Youth Are More Religious Than Old in Georgia

Pew Research Center's recent report - The Age Gap in Religion Around the World, reads that the young people in Georgia are more religious than older ones.

The research, conducted in 106 countries, reads that young people are more religious than their elders in only two countries – Georgia and Ghana.

The Pew Research Center stated that younger adults in Georgia say religion is very important to them more often than older adults do, adding Georgia has experienced a secessionist war with its breakaway region of Abkhazia and had a conflict with Russia in the past three decades, although the fall of the Soviet Union may also be a factor in religious differences by age.

“Older adults in Georgia mostly came of age during the Soviet period, when religion was repressed – including by Georgian-born leader Joseph Stalin, which is likely the main reason why young people are more religious than old ones. At the same time, other countries have experienced conflict during the same period and do not show these types of patterns,” the report reads.

According to the analysis of Pew Research Center, lower religious observance among younger adults is common around the world.

The report reads that although the age gap in religious commitment is larger in some nations than in others, it occurs in many different economic and social contexts – in developing countries as well as advanced industrial economies, in Muslim-majority nations as well as predominantly Christian states, and in societies that are, overall, highly religious as well as those that are comparatively secular.

According to the research, “each generation in a steadily developing society would be less religious than the last, which would explain why young adults are less religious than their elders at any given time.”

By Thea Morrison

Photo source: Pew Research Center