Dear Colleagues,

The population in much of the world is aging, as improvements in health care have lengthened life. At the same time, shifts in religiosity over the last century have altered our mechanisms for finding meaning in life. As older adults live into the 2020s and beyond, questions about meaning grow in significance.

This Special Issue will focus on the importance of spirituality and spiritual care for long life, exploring

• sources of inner strength and resilience in later life;
• the role of community/belonging/trust; and
• what the intersections of spirituality and aging teach us (older adults and younger adults) about being more fully human—in our vulnerability, compassion, mortality …

especially in the context of the global pandemic/isolation and loneliness, and in the context of residential care and/or dementia.

 This Special Issue of Religions will be of interest within many disciplines, from religious studies and theology to psychology, sociology, and the humanities, as well as the clinical world of pastoral care, chaplaincy, nursing, palliative care, social work, spiritual direction, spiritually integrated psychotherapy, etc. In this Special Issue, we will hear from those who research and study spirituality and aging, but also from practitioners. It will encourage and inspire those who live and work with older adults, in faith communities, in residential care, and all of us as we grow older ourselves. It will also help policy-makers better understand the essential nature of spiritual care in later life.

This Special Issue will make the readership of Religions aware of the multidisciplinary conversations within spirituality and aging. It will also help those in residential care provision and gerontology to better understand the integral role of spirituality in later life.

Papers published will include, but are not restricted to:

• providing appropriate and accessible spiritual care in residential care;
• finding meaning in late life—why am I still here?
• the role of older adults in faith communities—perceptions and practices in world religions;
• the experience of growing older, and what spirituality has to do with it;
• the role of change in later life, including the experience of dementia;
• toward the end—letting go of life in a medicalized world—dying with meaning; and
• the balance of medical and spiritual care at the end of life.

Prof. Dr. Jane Kuepfer
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• spirituality and aging
• older adults
• spiritual care
• residential care
• dementia
• meaning