Guest editorial JRSA special edition: changing cultures of ageing and spirituality

The papers published in this special edition of the JRSA are based on oral papers presented at the eighth International Conference on Ageing and Spirituality, October 2019, Canberra, Australia. The theme for this conference was: ‘Changing Cultures of Ageing and Spirituality’. The conference was held back in Canberra, almost 20 years from the date of the first conference in this series. It was a time of excitement, of delegates some who had attended most of this conference in various parts of the world, reminiscing on that first conference in January 2000. There was a new band of practitioners and scholars, learning and growing in their respective disciplines. All were united in their quest for knowledge and sharing, researching and providing care for older people. At the time of writing, we reflect that this conference was held just prior to the beginning of the worst bushfire season experienced in living memory, dubbed ‘Black Summer’ in Eastern Australia, followed rapidly by the pandemic of Covid19. In this context, the authors of papers have worked to bring their particular knowledge and experiences of ageing and spirituality from practice, academic and research backgrounds. This collection of papers was dreamed up before the fires and pandemic, so the manuscripts contain little on these topics that have invaded most of our waking moments for most of this year. Perhaps the writing of these papers may have been a welcome distraction for some, a looking back to how things were. The papers present a great variety of perspectives on the conference theme. We could ask, what is there in the papers that we have learned in those 20 years since 2000? In the final years of the twentieth century, we wondered if there was sufficient knowledge and scholarship existing in the field of ageing and spirituality, to invite people to that first conference. Those were early days, and at that time, few ventured to define the parameters of spirituality. There were many who were even hesitant to speak of spirituality, rather preferring to use the term religion, or religiosity. Much of the practice of pastoral care and chaplaincy had been set in the decades prior to the year 2000, and practice often focused on the work of respected pastoral thinkers and writers. There was little that brought both ageing and the spiritual together; the special issue of the JRSA that was published from that very first conference was titled, very broadly: Aging, Spirituality and Pastoral Care: A Multinational Perspective. So, we might ask, what has changed? Change has been seen in the increased body of research that has focused on the nature of spirituality, and JOURNAL OF RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY & AGING 2021, VOL. 33, NO. 2, 97–99 https://doi.org/10.1080/15528030.2020.1866294