When memory sings

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: World Tour.

For decades, so-called "experts" warned about global overpopulation. That included people like popular author Paul Ehrlich, who died in March.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: But recent headlines in Asia and the West have begun warning of the exact opposite—underpopulation. Fertility rates have fallen dangerously below the replacement rate, and the results are rapidly aging populations.

EICHER: That’s the case for the UK. But some say the problems bring opportunities.

WORLD’s Amy Lewis has this World Tour special report.

AMY LEWIS: The population of the UK is shrinking. Last year, fertility rates in England, Scotland, and Wales plummeted for the third year in a row. Birth rates are now the lowest since record-keeping began in 1938. 

But that’s not the only problem. The population is also getting older.

GREGORY THWAITES: 2026 may be the last year when births exceed deaths.

Gregory Thwaites is the research director of Resolution Foundation, a UK think tank.

THWAITES: And from then on, the kind of natural rate of increase of population growth will be negative.

With better healthcare, people are living longer.

THWAITES: The oldest baby boomers now are 81, and they’re moving into this final stretch.

That final stretch can bring complex needs, like dementia. About a million Brits currently have a dementia diagnosis. That’s about 1% of the population. But diagnoses are expected to triple in the next 15 years. 

That concerns many lawmakers and aged care workers. More older people will need more help, and the lower fertility numbers mean fewer younger workers will be there to give that help.

But some view the growing elderly population differently: as a promising mission field.

Pippa Cramer is the Pastoral Care and Seniors minister at Holy Trinity Claygate, an Anglican church southwest of London.

PIPPA CRAMER: It's not rocket science. Jesus tells us to love our neighbors.

Twelve years ago, Cramer began a group called Connections to combat the loneliness often associated with growing older. She wanted to give seniors a place to share their interests. But she also sees her work as a mission field.

CRAMER: And the reality is, a lot more of our neighbors these days are going to be older, and we need to reach out to them.

More than half of Brits who now say they have no religion were raised as Christians.

Neurologist Oliver Sacks worked with brain damage victims and the elderly for 50 years.

OLIVER SACKS: But all of them, without exception, respond to music, especially to old songs and songs they’ve once known. And these seem to touch springs of memory and emotion which may be completely inaccessible to them.

That connection in the brain is why Pippa and her husband Steve also created a video resource called “Hymns We Love.”

CRAMER: The idea of using hymns as a very gentle way of explaining key truths of the Christian faith, but also gently sharing the gospel with older people.

AUDIO: Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee, how great thou art, how great thou art.

Jennifer Bute knows both the need and the solution. She was diagnosed with early-onset dementia 20 years ago, at age 64. She runs a Friday service at her nursing home.

JENNIFER BUTE: And we sing one hymn. It's always the same one. Well, there are two. We sing one or other of them, so everybody knows it. It's familiar.

There’s a reason it’s familiar—they used to sing it decades ago.

BUTE: Because certainly in England, people of my age, you know, they went to Sunday school or they sang hymns. Even people who weren't Christians would do that kind of thing. So for many people in England of my age, they have got a background.

For many people, that background didn’t translate into a living faith. They wanted nothing to do with God.

BUTE: But when they get dementia, those inhibitions tend to go, so they're far more open to God.

Cramer recalls one man who tentatively came to their Connections groups and then stuck around through the “Hymns We Love” series—even though he didn’t describe himself as a Christian. 

Cramer visited him as his health deteriorated.

CRAMER: And he told me he was no longer frightened of dying, but he'd said to me that learning about Rock of Ages, he understood why Jesus had to die on the cross for Him, and oh, it makes me cry just thinking about it.

Cramer's new resource is also reaching other unexpected places, like the older inmates in British prisons.

CRAMER: It's just been unbelievable to, to hear about one, to see light bulb moments almost as people are singing these hymns.

By the year 2045, a quarter of the UK’s population will be older than 65. That’s 18 million people—a substantial field that may be ready for harvest.

CRAMER: My big prayer is for hundreds of thousands of older people to be given the opportunity to hear the good news of Jesus before the end of their lives, and to discover how much our amazing God loves them.

That’s this week’s World Tour. I’m Amy Lewis.

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