Buchanan Scholarship

Aria Gardiner is the 2025 Buchanan Scholarship recipient.

Aria Gardiner

Buchanan Scholarship Recipient 2025

Religion Out of Bounds—How Gen Z Are Creating Meaning in the Face of Existential Crises Beyond Tradition in Aotearoa New Zealand

Generation Z is the first generation who have grown up with the awareness of arguably the biggest existential threat this world has ever faced—climate change. Through schooling, media and various modes of communication, vast amounts of information covering explicit details of climate change and other related existential threats, backed by scientific knowledge, have been shared with this generation. Confronted with unprecedented existential threats unique to their generation, Gen Z are navigating their existence and beliefs in a world with a science-backed expiry date.

Within the schools of religion and psychology, awareness of death has been heavily researched, with the claim that religion plays a critical role in coping with the terror ensuing from human knowledge of the inevitability of death. Mortality salience asks how awareness of death affects people’s emotions and their worldview, self-esteem, and views on the afterlife. This idea centres itself within the finitude of the self and people. The awareness of death is the awareness of the death of people. I argue in this research, this does not cover the unique scope of Gen Z’s awareness of death. Due to the explicit nature of education around existential threats, such as climate change, from early ages, Generation Z are no longer only conscious of the death of people but also the death of the planet. There is now the additional knowledge of a possible future where the Earth itself dies, as has been made clear by scientific research, it is already in the process of dying.

In my research, I am looking at Generation Z’s awareness of existential threats and mortality salience, in order to understand the connection between Gen Z and awareness of their future and death, so that we can grasp how Gen Z are reimagining religion and spirituality in Aotearoa Zealand.  

As a core function of religion is often understood as playing a role in helping people cope with awareness of death, I wish to probe into how Gen Z are reconfiguring religion and/or spirituality in order to cope with awareness of existential threats.

Religion plays a vital and interesting role in New Zealand’s history, is embedded in much of our culture and fills a dynamic role in our society. However, the religious and spiritual beliefs of Generation Z in Aotearoa are deeply under-researched. New data shows that for the first time in census history, a greater population of New Zealanders identify as non-religious than religious. This shift is significant; however, a gap remains in that there is little to no research done on what ‘non-religious’ actually looks like.

Another key theme of my research is how spirituality is being performed by Gen Z in Aotearoa. From a Faith and Belief study in New Zealand, Gen Z was the most likely generation to hold ‘spiritual beliefs’, separate from affiliation with religion, although there is limited information on what these beliefs consist of. I intend to examine this through interview-style research.

Taking in the unique situation of Generation Z in relation to mortality salience and awareness of existential threats, I aim to inspect how this is being absorbed by Gen Z and further, if and how it is influencing how Gen Z are wrestling and absorbing religion and/or spirituality in unique ways. This is a project focused on resilience and creation, acknowledging the secular, religious and spiritual perseverance of Gen Z in Aotearoa New Zealand. The findings from this research will begin to map the religious landscape of young people in New Zealand, an area that has not been researched before.