Australia is a culturally, religiously and linguistically diverse country, however, learning about the religious dimensions of this superdiversity is inadequately reflected in the national school curriculum, notwithstanding recent attempts to address this at the state level in Victoria. Debates regarding the role of religion in school have raged across the country for decades and have impeded the introduction of learning about diverse worldviews and religions, and even research on this topic. Competing views of Australia’s national identity, as a multifaith and/or secular and/or Christian nation, continue to affect both policy and curriculum in Australia, and thereby the level of religious literacy of its citizens. Using data from a national study of young Australians and their worldviews, this research investigates levels of religious literacy and appreciation of religious diversity of ‘Generation Z’ Australians, for whom superdiversity is the norm. In doing so, it concludes that Australian curricula must evolve to include more content on diverse worldviews and better reflect the lived experiences of younger generations. This would in turn increase religious literacy and interreligious understanding in Australia. This study may also be instructive for those countries grappling to adjust to similar demographic and societal changes, challenges and opportunities.

Recent scholarly and media perspectives on religion and youth have often depicted young people as being apathetic when it comes to religion. The methods used in research on religion are also typically informed by outdated, fixed idea of religious identity that are no longer applicable, especially to young people. This paper confronts these issues by applying contemporary theories of religious diversity, including lived religion and religious complexity, to the findings of the Canadian Religion, Gender and Sexuality among Youth in Canada (RGSY) study, the Australian Interaction multifaith youth movement project, and the Worldviews of Australian Generation Z (AGZ) study. These three studies revealed that young people negotiate their worldview identities in complex, critical and caring ways that are far from ambivalent, and that are characterised by hybridity and questioning. We thereby recommend that policies and curricula pertaining to young people’s and societies’ wellbeing better reflect young people’s actual lived experiences of diversity.

The prolific and increasing number of academic studies concerned with spiritual tourism echoes humans’ enduring quest for spirituality through travel and the entanglement of many destinations in this unique form of social activity. Yet, what we know about spiritual tourism remains equivocal and unsynthesized. This critical review, followed by a thematic analysis offers a comprehensive and rigorous overview of the nexus between spirituality and tourism. It codifies how contemporary researchers understand, theorize and study this social phenomenon, allowing us to provide an in-depth comprehension and synthesis of spiritual tourism. The significance of this study rests in its scope and capacity to inform tourism scholars working in the fields of sociology, management, psychology, and theology.

This paper discusses an ongoing research project on contemporary forms of youth and young adult spirituality, highlighting issues in the history and definition of spirituality and in development of appropriate qualitative methods of investigation. Previous research on the topic has been bedevilled by difficulties of definition. 'Spirit' and 'spirituality' have a long history in both philosophy and religion and surviving senses of the terms include both religious and non-religious meanings. This paper suggests that 'lexical' definitions based on usage prove unwieldy because of widely varying and conflicting contents. Only a 'stipulative' definition will serve to provide a research project with a clear focus; our definition of spirituality as 'a conscious way of life based on a transcendent referent' is explained and defended. Next, we outline the distinctive features of our methodology: no direct mention of the term spirituality, an emphasis on personal narration and the use of evocative techniques. We conclude by outlining the 10 dimensions of spirituality which we have developed from our initial investigations.

The proposal is for a modular text in the sociology of religion. The field shades into Theology/Religious Studies but the core market is sociology of religio