Freedoms, Faiths and Futures: Teenage Australians on Religion, Sexuality and Diversity
Ebook
How do contemporary teenagers experience and understand religious, spiritual, gender and sexual diversity? How are their experiences mediated by where they go to school, their faith and their geographic location? Are their outlooks materialist, religious, spiritual, or do they have hybrid identities?
Freedoms, Faiths and Futures: Teenage Australians on Religion, Sexuality and Diversity offers powerful insight into how teenagers make sense of the world around them. Drawing on rich data from a major national study, this book creates new ways of understanding the complexity of young people's lives and how school education covering diversity best addresses their world.
This book argues that school education focused on worldviews is founded on ways of thinking about young people that do not reflect the complexities of Generation Z's everyday experiences of diversity and their interactions with each other. It argues that certain kinds of education in schools can play a significant role in developing religious literacy, tolerance and positive attitudes to diversity.
Drawing on a major national study, this book provides an evidence-based understanding of young Australians' worldviews and identities related to religion, non-religion, spirituality, sexuality and gender.
Based on a unique, major national Australian study of teens, comprising 11 focus groups, a nationally representative survey and 30 in-depthinterviews
Places the findings in international comparative perspective, with specific reference to cognate studies from Britain, Canada, New Zealand and America.
Features a ground-breaking typology that maps teen worldviews.
1. The Future Makers: Teens in the Age of Diversity
2. Doing Away with our Sunday Best: Teenagers and the Remaking of Religion in Australia
3. Mind, Body, Spirit: Teenagers and Spirituality
4. A Personal Point of View: Discovering Teenage Worldviews
5. 'A Higher Order Out There': Seekers and the Spiritual but not Religious
6. Immanent Gods: This Worldly and Indifferent Teens
7. Awash but not Adrift in a Sea of Diversity: Teen Attitudes to Religious Diversity
8. Taking it to School: Religious Literacy, Religious Instruction and General Religious Education
9. Harry Potter, Homophobia and Human Rights: Teens talk about Sexuality Education, Religious Exemptions and Gay Rights
10. Conclusion
Freedom, Faiths and Futures by Singleton et al. is among the best presentations of research into the religious worldview of generation Z. The authors amplify the voices of young people, providing an analysis of data that gives expression to these voices, rather than dampening them through methodological rigour. These are voices that need to be heard.
This book offers a thorough investigation of the perspectives of young Australians and is a must-read for scholars exploring youth and religion.
Freedoms, Faiths and Futures uses data gathered from Australian teens to chart a new course in the study of religion/worldviews. Using categories beyond traditional religious identities, it provides insights into what Australian teens are thinking and offers a new typology for understanding systems of meaning.
A topical and significant book ... The authors have presented valuable research data in a convincing narrative that gives voice to the young people that they have interviewed, while contributing to the growing literature on religious diversity in the sociology of religion.
- Title: Freedoms, Faiths and Futures: Teenage Australians on Religion, Sexuality and Diversity
- Authors: Anna Halafoff, Andrew Singleton, Mary Lou Rasmussen, Gary Bouma
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2021
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781350179585, 9781350237544, 135023754X, 1350179582
- Resource ID: LLS:9781350179585
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-04-09T05:43:24Z
Andrew Singleton is Professor of Sociology and Social Research at Deakin University, Australia.
Anna Halafoff is Associate Professor of Sociology at Deakin University, Australia.
Mary Lou Rasmussen is Professor of Sociology at Australian National University, Australia.
Gary Bouma was Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Monash University, Australia.