Britain is becoming an increasingly non-religious and atheist society (Figure 1), with only around half the British population now expressing some kind of belief in God (Voas and Bruce 2019). This shift is being driven by younger people, with each successive generation being less religious than their parents and grandparents. Previous sociological research in this area has been dominated by secularisation theory, focusing on why people are ‘losing’ religion. But the growth of non-religious populations raises important questions about how and why people are being drawn towards other-than-religious worldviews, and how this feeds into the growth of atheism and non-religiosity.
So, what it is that attracts people to alternative non-religious worldviews? The young age profile of the non-religious population begs the question of what is happening in childhood that is driving these changes. Our research set out to address these questions. Exploring the views and experiences of primary school children in different parts of England, we expected to find them being drawn towards a variety of worldviews – for instance, humanism, alternative spirituality or agnosticism.
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