Odd to think that some young people have better insight to faith than their parents do.

Think that's too generalized? There are plenty of specifics to back it up. Let's skip across the ocean first.

The Sunday Times reported last week that baby boomer parents in Great Britain are seeing more and more of their children converting to a faith, especially Islam and Christianity.

And some parents aren't happy about it.

A British mother, who's agnostic, conceded that her twenty-something son was "quite aimless" before he joined an evangelical church.

Today, she applauds his sense of purpose, but says, "It also makes me sad because none of the rest of the family shares his beliefs, and it excludes us from a massive part of his life."

Myfanwy Franks, an author quoted in the Times, has interviewed British converts to Islam (15,000 have claimed the faith in the past few years) and Christianity and sees a sociological angle to their decisions.

"More and more it seems that becoming highly religious is the ultimate form of rebellion, because secularity is really our society's main religion now," he said.

"A lot of people utterly despise religion, don't they? To convert to Islam or Christianity is really the punk rock of the modern age."

But there's more to this religious revival among youth than rebelliousness. Heading to the land Down Under, signs of spiritual rebirth are evident there, too.

Nathan Tasker of Australia, a Christian singer-songwriter for 10 years, has toured his country numerous times.

"I've noticed there's a lot more searching going on," he said on an Internet posting. "Spirituality is cool again."

He, too, talks about an emptiness to secular life and the spiritual enrichment Christianity offers young people. (Asia and Africa are other prime examples of such a revival.)

The story is similar in our country. Last week, the Harvard University Institute of Politics released a survey of 1,200 college students nationwide about their religious attitudes.

It found that most students say religion is important in their lives (seven in 10 say it was somewhat or very important). One in four say they have become more spiritual since entering college.

Last year, UCLA released results of a national survey on matters of faith that found, among other details, 80 percent of college students say they believe in God, and three-fourths say they are searching for meaning or purpose in life. More than 112,000 college students were surveyed.

So, is faith aborning in a new generation?

Here's another oddity: Many young people are finding faith even though their parents had less of an interest in it when they were their kids' ages. (Only in the last decade, as boomers have aged, have they become more serious about faith.)

And while the children of boomers aren't breaking down the doors of organized religion to get in, there is less of a reluctance to embrace the faith of generations before them.

In the Times story, a British convert to Islam, Joe Ahmed-Dobson, explains why he thinks religion is attracting a younger audience.

His parents' generation believed that conventional politics and activist governments would fix what was wrong, he said.

"There was a real sense back then that those movements would solve all the world's ills," he said, "but they didn't."

When life seems to be devoid of answers, and is punctuated by aimlessness, faith is a welcome door to find. No wonder increasing numbers of young people are stepping through it.

But is this generation of young people different from others? Will faith become an anchor for them throughout their lives or a line adrift?

No one can determine the genuineness or depth of anyone's faith. But the signs for a younger generation are encouraging.

Sometimes it takes childlike faith to keep hope alive in the rest of us.