The Future of Christianity in Europe

1
The Future of Christianity in Europe

• David Voas
• University of Manchester
• voas_at_man.ac.uk

2
What is secularisation (at the individual
level)?

• Not the direct conversion of the religious into
  the unreligious
• A gradual process whereby religion becomes less
  significant
• Most people become indifferent, not hostile

3
The initial conversion is to fuzzy Christianity

• identify with a denomination (e.g. C of E)
• believe in something out there
• pay lip service to Christian values
• go to church weddings and funerals, Christmas
  services and local festivals

4
Fuzzy Christians

• unbelievers in the making, or
• unorthodox Christians who prefer to let someone
  else do the business of practising? (Grace Davie)

5
Measuring fuzziness Three aspects of religious
involvement

• Belief
• Practice
• Affiliation/identification

6
Belief in what?

• Church doctrine
• Basics God, heaven, sin
• Unorthodox higher power, afterlife, karma
• Spiritually nebulous moral order, ultimate
  meaning, feelings of transcendence

7
Active how?

• Regular attendance at services
• Occasional attendance
• Attendance at special occasions (e.g. rites of
  passage, holidays)
• Private prayer / reading

8
What kind of affiliation?

• Current membership
• Ceremonial initiation
• Communal characteristic
• Self-identification

9
A possible typology
10
European Social Survey 2002

• Affiliation
• current or past identification
• Practice
• attendance at religious services
• prayer
• participation/support
• Belief
• self-rated religiosity
• importance of religion

11
Affiliation

• Do you consider yourself as belonging to any
  particular religion or denomination?
• If yes, which if no
• Have you ever considered yourself as belonging
  to any particular religion or denomination?

12
Practice

• Apart from special occasions such as weddings and
  funerals, about how often do you attend religious
  services nowadays?
• Apart from when you are at religious services,
  how often, if at all, do you pray?
• 1 Every day
• 2 More than once a week
• 3 Once a week
• 4 At least once a month
• 5 Only on special holy days
• 6 Less often
• 7 Never

13
Belief

• Regardless of whether you belong to a particular
  religion, how religious would you say you are?
• 0 Not at all religious 10 Very religious
• How important is each of these things in your
  life? religion
• 0 Extremely unimportant 10 Extremely
  important

14
As a starting point, distinguish three groups

• Actively religious
• Privately religious
• Unreligious

15
Actively religious

• respondent claims to attend services at least
  monthly
• rates him/herself as 6 or higher on a scale from
  0 (not at all religious) to 10 (very religious)

16
Privately religious

• attends services rarely or never
• rates him/herself as 6 or higher on a scale from
  0 (not at all religious) to 10 (very religious)
• describes the importance of religion in his/her
  life as 6 or higher on a scale from 0 (extremely
  unimportant) to 10 (extremely important)

17
Unreligious

• attends rarely or never
• prays rarely or never
• rates him/herself as 0, 1 or 2 on a scale from 0
  (not at all religious) to 10 (very religious)
• describes the importance of religion in his/her
  life as 0, 1 or 2 on a scale from 0 (extremely
  unimportant) to 10 (extremely important)

18
Religious composition of Britain (fairly typical
of Europe)
19
What about the other half of the population?

• What do they believe?
• When do they go to church?
• How do they describe themselves?
• Are they secular or religious?

20
Belief

• Most will fall into the ISSP categories
• I dont believe in a personal God, but I do
  believe in a Higher Power of some kind
• I find myself believing in God some of the time,
  but not at others
• While I have doubts, I feel that I do believe in
  God

21
Practice

• Few attend church services except for weddings,
  funerals, and possibly on special occasions such
  as Christmas
• Many (40) never pray, but a quarter do so weekly
  or even daily.

22
Affiliation

• About half identify with a religious group and
  half do not.
• Of those who do not, two thirds have a religious
  background, generally in a mainline
  Anglican/Protestant church.

23
Religious orientation

• By definition these people are neither
  particularly religious nor unreligious
• Nearly three quarters place themselves at points
  3, 4 or 5 on the 0-10 scale from not at all
  religious to very religious

24
Subjective significance of religion

• Nearly a third rate religion as very unimportant
  (placing it at 0, 1 or 2 on the 0-10 scale from
  extremely unimportant to extremely important).
• 57 rate it at 3, 4 or 5 on the scale.
• Thus only 10 think that religion is personally
  more important than unimportant.

25
What is the dominant attitude towards religion?

• Not one of rejection or hostility
• Many who are neither religious nor unreligious
  are willing to identify with a religion, are open
  the existence of God or a higher power, may use
  the church for rites of passage, and might pray
  at least occasionally
• But religion plays a very minor role in their
  lives.

26
What are Europeans?

• Failed agnostics they used to have doubts, but
  now they dont care.

27
Strong association between age (or birth cohort)
and religiosity

• Examples follow

28
No religion by age and sex (England and Wales,
2001 census)
29
Major countries
30
Cohort or age effects?

• Two possible interpretations of charts
• Religion is in long term decline across Europe.
  This decline is generational each birth cohort
  is somewhat less religious than the one before.
• People become more religious with age. There is
  no reason to expect religion to decline, because
  the people who are secular today will be faithful
  when they are older.

31
Reasons to favour cohort explanation

• Support from studies based on longitudinal
  analysis (e.g. Voas Crockett 2005)
• Repeated cross-sectional surveys reveal absolute
  decline over recent decades
• Curves show continuous transition rather than
  shifts around marriage / parenthood or old age
• Religiosity does not necessarily increase with
  age, e.g. Israel

32
General findings

• The magnitude of the fall in religiosity has been
  remarkably similar across Europe.
• The most religious countries are changing
  slightly more quickly than the least religious.
• The nature of inter-generational transmission
  makes it likely that the decline will continue.

33

• National distributions of
• fuzzy Christianity
• by year of birth

34
Greece
35
Italy
36
Switzerland
37
Germany
38
Sweden
39
Czech Republic
40
The logistic (or S-shaped) curve

• Pt relative frequency at time t
• a determines intercept (or starting point)
• B determines slope (or rate of change)

41
The trajectory of fuzzy Christianity
42
Greece, Italy, Germany, Sweden and the Czech
Republic compared with a logistic model