Young people in Northern Ireland are open to religion, poll finds

Research commissioned by The Iona Institute has suggested that young people in Northern Ireland are probably the most favourable towards religion within the province.

Nearly a 3rd (30 per cent) of 18-24-year-olds surveyed by the institute have a positive attitude towards religion, while just 4 per cent have a “very negative” view.

As well as being more favourable to religion usually, the poll found that young people were the almost certainly to have a positive view of the Catholic Church (17 per cent).

Speaking to Catholic publication Crux, Iona Institute director David Quinn said the findings amongst young respondents were encouraging.

“The indisputable fact that some form of revival of interest in religion is going on among the many youngest age group surveyed should encourage all of the Churches,” he said.

“It will not be an outlier finding because polls elsewhere have seen the identical thing. Maybe a growing subset of young individuals are concluding that secularism isn’t really giving satisfactory answers to life’s big questions.”

Over 1 / 4 of all survey respondents (28 per cent) identified as Catholic, in comparison with 14% who were Presbyterian, and 11% who said they belong to the Church of Ireland. Over a 3rd (36 per cent) were religious ‘nones’ – not belonging to any religion. 

Over half (56 per cent) described themselves as “religious and/or spiritual”, in comparison with 39% who said they were neither.

The poll was conducted by Amarach Research on behalf of the Iona Institute and involved talking to 1,200 adults.

Iona said the research showed that Northern Ireland could now not be viewed through the old Catholic versus Protestant lens, now that significant segments of the population don’t discover with either denomination.

Quinn said, “One big thing it shows is that the North can’t be considered in Catholic versus Protestant terms anymore because now we’ve loads of ‘nones’, that’s individuals who don’t belong to any religion. They have a ‘plague on each your houses’ attitude.”

Hostility between Catholics and Protestants dominated the headlines during “The Troubles”, a many years long social conflict involving terrorist and armed groups in addition to the British state. Thousands of individuals were killed and injured in violent incidents, with the conflict officially coming to an end with the Good Friday Agreement of 1997. Violent incidents have sporadically occurred since that point.

Quinn sees challenges nonetheless. He said, “In the long run, there’ll probably be fewer ‘cultural Christians’ around, that’s, individuals who say they’re Christian but don’t practice. Instead, society could possibly be divided between those that consider in religion and people who don’t consider, with little in between, that’s between the religious and the ‘nones’.

“This appears to be what is occurring in each the North and the South. The overall conclusion, nonetheless, is that religion will not be disappearing, contrary to past predictions.”