Susan A. Eisenhandler Aging and the Religious Dimension

Annotation

Aging and religion has been badly neglected in the field of Gerontology. This book, containing 13 chapters of original theory and research, is devoted to understanding the place that religion and spirituality hold in the lives of elderly persons. The authors, each experts in their own field, approach this issue from their backgrounds in the social sciences and the humanities.Overall this is a ground-breaking collection: It is one of the first attempts to seek to understand the role that religion plays in the lives of elderly persons. Based on their various multi-disciplinary perspectives, the authors make use of a variety of qualitative and quantitative methodologies as well as personal narrative and literature to grapple with this issue. Finally, the book is unique in that it addresses scholars and students, including the educated layman, rather than the professional alone.