Religious Decline Research Articles

Mainline Religious Decline and Multiculturalism

Mainline Religious Decline and Multiculturalism

Does Higher Education Cause Religious Decline?: A Longitudinal Analysis of the Within- and Between-Person Effects of Higher Education on Religiosity

Although there is ample empirical evidence of the associations between higher education and various aspects of religiosity, the causal mechanisms producing these associations remain unclear. I use four waves of longitudinal data, with respondents ranging in age from 13 to 29, to model the within- and between-person effects of higher education on several measures of religiosity. The results show that earning a bachelor's degree is associated with within-person declines in some but not all measured aspects of religiosity, which partially supports the argument that higher education causes religious decline. The results also suggest that those predisposed to attending religious services self-select into higher education, that relatively religious youth in general self-select into nonelite colleges, and that those with low levels of religious belief self-select into elite universities. These findings further understanding of the associations between social class and religion, particularly the causal effects of higher education.

The Lasting Impact of the ‘Sociological Moment’ on the Churches’ Discourse of ‘Secularization’ in West Germany

This paper focuses on the effect of the religious sociology on the churches’ discourse of “secularization.” The research results refer to transformations within the Catholic and Protestant Church(es) in West Germany since the 1950s. At this point the purpose is not to give comprehensive insight into that topic. Rather, a few general trends are to be considered here. The secularization discourses within the West German Churches can be described as a periodization with three stages. In the period from 1945 to the late 1950s “secularization” was used to give an orientation after the devastating experiences of the Second World War. The concept was at that stage most understood in the classical meaning of a religious decline. “Secularization” was the mirror-image of past, present, and more importantly, the future. The chance of a religious revival on the one hand and the fear of a godless communism on the other hand were the main topics of the secularization discourse in the postwar period. In the 1960s we can find a kind of “theologization” of “secularization.” Based on the work of theologians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Paul Tillich, and Friedrich Gogarten it was the aim to integrate a changed understanding of “secularization” in the sense of a necessary “Verweltlichung” or “Weltlichkeit” into a “modern” and future oriented church model. The churchly debate was influenced and inspired by the general politicization of the West German society. The third period began in the 1970s, but was fully developed in the 1980s. The secularization discourse followed the trend of a scientification of the Churches. The definition of “secularization” was more and more affected by sociological patterns and the theological dimension moved into the background. The churchly discussion benefited primarily from the extension of Church Sociology to Sociology of Religions. This impact of the “sociological moment” improved the future prospects of the Churches, as long as they were willing to adapt to modern society by changing their symbolic, ritual, and institutional form. Already, at the end of the 1970s the first indications of a changed perception of the significance of religion were seen. This also involved attempts to replace the theory of secularization with more plausible accounts of the future of religion.

Tensions in Ontario rural churches among long-term members, newcomers, and local residents

Religious decline in small-town rural Ontario churches has created a vulnerability in their systems of belonging, including reduced levels of volunteerism that have traditionally provided significant sources of social capital within churches themselves and for the larger community. Attempts to counter this decline have also created the potential for conflict and tensions amongst church members. Newcomer retirees (predominately from large urban cities) who resettle in rural areas present opportunities for rural churches to encourage and support them as new members, to engage in lay leadership for administration, and to help sustain the array of pastoral services and activities that serve broader community interest and participation. Newcomers, however, also bring different attitudes and values regarding church buildings, spaces, and objects, and within the liberal churches, they expect to have their views and interests addressed. Subsequently, liberal churches face more overt challenges to existing traditions and symbolic meanings of identity and belonging, likely experiencing a greater number of frames of conflict. Utilizing Becker’s (1999) approach to congregational conflicts and Davie’s (1994) model of believing and belonging, this article explores how larger issues of power, authority, and control between retiree newcomers, long-term members, and local residents reflect the symbolic materiality of church space and furnishings, highlighting tensions in sustaining church identity and place within a wider community context.

Religious Decline in Small-Town Rural Ontario Churches: Effects on Levels of Social Capital and Subsequent Innovative Responses

The qualitative data in this article highlights the dynamics of religious change and decline in small town rural churches, reflecting larger trends throughout North America and Europe. 1 It questions the consequences of religious decline, particularly regarding reduced levels of volunteerism 2 and community social capital. 3 This article posits that the decline in institutionalized religion has already had negative effects within small-town rural Ontario communities, specifically the loss of leadership to sustain numerous enterprises that traditionally serve members beyond the church alongside decreased support in various volunteer sectors that also provide a range of services, activities, and programs to the larger community. Following an analysis of the challenges facing churches in a cluster of small rural communities within the Haliburton Highlands, the paper details responses developed by local churches and ministers to continue to meet community needs and maintain their strong presence and high levels of social capital in these non-religious locales.

Does Viewing Pornography Diminish Religiosity Over Time? Evidence From Two-Wave Panel Data

Research consistently shows a negative association between religiosity and viewing pornography. While scholars typically assume that greater religiosity leads to less frequent pornography use, none have empirically examined whether the reverse could be true: that greater pornography use may lead to lower levels of religiosity over time. I tested for this possibility using two waves of the nationally representative Portraits of American Life Study (PALS). Persons who viewed pornography at all at Wave 1 reported more religious doubt, lower religious salience, and lower prayer frequency at Wave 2 compared to those who never viewed porn. Considering the effect of porn-viewing frequency, viewing porn more often at Wave 1 corresponded to increases in religious doubt and declining religious salience at Wave 2. However, the effect of earlier pornography use on later religious service attendance and prayer was curvilinear: Religious service attendance and prayer decline to a point and then increase at higher levels of pornography viewing. Testing for interactions revealed that all effects appear to hold regardless of gender. Findings suggest that viewing pornography may lead to declines in some dimensions of religiosity but at more extreme levels may actually stimulate, or at least be conducive to, greater religiosity along other dimensions.

Is the United States a Counterexample to the Secularization Thesis?

Virtually every discussion of secularization asserts that high levels of religiosity in the United States make it a decisive counterexample to the claim that modern societies are prone to secularization. Focusing on trends rather than levels, the authors maintain that, for two straightforward empirical reasons, the United States should no longer be considered a counterexample. First, it has recently become clear that American religiosity has been declining for decades. Second, this decline has been produced by the generational patterns underlying religious decline elsewhere in the West: each successive cohort is less religious than the preceding one. America is not an exception. These findings change the theoretical import of the United States for debates about secularization.

Jakarta: A Secular City (A Study of Neosecularization of the Middle Class Muslim Community in Metropolitan Jakarta)

Originally, this paper is a summative work of the writer’s research conducted in 2013-2014, entitled “Neo-sekularisasi: Studi Sekularisasi pada Komunitas Muslim Kelas Menengah Metropolitan Jakarta” (Neo-secularization: A Study of Secularization at the Middle Class Muslim Community in Metropolitan Jakarta). This study tries to portray of how the role of Islam as a religion has been treated or internalized by its followers, particularly amongst the middle class Muslim in Jakarta as the metropolitan. In other word, the writer wants to explicate of how the middle class Muslim Jakarta internalized and implemented their religious teachings adhered. Using the mixed methodology, the study highlights a numerous conclusions of the findings. First, at the institutional dimension, secularization appeared in the form of religious decline of the religious institution, decline of religious leaders, and religious transformation. Second, at the normative dimension, secularization manifested in the type of desacralisation, disengagement of religion. While at the cognitive dimension, secularization has been being crystallized as religious segmentation and secularism. But, above all, the type, process, and trend of the secularization occurred amongst the middle class of Muslim community is different for the secularization experienced commonly in the West.

“Declension Comes Home”: Cotton Mather, Male Youth Rebellion, and the Hope of Providential Affliction in Puritan New England

AbstractThe theme of generational religious decline has been a staple of New England Puritan historiography. Yet while scholars have examined these issues at the larger cultural and ecclesial levels, few have looked at the small-scale manifestations of such “declension” within Puritan parent-child relationships. This article looks at Cotton Mather's perceptions of the causes of and potential solutions for male youth waywardness in colonial New England. Attempting to provide pastoral wisdom for distressed parents in his congregation, Mather also had to deal with this issue in his own home. His rebellious son, Increase, served as a very personal example of a vexing public issue, and Mather worked hard to put his pastoral ideals into “fatherly” practice. As he confronted these challenges, Mather located the causes of male youth rebellion in the perilous nature of “youth,” the failures of Puritan parents, and the inscrutable sovereignty of God. In the end, I argue that Mather was ultimately hopeful about God's work and purposes in the midst of youth declension. His belief in God's providence meant that the afflictions attending youthful rebellion could be perceived as God's means of spurring repentance and renewal, addressing parental sin, bolstering godly childrearing, and arousing youth themselves in the pursuit of righteousness.

Morality in Context: A Multilevel Analysis of the Relationship between Religion and Values in Europe

AbstractThe exact relationship between religiosity and moral values is understudied, and it is unclear what the process of secularization means for the morality of Europeans. Previous research shows that religion is associated with low levels of political and economic development. A potential explanation is that religion provides an alternative moral authority to the authority of the state. Using data from four waves of the European Values Study 1981–2008, I analyze attitudes to personal autonomy (vs tradition) and self-interest (vs social norms) in a multilevel model of 48 European countries. The results show that religious decline has been accompanied by an increase in autonomy values, but not self-interest, that the relationship between religion and morality is stronger in more religious countries, and that it has declined since the 1980s. We also show that religiosity is more negatively associated with self-interest among people with low confidence in state authorities.

Secularising selfhood: what can polling data on the personal saliency of religion tell us about the scale and chronology of secularisation in modern Britain?

Sample surveys on the personal saliency of religion provide an additional lens on the scale and chronology of secularisation in Britain from the 1960s to the present. Six self-rating measures have been derived from both non-recurrent and serial surveys: religiosity (binary questions), religiosity (non-binary questions), spirituality versus religiosity, importance of religion, importance of God, and difference made by religion. The methodological advantages and disadvantages of such sources are explored. Descriptive and tabulated results suggest the very religious have never numbered more than 10% and the tipping-point for the majority of Britons self-identifying as non-religious came in the 1990s, with religious decline quickening after the Millennium. Saliency of religion indicators present one of the bleaker pictures of the extent of secularisation, worse than affiliation or belief in God data, with self-assessed non-religiosity in Britain higher than in most other Western European countries.

Säkularisierung – und was dann?

Secularization is not a descriptive category, but an interpreting category by intellectual observers of religion in modern society. This paper sketches the history of the concept and of its critics. Whereas the dominating perspective understood Secularization as the process of definitive decline of religion, in Germany secularization took also positive connotations by protestant theologians. Actually the religious decline in Europe is considered no more as forerunner for the modernizing world but as a special case, which is moreover not uniform within European nations. Until now no convincing term has been proposed to characterize the religious situation in Europe after the decline of the secularization thesis. The paper concludes by posing a number of open questions concerning the actual role of religion and secularity.

Religion, Inclusive Individualism, and Volunteering in Europe

A well supported finding in social science is that religiosity is associated with pro-social behaviours such as volunteering, but the religious decline in Europe characterising the latter part of the twentieth century has not been accompanied by decline in voluntary participation. This period is also associated with a sharp increase in the moral emphasis on individual autonomy and inclusiveness over social norms and traditions. In this analysis of the European Values Study (2008–2010), I examine the relationship between religion and volunteering, taking both individual values and aggregate norms into account. Religious attendance is found to be associated with volunteering at the individual level. However, the average citizen’s likelihood of volunteering is lower in more religious countries. This could be due in part to secular countries’ high levels of inclusive individualism (autonomy values and generalised trust) which are positively associated with volunteering among both religious and non-religious respondents.

The End of Secularisation through Demography? Projections of Spanish Religiosity

This article presents the first projection, to our knowledge, of the intensity of religiosity in a population, which has a strong bearing on the critical question of the religious future of Europe. Spain has, in recent decades, simultaneously experienced rapid religious decline and marked demographic change through high immigration and declining fertility. To investigate future trends, we carry out population projections by religion and religiosity to the year 2050. We find that both fertility and immigration increase the share of the highly religious, as the more religious tend to have more children and immigrants tend to be more religious than non-immigrants. The non-religious population grows because people switch from religion to no-religion and because they are younger. Our findings suggest that in the longer term (2050), there may be growth in the no-religion population, a decline in the share of highly religious Christians, and moderate development of low religious Christians. The Muslim population would substantially increase, unless there is an end to migration and fertility differentials.

Repensar La Secularización

Current sociology has falsified the modern prediction for the decline and extinction of religion. A lot of signs show a religious return and a revival of the religious question in a progressively more and more plural and globalized world. The survival of religion in modern societies forces philosophy to rethink the classical secularization theory and its principal equation: rationalization = modernization = secularization = religious decline. The coming of a postsecular society obliges secularism and religion to a mutual understanding in the public sphere, but beyond triumphal proclamations of both mentalities. Secularism and religion face the same fundamentalist dilemma. This essay aims to analize some thesis, premises and consequences of the secularization theory, unveiling diverse theoretical insufficiencies at three levels: at the level of the sociological theory, at the level of a theory of religion and at the level of a theory of rationality.

Is Religious Attendance Bottoming Out? An Examination of Current Trends Across Europe

The purpose of this research note is to summarize the available data on trends in religious attendance across 24 European countries to determine whether a base level has been reached in some countries. We focus on the changes observed in the period 1990–2012. After critically assessing the data quality of the recent European Social Survey (ESS) and European Values Study (EVS), we present four different methods of assessing current trends. First, we assess intercohort differentials, an indicator previously used extensively. We then look at trends in young people's rates of attendance, followed by trends of the postwar cohorts born in 1950–1981. We proceed to an appraisal of individual life‐course variations by looking at attendance as a child and young adult. A compilation of these indicators shows that they often do not fully agree on whether there is growth, decline, or stability. To generalize, the high‐attending Catholic countries are more likely to exhibit religious decline, whilst a few ex‐communist countries are seeing sustained growth. The most secular countries seem to be generally stabilizing in the 5–20 percent range for attendance rates of the postwar generations.

Religion and the Demographic Revolution: Women and Secularisation in Canada, Ireland, UK and USA since the 1960s. By Callum G. Brown. Studies in Modern British Religious History 29. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2012. xiv + 305 pp. $95.00 cloth.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Religion and Demographic Revolution: Women and Secularisation in Canada, Ireland, UK and USA since 1960s . By Callum G. Brown . Studies in Modern British Religious History 29. Woodbridge, U.K. : Boydell , 2012. xiv + 305 pp. $95.00 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesSociologists and historians have vigorously debated religious decline in West since 1960s, but until recently, most scholars have paid little attention to gendered dimensions of secularization. Religious decline for these scholars amounted to waning in beliefs and practices of men, with little consideration for women's religious experiences. Callum Brown, social historian of religion, stands out as one of most prominent proponents in gendering of secularization narratives and models. In first volume of his planned trilogy on religious decline, The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation, 1800-2000 (New York: Routledge, 2001), Brown employed discourse analysis to make sense of secularization in modern British history. He made two controversial yet compelling claims in book: 1) secularization was not long, drawn-out process starting with Enlightenment or Industrial Revolution that gradually picked up steam in twentieth century; rather, it was an abrupt if not catastrophic event emerging in 1960s; 2) 1960s witnessed beginning of such marked decline in religious beliefs and practices because it was at this time that women began abandoning church in significant numbers due to sexual revolution and its undermining of traditional Christian constructs of femininity.Religion and Demographic Revolution constitutes second volume of Brown's trilogy. This book differs in some important ways from first volume: methodology is now demography; focus is not on one but four countries on both sides of Atlantic--Canada, Ireland, United Kingdom, and United States; and 1960s, subject of one chapter in first volume, receives Brown's full attention here. But basic argument has not really changed. If anything, what Brown is doing in this book is elaborating and expanding upon connection he made in first volume between women and secularization in 1960s.Brown points to three major cultural and social changes affecting Western societies in 1960s: 1) decline in Christianity's influence in West, particularly Europe and Canada; 2) demographic revolution in which severe drops in fertility and marriage rates revolutionized family structure; 3) the revolution in women's identities that ushered in a transformation in social construction of gender involving search for autonomy in sexual expression, education and economic life (1).Brown's thesis is that all three trends are interconnected. Secularization, in other words, is both demographic and gendered event. Demography and gender interact with religion in complex ways to determine degree of secularization in given context. Of four countries studied in this volume, mainland Britain and Canada represent highly secularized nations for Brown as measured in declining participation of women in churches as well as women increasingly rejecting religious identity. …

Religious decline in the 20th century West: testing alternative explanations

Retrospective questions from recent surveys let us estimate rates of church attendance among children and their parents in ten Western democracies throughout most of the 20th century. We combine these time series with standard sources to test competing theories of religious change. Although our attendance estimates affirm the prevalence of religious decline, our statistical tests offer no support for traditional theories of secularization (which link decline to changes in income, education, industrialization, urbanization, and family life). Nor can we attribute much of the observed decline to growth in the welfare state. But increased school spending by governments does reduce church attendance, and this effect is not the result of greater educational attainment. In shaping the content of schooling, governments may strongly influence long-run religious trends.

“Secularization of Consciousness” or Alternative Opportunities? The Impact of Economic Growth on Religious Belief and Practice in 13 European Countries

This research note contributes to an evaluation of the validity of secularization theory by studying the relationship between economic modernization and patterns of religious change. Both the disenchantment narrative of Berger and Weber and the existential security perspective of Inglehart hypothesize that economic development should be accompanied by a weakening of religious values. Using macro‐level panel regressions, my analysis reveals that while economic growth is directly associated with diminishing church attendance rates, it is not directly associated with a decline in belief. The relation between economic growth and religious decline is therefore not primarily mediated by a “secularization of consciousness.” Findings instead indicate that economic prosperity leads to a change in consumption patterns on the part of individuals due to increased income and availability of alternative, secular opportunities to meet needs previously fulfilled by traditional religion. A decline in religious belief may occur as a secondary consequence of this behavioral change, since diminishing worship attendance rates reduce the influence of religion on value socialization.

Religion and the demographic revolution: women and secularisation in Canada, Ireland, UK and USA since the 1960s

In the 1960s, two great social and cultural changes of the western world began. The first was the rapid decline of Christian religious practice and identity and the rise of the people of 'no religion'. The second was the transformation in women's lives that spawned a demographic revolution in sex, family and work. Both phenomena were sudden though not uniform in their impact. The argument of this book is that the two were intimately connected, triggered by an historic confluence of factors in the 1960s. Canada, Ireland, UK and USA represent different stages of secularisation for the book's study. The religious collapse in mainland Britain and most of Canada was sharp and spectacular but contrasted with the more resilient religious cultures of the United States, the Canadian Maritimes, Ireland and Northern Ireland. Using statistical evidence from government censuses, the book demonstrates how secularisation was deeply linked to demographic change. Starting with the distinctive features of the 1960s, the book quantifies secularisation's scale, timing and character in each nation. Then, the intense links of women's sexual revolution to religious decline are explored. From there, women's changing patterns of marriage, coupling and birthing are correlated with diminishing religiosity. The final exploration is into the secularising consequences of economic change, higher education and women's expanding work roles. This book transforms the way in which secularisation is imagined. Religion matters more than mere belief, practice and the churches; it shapes how populations construct their sexual practices, families and life-course. In nations where religion has been dissolving since 1960 into apathy and atheism, the process has been part of a demographic revolution built on new moral codes. Connecting religious history with the history of population, this volume unveils how the historian and sociologist need to engage with the demographic enormity of the decline of Christendom. CALLUM G. BROWN is Professor of Religious and Cultural History at the University of Dundee.