Youth and religion in France

Under the umbrella of the french Association for Religious Sociology, we organiszed a symposium, in Frebruary 1992, together with Guy Michelat (and Françoise Champion, General Secretary) on the state of religious feeling among the young. We shall give the principal conclusions which emerge from the proceedings, as contained in a synthesis prepared in collaboration with Guy Michelat. The large attendance at this symposium - more than double the usual attendance - revealed an interest which can be best explained by the fundamental questions which the paradoxical link between young people and religion gives rise on the part of sociolgists and of religious leaders alike : on the one hand, the hint of a return to religiosity and the successof the great European gatherings, on the other hand, the acknowledgement, both on the ground as well as in the statistics, of a growing disaffection and of an apparent indifference. Indifference or, as Heiner Barz, suggests, "heretical religion" ? In the background also lies the fundamental problem of the frame of reference in the young.