decline of the mainstream church and the place of organised religion in these rapidly changing times. Despite the prominence in the mass media of alternative spiritualities, reincarnation, horoscopes and Buddhism, this book argues that for the most part, young people are not active spiritual seekers, but instead have a highly individualistic and relativistic approach to life and spirituality, and are hardly familiar with religious traditions. Only a small percentage of Generation Y is actively religious. The religion of those young people who do belong to a denomination, is for the most part 'low temperature'.