Stability and Change in Religious Beliefs, Practice, and Attitudes: A Swedish Panel Study

Abstract

The question of individual stability versus change in values, attitudes, and beliefs has been much debated, as has the question of the relative importance of cohort effects, age effects, and period effects in the processes of such change. Thus, the issue of individual stability or change in religious beliefs, practice, and attitudes, dealt with in this article, is part of a more general problem. The present study builds on hitherto unpublished Swedish panel data from nationwide surveys undertaken in 1955 and 1970. The results indicate that the decline in adherence to traditional religious beliefs that took place in Sweden during the period studied was due both to a successive decline in religious beliefs from older birth cohorts to younger, probably connected with differences in religious socialization, and to a decline in religious beliefs within given birth cohorts, a decline most pronounced in the younger age strata.