Churches: Lasting Sources of Civic Engagement? Effects of Secularization and Educational Expansion on Non-religious Volunteering in the Netherlands, 1988 and 2006

Paul Vermeer,Peer Scheepers,Manfred Te Grotenhuis

doi:10.1007/s11266-016-9679-2

Abstract

During the last three decades Dutch church attendance rates dropped considerably, while the relative share of volunteers in non-religious organizations decreased at a slower rate. This is an unexpected development given the positive association between religious involvement and volunteering. In this article, we try to account for this development by addressing the following question: Why has a massive and ongoing decline of church attendance in the Netherlands not resulted in a similar drop in the relative number of volunteers in non-religious voluntary organizations? In view of this question, we wonder if the negative effect of declining church attendance on volunteering is perhaps counterbalanced by a positive effect of educational expansion. Our findings reveal that this is indeed the case, but these counterbalancing effects are only modest.

Highlights

Volunteering in organizations and associations for the benefit of others is generally considered an important aspect of civic engagement
We try to account for this development by addressing the following question: Why has a massive and ongoing decline of church attendance in the Netherlands not resulted in a similar drop in the relative number of volunteers in non-religious voluntary organizations? In view of this question, we wonder if the negative effect of declining church attendance on volunteering is perhaps counterbalanced by a positive effect of educational expansion
We addressed the following research question: Why has the massive decline of church attendance in the Netherlands not resulted in a similar substantial drop in the relative number of volunteers in non-religious voluntary organizations? In view of this question, we investigated whether the loss of volunteers in nonreligious organizations as a result of declining church attendance rates perhaps was compensated by an increase of highly educated people

Summary

Introduction

Volunteering in organizations and associations for the benefit of others is generally considered an important aspect of civic engagement. Religious involvement has been identified as an important determinant of volunteering for both religious as well as non-religious voluntary associations. This is for instance the case in the US (Jackson et al 1995; Putnam 2000; Putnam and Campbell 2010), in Canada (Berger 2006; Perks and Haan 2011) as well as in various European countries (Reitsma 2007; Ruiter and De Graaf 2006; Savelkoul et al 2011). In the Netherlands, the association between religious involvement and volunteering is found (De Hart 1999), and according to Van Ingen and Dekker (2011), it has even become stronger between 1975 and 2005

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