People living in the UK will have noticed that Christians have been getting noisier in recent years. More clamour for more state-funded faith schools, more litigations, and more complaints against perceived anti-Christian bias.Evidence of a popular religious revival? Or the death throes of a once-powerful ideology? A team from Erasmus University in the Netherlands has some answers.
It seems that when Christianity is popular, Christians are content with the idea of a firewall separating Church and State. It's only when Christianity begins to lose it's influence over the population at large that Christians begin to campaign for the State to adopt a Christian character.
Looking at survey data from 18 Western countries, they found:
- The fewer Christians in a country, the greater the support among Christians for a greater public role for religion (as shown in the graph).
- The polarization of views between Christians and non-religious on a public role for religion is greatest in countries where there are fewest Christians.
Then they took a look at data from the Netherlands, where the proportion of Christians has plummeted from 60% in 1970 to 35% in 1996. There's a good time-series of data covering this decline in Christianity.
In the Netherlands they found a similar picture. As the numbers of Christians declined, the support among Christians for a greater public role for religion went up, and the gulf in attitudes grew.
I guess these results are not too surprisingly, but they do highlight a reality that is often not fully appreciated by researchers into 'secularization'. And that is that secularization is not a single thing or process. What's more, it's possible to have different aspects of secular (or religious) trends to move in opposite directions, at least for a time.
A resurgence of governmental interest in religion, and increased noise from religious adherents, can happen alongside a increasing popular disinterest!
Well, that's nearly it for 2009! I hope you enjoyed the blog this year, and I wish you all a great Christmas (or whatever you choose to call the midwinter/summer festival). I'll try to put a post up before the New Year, but just in case I don't - have a happy New Year as well :)
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Achterberg, P., Houtman, D., Aupers, S., Koster, W., Mascini, P., & Waal, J. (2009). A Christian Cancellation of the Secularist Truce? Waning Christian Religiosity and Waxing Religious Deprivatization in the West Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 48 (4), 687-701 DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-5906.2009.01473.x
This article by Tom Rees was first published on Epiphenom. It is licensed under Creative Commons.
Hi Tom
ReplyDeleteThanks for all your work on your blog this year. I've really enjoyed, and learnt much, from reading your posts.
Yours
Brian
No-one squeals persecution like the majority becoming a minority. Even when its effectively their own fault.
ReplyDeleteHow is that calculated? I mean, if only 20% of Christians are in favor of a state church when there are lots of Christians, as more turn to other beliefs or no religion, the 20% will eventually become 30%, 40%, until maybe they are all that's left. The theocratic types, one assumes are the least likely to leave their faith.
ReplyDeleteThis is oscillatory. It could just as easily be rendered that the fewer atheists there are, the more vocal the atheists get, right? If there weren't ... spring compression? -- as groups get marginalized, all minority groups would disappear very quickly.
ReplyDeleteHelen, Joshua, yes, those are both potential explanations for the results. 'Christian' was measured simply as whether or not they identified as Christian.
ReplyDeleteThe crucial measure is the polarisation. It's not simply that the minority (atheist or Christian) is more vocal. It's that differences of opinion are small when atheists are the minority, but large when they are the majority.
Here's the potential explanations they give:
>> The spread of secularism affects less religious believers first and disproportionally, stimulating them to abandon their religious creeds, so that increasingly a hard core of passionate believers remains.
>> As Western societies grow more heterogeneous, churches may feel increasingly forced to mobilize their congregations
>> religion may be made more salient by the process of secularization itself ... “culture, identity and sense of worth are challenged by a source promoting either an alien religion or rampant secularism and that source is negatively valued”
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ReplyDeleteThe graph is quite demonstrable of USA's religious population and their insecurity, even though they still have a great majority.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to thank you for your good work and wish you a happy and healthy New Year!!
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