Why am I back in church?

But over time, even members of a generation of iconoclasts, or self-styled ones, might one morning come to find themselves in the kind of a place where icons are revered, not smashed.

Academics and pastors alike have long known that as people get older, they tend to become more religious, and it turns out that boomers are no exception. A survey conducted by Gallup in 2010 found that people ages 50 to 64 were more likely to say they frequently went to church, temple or mosque than those 18 to 29 did. The figures were 43 percent versus 35 percent, and for the group containing the oldest segment of the baby boom population – 65 and up – the figure was 53 percent.

More to the point, when pollsters looked at how often baby boomers said they went to church now and compared that with what they said when they were younger, they found a difference, said Frank Newport, Gallup’s editor in chief, who has a book coming out about religion. “They were less religious, that group, 20 years ago than they are now,” he said.