Religion and Modernity: An International Comparison 9780198801665

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RELIGION AND MODERNITY

Religion and Modernity An International Comparison

DETLEF POLLACK AND GERGELY ROSTA Translated by D A V I D WE S T

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © First published in German by Campus Verlag GmbH 2015 All rights reserved. The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaften International—Translation Funding for Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany, a joint initiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office, the collecting society VG WORT, and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (German Publishers & Booksellers Association). © English edition Oxford University Press 2017 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2017 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2017942729 ISBN 978–0–19–880166–5 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

Acknowledgements This book would have turned out very differently without the input of other people. Many colleagues have read parts of the book and provided critical comments on it. In particular, we would like to thank Olaf Müller (Münster), Johannes Berger (Mannheim/Berlin), Hedwig Richter (Hamburg), Michael Hainz (Leipzig), Max Livi (Münster), Jörg Haustein (Heidelberg/London), Hugh McLeod (Birmingham), Erik Sengers (Amsterdam), Kersten Storch (Amsterdam), Andreas Wöhle (Amsterdam), Wolf Wagner (Berlin), Gert Pickel (Leipzig), and Klaus Große Kracht (Münster), whose critical comments and suggestions have contributed much to our book; Angelika Reerink (Münster), who proofread the whole text carefully; and our student assistants Andreas Osterkamp, Dirk Baumkamp, Franziska Ludewig, Maximilian Keller, Anne Schlüter, Isabell Kump, and Phil Pannier for their valuable contributions to improving the manuscript, not only by formatting the tables and figures and checking the spelling and grammar of the German version, but also by checking the citations and the literature as well as doing additional editorial work for the English translation. Special thanks go to the translator of the book, David West, Münster, whose translation in some respects even excels the original. Finally, we have to acknowledge that the book would probably not have come about at all without the support of the Cluster of Excellence Religion and Politics in Pre-Modern and Modern Cultures at the University of Münster. Our book owes much to the intellectually stimulating atmosphere, to our discussions with colleagues, and also to the critical concerns expressed about the approach that we take—and it also owes much to the financial support of the Cluster, which allowed us to concentrate on writing the text. Not least, the disbelieving objections of colleagues forced us to sharpen our arguments. Detlef Pollack Gergely Rosta Münster December 2016

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/9/2017, SPi

Contents List of Figures List of Tables

ix xiii

Introduction

1

PART I. THEORETICAL REFLECTIONS 1. Reflections on the Concept of Modernity

15

2. Reflections on the Concept of Religion

34

3. Key Questions and Methodological Preliminaries

50

PART II. RELIGIOUS DECLINE IN WESTERN EUROPE? Introduction 4. Between Dechurchification and Religious Persistence: West Germany

65 73

5. A Stronghold of Catholicism: Italy

143

6. Religion in Free Fall: The Netherlands

163

Conclusion

189

PART III. RELIGIOUS RENAISSANCE IN EASTERN EUROPE? Introduction

207

7. Russia: Return of Religion

215

8. East Germany: No Signs of a Turnaround

237

9. Poland: Unexpected Vitality after the Fall of Communism

251

Conclusion

273

PART IV. RELIGIOUS CHANGE OUTSIDE EUROPE: THREE CASE STUDIES Introduction

285

10. Religion and Religiosity in the US: A Contrasting Case to Europe?

287

11. South Korea: The Simultaneity of Modernization and Christianization

339

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viii

Contents

12. Charismatic, Pentecostal, and Evangelical Movements in Europe, the US, and Brazil

356

PART V. SYSTEMATIC PERSPECTIVES 13. Macro- and Microsociological Explanations for Differences between Countries

391

14. Patterns and Determinants of Religious Change in the Modern Period: Towards a Multi-Paradigmatic Theory

412

Bibliography Index

437 475

List of Figures 4.1. Numbers leaving the church in Germany, 1900–2010 as a percentage of members

77

4.2. Reasons for church membership among Protestants in the old Federal states according to frequency of church attendance, 2002 (in %)

85

4.3. Development in membership of Protestant free churches and congregations (1890–2012)

89

4.4. Catholic marriages in West Germany, 1951–2005 (from 1990, the whole of Germany) to every 100 civil marriages, where at least one partner is Catholic

97

4.5. Development of religious beliefs in West Germany, 1967–92 (in %)

106

4.6. Changing values in West Germany, 1957–96 (in %)

122

4.7. Gross domestic product per capita in Germany, 1850–2010 (in 1990 Int. GK$)

125

4.8. Net church tax revenues in Germany, 1968–2012 (in Euros)

133

4.9. Religious pluralism—enrichment or threat? 2010 (in %)

136

5.1. Belief in different ideas in Italy, 1981–2001 (in %)

145

5.2. Mixing religion and politics (agree, agree strongly), 2008 (in %)

151

5.3. Separation of religion and politics (agree, agree strongly), 2008 (in %)

151

5.4. Catholic child baptisms in Italy, West Germany, and the Netherlands, as a percentage of births

153

5.5. Regular church attendance in Italy with regard to national pride, 2008 (in %)

153

5.6. Regular church attendance in Italy with regard to number of children, 2008 (in %)

154

6.1. Spirituality and religiosity, 2008 (in %)

183

6.2. Religiosity and spirituality according to age categories, 2008 (in %)

184

8.1. People leaving and joining selected Protestant churches in the GDR (Saxony, Mecklenburg, Greifswald, Anhalt, Görlitz), 1949–89

241

8.2. Baptisms and burials in selected Protestant churches in the GDR (Saxony, Mecklenburg, Greifswald, Anhalt, Görlitz), 1949–89

242

x

List of Figures

10.1. Church membership according to age in selected countries of Europe and the US, 2008 (in %)

294

10.2. Those without religious affiliation in the US and Western Germany (in %)

294

10.3. Religious affiliation among Americans (in %)

295

10.4. Proportion of mainline Protestants and Evangelicals within the overall population (in %, floating average over 3 years)

296

10.5. Distribution of counties according to the proportion of the largest denomination among members of a denomination (in %)

303

10.6. Belief in God in selected European countries and the US (in %)

305

10.7. Age and importance of God (8–10, in %)

305

10.8. ‘There is a God who concerns Himself with every human being personally’ (in %)

311

10.9. Religiosity in Europe and the US over time: ‘Independently of whether you go to church or not, would you say you are a religious person?’ (in %)

312

10.10. Group of religious spiritual people according to age (in %)

315

10.11. Not religious, but spiritual according to age (in %)

315

10.12. Not religious and not spiritual according to age (in %)

318

10.13. Frequency of church attendance (monthly) according to age (in %)

321

10.14. Proportion of those who at the age of 11–12 went to church at least weekly, according to age groups (in %)

321

10.15. Proportion of weekly church attenders, according to whether they have children or not (in %)

322

10.16. Proportion of weekly church attenders in the US in the various birth cohorts, according to whether they have children or not (in %)

323

10.17. Attendance at church service in a comparison between today and the time when the person questioned was 12 years old (in %)

324

10.18. Correlation between the Gini coefficient and the significance of belief in God in 43 countries

331

10.19. Belief and politics in selected countries of Europe and the US (in %)

332

11.1. Religious and denominational affiliation in South Korea, 1982–2010 (in %)

341

11.2. Church attendance once a month (at least), according to denominational affiliation, 1982–2010 (in %)

342

List of Figures

xi

11.3. Belief in God and religious self-assessment, according to denominational affiliation, 2010 (in %)

343

11.4. Ratio of proportions of members of different denominations among those with a high level of education (school-leaving qualification after the twentieth year of life) in comparison to proportions among the population as a whole in South Korea, 1982–2010 (in %)

352

12.1. How important is religiousness to you personally? (very important, quite important) (in %)

373

12.2. To what extent do you believe in God or in something divine? (very much so, quite a bit) (in %)

374

12.3. For my religiousness it is important to be constantly on guard against evil (totally agree, tend to agree) (in %)

377

12.4. To what extent do you believe in the efficacy of demons? (very much so, quite a bit) (in %)

378

12.5. To what extent do your religious beliefs affect your political opinion? (very much so, quite a bit) (in %)

379

12.6. I believe that the end of the world is near (totally agree, tend to agree) (in %)

380

12.7. I am convinced that primarily members of my own religion will be saved (totally agree, tend to agree) (in %)

383

List of Tables II.1. The development of churchliness in selected countries of Western Europe, 1981–2008 (agreement in %)

68

II.2. The development of religiosity in selected countries of Western Europe (agreement in %)

69

II.3. Forms of non-church religiosity in selected countries of Western Europe (agreement in %)

70

II.4. Correlation between ideas about God and the influence of religion on a person’s own way of life (mean value of five variables)

190

III.1. Religiosity and churchliness in selected countries of Eastern and Central Europe, and in selected Western European countries for comparison (in %), 1990

209

III.2. The development of churchliness in selected countries of Eastern and Central Europe, and in selected Western European countries for comparison, 1990–2008 (in %)

212

III.3. The development of religiosity in selected countries of Eastern and Central Europe, and in selected Western European countries for comparison, 1990–2008 (in %)

213

III.4. Proportion of those whose frequency of church attendance has changed significantly since childhood (in %)

280

III.5. Proportion of those whose belief in God has changed significantly, selected countries of Central and Eastern Europe (in %)

281

III.6. Correlation between economic development and difference in the proportion of those who report an increase or decrease in their religiosity, in Central and Eastern Europe (selected countries)

282

1.1. GDP per capita, 1000–2003 (1990 international dollar)

23

3.1. Dimensions of individual religiosity

60

4.1. Denominational affiliation in West Germany, 1950–2010

76

4.2. Live births and infant baptisms in West Germany, 1950–2010

78

4.3. Baptisms, conversions, instances of rejoining the church, deaths, and instances of leaving the church in West Germany, 1950–2010

79

4.4. Reasons for leaving the Protestant Church among those having left the church: mean values (MV) from 7 (= completely true) to 1 (= completely untrue)

83

xiv

List of Tables

4.5. Regular church attendance among Catholics and Protestants in West Germany, 1952–2012 (in %)

92

4.6. Proportion of those who go to church every week among Catholics and Protestants in West Germany, 1950–2010 (church countings) (in %)

93

4.7. Church attendance and number of children among Protestants and those with no religious affiliation in Germany, 2012 (in %)

93

4.8. Church activities outside the church service

94

4.9. Church activities outside the church service according to attendance at church service (in %)

95

4.10. Proportion of those attending religious service on Christmas Eve in the total number of Protestants in West Germany (church countings) (in %)

96

4.11. Proportion of those who pray, according to age groups, 1981–2010 (in %)

99

4.12. Increases and decreases in the belief in God according to age, West and East Germany, 1991 and 2008 (in %)

101

4.13. ‘Do you believe in God?’, differentiated according to gender and level of schooling, in West Germany, 1949 (in %)

102

4.14. Belief in God in West Germany, 1968–2008 (in %)

102

4.15. Belief in God or in a higher power (in %)

104

4.16. Denominational affiliation, belief in God, religious self-assessment, and importance of religion, according to different ideas of transcendence (in %)

104

4.17. Belief in life after death in West Germany, 1956–2006 (in %)

107

4.18. Experience of non-church religiosity in West Germany, 2002, 2012 (in %)

108

4.19. Principal components analysis of forms of non-church religiosity; rotated component matrix

109

4.20. Distribution of belief in forms of non-Christian religiosity in West Germany (in %)

111

4.21. Correlations between traditional churchliness, individual religiosity, and non-church religiosity in West Germany, 2008

114

4.22. Correlations between traditional churchliness, individual religiosity, and non-church religiosity in East Germany, 2008

115

4.23. Changes to family structures in West Germany, 1950–2010

119

List of Tables

xv

4.24. Bringing up children alone or as a couple, and indices of churchliness or religiosity

121

4.25. Indices of religiosity and churchliness according to social-structural features (Pearson’s correlation coefficients)

128

4.26. Passing on of denomination from one generation to the next, 1991 and 2008 (in %)

131

4.27. Employees and priests/pastors in the Catholic and Protestant churches in Germany, 1950–2008 (without Caritas and Diakonie)

134

5.1. Average annual migrations to and from different regions of Italy (1955–88) (thousand people)

149

6.1. Proportion of church members in the general population of the Netherlands, 1958–2011 (in %)

164

6.2. Belief in God and a higher power in the Netherlands, 1966–2006 (in %)

165

6.3. Correlations between traditional churchliness, individual religiosity, and non-church religiosity in the Netherlands (NL), Denmark (DK), and Ireland (IRL), 2008

186

7.1. Percentage of respondents with or without religious upbringing in different years

224

7.2. Relatives’ religiosity among various age groups in 1999 (in %)

224

7.3. Percentage of various opinions about the nature of God in various years

226

7.4. Russians’ religious identification among the general population and among male and female respondents in 1999 (in %)

226

7.5. Adherents of various traditions among the general population and among male and female respondents who regard themselves as Orthodox in 1999 (in %)

226

7.6. Correlations between traditional churchliness, individual religiosity, and non-church religiosity in Russia, 2008

228

7.7. Confidence in various institutions in 1999 (in %)

229

7.8. Confidence in institutions in Russia, 1990–2008 (mean values)

229

7.9. Growth in gross domestic product in Germany, Poland, and Russia, 1990–2013 (in %)

230

7.10. Competence of the church in selected areas (in %)

231

7.11. It is proper for churches to speak out on . . . (1991) (in %)

232

7.12. Separation of church and state (in %)

233

9.1. Changes in the proportion of Sunday worshippers and those receiving communion in Poland, 1980–2010 (in % of church members)

266

xvi

List of Tables

9.2. Belief in God according to denominational affiliation (in %)

270

10.1. Belief and church membership in Europe and the US, 2006–8 (in %)

292

10.2. Childhood versus current affiliation of US adults (in %)

298

10.3. Retention rates—proportion of those remaining in the same faith that they were brought up in, and of those changing their religious affiliation (in %)

299

10.4. Religiously mixed marriages (in %)

301

10.5. Religious dogmatism

307

10.6. Correlations between religiosity, dogmatism, and religious openness

308

10.7. Correlation between belief in God and trust

309

10.8. Changes in the image of God in Europe and the US in recent decades (belief in a personal God or a spirit or a life force in %)

310

10.9. Religiosity and spirituality in selected countries of Europe and the US, 2012 (in %)

314

10.10. Religious characteristics of the areligiously spiritual in comparison to the overall population in selected countries of Europe and the US

316

10.11. Frequency of church attendance in the US, 1972–2014 (in %)

319

10.12. Correlation between indicators of religiosity and church attendance

324

10.13. Frequency distributions of interreligious contacts in the family, in the neighbourhood, at the workplace, and during leisure time, according to country (in %)

326

10.14. Correlation between religious plurality in a person’s immediate environment (sum of all four variables) and individual religiosity (church attendance, belief in God, significance of religion, and spirituality)

327

11.1. Development of religious and denominational affiliation in South Korea, 1950–2005 (in %)

340

11.2. Church attendance once a month (at least), according to denominational affiliation in selected countries (in %)

342

11.3. Belief in religious miracles, according to religious and denominational affiliation (in %)

344

11.4. Belief in the supernatural powers of deceased ancestors, according to religious and denominational affiliation (in %)

344

12.1. Indices of religiosity in Western Europe, the US, and Brazil (2005–8) (in %)

372

List of Tables

xvii

12.2. Correlations between different religious ideas in Western Europe, the US, and Brazil (Pearson’s correlation coefficients)

382

12.3. Development of religious affiliation in Brazil, 1980–2010 (in %)

385

13.1. Multilevel analysis (‘church attendance’ as dependent variable)

395

13.2. Multilevel analysis (‘importance of God’ as dependent variable)

397

13.3. Multilevel analysis (‘Indiv. 1’ as dependent variable)

399

13.4. Multilevel analysis (‘Indiv. 2’ as dependent variable)

401

13.5. Correlation between agreement with the statement ‘church leaders should not try to influence government decisions’ and indicators of religiosity

404

13.6. Correlation between the upbringing value ‘independence’ and indicators of religiosity

406

13.7. Correlation between the index ‘traditional female role’ and indicators of religiosity

407

13.8. Correlation between the index ‘public morality’ (1 = never justifiable, 10 = always justifiable) and indicators of religiosity

408

13.9. Correlation between the index ‘morality of the body’ (1 = never justifiable, 10 = always justifiable) and indicators of religiosity

409

13.10. Correlation between the factor ‘religious diversity’ and indicators of religiosity

411

Introduction Joseph Story graduated from Harvard University as the second best student in his year. In 1811, he became—at the age of 32—the youngest justice ever on the Supreme Court of the United States. He considered it his duty to work for the equality of all people before the law. But, like many of his contemporaries, Joseph Story was also a fervent defender of property rights and, as an educated member of the ruling class, a successful poet. As a justice on the Supreme Court, Joseph Story argued that ‘Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state’ (Koppelman 2004: 641). For Story, the interpretation of the law should draw on the Christian religion, since all beliefs are Christian (by which he meant Protestant). He considered belief in future rewards and punishments as being more or less indispensable for the exercise of state law. The separation of church and state may well have been enshrined in the First Amendment of the American Constitution, but the principle that Christianity should have an inherently privileged position in US society was still undisputed at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and was not questioned by Joseph Story himself, despite his commitment to the equality of all before the law. Christianity retained this privileged position up until the end of the nineteenth century, with the Supreme Court establishing in a unanimous judgement in 1892 that, ‘in American life as expressed by its laws, its business, its customs and its society, we find everywhere a clear recognition of the same truth […] that this is a Christian nation’ (Church of the Holy Trinity vs. United States). Today, no Supreme Court justice would be willing to grant Christianity, let alone Protestantism, such a privileged position. Until recently, we would probably still have taken Joseph Story’s Christian interpretation of the law, and the Supreme Court’s continued privileging of Christianity right up until the end of the nineteenth century, as sure signs of the radical changes that the religious landscape has undergone in the US in the last two centuries. We would have seen in these changes not only a manifestation of religious pluralization since the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Protestantism was still the spiritual basis of public discourse in the US, but also clear evidence of a process of secularization enveloping the public domain, as well as the domains of law and politics.

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Religion and Modernity

Only a few people still wish to speak in terms of secularization, though. Faced with the clear signs that Christianity has lost its privileged legal status in the United States over the last two centuries, most scholars in religious and social studies today would probably look for counterexamples and try to undermine the master narrative of the declining importance of religion in the modern period—by pointing perhaps to the increase in church members since the American Revolution, to the spiritual impulses provided by the revival movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to the political success of the moral majority, and to the high media presence of charismatic televangelists. Questioning secularization theory has become a popular rhetorical pastime, with many referring to it now as if it were a dead horse (Stark 1999; Miller and Yamamori 2007: 38; Pfleiderer and Alexander 2013). Criticism of secularization theory focuses on the one hand on its opposition of religion to modernity, or of tradition to modernity; and, on the other, on its evolutionary, progressive and Eurocentric character as a whole. Secularization theory is criticized in particular for claiming that modernization leads inevitably to secularization, and that religion is negatively affected by the consequences of rationalization, technologization, and functional differentiation, by an increase in the level of prosperity, education, and urbanization. But it is also criticized for using a concept of religion that sees religion only in institutional terms, for employing a homogenized concept of modernity, for turning religion into a mere dependent variable, and for idealizing the past as a ‘golden age of faith’ (Warner 1993; Casanova 1994; Berger 1999; Stark and Finke 2000; Graf 2004; Beck 2008; Hellemans 2010). Criticism of secularization theory has often itself become a master narrative (as has been pointed out, for example, by Ziemann 2009: 32; Haustein 2011a: 552).1 More and more people are convinced that secularization theory is only still important because it expresses how the period in which the theory arose understands itself—but that it no longer has anything to say at the level of content (Asad 2003; Graf 2004: 96f.; Borutta 2005: 16, 2010: 347; Knöbl 2013: 78ff., 111). Faced with such a resounding rejection of secularization theory, we wish in the analyses presented here to keep two questions open. One, do we really know already what the dominant tendencies of religious change consist of in modern societies? And, two, are we in a position to explain these tendencies? We intend in the analyses collected here to pose a descriptive and an explanatory question. First, we wish to describe how the social significance of religion in its various facets has changed in modern societies. Second, we wish to explain what factors and conditions have contributed to these changes. 1 Peter Beyer described in the 1990s this inconsistency of argument of postmodern discourse when he wrote (and not without irony): ‘Postmodern critique and analysis usually has a Phoenix-like quality in that it tends to suggest a new authoritative narrative after having deconstructed the old ones’ (Beyer 1996: 1).

Introduction

3

Such an analysis can of course not forego investigating the validity of the claims made by secularization theory, too. It is beyond all dispute that many of its assumptions are simply untenable—for example, its treatment of religion as a phenomenon that belongs to the pre-modern period, its claim that religion has largely lost its political and public significance and has privatized itself, and its deterministic assumptions of linearity. It may also be necessary for us to pay more attention to the intrinsically dynamic potentials of religion, as well as to its capacities for transformation and self-modernization. But such necessary challenges to the assumptions of secularization theory should not lead us to deny that the theory has any explanatory power at all. Criticizing the theory’s opposition of religion to modernity, or of tradition to modernity, its creation of deterministic models of deduction, its use of homogenized container terms risks slipping into an uncritical relativism, one that absolutizes the contingent, makes the individual case the only unit of analysis, and prevents overarching structures from being built (Wohlrab-Sahr 2013). Whether religion and modernity are compatible, whether tradition and modernity are opposites, whether the internal diversity of modernity prevails over its unity, whether generalizable patterns and developmental tendencies exist— we should not prejudge these questions ideologically, but instead investigate them historically and empirically. We should consider not only the productive effects that religious communities, practices, and ideas have, but also their dependence on external circumstances; not only the compatibility of religion and modernity, but also the underlying tensions between them; not only the historical contingency of processes of change undergone by religion, but also their regularity. We should avoid making the structural analysis of religion that is practised in the social sciences and its cultural-historical interpretation mutually exclusive. Rather, we should explore opportunities to bring the two together (see Kocka 2008). Such an attempt is important not least because a scholarly analysis oriented towards exclusion is usually unable to make what it marginalizes disappear, and because what it sets itself sharply against often returns again to its subject area as something uncomprehended (Derrida 1978: 284). It is therefore hardly surprising that arguments used by secularization theorists very often find their way back into the arguments used by opponents of the theory, who reject once and for all the assumptions of the theory, only to discover that they cannot dispense with them without leaving every question unanswered. Even such a fierce critic of secularization theory as Peter van Rooden (2004a: 21) can find nothing else to explain the dramatic process of de-Christianization that began in the Netherlands in the 1960s but ‘the sudden growth in wealth and the emergence of a mass consumer society’. And Hugh McLeod, one of the leading experts on the recent history of religion in Europe, ultimately takes up a position that is recognizably that of secularization theory, despite all his verbal attempts to distance himself from the theory. Although McLeod rejects the

4

Religion and Modernity

global theses put forward by secularization theory concerning the mutual dependencies between industrialization, urbanization, and increases in prosperity on the one hand, and secularization on the other, and denies that secularization theory has any explanatory power (McLeod 1997, 2007: 16), he then makes ‘the impact of affluence’ the ‘most important’ factor in the religious crisis of the 1960s (2007: 15). For all its rhetorical distancing from secularization theory, then, recent historiography often remains strangely indebted to the theory (see also Damberg 2011: 30f.).2 Instead of rejecting secularization theory, we should therefore subject it to critical examination. Referring to the conditions from which it emerged helps us little here. Even if secularization theory really is a Eurocentric ‘concept of modernity’ originating in the Enlightenment, as Callum Brown has claimed (2003: 39f.), or a grand récit of Western modernity emerging from the culture struggles of the nineteenth century (Borutta 2005: 16, 2010), or indeed a master narrative that arose due to the specific conditions of the 1960s (Kippenberg 2007: 50)—none of this says anything about the validity of its claims. It is clear that the theory can only be falsified through empirical facts. Basing sociological or historical statements on empirical foundations should really be a self-evident truth for those working in the humanities and social sciences, although a glance at the work of Thomas Luckmann, Hans Joas, Talal Asad, Peter L. Berger, and Grace Davie goes to show that not a few sociologists of religion think that they can get by without referring systematically to empirical data. A kind of armchair sociology has established itself in the sociology of religion, one that is more than capable of forwarding interesting and thoroughly plausible theses, but one that also sees little need to test these theses empirically. Anthony Liedhegener (2012: 489) has also complained that ‘the sociology of religion […]—despite the prominence of theorems of secularization theory—has never been seriously interested in checking empirically the long-term process of secularization that it alleges’. Providing sociological statements with an empirical basis is certainly far more demanding than some that make use of social-scientific data think. Doing so requires more than the occasional use of results from empirical research either to support or to undermine a particular thesis. Using empirical data selectively remains open to manipulation, and often serves only to allow researchers to make claims obtained independently of empirical work and to shield these claims from the questioning of others.3 Secularization theorists, 2 The rhetorical rejection of modernization theory is accompanied by its use in Michael Hochgeschwender’s work, too. His assertion that modernization theory is normativistic and anachronistic (Hochgeschwender 2007: 17) does not prevent him from seeing concepts such as modernity, modernization, the modern as being ‘indispensable’ for his analytical description (Hochgeschwender 2007: 258, footnote 27). 3 The reverse strategy of using empirical data to counter arguments that differ from one’s own with arguments that are readily available and often arbitrarily deduced is also unconvincing. José

Introduction

5

for example, like pointing to falling rates of church attendance to prove the declining importance of religion, while critics of secularization theory prefer to point to people’s increased interest in esotericism, spirituality, and pilgrimages as evidence of the increasing importance of religion—both sides see the evidence that they produce as confirming their own interpretations. Empirical evidence for a thesis cannot, however, be gained through individual pieces of evidence; it is gained, rather, by placing the thesis on a broad empirical foundation and deciding which sources speak in favour of the thesis, and which against. Empirical work must be allowed the chance to overthrow a cherished thesis, which means that we have to consider the phenomenon in question in its entirety, and to expose all its essential features to empirical analysis. Relying only on rates of church attendance, or only on esoteric fairs, to investigate processes of religious change would result in a one-sided and distorted view of the matter in question. Only when the analyses are based on a comprehensive and distinct concept of religion, one that makes explicit what is included in the definition and what is not, can we ascertain whether the social significance of religion has increased, decreased or remained much the same. Otherwise, we run the risk of overemphasizing what is marginal, and neglecting what is central. Theoretical reflections are also unavoidable, though, because reality cannot be accessed directly. It is never possible to capture the entire diversity of reality empirically; our observations are always dependent on where we are standing at the time. Cultural contexts, political interests, delimitations made in the strategic interests of scholarship—all these intervene in, and influence, the process of understanding, whether we want them to or not. Data gained empirically are therefore not meaningful in themselves. They are always constructed facts and interpreted realities, meaningful reconstructions that cannot be produced independently of categorial and theoretical assumptions. The very decision as to which facts should count and which should not is a decision made at the theoretical level. According to Albert Einstein, it is theory that determines what we can observe in the first place. Theoretical reflections are therefore unavoidable for empirical work not only because they determine and delimit the object of study in its essential features, but also because only they enable us to ask the right analytical questions and to

Casanova is a master of this strategy—for example, when he opposes the secularization thesis that in East Germany religiosity and churchliness are less pronounced than in West Germany, although the level of modernization is lower in East Germany than in West Germany (Casanova 2007: 329); when he cites the established churches in Scandinavian countries and the communist Soviet regime as evidences that the separation of church and state is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition of democracy (Casanova 2008: 68); and when he concludes from the contribution of Christian Democratic parties to the formation of the European Union that democracy and Catholicism are compatible (Casanova 2008: 69f.).

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single out which phenomena are important and which are not.4 They provide the framework that determines the significance of the facts and correlations discovered, the framework that can even explain the significance of when the correlations expected simply do not materialize. All too often, however, empirical researchers begin with questions that allow them to respond to the available data, and marshal the theoretical assumptions in such a way that they can be tested according to the available data. A pragmatic approach to theoretical assumptions does not preclude obtaining interesting and relevant research results. The likelihood of producing such results increases, however, if we make a more strict distinction between empirical and theoretical work, and give each the chance to stimulate and correct the other. The studies presented here largely forego the results from qualitative research. Qualitative research on religion claims that it provides the more interesting, the more profound, the more relevant findings. It claims that it explores the religious landscape in a process of research that is open to whatever results are produced, without being tied down by standardized methods to hypotheses and predictable outcomes. By doing so, it claims that it can produce insights that are more innovative and can achieve a more nuanced understanding of phenomena, an understanding that does not reduce these phenomena to mere frequencies, but is able to capture their deep grammar. What is true here is that sociological analysis after the cultural turn can no longer be satisfied with mere frequency counts, and that pointing to statistical correlations no longer suffices. Rather, work in the social sciences should give priority to elucidating the patterns of significance behind the distributions of frequency and the statistically demonstrable correlations, to understanding the interpretations of the world that people have and how they see themselves, their schemata to interpret the world and their discourse universes. Reconstructing the level of meaning of the social is indispensable. The patterns of interpretation that people have cannot be the ultimate object of sociological analysis, however, but can only be its starting point at best. They have to be related to their practices; these practices may indeed be influenced by their worldviews and self-attributions, but practices can certainly deviate from them and are therefore not simply deducible from them. They must also be related to socio-structural, political, economic, and legal contexts, contexts that also influence how individuals act, even when these contexts are 4 That historiography needs theory is indisputable among representatives of a historical social science. Sources, explains Reinhart Koselleck (1977: 46), may protect us ‘against mistakes, but they do not tell us what we should say’. Thus, historical social science turns against a historicist positivism whose ideal of objectivity long dominated historiography. Leopold Ranke (1824: vi, 1870: 103) could still write that the historian wants ‘merely to show how things actually were’ and wishes ‘to extinguish as it were his own self and simply allow things to talk for themselves’. More recent historiography has rejected the idea that historical knowledge can be independent of standpoint.

Introduction

7

sometimes situated, as it were, behind those who act and cannot be grasped discursively by them. In fact, if they are not generated systematically using a strict methodology, then research results produced qualitatively often prove to have little reliability, to be particularistic, subjective, and lacking transparency. They are often not produced on a scientifically comprehensible basis and are therefore not intersubjectively verifiable. Although such results are not representative, researchers often make far-reaching generalizations and put forward daring theses on the basis of a few cases, and sometimes also on the basis of a single case. Qualitative research results are also often not value-free, with subjective likes and dislikes intervening in the analysis. And, finally, researchers also often argue from a position that does not include all the relevant factors, but tends instead towards a one-sided exaggeration of particularistic viewpoints that were often produced on the basis of strong theoretical assumptions. That preconceptions and prejudices determine the course of research applies more to qualitative than to quantitative work. At the same time, representatives of qualitative approaches repeatedly make negative judgements regarding quantitative analyses, which often lack their specificity.5 Without a deeper understanding of the logic of statistical surveys, and sometimes also without even a serious attempt to gain such an understanding, qualitative researchers accuse all quantitative approaches in the social sciences of lacking the capacity for empathy, of thinking in terms of rigid categories, of having a reductionist view of reality, and of mindlessly counting the number of legs on a fly. What we wish to emphasize here is that statistical surveys are able to link the level of individual action to the social level. Statistics on baptisms, for example, as simple as they may at first appear, tell us something about the changing motives that individuals have with regard to baptisms. They are a form of honouring the individual in his or her personal decision, and represent at the same time an aggregation of individual decisions for societal trends. Typical of the standardized recording of church practices is also not only thinking in dualistic terms of either/or, but also in terms of the categories of how and why. Statistics on baptisms record not only the baptism rate, but also the age of those baptized. Whether a person is baptized as a child at the instigation of the parents, or whether baptized as an adult at his or her own instigation, is a qualitative distinction. In the first case, church membership following baptism is an ascribed characteristic; in the second, it is acquired personally. Statistics on baptisms also allow us to make statements about the family background of the person baptized—about, for example, the denominational homogeneity of the person’s parents, their social status, their level of 5

For reasons of collegiality, we do not point to evidence here and in what follows. It is our intention to criticize not individual colleagues, but the patterns of argumentation that they use.

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education, their region of origin, and so on, so that changing baptism rates can be related to socio-structural conditions and interpreted socio-structurally. Statistics not only permit yes/no decisions, but also enable us to understand qualitative distinctions, gradations, and transitions, and the social circumstances in which changes occur. Of course, quantitative data, just like qualitative data, are data that are produced. And of course the findings obtained through quantitative methods require interpretation just as much as those obtained through qualitative approaches. It is beyond all dispute that data gained through representative surveys and standardized methods do not represent reality objectively. They do have the advantage, though, that their empirical evidence can be verified intersubjectively, and therefore called into question when necessary. Where, as here, we are concerned with reconstructing processes of religious change and making international comparisons, then using standardized procedures is clearly necessary. Only by keeping the criteria constant when it comes to making comparisons, be they temporal or regional, can we capture historical changes and regional differences. Recognizing variance requires a uniform set of criteria, and using quantitative methods is therefore the logical consequence of the questions guiding this investigation. The studies presented here follow just as little the qualitative method as they do the fashionable interest in dedifferentiating phenomena, dissolution of boundaries, hybrids, ambivalences, paradoxes, asynchronicities, and syncretisms. Poststructuralist thought denies the possibility of being able to discern regularities, structures, and patterns, and claims instead the incommensurability of the real. It dissolves the real into discourses about reality, structures into practices, and generally applicable statements into the contingency of the single case. It is concerned with destroying previously acquired knowledge, and not with acquiring new understanding. Where previously limits and turning points were perceived, continuities are now said to exist; where previously individual entities were assumed, internal differences and fractures have now been discovered. In its attempt to bring down established insights and to overcome them through a process of reversal, poststructuralism attaches itself parasitically to such insights while remaining vague and underdetermined in terms of what it itself has to say instead. While well-behaved scholars are happy if they manage to beat a narrow clearing through the thicket of reality, the postmodern thinker gains most satisfaction from obscuring the clearing again and diving anew into the thicket. But the postmodern enthusiasm for fuzzy boundaries cannot replace distinct concepts. Rather, fuzziness, blurring of boundaries, dedifferentiations, fluid transitions—these only become visible as such once the boundaries that are supposedly transcended or abolished have been determined. ‘We need general terms’, explains Friedrich Wilhelm Graf (2004: 237), ‘so as to be able to structure the religious sphere and to distinguish it from other spheres. […] It is […] not about finding a functionalistic,

Introduction

9

ubiquitously usable concept of religion. But the culturally particular or individual can only be described if we have available to us general terms with which to grasp the specific difference of this particularity.’ Even exceeding the structure requires the structure for the act of exceeding to be seen as such. The studies collected here also refrain from pursuing the history and sociology of religion from the viewpoints of global history. Even if religious communities, such as the Catholic Church, often act globally, the conditions in which they act are usually so different locally and nationally that they have to be analysed within their respective regional contexts. It is certainly not the case that behind all regional changes there are transnational processes. Inglehart has shown that, despite the immense processes of globalization that we have witnessed, what is still of great importance are national differences concerning the religious landscape. Catholics and Protestants in the Netherlands, for example, are more similar when it comes to their value systems than are Catholics in the Netherlands and Catholics in traditionally Catholic countries such as Spain or Italy (Inglehart and Baker 2000: 37). And, if we think of the religious cultures in Poland and the Czech Republic, for example, which have very little in common, although the two countries are neighbours and both are predominantly Catholic, then it is immediately obvious that we can only do justice to what is particular about these cultures by adopting an approach that does not disregard national differences. The criticism that historians of globalization level at a methodology that focuses on the nationstate runs the risk of becoming a methodological globalism (Spohn 2006). That we have to abandon the idea of parallel developments, that all regions are entangled with one another, that only global forces are at work in the economy, in politics, in social structures, and in the formation of elites, and that the system at the global level dictates the conditions of existence in which all regional developments occur—all this is a myth (Hirst and Thompson 1998). Nation-states are still key players in the world economy and world politics (Pohlmann 2006: 170). And, despite the enormous tendencies towards globalization, there are still patterns of order specific to countries and cultures that remain influential (Blossfeld 2001: 240ff.; Mayer 2001; Streeck 2001). What is justified is the criticism that global history makes of Eurocentrism. When it comes to processes of religious change, it is especially important to go beyond the horizon of Western Europe. If it is true that religious awakenings are taking place primarily outside the old continent, and that secularization theory was developed for the European case, then critically examining the theory’s claims must also involve dealing with the non-European world. The US acts as a precedent here. Both religiously vibrant and one of the most economically and technologically advanced countries in the world, the US is particularly useful for us to advance the investigation of the relationship between modernity and religion. Going beyond the European perspective cannot result in observing Europe from an external point of view and making

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it an exceptional case, however (Davie 2002), since that would mean simply choosing a new set of normative criteria instead of the European, and making this new set central (see Torpey 2010: 154). The postcolonial polemic against the dominance of the West may reject modernization theory and deny that the West is the agent of history. But even global history, which seeks to defeat the Western narrative of modernity by demonstrating the dependence of the West on other parts of the world, always comes back to Europe—be it negatively in its highlighting of European colonial domination as the West’s original sin (Richter 2013b). Europe has after all been an important player for the regions outside of Europe, and was especially so in the nineteenth century (Osterhammel 2014: xx)—a player that simply cannot be ignored. It is therefore hardly surprising that, for global historians, the ‘key question in describing world history’ should be the question of the special path taken by Europe (Conrad 2013: 163). If, however, the internal contradictions in the discourse of globalization theory refer again and again to Europe, then we will be well advised not to make the denial of the importance of Europe the prerequisite for dealing with the continent. We should, rather, distinguish between a normative and a heuristic Eurocentrism. The former makes Europe, and especially Western Europe, the yardstick by which everything else is to be judged, while the latter uses Europe to discover what is specific about Europe in comparison with other regions. In our analyses, we therefore deal initially with Western Europe, but for the sake of comparison we also consider the United States, whose political, legal, and economic conditions are in many respects very similar to those in Western Europe, but whose religious landscape is fundamentally different. While the comparison of Western European countries with each other and with the United States makes up the core of this analysis, we also go beyond this comparison by also including quite different cases such as Eastern Europe, South Korea, and the Pentecostal movement, which is a phenomenon of obvious global importance.6 Our investigation follows a systematic logic, even if we wish also to avoid all over-determination. After discussing the two central concepts of the investigation, those of religion and modernity, we present the most important theories that deal with the relationship between religion and modernity so that we can formulate again and in more detail the central questions of our investigation. After the theoretical comes the empirical part, which constitutes the bulk of the book. This part begins with our analyses of religious change in Western and Eastern Europe. For the sake of comparison, we then present 6 We have refrained from including countries such as Japan, India, and China as prominent Asian cases, and African countries because we work mainly with standardized methods, whose applicability has been well tested on the European and Anglo-American world in which the Christian tradition dominates. These methods cannot be easily used for the analysis of cases that are culturally different. Furthermore, the data available for some of these countries are rather unreliable.

Introduction

11

individual analyses of selected non-European cases (the US, South Korea), as well our investigation of the global spread of Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism not only in Europe and the US, but also in Brazil. On the basis of these selected case studies, which place as much emphasis on analysing the social, political, and economic context of religious changes as on capturing historical path dependencies, we identify patterns and determinants of religious change in modern and modernizing societies. We close the argument’s circle by returning at the end of our book to the theoretical reflections on religion and modernity introduced at the beginning, and attempt to specify in a process of theoretical and empirical densification the insights gained. Only after conducting the empirical case studies do we offer some general theoretical conclusions that rely on the empirical findings and that propose determining factors and overarching patterns lying behind the religious changes witnessed by modern societies. Thus, the book does not build an all-encompassing and coherent model such as secularization theory. Rather, it adopts an empirically-based, multiparadigmatic perspective containing various theoretical elements that can be combined flexibly to provide an explanation of religious changes.

Part I Theoretical Reflections

1 Reflections on the Concept of Modernity 1.1. THE CORE OF MODERNIZATION THEORY Awareness of the radically new is an inevitable part of modernity. ‘The modern age was the first and only age that understood itself as an epoch and, in so doing, simultaneously created the other epochs’, wrote Hans Blumenberg (1991: 116). The claim of making a radical break with tradition does of course not correspond to historical reality, since it can never begin anew from scratch. At the same time, though, modernity is inconceivable without this claim. We may think of Kant (1998: 110), who, in the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, compares his transcendental-philosophical approach to the Copernican shift from the geocentric to the heliocentric view of the world. Or of Hegel (2001a: 221, §273), who defines the principle of the modern world as being ‘the freedom of subjectivity’, and contrasts this world with the traditional societies of Asia, which remained within the substantial or stationary (Hegel 2001b: 123, 128, 132f., 156, 162, 191). The fact is that modern thought always places itself in sharp contrast to everything that preceded it. It celebrates itself as an epochal breakthrough to reason, to whose forum each instance of tradition and authority, even the holy scripture, has to justify itself; it announces the infinite practical improvability of social and political conditions; and foregrounds not a world order determined by God, but human interests and needs with which social conditions always have to realign themselves. It is hardly surprising that this conception of progress, intent as it was on rejecting everything previous, traditional, and authoritative, should have soon met its radical reversal. Nietzsche discovered the theoretical implications with regard to power of the subject/object dialectic of Enlightenment, and exposed the modern principle of subjective freedom as a form of the will to power that the modern subject makes use of. For Nietzsche, power is no longer the irrational counterpoint to reason, but is actually rooted within reason itself (Schelkshorn 2009: 18f.). Nietzsche’s position was taken up by Heidegger, Horkheimer, and Adorno, who also discovered in the subject’s overpowering quest for knowledge the very seed of oppression, reification, and desubjectification. With his analyses

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of the disciplinary society and biopower, Michel Foucault elaborated further on the theoretical implications with regard to power of the theory of modernity. But merely reversing the modern principle of subjectivity does not take us beyond the Enlightenment optimism regarding progress, since it remains indebted to the Enlightenment pathos of criticism and therefore to a normative perspective (Richter 2013a). Since the power-oriented theoretical conceptions of modernity understand reason itself as the desubjectifying power of destruction, the only escape from the catastrophe that modern society is heading inexorably towards lies in an abstract counter-utopia, in formulae such as ‘recovery from metaphysics’ (Heidegger), ‘mimesis’ (Horkheimer, Adorno) and ‘aesthetics of existence’ (Foucault). Although their evaluations differ, both the Enlightenment and the anti-Enlightenment discourses try, under the influence of profound sociohistorical changes, to determine the location of modernity. Whether the realization of freedom is expected by modernity itself or by its other, the unprecedented consciousness of epoch that modernity has, obviously arises in both cases from the need for self-assurance resulting from the complete transformation of circumstances (Schelkshorn 2012: 218). In contrast to these philosophical determinations of location, sociological reflections on modernity, even if they are concerned also with determining the location of modernity in the face of radical social, political, and economic changes, are characterized by a higher degree of sobriety. Although nurtured on the soil of Enlightenment thought regarding progress, they also readily leave this soil, too. Like this, they are often normatively grounded. At the same time, they partially refrain from making modernity in its uniqueness the yardstick of criticism. Durkheim (1997), for example, not only considered modern society with its division of labour as being more complex and powerful than traditional societies, but also saw the threat to modern societies of anomic tendencies. Max Weber (1992: xxviii), on the other hand, ascribed to the cultural phenomena of the West a developmental direction of universal significance, while conceding at the same time that this itself was a fond imagination of Western European citizens of culture. And Parsons (1964: 340, 347ff.), who saw evolutionary universals such as bureaucratic organization, the market complex, universalistic norms, and democratic association as indispensable to increased adaptability and higher development, did not rule out the ability of systems at a lower stage of evolution to survive. Sociological conceptions of modernity also correspond to the Enlightenment discourses in their sharp contrast between the pre-modern and the modern. Spencer, with his distinction between military and industrial society; Durkheim, with his clear separation of modern society with its division of labour from society differentiated into segments; Weber, who saw the modern world of the West as characterized by processes of rationalization, which he reserved for this world; and Luhmann, who identified the formation of modern society with the conversion of the primary form of differentiation from stratification to

Reflections on the Concept of Modernity

17

functional differentiation—all differentiated clearly between tradition and modernity. But they all also pointed to overlaps between the two epochs. Durkheim (1995), for example, emphasized in his late work the continued existence of religious practices in the modern period, and Weber (1992) looked for the Protestant roots of the capitalist economic ethos. Unlike Enlightenment and idealistic discourses, however, sociological approaches no longer find the specificity of modernity in a single principle, such as that of liberal subjectivity, a principle that acquires its foundational character only from its society-free conception, and therefore also no longer feel challenged to unmask this principle. Rather, they make out a variety of features to characterize modern societies, not one of which possesses ultimate significance. Tocqueville, the brilliant analyst of political power, set the tone. Overwhelmed by the inevitable triumphal march of democracy in America and Europe, he understood not only that this meant the steady erosion of the value of descent, but also, parallel to the decline of the monarchy and the nobility, and the spread of equality among people, that trade would become the new source of power, that citizens and financiers acquiring property would become political heavyweights, that, with the spread of training for the soul, science and education would become a means to power and success, that press freedom would be an essential foundation of democracy, that the well-being of the state and of society would be inextricably linked to the granting of political rights to all citizens, and that democracy would demand the sincere and deep respect of the law (Tocqueville 2000: 4f., 252f.). Across the entire Christian world, Tocqueville wrote, there was ‘the same revolution’—a revolution that had led to ‘greater equality of condition in Christian countries at the present day than there has been at any previous time, in any part of the world’ (Tocqueville 2000: 6f.). Like Tocqueville, the representatives of modernization theory also argue that modernity is characterized by a set of interrelated properties. Daniel Lerner (1968: 387) pointed to five ‘salient characteristics of modernity’: selfsustaining economic growth, a democratic system of representation, the diffusion of secular-rational norms in the culture, personal freedom of mobility in society, and the influence of ‘self-others seeking’ and empathy. Anthony Giddens (1990: 55ff.), who represents a more recent version of modernization theory, considers the integral components of modernity to be capitalism, industrialization, the nation-state, and the state’s monopoly on power, while Wolfgang Zapf (1991: 34) considers them to be a competitive democracy, a market economy, and an affluent society with mass consumption and a welfare state. However we define the elements that necessarily belong to the structure of modern societies, the diagnosis that modernization theorists make is that the individual elements cannot occur independently of each other, but form instead an intricate web of interconnections. Indeed, the core of modernization theory is precisely the claim that the relationship between

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economic, political, legal, and cultural changes, such as increasing prosperity, democratization, the guarantee of human rights, and individualization, is not random. This claim usually has three implications. First, by defining such a system of interdependent variables as specifically modern, modernization theories make a demarcation with tradition. Second, they thereby distinguish within the present between modern and non-modern societies. And, third, by identifying a system of interdependent variables, they usually argue that this system of variables is becoming increasingly prevalent, and that modern and less modern societies are increasingly converging. When we come in this book to understanding and explaining religious changes in the modern period, then we must therefore also deal with the question of how closely religious change is intertwined with processes of modernization. To begin with, though, we want to open this question up in two directions. First, we do not assume that modernization necessarily has a negative effect on the importance of religion in society and automatically leads to secularization. Modernization can also affect the religious landscape positively. Second, we do not assume that the role of religion in modern societies is influenced only by processes of modernization; other factors— such as political conflicts, national sentiments, migration movements, and charismatic leaders—can of course also have an influence. To estimate the effects, we need to determine more precisely what we mean by modern societies, and, to account for religious changes in terms of modernization theory, or to trace them back to other factors, we need to outline a concept of modernity. Modernization theories, though, are anything but uncontroversial in more recent research in the social sciences and history. Before presenting our own outline, we therefore need to address the main reservations that have been expressed concerning this classic approach of sociology, and to discuss the legitimacy of these reservations.

1. 2 . D I S CU SS I O N O F S E V E R A L OB J E C TI ONS TO MODERNIZATION THEORY 1) A first objection relates to the macrosociological character of modernization theory. Clifford Geertz (1973: 21, 23), one of the early critics of modernization theory, refused in his anthropological analysis to interpret ‘whole societies’. He argued that, although anthropological analysis does not preclude investigating broad interconnections, anthropologists, unlike historians, economists, political scientists, and sociologists, can come close to grand realities such as power, legitimacy, modernization, integration, conflict, and structure not from above, but from below: that is, microscopically. For Geertz, it is only through meticulous fieldwork that we can bestow on ‘those big words

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19

that make us all afraid’ that degree of sensitivity necessary if we want to work with them concretely and creatively (21). Modernization theories do indeed remain largely at the macrosociological level, and are content to identify macrosociological relationships, such as between economic growth and the development of democracy, or between nation-building and bureaucratization, without asking how such relationships are present in the thoughts, actions, and experiences of the individual, and what causal mechanisms are responsible for producing these relationships in the interaction between macro- and micro-social factors. To overcome this deficit, we should perhaps distinguish the different levels that constitute the social, using these to take into account both the reciprocal relations between these levels and their relative independence from each other (see Luhmann 1982), and give our analysis of the relationships between the macrosociological processes and structures a theoretical foundation that focuses on actors. This does not mean replacing macrosociological theories with microscopic fieldwork; rather, it means relating both to each other, since the individual’s world of experiences is of course not independent of macrosociological contexts. 2) A second objection is closely related to the first, and concerns the high degree of generalization that modernization theories practise. Criticism is directed here at the claim made by modernization theories that they are able to articulate general statements that can be applied to each and every individual case. What critics correctly argue, though, is that there are always exceptions to the rule, and that general statements tend to negate what is unique about the individual case. Wolfgang Knöbl (2007), for example, calls his counter-proposal to modernization theory ‘The contingency of modernity’, and is especially keen to demonstrate the impossibility of developing approaches with a high degree of generalizability and scope. While such critics are right to take into account the historical specificity of each case, we would also be wrong not to consider regularities and structures, since, if there really were no such regular patterns in the social world, then we would also fail to recognize deviations—and, indeed, any kind of scientific analysis would be impossible. In other words, it is only against the background of patterns and regularities that we can recognize deviations and breaks in the first place. Those wishing to view the contingency and coincidences of the modern period require a definition of modernity (Schwinn 2009: 820). Such a definition therefore needs to make the drafting of a revised theory of modernization a priority. 3) The allegation that modernization theory presents the process of modernization as being inevitable, irreversible, unilinear and deterministic (Gorski and Altinordu 2008) needs to be taken seriously since many contributions in the 1950s and 1960s did in fact tend towards such a view of modernization. More recent versions of modernization theory have distanced themselves in the meantime from this view, with two theorists declaring in 1992, for example,

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that ‘Nothing in the social world is irreversible or inevitable’ (Wallis and Bruce 1992: 27), and two other representatives of modernization theory, Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart (2004: 16), emphasizing that their line of argumentation differs from mechanistic versions of modernization in being ‘probabilistic, not deterministic’. More recent advocates of modernization theory therefore recognize that, after a certain level of development has been reached, reversals can occur. When it comes to the process of democratization, for instance, they cite the examples of Germany after the end of the Weimar Republic, of Spain, and of Cambodia, and point to the fact that it was probable, rather than inevitable, that modernity would prevail, and that the process of modernization cannot entirely escape reversals and detours. In 1900, for example, there were eight democracies; by the beginning of the 1920s, about thirty countries had achieved the procedural minimum of democratic systems by introducing universal, equal, and free elections; in 1940, only nine met this criterion; today, the number of democracies has risen to more than one hundred. It is such observations that lead modernization theorists to make probability statements about the direction that global democracy will take and about the secular trend of modernization. When discussing how modernity emerged, modernization theorists have never assumed that the development was inevitable. Indeed, they point instead to how unlikely it was that modernization processes emerged. Max Weber (1992: xxviii), for example, asked what concatenation (Verkettung) of circumstances had led to the fact that cultural manifestations of universal significance had appeared in the West, and only in the West. Other modernization theorists believe that modernity emerged under unique historical conditions (they speak of pioneer societies (Bendix 1966)), and investigate the particular conditions of their emergence (Luhmann 2013: 65). We therefore need to distinguish between the emergence of modernity and the way that it has spread. While earlier approaches in modernization theory tended to imply inevitability with regard to the spread of modernity, modernization theory has since its beginnings seen the breakthrough to modernity as highly contingent and requiring explanation. 4) Of all the criticisms made of modernization theory, the charge of ethnocentrism, which for anthropologists is undoubtedly the harshest word that they can use to describe a moral indiscretion, is the weakest. If what is meant by that is that the categories used by modernization theory are not applicable to non-Western countries due to their Western origin, then we should point out, as does Shalini Randeria (2009), a representative of an explicitly non-Western perspective, that renouncing the use of Western categories and adopting indigenous terms instead can lead only to terminological confusion. Social scientists should of course not ignore in their analyses the

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21

perspective taken by those affected. But making themselves dependent on this perspective would mean downplaying contextual viewpoints and limiting the opportunities to carry out social-scientific analysis. If charging modernization theory with ethnocentrism is based on the theory’s claim of Western superiority, then this charge is easy to refute, since many modernization theorists—Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Georg Simmel, but also Peter L. Berger, Jürgen Habermas, and Richard Sennett—are aware of the dark side of modernity, and underline in their analyses not only the productive, but also the destructive, traits of modernity. Up until the 1950s, the US was still frequently cited as the pioneer society of modernization, a position no longer maintained today (see van der Loo and van Reijen 1992), and the idea of the superiority of the West is held less frequently by proponents of modernization theory than it is by representatives of non-Western societies (Bayly 2004: 58). It is common in such societies to want to share in the benefits of modernity, something apparent not least in the direction of international migration. Even when Western culture is criticized as being decadent, consumerist, or violent, a sense of admiration for it also often comes to its defence. We should not allow ourselves to be fooled by the depotentiation of Western modernity that we encounter again and again, and especially among intellectuals outside the West, a depotentiation that is carried out in the interests of self-assertion. Western modernity is attractive particularly in those countries excluded from it, and often even among its critics. And, if ethnologists, sociologists, and historians from the European circle of culture are so keen to avoid Eurocentric prejudices and claims of superiority, then we can interpret such an attitude itself as a manifestation of the typically modern tendency to self-relativization and self-criticism. 5) The very heart of modernization theory is attacked by the assertion that its distinction between the traditional and the modern cannot be maintained, since assuming processes of modernization presupposes a difference between pre-modernity and modernity. In as early as the 1960s, Joseph R. Gusfield (1966) hypothesized that tradition and modernity are not mutually exclusive, and that there is a relationship of interdependence between the two, with traditions even often themselves paving the way for modernization. Gusfield also argued that the antithesis postulated by Marion J. Levy (1952) and others between ascriptive, particularistic, and functionally diffuse norms in traditional societies, and performance-related, universalistic, and functionally specific role models and values in modern societies, should be abandoned. For Gusfield, pre-modern societies are not static, homogeneous, and undifferentiated, but flexible, full of conflict, and differentiated. And modern societies are not defined simply through their contrast with tradition; rather, traditional ways of behaviour, norms, values, and institutions also survive in a number of ways in modernity. As Andreas Reckwitz (2008: 227) has already observed, the

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blueprint for this dualism between a homogeneous pre-modernity and a differentiated modernity is the distinction that Ferdinand Tönnies made between Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (society). Ultimately, though, the idea goes back to Durkheim and his differentiation between mechanical and organic solidarity. The distinction between community and society was taken up by Talcott Parsons in his pattern variables, which were then used by early modernization theorists (for example, Marion J. Levy) to delineate modern from traditional societies. The claim that this delineation is misleading is still made today (Eisenstadt 2000a; Joas 2004: 36ff.; Graf 2005: 239). While it is undoubtedly true that modernity often contains traditional elements, and that tradition can even itself lead to modernization, we can hardly deny that we are now living in a world that is very different from the world of, say, 300 years ago. If we think of access to clean water, protection against natural disasters, epidemics and famines, the level of medical care, the expansion of the legal and social state, the granting of political and civic freedoms, access to educational institutions, and also the availability of consumer goods and luxury articles, then people’s living conditions have clearly been radically transformed in the last 300 years. People today, if they live in the Western hemisphere of the globe, inhabit a world of material abundance, of political freedom, of legal security protecting the dignity of the individual; people living 300 or 500 years ago, even if the community in which they lived provided them with some degree of protection against economic uncertainty and political arbitrariness, inhabited a world of economic scarcity, of political dependence and servitude, and of legal insecurity. The idea of human dignity had not even been born. People today are largely free of physical pain; 300 or 500 years ago, diseases, epidemics, physical discomfort, and death were all part of everyday life. At this point, representatives of modernization theory tend to become emphatic. For some, no social change has been as profound and farreaching as the transition from pre-modernity to modernity—not even the Neolithic Revolution or the invention of writing (Freyer 1967: 81; Berger 2006: 201). Assessing the differences between pre-modernity and modernity in a measured way will also have to take account of the negative consequences of modernization, too—environmental pollution due to increases in economic output, the concomitant threat to the world of nuclear war, the excessive demands made by financial and capital markets, the stress symptoms and mental illnesses suffered by individuals due to increased competition on the labour market, and, not least, the humanitarian disasters that scarred the twentieth century. Even these global disasters and dangers are of course not enough to bridge the gap between modern and pre-modern societies. On the contrary, when faced with these disasters and dangers, we see the gap as being all the more dramatic.

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If we take economic figures, and consider for now only changes to economic productivity, regardless of whether we view their consequences as a blessing or a blight, then we can certainly underpin our argument that there was a profound rupture between pre-modernity and modernity. Comparing the economic productivity of pre-modern and modern societies makes abundantly clear that, with the industrial revolution, economic growth has increased about thirtyfold. Before 1820, the annual per capita growth in GDP worldwide was approximately 0.04 per cent; between 1820 and 1992, it was 1.21 per cent. According to calculations made by Angus Maddison (2007), economic productivity in Western Europe between 1000 and 1500 (i.e. for a period of 500 years) did not even double while, between 1820 and 1973 (i.e. for a period of 150 years), it increased tenfold (Table 1.1). 6) If it is true that there are profound differences between traditional and modern societies at the economic level, then we can reasonably assume that there is a wide gap between pre-modernity and modernity in other respects, too. Economic growth does not usually take place in isolation from political, legal, and cultural contexts, all of which exert a strong influence on the economic sector. Whatever changes these may be individually (processes of democratization, increasing levels of education, expansion of the legal system, or the system of social welfare), representatives of modernization theory suggest a strong interdependence between them. If that were the case, then modernity would be characterized by a high degree of coherence. The idea of multiple modernities has been put forward for some years now to replace the idea of a single modernity. Must the emergence of a constitutional state, democracy, and a market economy go hand in hand? Is there a causal relationship between changes in the legal, the political, and the economic sector? China has allowed since the late 1970s market elements in its economic policy, but has introduced neither the constitutional state nor democracy, and has since then achieved unprecedented economic growth. Table 1.1. GDP per capita, 1000–2003 (1990 international dollar) Year 1000 1500 1700 1820 1870 1913 1950 1973 2003

Western Europe 427 771 997 1,202 1,960 3,457 4,578 11,417 19,912

Source: Maddison 2007: 382.

US

Japan

China

India

400 400 527 1,257 2,445 5,301 9,561 16,689 29,037

425 500 570 669 737 1,387 1,921 11,434 21,218

450 600 600 600 530 552 448 838 4,803

450 550 550 533 533 673 619 853 2,160

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India took over the constitutional state and democracy from the British Raj, without this leading to economic growth (Wagener 2009: 310). Is modernization always accompanied by functional differentiation, by the institutional separation of religion, politics, economics, law and science, and their functional linkage? Are the social structures in the US, in Germany, and in Japan not entirely different? According to Shmuel Eisenstadt (2000a: 1), theories of modernization have assumed ‘that the cultural program of modernity as it developed in modern Europe and the basic institutional constellations that emerged there […] prevail throughout the world’. But, for Eisenstadt, ‘the reality that emerged after the so-called beginnings of modernity […] failed to bear out these assumptions’. While a general trend developed in modernizing societies toward structural differentiation between family, economic structures, education, mass communication, and individualistic values, ‘the ways in which these arenas were defined and organized varied greatly’ (Eisenstadt 2000a: 2). According to Eisenstadt, contemporary developments testify not to convergence, but ‘to the great diversity of modern societies’ (Eisenstadt 2000b: 11). The idea of a diversity of modernity has considerable appeal, since it is immediately obvious that modern societies are not uniform, but differ greatly in their structures and their appearances. The discovery of diversification and plurality has become much more highly valued since the cultural turn. What most interests academics is no longer the search for overarching patterns, regularities, and mutual dependencies, but the deconstruction of unities, causal deductions, and categorial associations. Nevertheless, this general liking for diversity should experience its first jolt if we use Table 1.1 to look again at the development of economic productivity in the different regions of the world. The table shows that changes in GDP per capita since 1973 have no longer been characterized by divergence between the countries surveyed (as was still the case up until the 1950s and 1960s), but by convergence. Up until AD 1000, there were barely any differences in economic development between Western Europe, India, and China (Table 1.1), and economic productivity did not exceed the level of subsistence in any region. A certain economic growth began in Europe in the High Middle Ages, while the other major regions at the time showed no economic growth. Processes of development began to diverge seriously after 1820. While the pace of development accelerated in Europe and the US, China and India remained, despite temporary periods of growth, more or less at the same level up until 1950, and have only gradually begun to catch up since the 1960s and 1970s. While the difference in productivity between China and Western Europe was still one to ten in 1950, it has now shrunk to a ratio of one to four. Even if the gap in economic performance of the different regions of the world widened up until the middle of the twentieth century, it has narrowed since then. According to figures provided by the United Nations

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(United Nations 2015: 6), the number of people living in extreme poverty fell by more than half worldwide between 1990 and 2015, while the proportion of undernourished people has fallen by almost 50 per cent since 1990. But differences between countries are lessening not only in terms of economic growth; other typical indicators of modernization, such as the degree of urbanization, the establishment of democratic processes and institutions, the guaranteeing of political freedoms and civic rights, the level of education, and the length of life expectancy, are also tending towards convergence between regions. The contribution of agriculture to gross national product is falling in all modernizing states, and especially in South America, East Asia, West Asia and Africa (Oesterdiekhoff 2006).1 The significance of this structural change can hardly be overestimated, since agriculture, with its well-established customs, role assignments, and work rhythms, was the dominant mode of production for thousands of years. Life expectancy is also increasing much more rapidly in developing countries than in Western Europe (Human Development Report 2007/2008). The main reason for the increase in life expectancy is the expansion of the medical system. Likewise, participation in education, as measured by rates of literacy and the use of tertiary education, is increasing more quickly outside Western Europe and the US than in these countries (UNESCO: 29 April 2014).2 But the birth rate is also falling significantly more rapidly in non-Western countries than it is in the West (Human Development Report 2007/2008: Table 5). The transformation of everyday life that this involves is leading to an immense increase in the status of women, since a declining birth rate frees a woman from the burden of lifelong childrearing, and opens up new opportunities for her to take advantage of educational opportunities, to participate in working life and thereby to gain a higher degree of self-determination. Although we cannot exclude the possibility that there is a causal relationship between these concurrent developments, they do nonetheless problematize the thesis of multiple modernities, since they amount to an increasing convergence of once highly divergent societies and strongly limit the initial plausibility of the multiplicity argument. It is not growing divergence that seems to be the feature of modernization, but growing convergence. If, as Eisenstadt claims, the differences within modern societies really were greater than the similarities between them, then we would have to relinquish the concept of modernity. It is therefore anything but coincidental that Eisenstadt cannot specify exactly what he means by modernity and uses such a wide concept of modernity that it includes fundamentalism, state 1

See also http://www.berlin-institut.org/. For literacy rates in education, see http://data.uis.unesco.org/Index.aspx?queryid=166; for distribution of enrolment in tertiary education, see http://data.uis.unesco.org/Index.aspx? queryid=134. 2

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socialism, and fascism (Eisenstadt 2000a: 19f., 2000b: 174ff.).3 We can only begin to talk in terms of modernity if we can identify features that apply more or less to all societies deemed modern, and that do not apply to those deemed non-modern. It is therefore clear what tasks we face if we wish to reformulate a theory of modernization. We will have to begin by identifying the central features of modernity. Only then can we show whether and to what extent modernity differs from pre-modern societies, as well as see whether the differences between modern societies outweigh their similarities. Determining these central features is also necessary to investigate the links between modernization and religious change. In formulating our theory, we strive neither to add further features to the pot of common features such as industrialization, urbanization, nation-building, and democratization (as Dipper 2010 does, for example, in his account of eight basic processes), and nor to propose ‘less common angles of vision’ (as does Osterhammel 2014: 907ff.), and nor even to trace them back to an ultimate principle. Rather, we decide on a level of abstraction that allows us to reduce again and again the prominent and also lesser-known features of modernity to a few structural and processual features.

1.3. TOWARDS A THEORY OF MODERNITY To investigate the central features of modernity, we put forward three theses derived from classical sociological theory. 1) According to the first thesis, modern societies are characterized by principles of functional differentiation. This means that, unlike in pre-modern societies, different functional areas of society—law, science, economics, politics, education—emerge in the modern, these areas showing a high degree of their own internal momentum while also being dependent on each other. The transformation of the social structure from stratification to functional differentiation has the power to break tradition and dissolve hierarchy. The individual areas no longer adhere to trans-social norms, worldviews, and values. They differ from each other in their specific codes and institutions.

3 It is a widespread misconception to believe that fundamentalism, fascism, and the system of state socialism are modern phenomena. Even if there are elements of modernity in these social formations, such as the use or even the expansion and further development of modern techniques and technologies, this does not yet make them representatives of modernity. More dominant than the observable elements of modernity that they incorporate is their rejection of such basic modern principles as respect for human rights, the guarantee of individual autonomy, the acceptance of democracy and the rule of law, and toleration towards cultural, religious, and ethnic plurality.

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What Friedrich Schiller (1967: 55) already pointed to regarding the relationship between politics and art, or between politics and science, is prototypically true for all relationships between the functional systems of modern societies: ‘The political legislator may put their [i.e. art’s and science’s] territory out of bounds; he cannot rule within.’ With respect to how the functional systems relate to each other, there may, as Luhmann (2013: 93) puts it, be destruction, but not instruction. Politics cannot determine what is scientifically true; science, not what is perceived as beautiful; the arts, not what we should believe. And morality can certainly not dictate how we trade economically. But even money does not rule the world. Money cannot determine who is considered kind; nor who will find grace with God; nor which scientific findings satisfy methodological, definitional, and theoretical claims to validity. If one functional system were to prescribe core operations in the other, this would result in loss of performance. The individual spheres of society can only develop their own inner momentum and power by following their own respective codes and principles of rationality, and by refusing to be influenced by external forces. Nevertheless, the individual functional systems have no autonomy of their own. Science must go out on a limb, and there is no guarantee that its findings will be in line with the state of things. It can develop methods, and build clear concepts and models that make its findings intersubjectively verifiable. But whether these findings are true is the subject of a discussion that may never come to an end. What is true is subject to the interactive process of negotiation institutionalized in journal publications, review procedures, evaluations, assessments, and discussions (Popper 1976). However, contrary to Descartes’ view, there is no Archimedean point from which truth can be justified. And the democratic liberal state also depends on conditions that it itself cannot guarantee (Böckenförde 1967). It cannot enforce the loyalty of its citizens without abandoning its liberality. It is dependent on the democratic spirit of its citizens, if it does not want to run the risk of being abolished by its own procedures. Since citizens in a democracy can also vote to abolish it, a democratic system of government, which presupposes its citizens’ right to self-determination, has no secure foundations. But the economic core operation aimed at profit and profitability is also unable to secure itself, since the capitalist market is based on a number of contextual conditions that it itself cannot guarantee, such as the existence of property rights, the establishment of authorities to regulate cartels, the presence of political stability, and perhaps even also the creation of a culture of fairness and trust. It is precisely this inability to justify themselves self-referentially that has made the individual functional systems for religious legitimation vulnerable in the modern period. Ultimately, the individual functional areas stand on feet of clay. They require cultural and social recognition that is borrowed from outside, something that can only occur if they themselves operate efficiently; but their efficiency in turn depends on these same contextual conditions. The

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integration of functionally differentiated societies is therefore based on what the individual functional systems can do for each other, on their transfer of resources, although their effectiveness requires this integration. What is required are both the production of consumer goods by the market economy and the possibilities offered by democracy for political participation, both the legal certainty provided by the legal system and the technological innovations of science. Only when the functional systems work together can confidence arise in the ability of modern society to perform. How fragile this confidence is can be seen as soon as the assumed ability to perform of the individual areas, such as the financial system or the labour market, is perceived as not being guaranteed. To explain the processes of differentiation of the functional systems, we have to avoid starting with a general and undifferentiated concept of society. Society does not generate differentiated subsystems from within itself, as the schema of decomposition thought, since it is not an active system capable of performing operations (Greve and Kroneberg 2011: 10). It is also not enough to describe functional differentiation as a process that brings about increased complexity, a process in which the systems orientate themselves to each other, react to each other, and distinguish themselves from each other, since that would already presuppose differentiation. Rather, if the macrosociological theory of differentiation wishes to locate what is driving differentiation processes, then it requires a theoretical foundation that recognizes human action. Processes of functional differentiation cannot simply penetrate the intentions of those acting and realize themselves independently of them. They are also of course not merely the result of intentional action, which also always has unintended effects. Rather, the question of which differentiations can claim validity is subject to processes of negotiation and social struggles (Reuter 2009a). Producers of one system wrestle with producers of other systems, but also with competitors internal to the system, over the determination of key systemic differences and thereby over the drawing of distinctions to other systems. Established semantic codes and their corresponding institutional arrangements are repeatedly called into question by competitors internal to the system, by producers of other systems, and even by those benefiting from the system. Thus, those key differences win through that find resonance, and that people connect with and call upon. Key differences are therefore formed cumulatively (Nassehi 2004: 108), but also aversively. They are a little like channels or beaten tracks of interaction; they are used again and again, thereby becoming stronger and assuming domination over other less frequently beaten tracks. Culturally, functional differentiation means a decrease in the possibility of establishing socially comprehensive interpretations of the world, semantics, and codes. A uniform interpretation of the world can no longer exist when there are differentiated codes and functional systems. The end of ideologies

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and worldviews means precisely that it is no longer plausible to make an allencompassing interpretation of the world for the whole of society, not even a secular interpretation. At the individual level, the functional differentiation of modern society leads to the compartmentalization of the self (Dobbelaere 2002). Just as at the macro level the opportunities and even the need to ensure integration through generally binding norms and values decrease in modern societies, so it becomes more difficult and more unnecessary for individuals to continue to determine their way of life from a single perspective, be it religious or secular. 2) Perpendicular to functional differentiation, which takes place horizontally, there is also in modern societies a form of vertical differentiation. Not only functional areas, but also the social levels of constitution, are increasingly diverging. In the modern period, we can no longer attribute societies to people, and nor to interactions between those present, communities or organizations. Rather, the personal level, the interactional and communal level, the institutional and organizational level, and the level of society as a whole, are becoming increasingly differentiated. As a consequence, the middle levels, and in particular the level of organization (trade unions, churches, political parties, voluntary organizations, businesses, hospitals, schools, etc.), assume many of the tasks of mediating between individual and society. It is organizations that, on the one hand, communicate the expectations of society to the individual and that, on the other, record individual wishes and needs, and communicate them within society. Anthony Giddens (1990: 27ff.) emphasizes the importance of expert systems (such as automobiles, telephone networks, water-supply systems, hospitals, airlines, traffic lights, etc.) in the mediation between individual and society. What the individual most lacks is knowledge of how these systems work and how their functionality can be maintained. Due to the differentiation between levels, the individual, unlike in simple societies, in which people are often well acquainted with the basics of living of their society, usually has no direct access to the technologies that determine his or her life (Lübbe 1990: 45f., 48; see also Weber 2012: 342). Instead, the individual has to trust in experts. This trust is usually impersonal, since the experts often work in secret or in the background, and it is ambivalent. We do not know how far we can rely on the functioning of the expert systems, but at the same time we have no choice but to trust in their functioning. Respect is therefore mixed with scepticism, and is always vulnerable to criticism and questioning. Sometimes we meet personally with the experts of the technical systems. These are events that can strengthen our trust in the expert systems, but also provide opportunities for our trust to be damaged. As we can see, the mediation between different levels again depends mainly on the effectiveness of the services provided at the individual level, and on the trust resulting from this; this,

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though, can also become solidified and thereby gain a degree of independence from actual performance. The divergence between the social levels of constitution means that the individual is increasingly freed from social bonds, and is less dependent on social structures than in pre-modern societies. As we know, Ulrich Beck (1992, 2002) argued in his individualization thesis that individuals increasingly separate themselves from prescribed social forms such as neighbourhood, region, milieu, status, and class, and increasingly define themselves through their life; that they lose traditional certainties in this process; and that, through their integration into modern institutions such as the labour market, the social system, and the education system, there emerges a new immediacy between individual and society, or, as Beck (1992: 89) would have it, between social crisis and individual sickness, but also a new dependency of social institutions on the individual (Beck 1995: 135). If we take this model as the basis for differentiating between levels, we can see immediately that this description is correct insofar as the growing separation between the levels actually does increasingly disentangle the individual from the bonds of community, but that it is also misleading insofar as this disentanglement does not lead to a new immediacy between individual and society. Integration into the labour market, which replaces dependence on origin, milieu, and family, does not mean that the labour market determines the career destiny of the individual. Rather, the labour market is able only to determine the conditions under which the individual operates, and it is then left largely to the individual regarding how he or she copes in these conditions, how he or she uses them, and which conditions he or she accepts in the first place. Modern institutions no longer have direct access to the individual, something that guarantees the individual a higher degree of personal autonomy. At the same time, though, the increasing differentiation between levels that we can see in modern societies also means a limitation on the possibilities of the individual to have a direct influence on social processes. If the separation between the levels at which society is constituted is a key characteristic of modern societies, then those descriptions are inadequate that assume a loss of importance on the level of community (Tönnies), that claim the colonization of the living environment through society’s functional systems of control such as politics and economics (Habermas), or that complain of the increasing anonymization of the individual in modern society. Modernity has communal forms of living that are just as available as in pre-modern societies, only it does not force them on the individual. Rather, the individual increasingly has to choose these communal bonds. Such bonds are not for everyone, but are in principle available to each person. The modern city, for example, not only drives individual and society apart, but also creates new forms of solidarity. Between individual and society there is therefore in modern societies a relationship not of exclusion, as the early and middle Foucault or critical theory assume (Schroer 2001), but of mutual intensification (Luhmann 1993, 1995: 130).

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That means that increases in social complexity need not be at the expense of the individual; rather, the individual can also benefit from them. Nevertheless, due to the larger gap between the levels at which society is constituted, individuals will tend to ascribe to themselves a greater responsibility for their lives and be more sceptical towards more distant social levels. However, due to the high internal dynamism of technical, political, legal, and social institutions, expectations of what such institutions can do also rise. In modern societies, individuals tend to evaluate all social structures and institutional actions according to themselves and their increased needs. Due to the high claims of individualization, everything that is offered by society is critically examined again and again according to its suitability of identity (Schwinn 2013: 42), and often the individual remains sceptical. 3) The individual functional systems of society appear to be involved in the process of functional differentiation in different ways. Some systems, such as family, education, and religion are exposed to this process rather reactively and, if at all, take on enabling functions in the initial phase, while others, such as business, politics, and science drive the process forward. Crucial to the distinction between enabling and mobilizing systems is apparently whether the social systems have established forums of competition, that is, markets where different suppliers compete for acceptance. Markets provide suppliers with an incentive to improve performance and to outdo rivals, and are in this sense the engines of social dynamization. Nothing is valued for its own sake; rather, everything has the mere status of a provisionally best offer that is just waiting to be outdone by the next best offer. As we have already pointed out, the emergence of markets is by no means unconditional. Their emergence depends on the guarantee of fair conditions of competition and the removal of privileges. But, once in place, they provide important conditions for a self-sustaining upswing. Establishing competitive forums in business, science, and politics has two obvious consequences for modern societies. First, social practices are exposed to permanent review and are constantly reformed in the light of new information. No institution, no social practice, no body of knowledge can escape the process of permanent change. In this process, there can be no ultimate destination that social transformation works towards. The results of democratic decision-making are fundamentally indeterminable. Modernity is therefore certainly not a project, as Habermas (1997) claims, but a process that is essentially open-ended. The application of modern practices to itself excludes the possibility of formulating end goals. Modernity’s self-reflexive principle of constitution places a premium on innovation, makes the continuation of what is old subject to a process of legitimation, permanently drives on change beyond the state that it has just reached, and thereby elevates acceleration to a fundamental principle of change (Rosa 2015). Second, the forums of competition have within them the tendency to propagate themselves. It is the effectiveness of what they bring to the open market that

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melts the discernible remains of traditions, routines, habits, and communal bonds. ‘The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls’ (Marx and Engels 1950: 36f.) Because of their enormous effectiveness, modern institutions have a tendency to expand. More and more areas fall within the allencompassing range of modern society and are subject to its control. Economic performance increases, and with it come changes in ways of living in other areas of society, too—not only in the world of work and technology, but also in politics and the public sphere, in science and education, medicine and social security, and family and culture. The standard of living increases, the chances of acquiring education improve, the opportunities for political participation are expanded, social security systems are extended, medical advances are made, protection against threats to internal and external security are reinforced, and so on. As a result of these interrelated processes, the capacity of human beings to exercise control over their natural and social environment increases, while their vulnerability to uncontrollable dangers such as famines, epidemics, floods, and tidal waves decreases (Norris and Inglehart 2004). At the same time, though, the opportunities to control the environment also trigger through the use of modern technologies an increase in risks, such as environmental degradation, nuclear threat, the likelihood of lifestyle diseases, and the psychological burden on the individual. Scepticism towards progress, hatred of knowledge, criticism of rationality and technology—these are the inevitable results when such risks increasingly enter the public consciousness. It is therefore no coincidence that, since the 1970s, when unexpected economic and environmental problems appeared, the general euphoria about progress has stopped and been replaced by an awareness of the limits of growth and of a crisis of modernity. The heightened risks posed by modernity do not prevent further growth, however; rather, increasing attempts are made to deal piecemeal with the risks, to balance them against possible gains, and to keep them under control. Since the growing awareness of risk means that all institutions contributing to technological, economic, and scientific progress are increasingly viewed with scepticism, the inevitable expansion of the competencies of these institutions is also increasingly linked to the regulation of their drive to expand. The institutions of modernity become increasingly reflexive and therefore more capable of learning. It is therefore not surprising that the drive to expand that characterizes modern institutions should go hand in hand with their capacity for self-delineation. Scientific thinking is prepared to define the limits of its own adequacy, provided that it itself determines these limits. Modern law can change itself, provided that the procedures to change the law are themselves in a legal form. Economic activity can take into account ecological considerations, provided that they

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can be converted into economic cost–benefit calculations. Not everything that is scientifically imaginable, technologically producible, and medically feasible is then realized—think of the non-proliferation treaties, the regulation of financial markets, the ceiling on debt, the discussion on embryo protection and other bioethical issues, the ban on people selling their own organs, the ban on smoking, and also the prohibition on the death penalty, a prohibition which is being introduced in more and more countries. The modern dynamics of increase tend towards reflexive self-restraint (Offe 1989). This self-restraint, though, is linked to the fact that it is not enforced heteronomously, but is in the hands of modern institutions themselves and does not contradict the logic of increase of modern institutions, which is to ensure a safer, richer, healthier, and longer life. A decelerating loop has been built into the dynamics of change of modernity, a loop that comes into play when it is due to the same principle as the mode of acceleration: namely, the principle of improving competitive performance and outdoing others. The tendency towards pacification, moderation, and civilization (Elias) therefore emerges from the dynamic and destructive potential of modernity itself. We could also say that modernity has learned to learn from its mistakes, and can now correct itself. Establishing forums of competition corresponds culturally to a performance ideology that challenges individuals to increase their own competitiveness, to pursue learning throughout their lives, and to intensify their commitment to their careers. This performance ideology has long since lost its unchallenged validity in the highly modern societies of Western Europe, however, and is now accompanied by a norm of moderation, of self-withdrawal, and of stress compensation. Protecting the individual’s health enjoins him or her to take recreation. Improving performance does not take place at any price—it does not include social intolerance and physical ruin, for example. It is also not an end in itself, though, but is related to other goals. Self-disciplining and selfwithdrawal come in at the latest when the principle of increase itself is endangered by an improvement in performance. It seems to be the tension between activation and moderation that characterizes the modern subject and his or her culture (Reckwitz 2006). The attempt to expand the individual’s opportunities to experience and act in the world is countered by the moderation and domestication of this attempt; the restlessness within the individual that reaches out to the world, by rational self-control; the indulgence of the will, by the expectations of the centre. The bourgeois spirit is not shaped simply by the methodization of working life, by the self-disciplining and control of the individual life, but also by the striving for success, by efforts at self-empowerment, by transcending what has already been achieved, and by expanding the horizons of possibility. What characterizes it, however, is also the taming of these energies, their domestication and their employment.

2 Reflections on the Concept of Religion 2.1. GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON THE DEFIN ABILITY OF RELIGION: PROBLEMS IN DEFINING RELIGION There is no definition of religion that is universally valid and generally accepted in religious studies or the social sciences concerned with religion. The number of definitions already put forward runs into the hundreds, and pointing to the forty-eight definitions of religion compiled by James Leuba (1921) almost one hundred years ago has developed into something of a religious ritual in the handbooks and introductory works in religious studies. Considering the further proliferation of the concept since then, we hesitate to add another definition of our own. Some are not discouraged by the diversity of attempts at definition from at least sketching a working concept of religion (Figl 2003: 77). Others do without a final definition of religion, and are content instead with basing their work on an ‘open concept’, a kind of grid or framework for the definition of the concept of religion, and with discussing basic problems in dealing with the concept of religion (Waardenburg 1992: 234ff.; Hock 2011: 10, 20). Not a few, however, see the attempt to define religion as being doomed to failure, and therefore do not even try (Kippenberg 1983: 10ff.; Arnal 2000; Fitzgerald 2016). We wish to highlight here three of the problems to which scholars point when it comes to determining a generally applicable definition of religion. First, they claim again and again that the sheer diversity of religious rituals, symbols, dogmas, experiences, institutions, communities, and roles does not lend itself to a uniform definition, and that creating a generally applicable definition of religion must necessarily fail because the empirical material cannot be captured analytically. In other words, the very diversity of religious forms and ideas makes it impossible to agree on a uniform definition of religion, and there are therefore in principle an infinite number of concepts of religion possible (Wagner 1986). Second, scholars also claim that providing a comprehensive concept of religion is made difficult by the fact that there are only religions in the plural and not in the singular (Kaufmann 1989: 77). To speak in terms of religion would therefore mean treating it as an abstraction

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that does not exist in historical and social reality. Philosophy may have tried in the Enlightenment period to discover a general ‘essence of religion’ underlying its manifestations, an essence from which it could critique its historical particularities and peculiarities. However, although used as a yardstick to evaluate historical forms of the religious, such an ‘essence of religion’ does not occur at all in the history of religion. The third argument against using a uniform definition of religion is that such a definition is a relatively late product of the history of religion in Europe with its strongly Christian and Western bias (Asad 1993: 27ff.; McCutcheon 1997; Fitzgerald 2000; Dubuisson 2003; Matthes 2005). According to this argument, elements of Western and Christian thinking have entered into this definition and greatly restricted its universal applicability. Since the definition of religion is an invention of Western Enlightenment modernity, the category can no longer be taken seriously in terms of its content; rather, it can only be deconstructed and examined regarding its function in popular discourse (Arnal 2000: 23, 30). The problems listed here of creating a universally applicable definition of religion usually do not stop historians and sociologists of religion from nonetheless using the concept of religion (also, for example, Chidester 1996: 259; Bergunder 2011: 5). It is a basic concept in religious studies and the sociology of religion, and is indispensable for staking out the subject area with which these disciplines are concerned (Rüpke 2007: 31f.). Not clarifying this basic concept would open the floodgates to implicit assumptions and value judgements, and dissolve the boundaries of empirical analysis and expose it to arbitrary decisions. We should of course not exaggerate the importance of conceptual definitions. Definitions do not ensure that the analysis is appropriate to the subject matter, but represent conventions which are accepted among researchers and which can also always turn out differently. As such conventions, though, they form the basis of the work that makes it possible in the first place to understand the subject matter and to observe it. Scientific analysis clearly requires defined categories; without their application, it would remain blind.1 It has to rely on definitions—not only to determine the content of the object to be examined and to distinguish it from other objects, but also to detect changes in the field of study. We can only properly answer the question so relevant to the sociology of religion concerning the change in significance of religion in society and the change in its social functions once it is clear what is meant by religion; otherwise, we run the risk of making temporal comparisons of things that are of unequal sizes, and of comparing

See also Graf (2004: 237): ‘We need general terms to be able to restructure the religious field and to distinguish it from other fields. […] It is […] not about having a functionalist, ubiquitously usable concept of religion. But the culturally specific or individual can only be described if we have more general concepts available to us, concepts with which we can grasp the specific difference of this specificity.’ 1

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things that are, in fact, not comparable. Recognizing variance means using a uniform yardstick. Arguing that it may well be impossible to define religion in such a way that it captures the wealth of religious phenomena is justified. The concept necessarily lags behind the plurality offered by reality. Whether a concept is useful or not cannot be decided at the theoretical level; rather, it can only be decided empirically. Testing the concept against the empirical object therefore remains a never-ending task. This does not prevent us from making generalizations, though, since we can of course assign different phenomena to an abstract category that subsumes them without annulling their specificities. If Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Scientology, Shamanism, and Bahai are treated as specific religions, then that certainly does not mean that we cannot bring together these specific religions into a concept. The condition for this is that there is something in the religions that connects them with the non-religious (e.g. art, philosophy, or literature) (genus proximum), and that they can also be distinguished from the nonreligious (differentia specifica). If the specificity of religion cannot be identified either by giving a genus proximum or by designating differentia specifica, then we have to relinquish the concept of religion and talk instead in terms of something else—culture, for example, or ideology, self-transcendence, community, or cult. Indeed, some of the more recent approaches in religious studies have also tended to dissolve the concept of religion into, say, the concept of culture. Reacting critically to the claim made for the theological and phenomenological irreducibility of religion (see, e.g., Nathan Söderblom, Rudolf Otto, Friedrich Heiler), these approaches emphasize its cultural integration so strongly that religion loses its distinct status within culture (Sabbatucci 1988; Fitzgerald 2000; Dubuisson 2003). If we wish to avoid dissolving the object of study that religious studies and the sociology of religion have, then we have to investigate whether there are features that are common to all religions and that can be used to distinguish religion from other phenomena. Finally, as regards the claim that our knowledge is dependent on cultural and social contexts, we should acknowledge first of all that our scientific analyses are of course always constructions that are influenced by subjective interests and prejudices, cultural contexts and social frameworks, and can be deconstructed as such. This does not mean, however, that our concepts and categories are purely dependent on such preconditions underlying our knowledge. We should assume, rather, that we construct our picture of reality not just arbitrarily, and that this process of construction involves the object of study, too. Radical constructivism does not argue radically enough: its scepticism is directed only at the knowability of reality, whereas it should be directed also at the claim of its unknowability. As researchers, we are of course always involved productively in the analysis of our object, but that does not

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necessarily mean that our findings are extra-empirical fictions. The process of understanding is after all a two-way process in which the subject cannot arbitrarily decide what the object should be, a process in which the object itself may also become the subject and prove itself capable of resisting the attempts made by the other side to overpower it. And even if our categories are influenced by our preconceptions, the latter do after all emerge essentially from the reality that we are concerned with understanding.

2.2. DIFFERENT DEFINITIONS OF RELIGION

2.2.1. Substantive Definitions A common approach to the problem of defining religion is to put forward substantive definitions related to content. Religion is defined here through identifying its primary characteristics—for example, by attempting to curb the diversity of religious forms of manifestation through specifying the object to which religions refer, and by characterizing religions through their reference to God or to gods, through their worship of higher spiritual beings, or their belief in one or several gods (Tylor 1871: 383f.; Pettazoni 1956; Widengren 1969: 4, 46f.). The advantage of such a definition of religion based on its reference to God lies in its proximity to the religious-historical material, as well as its closeness to how those belonging to a religion actually understand themselves. Its problem, though, is that there are several forms of religion, such as early Buddhism, the rituals of advanced hunter societies in the Upper Palaeolithic period, and more recent religious ideas, in which the relation to God plays no, or only a minor, role. Instead of the concept of God, some scholars in the field of religious studies therefore use the category of the ‘holy’ (still central: Otto 1917), and explain that all religions have at their centre the worship of some kind of ‘holy’ being. By using such terminology, though, the researcher into religion becomes dependent on how those who belong to a religion understand themselves, since what counts as ‘holy’ can only be determined by this self-understanding and is therefore likely to be quite diverse. Even the worship of nation, family, freedom, or money can then appear as a religion, if these values and institutions are worshipped as holy, with the concept thereby losing its sharpness.2 2 To make religious self-understanding the yardstick of what we can understand analytically as religion raises a double problem, since we would then have not only to treat as religious those phenomena that are clearly different from religion, such as enthusiasm for football, success, or money, but also to deny the status of religion to religious phenomena, such as freethinking or mysticism about nature, many of which the actors themselves do not interpret as being religious. We can certainly distinguish the enthusiasm for football, for example, from religious ideas and

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Frequently, therefore, neither the concept of God nor that of the holy is the focus of the definition of religion—but, rather, that of the supernatural (Heiler 1962: 13). But the problem that we face here again is that the object to which we are referring is not only applicable to religion and the religious. Reference to the supernatural and to the extraordinary can also be claimed for art, literature, dance, ecstasy, or playing, all forms in which the human being extends his or her everyday possibilities of experience and transcends the usual boundaries. Can we really talk of religion when the human transcends his or her everyday world? The phenomenological approach of Alfred Schutz (1962), which was taken up by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1966), makes a distinction between different provinces of meaning, such as between the experiential world of the theatre, the world of theoretical speculation, the dream world, the world of religious experience, and the everyday life-world as the densest and highest zone of reality. After travelling to the different provinces of meaning, the human always returns to the everyday world. According to the phenomenological approach, when humans transcend the everyday life-world, the ‘world of working’, they do not necessarily give themselves to the experiential area of religion. Rather, the act of leaving the world of the everyday and of the immediately accessible also consists in going to the theatre, in dreaming, even in carrying out work in sociological theory—without any of these acts of transcending boundaries being classifiable as religious. A more recent definition of religion, one that we can characterize as substantive, derives from Martin Riesebrodt’s work. Rejecting functionalistic definitions, Riesebrodt (2010: 72f.) adopts an action-theoretical approach that is oriented towards the meaning of religious action. According to Riesebrodt, the specific meaning of religious action lies ‘in its relation to personal or impersonal superhuman powers, i.e., powers that control or influence what escapes human control’ (71). It is through religious practices such as prayer, magical formulae, sacrifice, oracles, and singing that the human makes contact with these powers and tries to manipulate or to communicate with them (2000: 41). Riesebrodt (2010: 80, 85f., 78) understands religion not primarily as a worldview or a system of symbols and beliefs, and nor as a morality or an ethics, or as theology or philosophy; rather, he sees it as an interventionist practice constituted socially, one that aims through communicating with superhuman powers to influence what eludes human control and thereby to ‘prevent or manage crises (risks, dangers) when they occur’ (2000: 42). The promise of salvation held out by religion, its capacity to ward off evil and to

practices, since its object of enthusiasm is not something transcendent, while we may also usefully interpret the ideas, worldviews, and practices of freethinkers as religious, although such people may want to understand them as scientific.

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overcome crisis, is therefore not a latent function of religious practices, but the very meaning inscribed within them (2010: 89). Such a concept determines the centre of religion as being cultic performance and ritual action, while making religious discourses, religious interpretations and theologies of secondary importance, and giving subjective religious experiences no role at all in the definition of religion. Outside this concept are forms of a passive, mystical religiosity that seeks rest in God, as well as forms of a deistic religiosity that presupposes God as the basis of the world, without wanting to ascribe interventionist influence to Him, or even regarding such influence as being possible. Riesebrodt’s concept of religion also has a striking resemblance to a modern understanding of technology, one that assumes that we can increase our mastery of nature, the human being and society, and prevent crises, by improving our technological means of controlling and determining the world. This definition of religion proves again to be not comprehensive enough on the one hand and not specific enough on the other. At the same time, though, it does undoubtedly capture some central features of religion.

2.2.2. Functionalistic Definitions of Religion To avoid the problems arising from a method of definition that starts with the substantive assumptions of religions (for example, with religion’s object of reference), the functional approach defines religion according not to what it itself is, but to what it is not, and begins with the social or individual contexts in which religion is located. The functional method relates religion to a problem to which it is the solution (Luhmann 1977: 9f.). It relates it to the problem of social cohesion, for example, and specifies the role that religion plays in solving this problem. While substantive definitions seek to determine what religion is, functional definitions seek to determine what religion does and achieves (Dobbelaere and Lauwers 1974: 536). From a functional point of view, we could say, for example, that religion is characterized by the fact that it ensures the integration of a group, a community, or a society. A typical functionalistic approach can be found in the work of Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart. For Norris and Inglehart (2004: 13f., 18f.), the importance that religion has in a society is determined above all by the experience of human security and vulnerability to physical, social, and personal risks. The demand for religion is greater in societies that are more exposed to existential risks than it is in societies where there is a higher degree of human security. Such security means on the one hand freedom from natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, tornados, and droughts, and, on the other, freedom from manmade risks and dangers such as war, violations of human rights, poverty, and social inequality. The more societies ensure peace, create access to

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sufficient amounts of food, offer health care, schooling, and adequate incomes, and reduce social inequalities, the more the level of human security experienced by people rises, and the demand for religious values, belief systems, and practices falls. For Norris and Inglehart, what is therefore crucial for understanding religion is analysing how it deals with the problem of human insecurity. This is the problem to which religion is related. What speaks against this approach is that religion is concerned not only with experiences of human insecurities, but also with increasing individual possibilities of experience, with experiences of delimitation and of merging with the other, with legitimating political order or terrorist acts that destroy order. Also, experiences of human insecurities can be dealt with not only by providing religious reassurance, but also by expanding institutions of the welfare state, building family networks of solidarity, raising the level of prosperity, developing insurance systems, and improving medical care—all of which the individual experiences as guaranteeing security. Finally, a response to this problem may also not be necessary, with the question of how best to deal with existential insecurities remaining unanswered. The range of religious systems of interpretation and practices is just one of many ways to deal with the problem of insecurity. A functional demand for religion does not necessarily also bring forth the forms of religion appropriate to the demand. By simply and unceremoniously inferring the social importance of religion from the demand for religion, and not specifically addressing the problem of functional equivalents, functional approaches such as that of Norris and Inglehart tend to draw a partial picture of the factors determining the social relevance of religion. There are therefore two main objections to using the functional method of definition. The first relates to the fact that it conceives of its object field too widely and includes in its scope of observation phenomena that not even a wide definition of religion would see as religion.3 If the problem of insecurity is made the essential feature of religion, then non-religious institutions and ideas could also take on religious functions and operate as religion, with the definition thereby losing its sharpness. The second objection is that the problem identified by the functional method as being the problem that religion addresses (i.e. that of insecurity) is perhaps not articulated precisely enough, and is simply unable to embrace many religious ideas and forms. Is religion not also about experiences of finitude and death, of disorder and chaos, of injustice and suffering, and not only about experiences of existential insecurity? Do we really grasp the 3 The problem that the functional definition of religion has in terms of universality and delinearity has been discussed widely. See Spiro 1966: esp. 95f.; Berger 1974; Dobbelaere and Lauwers 1974; Kaufmann 1989: 15ff.; Lambert 1991; Figl 2003: 67ff.; Stausberg 2009; Hock 2011: 16f.

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specificity of religious practices, beliefs, and identities when we identify the function of religion as being to help people cope with existential insecurity? To escape the inconsistencies and incommensurabilities involved in formulating a universally valid definition of religion, Bourdieu suggests starting from the struggles waged by the religious actors themselves to define the religious field (Bourdieu 2009: 243). For Bourdieu, we cannot use a ‘prior definition’ to determine positivistically what religion is, since the religious field provides the venue for the struggle over definition and therefore also over the delimitation of responsibilities (Bourdieu 2009: 244). Against this hermeneutical principle, however, is Bourdieu’s proposal not to rely on the definition of religion provided by religious actors and specialists, but to observe shifting borders that are due to the fact that quite new specialists approximate to the clergy and deal with something that, for Bourdieu, belongs to the area of responsibility covered by ‘the clergy of old’: namely, ‘dealing with salvation’ (Bourdieu 2009: 246). This is a task that has been taken over by psychoanalysts, sociologists, social workers and other secular specialists, who have thereby assumed the status of religious specialists. That Bourdieu treats psychoanalysts, sociologists, and social workers as new religious specialists is due to the fact, though, that his argument actually also depends on a prior definition of what religion deals with: on identifying the problem that religion addresses as being its dealing with salvation. This prior definition of religion is problematic because it does not, and cannot, specify why it is that religion is concerned with salvation and not, for example, with the legitimation of political order, the grounding of ultimate truth, the interpretation of the world as a whole, or the healing of the body. And it is also problematic because there are of course forms of meaning other than the religious that deal with problems of the soul, such as psychotherapy, philosophy, art, literature, and body techniques. Bourdieu’s proposal therefore constitutes a functional definition of religion, one that is not yet aware that it uses a previous functional definition of religion. And, like all functional definitions of religion, it is also unable to explain why it is that it identifies this particular problem as being the problem that religion addresses, and why there should be no solutions other than religious ones to this problem. The internal contradictions in Bourdieu’s approach and in functional definitions of religion in general encounter two problems that any attempt to formulate a universally valid definition of religion has to face: the question of how an external academic perspective and a perspective from within religion itself relate to each other, and the question of the relationship between functional perspectives and substantive determinants. Our own suggested definition, given below, responds to both these problems by combining functionalistic and substantive arguments, as well as internal and external perspectives.

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Bourdieu’s argument is beset by a further problem, though, one that requires some attention: namely, the relationship between the scientific concept of religion and an unexplained but implicitly assumed everyday understanding of religion, something that always apparently accompanies scientific attempts at definition. If Bourdieu considers psychoanalysts, sociologists, and social workers to be religious specialists because they deal with salvation, then he obviously has in mind a certain idea of religion that underlies his sociological reflections. In our reflections we have also repeatedly referred to an understanding of religion not further explicated, and have measured suggested definitions according to this understanding—when claiming, for example, that the proposed definitions of religion treat as religious those features that cannot be found in all religious phenomena, or that can also be found in non-religious phenomena; or that the definitions include features that, even with a broad understanding of religion, cannot be regarded as religious. Do those who argue in such a way not make scientific analysis dependent on non-scientific discourse about religion, on an assumed, yet not explicit, prior understanding of religion—on, ultimately, an everyday understanding of religion? In fact, the scientific definition of the concept of religion is inevitably tied back to the everyday understanding of religion. We wish now to complete our discussion of current concepts of religion by dealing with the attempt that results from this insight to define religion according to everyday discourse about religion.

2.2.3. Religion as Discourse Increasing numbers of scholars in religious studies and the sociology of religion have called for several years now for the everyday understanding of religion to be made the starting point for defining religion. Arthur Greil (2009: 148), for example, argues that religion is less an entity than a discourse category, one whose meaning is negotiated in social interactions. Michael Bergunder (2011: 16) also argues that religious studies cannot have sole possession of its object of study. For Bergunder, the classical definitions of religion are now discredited, and obtain their plausibility only from their relation to everyday discourses about religion. The unexplained, everyday understanding of religion is ‘in fact’ therefore ‘the object of study of religious studies’ (Bergunder 2011: 17). For Bergunder, it is for this reason necessary to explore the social deposits accumulated in the concept of religion genealogically, thus illuminating religious discourse in its continuity and discontinuity (Bergunder 2011: 38, 44). Bergunder argues that definitions of religion that pursue an object are doomed to failure, since our concepts are not based on any point of reference outside our symbolic system, and can therefore not be clearly distinguished between concept and matter (Bergunder 2011: 26, 29). Religious studies can only be concerned with illuminating analytically the

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infinitely expanding game of designation, in which religious studies explores itself as an integral part of the infinite discursive game and therefore as part of the history of religion (47). It is by exploring the discursive deposits accumulated in history that everyday discourse on religion can be examined for its continuity and discontinuity (Bergunder 2011: 44). We have good reason to doubt, however, the extent to which the discourse-analysis approach can resolve the problem of defining the concept of religion, since the approach is unable to traverse the borders of the linguistic system of signs, therefore remaining within the medium of discourse. It merely shifts the duality between knowledge and the object of knowledge onto differences within the discourse. Moreover, the discourse on religion is, of course, not the fulfilment of religion in its life-practical, ritual, emotional, ideal, and communal reality.

2.3. TOWARDS A DEFINITION OF RELIGION If we now attempt to outline our own definition of religion, we then build on the dimensional research or polythetic method of definition common in the sociology and philosophy of religion (Glock 1962; Glock and Stark 1968; Kaufmann 1989; Wilson 1998; Saler 1993, 2008), which also declines to define religion by pointing to a unique feature, and instead sees religion as comprising a variety of features. The problem of the polythetic method of definition consists above all in the fact that it often remains unclear whether all features specified are essential for the definition of the object, or whether the existence of a selection of features can already make the definition sufficient, and how many features are required in such a case. Our definition of religion solves this problem by differentiating between a functionalistic perspective, which is always possible, though not necessary, and a substantive approach, which is indispensable. In attempting to combine the two methods, we have both to name the problem for which religion provides solutions, and to understand the specificity of the form in which those solutions are provided. While we adopt the functional approach to identify the problem that religion addresses, we adopt a form of substantive analysis to determine the manner in which it deals with the problem.

2.3.1. The Functional Perspective From a functional perspective, religious practices, experiences, and ideas can relate to a number of different problems. Behind religious forms of meaning, we can find problems to do with the finiteness of life, the injustice of suffering, the meaningfulness of existence, the incomprehensibility of

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reality, and other problems. Whether we can bring them all together into a single all-encompassing problem is a question that we do not need to answer here. There is, though, much to suggest that many, though perhaps not all, of the problems that religion addresses (and including those just mentioned) do converge in the problem of contingency, in the problem of the uncertainty of existence. It is therefore not surprising that sociologists and social philosophers such as Niklas Luhmann (1972: 250f.), Jürgen Habermas (1976: 118ff.), and Hermann Lübbe (1986) should see the functional problem that religion addresses as being the problem of contingency. Contingency means that something is possible, though not necessary; that something is what it is, but could also be quite different (Aristotle Met. IX 3, 1047a: 20–6). Contingency is therefore defined by the simultaneous negation of necessity and impossibility. In socio-structural terms, the contingency problem arises through the selectivity of all social structures and processes. Social structures and processes are always located in a horizon of further possibilities that they do not realize, but that they could realize. They are therefore necessarily contingent, which is the reason that the question of meaning can break out in all social structures, processes, and events. We can only really talk of a functional problem that religion addresses when it is located behind those acting and is not perceived by them. Contingency can also be perceived and experienced at the individual level, however. Strictly speaking, it is then no longer a functional problem, though, but a problem that has become a conscious reference point for individual action, knowledge, and experience. Contingency problems need not become conscious, however, even when religious practices and beliefs and identities can be interpreted as forms of dealing with these problems. Sometimes their latency is even a prerequisite for dealing with them effectively. What is also true at the level of action is that contingency problems may arise in any situation. Why is something the way it is, and why is it not different? Why did that have to happen to me? Why now? Why that? Why did this love come to an end? Why has this illness befallen me? Why was I not invited to an interview? Why did I get the date wrong? The problem of contingency that religious experience and action address is of universal relevance. The experience of contingency is typically accompanied by a sense of insecurity and uncertainty, and often awakens a need for order and security, and not infrequently for reassurance and comfort.4 The problem of contingency therefore includes what market theorists understand by the demand side of religious practice (Stark and Finke 2000). It is clear that, when it 4 See Riesebrodt (2000: 45): ‘The urge to interpret and give meaning that the human species has is particularly evident in situations of crisis, in moments of danger and risk, when social, moral and cognitive structures collapse, when people are confronted with their own powerlessness and helplessness in a particularly dramatic way.’

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depends on experiences of contingency, the need for religion is not constant, but varies according to the changing circumstances.5 The contingency problem itself can hardly be called religious (see also Stolz 2008: 258), since meaninglessness, suffering and chance, but also good fortune and success, represent dimensions of human existence that are not religious as such, and since there are the most varied forms of dealing with contingency problems: we can form ideologies and interpretations of the world that explain the contingency experienced, especially misfortune and suffering; if we experience pain, fear, and sadness, we can have psychotherapeutic treatment, change our behaviour, have conversations with good friends, throw ourselves into hard work, or lower our expectations. Religious ideas and practices are only one way of dealing with problems of contingency. What, then, distinguishes religious forms of dealing with the problem of contingency and meaning from other forms? Only a substantive definition of the concept of religion can answer this question.

2.3.2. The Substantive Approach Our first hypothesis to define the substantive core of religion is that all religious forms of meaning work with the distinction between immanence and transcendence, and relate to the transcendent. While everything immanent is accessible, intersubjectively verifiable, and therefore also open to questioning and criticism, the transcendent provides through its inaccessibility both irrefutability and security. By distinguishing between immanence and transcendence, religion closes the horizons of the world and transforms what is indeterminable in the world into something determinable. By doing so, it makes contingency tolerable and increases bearable uncertainty (Luhmann 1972: 250f.). Our definition leaves open what the transcendent comprises in each case—whether it is a supreme God, a multitude of gods, spirits, ancestral beings, angels, elves, demons, or a vague higher energy. What functions as transcendent always depends on the prevailing assumptions of normality, which vary historically, culturally, and individually. By defining religion according to the distinction between immanence and transcendence, we are making explicit the fact that religions exceed the differently defined area of the empirically comprehensible. But religions not only exceed immanence; they also—and this is our second substantive hypothesis—make the transcendent accessible, open to experience, and communicable. They do this by reintroducing the distinction between immanence and transcendence into immanence, thereby ensuring 5

For a more detailed treatment, see Pollack (2009: 293–303).

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the accessibility of transcendence within immanence. Through this form of re-entry (Luhmann 2000: 83f.), religions mediate between humans and God, between the accessible and the inaccessible, the determinable and the indeterminable. Should the claim to transcendence give religious forms an irrefutable status, then their position within immanence allows them to be comprehensible. What distinguishes religions from philosophical speculations is that they not only refer to the transcendental and supernatural, but also symbolize, clarify, and reify them. Religious forms of meaning are therefore a mixture of the determinable and the indeterminable, of the accessible and the inaccessible, of the evidential and the non-evidential, of immanence and transcendence. What we mean becomes clear when we consider, for example, that participants in Holy Communion take bread and wine, which also represent the body and the blood of Christ. A highly tangible and earthly process therefore enables people to experience unity with God.6 Different forms of religious meaning are available to mediate between immanence and transcendence: rituals, prayers, meditations, icons, shrines, altars, processions, sermons, holy scriptures, and so on. These forms of meaning are acquired individually. If we classify the forms in which the individual receives religious activities and objects, then, following the work of Charles Glock and Rodney Stark (1968, see also Glock 1962), we can distinguish a number of different dimensions. Glock took the view that there are five dimensions in all religions: the ideological dimension (the belief in certain religious propositions), the ritualistic dimension, the dimension of religious experience, the intellectual dimension, which comprises knowledge about religious teachings and dogmas, and the dimension of consequences, which is concerned with the practical effects of belief in everyday life (Glock and Stark 1965: 19ff.). The research that grew out of Glock’s work has focused primarily on three questions—whether all dimensions are covered by those given or whether others can be elicited; whether the dimensions are independent of each other or whether some of them can be combined into one; and which of the dimensions is dominant with regard to the others (see Roof 1979). Glock himself in a later study eliminated the ‘consequential dimension’ and thereby reduced his five-dimension scheme to one comprising four dimensions; claimed that the four remaining dimensions are relatively independent of each other; and attributed the highest importance to the dimension of belief (Glock and Stark 1968). Others have found more than five dimensions (King 1967; Hilty, Morgan, and Burns 1984). Boos-Nünning (1972), for example, added a sixth dimension to Glock’s five: namely, ties to the religious community, which is an obvious and useful addition. Kecskes and Wolf (1993; 1996: 55–66), meanwhile, showed a high statistical correlation between 6

On the application of the concept of religion outlined here to the development of the Protestant understanding of Holy Communion, see Pollack (2008).

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religious experience and the dimension of belief, although they were unable to prove a correlation between these two dimensions and a scale of religious knowledge. In the light of the work of Kecskes and Wolf and others, it probably makes sense to exclude from the definition of individual religiosity the dimension of knowledge. Whether someone knows a lot about religions or not need not be related to that person’s own religiosity, to the depth of his or her religious beliefs, or the intensity of that person’s religious practice. How appropriate it is to incorporate the ethical dimension in the scale of religiosity is more difficult to decide. Ethical behaviour can of course be strongly influenced by religiosity, but moral action certainly also has sources other than the religious. Since the work of Pierre Bayle, we know that there can be moral action independent of religion, and that religious zeal often has amoral—indeed, barbaric—consequences. It would probably therefore be wise to omit this dimension from the scale of religiosity, too. If we exclude the cognitive and ethical dimensions from the concept of individual religiosity, follow Kecskes and Wolf and combine the dimensions of belief and experience, and, like Boos-Nünning, add the dimension of people’s ties to the church, then we are left with three dimensions: the dimension of identification or affiliation, the dimension of action or practice, and the dimension of religious experiences, beliefs, and ideas. The dimension of identification begins with the question of who belongs to a religious group or organization, who identifies with a religion or denomination, who joins or leaves a religious community, and who feels linked to that community. The dimension of religious practice includes rites and cultic performances, and often forms the spine of a religion. This dimension can be explored by posing questions about church attendance, the practice of prayer or meditation, participation in church life, the use of rites of passage such as baptism, marriage, funeral, and similar practices. To outline the dimension of religious belief and religious experience, we can ask questions, for example, about belief in God and higher beings, and in the influence of the stars or of demons on human life; about the acceptance of religious ideas such as heaven and hell, resurrection and rebirth; about experiences of being close to God and angels; about experiences of conversion. All these religious concepts and forms have the task of creating contact with transcendence, however this may be filled with content. At the same time, though, they belong as human performances to immanence. If the dissociability of the unified is annulled in the course of the religious doubling of reality, then the religious forms of meaning gain in persuasiveness. Re-entry produces a pre-reflexive unity between religious symbol and the reality meant, and thereby a kind of religious certitude. However, since the immanence and transcendence of every religious form of meaning is simultaneous, this problem of certitude is always latent. It can erupt in particular in situations of competition and plurality, and assume a

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sharp form. In situations where they are challenged, religions therefore need to use sacralization to make invisible the contingency of their ideas and practices, to equip their forms with claims of unsurpassability, to pose as unobtainable, to erect barriers to communication, to impose restrictions on discursivity, to constitute zones of the mysterious, to establish authorities, inner circles, and, if all else fails, to excommunicate unbelievers. Only through erecting these barriers to communication can religions protect their forms from criticism and doubt. The empirical study of religion must analyse these different forms of mediating transcendence and immanence. It makes a difference whether the mediation of immanence and transcendence is performed primarily through forms of community, of affiliation to social groups such as castes or religious orders, or whether religious rituals and practices are foregrounded, or sacred writings, theological figures of thought and sermons; or whether inner experiences and ideas are regarded as decisive. The different religious dimensions of action, experience, and affiliation are not mutually exclusive, and their proportions can be distributed differently historically, culturally, and individually. It is important for analysis in the sociology of religion to capture how they relate to each other. The religious dimensions shown here must be related in the analysis of religious processes of change to contextual conditions external to religion. It is only by doing so that we can work out the factors influencing religious change. At the same time, though, it is inadequate to rely solely on contextual conditions to explain processes of religious change. Dynamics internal to religion also need to be considered. The concept of religion suggested here allows us to state the sources of such dynamics. In our approach, they lie, first, in the modal reciprocal relationship between the problem of contingency and the practice of overcoming contingency, and, second, in the unavoidable dialectic between the availability and the unavailability of the transcendental. Certain epochs in the history of religion have been dominated by the reifying symbolization of the transcendental, while others have emphasized more the distance between God and the human being, and the incomprehensible sovereignty of the divine. There therefore exists a relationship of tension between the process of the transcendental becoming concrete and its becoming fluid, a process that tends in the historical development of religion to increase the span of the transcendental at some points, and to restrict its span at others.

2.4. CONCLU SION The strengths of the definition of religion that we are proposing here are closely linked to its weaknesses. One strength is that the definition clearly

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delineates religion as an observable phenomenon that is distinct from nonreligious phenomena. Unless the distinction between immanence and transcendence is made, and this distinction is reintroduced into immanence, we are not dealing with religion. Exceeding the everyday world, forms of selftranscendence, philosophical speculations about God—these can therefore not be regarded as religious forms of meaning, since they lack the concretization of the transcendent in the immanent, that is, the re-entry of the distinction between transcendence and immanence into immanence that make transcendence communicatively accessible. At the same time, though, linking the substantive with the functional argument means that our definition of religion also has a certain breadth. By referring to the contingency problem, we can compare religious ideas, practices, and experiences with non-religious forms of coping with contingency, and widen our analytical perspectives. By making such comparisons, we can then investigate what religious forms of meaning have in common with other forms, and what distinguishes them. Connecting a functionalistic to a substantive approach therefore allows us to combine a necessarily precise definition of religion with a view of the object of study that is sufficiently broad. The distinction between immanence and transcendence, and the symbolization of transcendence in immanence, constitute the indispensable core of the definition; and the reference to function, a possible, though not necessary, addition. What is also clear is that our definition links directly to how members of religions, believers, and religious practitioners understand themselves. What stands at the centre of religion for religious actors is communication with the transcendent entity that they imagine, communication made possible through rituals, prayers, writings, images, dances, sermons, hymns, events, and experiences. If we relate these religious practices, experiences, and symbols to the problem that they address, then we can of course go beyond the personal perspective of those affected. The definition proposed here takes account of religious self-understanding; we do not ignore it, but nor do we make ourselves dependent on it, and we are able to go beyond it. The definition therefore brings together not only definiteness and indefiniteness, but also object language and meta-perspective. This flexibility in the definitional approach also implies a weakness, however. By adopting substantive and functional perspectives, we have already decided in advance which substantive features religion has, and which functions it may perform. Empirical research, though, may show very different characteristics and functions as being central, and we would then have to correct or supplement the features of our proposed definition. As in all theoretical reflections, empirical work has a veto when it comes to questions of definition, too.

3 Key Questions and Methodological Preliminaries 3.1. K EY QUESTIONS Knowledge in the social sciences is not produced by social reality, but is instead wrested from it. We would have to lose ourselves within the object of knowledge produced by the social sciences if we relied for the analysis of this object on the object alone. If we wish to come closer to the object, we therefore have to observe it from selective viewpoints, to narrow the perspective, and to devise definitions, distinctions, and hypotheses that enable us to orientate ourselves in the confusing diversity of the social. In other words, an objective knowledge of reality simply cannot exist. This was precisely the purpose of our theoretical reflections on the concept of modernity and the concept of religion: to provide us with categories, definitions, and concepts that would allow us to unlock social reality. Without these concepts and distinctions, every empirical study would remain blind. The theoretical framework determines which empirical facts we are able to identify at all in the maze of social reality. From this framework, we wish now to specify more precisely the research questions that will guide our empirical work. In doing so, our argumentation will follow the reflections on the concept of modernity set out in Chapter 1.3. 1) If we are concerned with describing and explaining religious change in modern societies, then, provided that we rely on a theory of modernity as outlined in Chapter 1, our first question must be concerned with how functional differentiation and religious change relate to each other (see pp. 26ff.). What are the consequences of functional differentiation for religious identities, ideas, and practices; to what extent are religion and functional differentiation compatible with each other; and how far is religion in a position to influence processes of functional differentiation? In contrast to the classical assumptions of secularization theory, we do not presume that functional differentiation and religion are difficult to reconcile, and that, ultimately, functional differentiation always has a negative impact on the stability of religion and its capacity for social

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integration. Rather, at a theoretical level, there are certainly different, and even opposing, scenarios possible. 1.1) On the one hand, we can imagine that the functional differentiation of society leads to a situation in which the opportunity decreases for the individual to align his or her actions, thoughts and feelings to one functional system alone, such as the religious; in which different points of view, interests, and discourses increasingly emerge together; and in which the likelihood that people lead a life motivated through and through by religion diminishes. It might be the case here that functional differentiation problematizes the uniform religious interpretation of the world (Niklas Luhmann); that functional differentiation makes available an increasing number of compelling secular alternatives to what the church can offer, and that these alternatives then force the church to make what it offers plausible (Jörg Stolz); and that the expansion of economic, welfare-state, medical, democratic, and cultural institutions accompanying functional differentiation provides services that reduce the demand for religious certainties and aspirations (Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart). And people themselves could also consciously drive on the differentiation of distinct areas of society (Christian Smith). Niklas Luhmann describes the consequences of functional differentiation as being at the personal level the privatization of religious decision-making, and, at the social level, as the weakening of the integration function of religion (Luhmann 1977: 242, 246). He argues that, in pre-modern societies, the individual was told what to believe and think by universally binding norms and values, and the integration of areas of society occurred at the level of society as a whole; in modern societies, though, the opportunity for services to cross the whole of society, and the demand for such services, recede (Luhmann 1977: 79f.). For Luhmann, religion is becoming just one subsystem of society among others, with two consequences. First, that it is losing its direct relevance for the whole and can be called into question by other systems; and, second, that individual religiosity ‘can now only be expected on the basis of individual decision-making’, and is no longer a product of what is considered a matter of course across society as a whole (Luhmann 1977: 247, 239). Jörg Stolz (2013: 45) criticizes approaches in the sociology of religion that only describe, but do not explain, secularization at the macro level as being the result of differentiation. By referring to micro–macro mechanisms, Stolz is concerned with identifying reasons for processes of secularization that meet the requirements of action theory. For Stolz, the modernization of society leads to a radical expansion of secular opportunities, especially in the leisure sector, to a rapid increase in individual resources (in terms, for example, of income or time available), and to a disintegration of the obligation to behave according to religious norms (Stolz 2013: 39). These changes, argues Stolz, not only increasingly expose what religion has to offer to competition from secular options, but also expand the opportunities available to individuals to make use

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of these options in the first place, while also reducing the normative limitations precluding their use (Stolz et al. 2016: 19ff.). For Stolz, it is the play of supply and demand set free by modernization that drives secularization. In contrast, when determining the significance of religion in society, Norris and Inglehart (2004: 18f.) start out from the feeling of human insecurity, and argue that the more a society is threatened by existential dangers such as natural disasters, earthquakes, famines, wars, human rights violations, corruption, poverty, and social inequalities, the greater is the demand for religion. Through processes of raising prosperity, democratization, and differentiation, societies manoeuvre themselves into a position where they can secure peace, guarantee access to clean water and adequate means of nutrition, improve the system of health care, raise the level of education, ensure growth in income, dismantle social inequalities, and install a social security net—leading to a rise in the level of human security and to a fall in the demand for religious values, worldviews, and practices. Christian Smith (2003) traces the observable forms of functional differentiation back to the intentions that social groups have, and thereby provides differentiation theory with an action-theoretical foundation. Much like George Marsden (1994) and Philip Gorski (Gorski and Altinordu 2008), Smith understands secularization less as the result of structural processes of change that society undergoes, and more as the result of the conflict between interest-driven groups of people. In doing so, he opposes a theoretical perspective on differentiation that reconstructs long-term socio-structural developments macrosociologically with a theoretical perspective that emphasizes action. As a consequence, he deals with religion, education, law, and culture as potentially open fields of society whose dynamic boundaries are negotiated by real people. For Smith, it is only by shifting the conceptual framework from differentiation theory to action theory that we can resolve the explanatory gaps of secularization theories. 1.2) But functional differentiation and people’s acceptance of religious ideas and practices do not necessarily have to conflict with each other. We might also consider the fact that religion can benefit from processes of functional differentiation, since these processes mean that it is not only nonreligious areas that gain in the autonomy that is specific to subsystems, but also religion and the church. As Luhmann (1977: 248, 263) and others following him (Krech 2012: 574) point out, this increases the chance of finding satisfying religious answers uncontaminated by non-religious viewpoints. Whether a person goes to heaven then no longer depends on whether that person has behaved in a thoroughly moral way in civil life, has done good works and been a loyal citizen, but on belief alone. Whether a person goes to church is then also no longer influenced by whether that person meets there potential customers, a marriage partner, or voters, but by whether he or she is convinced that participating in the church has a salutary power.

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2) From a theoretical point of view, we can also imagine different hypotheses regarding the divergence between the levels of constitution that comprise society (see Chapter 1.3, pp. 29ff.). On the one hand, the impact that the process of vertical differentiation has on the religious landscape can be seen in the fact that the individual has increasingly to stand on his or her own two feet in terms of religious orientations and actions—that is, the individual must increasingly do without institutional and community support, with the effect that his or her religious ideas and practices become ever more insecure and porous (Peter L. Berger, Bryan Wilson, Steve Bruce). On the other hand, though, the differentiation between individual, community, and institution also enables people to have a highly individualized religiosity independent of institutional and community prescriptions, one that, freed from conventions and institutional authority, can develop a high degree of self-determination and autonomy, and that has its own particular momentum (Thomas Luckmann, Grace Davie, Wade Clark Roof). 2.1) When observing the relationship between institution and person, or between community and individual, sociologists of religion such as Berger, Wilson, and Bruce see more a relationship of correspondence and support than one of exclusion. Building on Arnold Gehlen’s theory of institutions, Berger (1969: 29ff.), for example, emphasizes the structuring and socializing function that religious institutions and communities perform. When religious institutions and communities lose their capacities to control, then he expects a weakening of individual religiosity. For Wilson (1982), the decline in the social relevance of religion is also due to the process accompanying modernization that he terms societalization, a process whereby forms of community tend to be replaced by impersonal formal organizations. The process of societalization means that religious practices and ideas once strengthened by their anchoring in personal communities are now losing their powers of persuasion. 2.2) It is the counter-thesis, though, that now dominates discussions in the sociology of religion: the so-called individualization thesis, which begins with the increasing deinstitutionalization of the religious, that is, the widespread dissolution of the relationship between religiosity and churchliness in modern societies. The decline in the importance of religion that secularization theory assumes is, according to this thesis, only true of the churches, but not of individual religiosity (Luckmann 1967, 1972; Inglehart and Baker 2000; Davie 2002; Heelas and Woodhead 2005; Knoblauch 2008, 2009). Rather, according to Robert Wuthnow (1998), the decline of organized religion, such as in the US, is accompanied by an increase in spiritual interests. While the authority of traditional church institutions is in decline, individuals are embarking on a search for religious meaning, for alternative religious practices such as astrology, Zen meditation, New Age, Reiki, crystal therapy, chakra, or Tai Chi, for deeper wisdom (Roof 2001; Hervieu-Léger 2003: 103; Zulehner 2008). Precisely where religious practice can no longer be prescribed institutionally is

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where the likelihood increases that the individual will be more religiously committed and discover religion as a medium of individualization, rather than as a set of rules to be followed. The dominant forms of religiosity are determined today by individual choice, by the mixing of religious codes, by diffusion, by religious experience as well as by an anti-institutional, antidogmatic and anti-hierarchical stance (Roof, Carroll, and Roozen 1995: 247ff.). According to this view, we can now find religion and religiosity in places where we would never previously have expected to find them: in psychoanalysis and body therapy, in wellness and the entertainment industry, in tourism and extreme sports (Luckmann 1967; Knoblauch 2008, 2009). Since the individual’s relationship to religion has freed itself from the patronage of the great religious institutions, individual religious beliefs and practices increasingly constitute themselves as an individually responsible selection from a great variety of religious products, as a unique individual ‘bricolage’ that goes beyond the area inhabited by the great religious traditions. In short, the decline in the social significance of traditional religious institutions does not go hand in hand with a decline in the importance of religion for the individual. On the contrary, institutionalized religion and individual spirituality are in an inversely proportional relationship. ‘As the institutional disciplines decline, belief not only persists, but [ . . . ] shows a reverse tendency’ (Davie 2002: 8).1 ‘Believing without belonging’—that, for Davie, is the religious signum of our age (Davie 1994). 3) Establishing forums of competition as a third feature of modernity (see Chapter 1.3, pp. 31ff.) does not apply to the relationship between the religious sphere and non-religious secular areas, and nor to the relationship between the institutional and the personal level. It involves neither horizontal differentiation between different areas of society nor vertical differentiation between different levels of the social. Rather, the category of forums of competition designates the differentiation internal to the various social spheres between different discourses, institutions, human actors, and practices. In the case of religion, it means the emergence of a market where different religious communities and ideological groups exist and make available what they have to offer. With regard to the effect of forums of competition internal to religion, we can validate the plausibility of different assumptions at a theoretical

1 This figure of thought is widespread. It is found, for example, in Schnettler (2006: 96): ‘Where we find in decline the attractiveness of traditional concepts held by forms of religion bound to the church, there we can find also an upswing in ‘ “quasi-religious” offers of meaning.’ But also in Hervieu-Léger (2004: 12): ‘The less the apparatuses of the great religious institutions appear to be able to influence the life of their members [ . . . ], the more we can observe a blossoming of groups, networks and communities in which individuals share and mutually validate their spiritual experiences.’

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level, too. We might assume, for example, that religious pluralization leads inevitably to a mutual relativization of each religious claim to validity, and therefore also to a general decline in the acceptance of religions. We could also put forward the hypothesis, though, that religious vitality increases the more plural the religious market becomes. 3.1) Berger (1969, 1979) argues that there is a negative correlation between religious plurality and religious stability. For Berger, religious practices and assumptions enjoy the highest degree of certitude when they are embedded within a homogeneous structure of plausibility that is shared by the majority of people. Under conditions of religious pluralism, in contrast, religious communities have to relinquish their claim to the unquestionable and selfevident validity of their beliefs, and are forced to compete with rival statements and practices. ‘What pluralism does [ . . . ] is to undermine all taken-forgranted certainties, in religion as in all other spheres of life’ (Berger 2001: 194). According to Berger, though, the fact that religious forms of meaning are exposed to competition from other religious or non-religious worldviews not only increases the likelihood that they will be relativized, negated, and challenged. A further consequence of pluralism for Berger is fundamentalism, which, according to his definition, is the attempt to restore decisionistically the lost religious certitude in the face of emerging doubts (Berger 2014: 17f.). Steve Bruce (2002: 17, 2006) agrees with Berger’s insight that increasing religious diversity calls into question the certainty that believers can accord their religion, adding that this effect occurs especially when countries become increasingly egalitarian and democratic. Confronted by increasing religious diversity, countries that accept the principles of the legal equality of individuals feel obliged to withdraw their support for individual religious communities and to secularize central institutions of society such as the state, schools, and the law. At the same time, religion in religiously diverse societies loses the regular daily confirmation that it otherwise enjoys through its embeddedness within everyday life in culturally homogeneous societies, and therefore loses also that degree of self-evident recognition that is characteristic of relatively homogeneous cultures. 3.2) The opposing view is held by representatives of economic market theory, which is particularly widespread in the US (Iannaccone 1991, 1994; Stark and Finke 2000). The more pluralistic the religious market is, and the more competition there is between the individual religious suppliers, the more the individual religious communities are forced to improve their products to keep their clientele and to attract new customers. If religious communities hold a monopoly in a region, however, then the clergy tends to become careless and lazy, and to ignore people’s actual needs. The proliferation of faiths that we can observe in modern societies therefore has a stimulating effect on the vitality of religious communities. When the religious landscape is pluralized, then the level of religiosity does not fall, as Berger and Bruce argue,

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but actually rises. Religious pluralism also has an invigorating effect for the individual, since the more religious goods there are available the more likely the individual is to find what most satisfies his or her needs. Where there is a lack of alternatives, then the customer who is dissatisfied with the product is more likely to reject religion altogether. According to the market theorists, the most important conditions for the emergence of religious competition lie in the strict separation of church and state, and in the legal equality of religious communities. Only when the state keeps out of religious affairs and does not privilege one church over another can fair competition be guaranteed in which the stronger can prevail. This argument reverses the well-known patterns of argumentation used by secularization theory: religious plurality does not lower, but increases, the level of religiosity; the separation of church and state does not harm, but actually benefits, the ability of religious communities and churches to form bonds in society; urban areas with a variety of religious communities are not weaker religiously, but are actually more alive than denominationally homogeneous rural areas. If modernization is characterized by processes of cultural pluralization and institutional differentiation, then, according to market theorists, religion does not suffer under modernization, but benefits from it. Religion is no longer regarded as a mere dependent variable, but is instead afforded the status of an entity able to stimulate political, economic, social, and cultural activities. In contrast to secularization theory, the market model sees religion not so much as a stock of traditions whose connection to society is diminished by processes of rapid social change, and more as a dynamic element that is capable of mobilizing both socially and politically, and that has the potential to organize itself (as already argued by Warner 1993). In summary, therefore, the research questions guiding our empirical investigation are as follows: 1) To what extent are functional differentiation and religion compatible? Do processes of functional differentiation lead to a weakening of the social relevance of religion? Do the gains in autonomy made by religion that such differentiation brings about open up new possibilities for religion to shape itself and to exert influence? Which of the tendencies that we can observe is dominant? And what causes the religious changes to take place? Is there behind the changes an increase in the complexity of non-religious systems such as law, economics, science, and politics, which cause religious interpretations of the world to become increasingly irrelevant to non-religious areas (Luhmann)? Or a competition between the religious and secular domains to satisfy religious needs (Stolz)? Or an increase in the performance of nonreligious functional systems, which causes the demand for religious reassurance to diminish (Norris and Inglehart)? Or, on the contrary, an increase in the inner dynamics of religious forms of meaning (Luhmann)?

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2) How does vertical differentiation affect the religious landscape? Does the separation of individual and institution lead to a decrease in the acceptance of religious identities, rituals, and ideas? When the individual emerges from the safety of traditional institutions, does his or her religiosity then become more susceptible to disruptions, questionings, and criticisms, or, on the contrary, do the chances of a self-determined and highly committed religious practice increase? Does the attachment to religious institutions work more to relieve individual religiosity (Berger) or more to obstruct individual religious selfdetermination (Davie)? 3) Does the increasing diversity of the religious have a positive effect on the vitality of religious communities, organizations, and markets, or a negative effect? Is there a connection here at all? Can we understand the effects of religious pluralization as the relativization of religious claims to validity, as an undermining of religious certainties (Berger, Bruce)? Or does the competition between different religious and ideological providers trigger particular efforts to preserve and expand customer bases and a strengthened will to selfassertion (Stark, Finke, Iannaccone)? Do religious beliefs and practices need embedding in a relatively homogeneous universe of discourse, or do religious majorities weaken religious zeal?

3.2. METHODS AND SOURCES We have formulated our research questions in such a way that we are concerned not only with describing processes of religious change, but also with illuminating the conditions and factors that determine change. We aim not only to describe, but also to explain. It is therefore not enough to base our analyses on a purely macro-social level. Rather, a sociological explanation needs to include micro-social processes, too, and to work out the connection between the two levels. Sociological explanations need to be founded on action theory, even though social changes are of course not simply reducible to the practical actions and intentions of people. If, however, from a theoretical point of view, the same factors can act in different directions (if, for example, the idea that religious pluralism undermines religious certitude is theoretically just as plausible as the idea that religious competition stimulates religiosity), then we require concrete empirical analysis to identify the path actually taken by religious change. In doing so, we cannot of course understand religious changes deterministically. Rather, correlations between religious and social change that are verifiable under the influence of certain contextual variables may clearly vary in a different social context. They can become stronger or weaker, transform or reverse themselves, or even collapse. In a context such as the US, for example, where

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religion is very much alive, Evangelical movements can be attractive and have a politically mobilizing effect, whereas, in a more secular context such as that of many Western European countries, they can appear strange and trigger reactions of rejection. Growing religious pluralism may encourage tendencies of Christian self-assertiveness in strongly Catholic countries such as Poland, Croatia, and Italy, while having little effect in regions with weak Christian roots. It is always important not only to analyse possible correlations between two variables, but also to understand the cultural, political, and legal embeddedness of each one. It is therefore appropriate to approach the multifactorial conditions determining religious change through concrete case studies and to put international comparisons to one side for now. Such case studies are most likely to be able to account for the variety of factors influencing religious change and to consider their mutual entanglements. As indicated in the introduction, we wish to carry out these case studies on a nation-state basis, since, in cultural and religious, but also in legal, economic, and political, terms, nation-states are still significant units that set boundaries. They mark differences that are often more significant than individual differences (Inglehart and Baker 2000: 37; Höllinger 2009: 461), and are often also more significant than global and transnational trends (Blossfeld 2001: 240ff.). Case studies based on countries do not preclude transnational investigations and international comparisons. Rather, such comparisons are necessary to be able to select the most illuminating case studies. They help us not only to see overarching patterns and correlations, but also to make visible the specificity of the individual case in the first place. We will therefore begin our empirical analyses with comparative considerations and always return in the course of our argument to international comparisons, be it whether we sprinkle these comparisons into the case analyses or consider them from a systematic and substantive point of view. If we place individual case studies at the centre of our empirical investigations, though, then we do so with the intention of generating new knowledge about the conditions and constellations determining religious change, and of adding more ideas to those already made in the literature concerning such conditions and constellations. The leading questions and hypotheses of our study developed at a theoretical level should not only be applicable to the object. Even if they provide us with our outlook, give us categories and distinctions, stake out and give contours to our field of investigation, we are still interested in widening the perspective and generating new hypotheses. This is the purpose of our individual case studies. In the case studies, we integrate historical analyses, since religious and social constellations can often only be understood from their history. Path dependencies do not predetermine religious change, but often stake out boundaries within which change takes place (see Martin 1978; Pickel 2009). As such, they are one important influence among others—an influence that cannot be universalized, though, but acts differently in different regional contexts. The

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regional specificity of cultural and political traditions also justifies concentrating on individual cases, since they are often better able than universalistic analyses to illuminate the diversity of interrelated or independent variables. Whatever important heuristic function the individual case may perform, we still need to be aware of overarching correlations and regularities, since the goal of analysis in the social sciences is always to generalize. Yet, relations of cause and effect depend not only on different contextual conditions and historical influences, but also on the religious forms and dimensions that are actually affected by change in each case. There need be no accord between the three dimensions of religiosity worked out in Chapter 2 (identity, practice, belief). Conditions of increasing functional differentiation, religious pluralization, and individualization may cause a decline in the importance of religious practice, while the level of individual religiosity remains high. It is also possible for belief in God, the expectation of life after death, and other religious ideas to lose plausibility, while church membership remains the same. The question of whether the different religious dimensions are independent of each other, of whether they can be traced back to each other, and of the extent to which they are connected to each other, can only be answered empirically. We have already pointed out in Chapter 2 the variables that we can use to understand empirically the three different dimensions of religiosity. We can understand the dimension of affiliation and identification, for example, through denominational affiliation, instances of joining and leaving the church, but also through the feeling of connectedness that a person has with a religious community, the identification with, or confidence in, that community. We can understand the dimension of practice according to the frequency of church attendance, of prayer or meditation, but also according to people’s use of the churchly rituals of baptism, confirmation, wedding, and funeral. To understand the dimension of experience and belief, we can draw on belief in God, in a higher being, in life after death, in heaven and hell, in a divinely predetermined destiny, and also on people’s experience of God’s proximity to them. It is also important, however, always to keep in mind the forms of a highly individualized, syncretic, and non-church religiosity that are difficult to identify, from magic, pendulums, and astrology through esotericism, spiritualism, and occultism, and to Zen meditation, energy training, and Reiki. We could of course use other variables to understand the three dimensions; for reasons of space, though, we will do so only selectively. Table 3.1 shows the most important of the variables that we use. To understand the forms and ideas of individual religiosity, we also need to investigate the status that religious issues have in an individual’s life. The sociology of religion should investigate not only which religious beliefs the individual accepts, which religious actions the individual performs, and which religious communities the individual is affiliated to, but also the extent to which these religious beliefs, actions, and affiliations are central to the mental

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Table 3.1. Dimensions of individual religiosity Dimensions

Selected indicators

Affiliation and identification

Church membership, instances of joining and leaving the church, confidence in the church

Ritual practice

Church attendance, participation in church life, prayer, baptism, wedding, funeral

Religious belief and experience

Belief in God, in life after death, in heaven and hell, experience of the proximity of God, importance of God in life, importance of the area of religion, spiritualism, belief in astrology, in reincarnation, in esotericism, in nirvana

life of the individual and the role that they play in the individual’s life.2 To be able to do so, we always include in our investigation questions about the importance of religion in comparison to other areas of life, such as politics, work, family, and friendship, but also questions about the importance of belief in God, and, in Chapter 13, questions about the implications that religion has for other areas of life and for how people live their daily lives. We draw on different types of sources for the empirical basis of our analysis. An important source of data is provided by statistics, and statistics produced by the church and published by religious communities have a particular status. We often compare these statistics with data from statistical yearbooks and social reports. Representative population surveys are also an important source for our analyses. We use data from the World Value Survey (WVS) 1981– 2009, the European Values Study (EVS) 1981–2008, the European Social Survey (ESS) 2002–3, the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) of 1991, 1998, and 2008, the General Population Survey of the Social Sciences (Allbus 1996, 2002, 2012), the Mannheim Eurobarometer Trend File 1970–2002, the Bertelsmann Foundation’s Religion Monitor of 2007 and 2012, and the Church Membership Survey of the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD) (KMU IV and V) of 2002 and 2012.3 We conducted a 2 Stefan Huber calls again and again in his publications for us to take into account the relevance of religion in the cognitive-emotional system of the human personality (see Huber 2003). His own operationalization of the status of the religious in the mental life of individuals is, however, largely unconvincing. If he brings together variables such as church attendance, prayer, meditation, belief in God, experience of God’s proximity, knowledge about religion into a centrality index, then he is merely doubling the content dimensions of religion that are recorded in any case. To determine the centrality of religion, though, we would have to distinguish between the content dimensions of religion and the status that they have for the individual. Only then would we be able to weigh the significance of practices, beliefs, and affiliations for the individual. Correlating like with like does not allow us to test the scale of centrality. 3 For detailed information on the studies, see their websites. WVS: http://www.worldvaluessurvey. org/wvs.jsp; EVS: http://www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu; ESS: http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org; ISSP: http://www.issp.org/menu-top/home/; Allbus: http://www.gesis.org/en/allbus/allbus-home/; Religion Monitor: http://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/en/our-projects/religion-monitor; KMU

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secondary analysis of these sources of data. We also use our own data, such as the data that we collected for the Volkswagen Foundation project ‘Church and Religion in an Enlarged Europe’ (C&R), which we carried out at the Chair for Comparative Cultural Sociology at the European University of Viadrina in Frankfurt an der Oder in 2006, and for the study ‘Perception and Acceptance of Religious Diversity’ (WArV), which we undertook at the Cluster of Excellence ‘Religion and Politics’ at the University of Münster (Germany) in 2010.4 The underlying representative samples of these studies usually have a size of 1,000–1,500 respondents per country, which can result in an estimation error of up to 2.5–3 percentage points in the percentage calculations made. Where the documentation of the study used recommends weighting the data, then we have performed the analyses with the weighted data. In describing the religious situation and its change over time, we have used mainly simple univariate statistics such as relative frequencies (percentages) and mean values as measurements. To ensure comparability, we have generally calculated the percentages for the valid responses, that is, we excluded the questions not answered. In our attempt to build a microsociological explanation, we also draw on bivariate and multivariate methods of analysis. To measure the correlations between two features, we primarily use Pearson’s correlation coefficient. To calculate more complex models that can take into account several effects on a dependent variable, we employ linear regression models. Both methods allow us to estimate both the strength and the direction of the correlation. The closer the absolute values of Pearson’s correlation coefficient or the standardized regression coefficient are to Value 1, the stronger is the correlation. The sign of the respective coefficient indicates whether we are dealing with a positive or a negative correlation. If the values of one variable increase, then, with a positive correlation, we can expect also a rise in the values of the other variable. Conversely, with a negative correlation, higher values of one variable are accompanied by lower values of the other. Values for non-significant correlations, where the statistical sample cannot confirm the existence of a correlation, are not shown, but designated ‘not significant’ (‘n.s.’). To capture the complexity of a feature, we built in some places indices from a number of variables of a study. The process that we used to build an index is discussed in more detail in the relevant sections.

IV, 2002: http://www.ekd.de/download/kmu_4_internet.pdf; and KMU V, 2012: http://www.ekd. de/EKD-Texte/kmu5_text.html. 4 For more information on our own studies, see the following websites: C&R: http://www. uni-muenster.de/imperia/md/content/soziologie/personen/pollack/church_religion_codebuch. pdf (codebook); WArV: http://www.uni-muenster.de/imperia/md/content/soziologie/personen/ pollack/religionssoziologie_codebook_3.pdf (codebook).

Part II Religious Decline in Western Europe?

Introduction Western Europe was regarded for decades as the paradigm case for the application of secularization theory. The growing number of people leaving the church, the dwindling number of priests, the decline in the ability of the Christian churches to hold their own against other powerful agents in civil society, and their waning influence on public discourse—all these were taken as unmistakable signs of the weakening of the social relevance of religion in the highly developed countries of Western Europe. Regardless of whether the tendencies towards secularization were associated with the growing rationalization and mechanization of people’s approaches to the world or the industrialization and urbanization that were eroding the communal character of human co-existence (Wilson 1982; Dobbelaere 1988), or whether these were attributed to the economically driven growth in prosperity that was claimed to be making religion largely superfluous (Norris and Inglehart 2004), or to the cultural or ideological pluralization that was leading to the undermining of its unquestionable claim to validity (Berger 1979; Bruce 2002), the negative correlation between modernization and religious vitality was considered a matter of certainty. Empirical analyses confirmed the posited interrelationships (Ashford and Timms 1992; Jagodzinski and Dobbelaere 1995; Halman and Riis 1999). There were even some who were already talking of a postChristian Europe (Lambert 1995). In the meantime, the number of those who regard Europe as being characterized by a religious mobilization has increased. Instead of post-Christian Europe, talk is now of the ‘post-secular society’ (Habermas 2001); instead of the decline of religion, talk is now of its renaissance (Riesebrodt 2000; Graf 2004). Many now emphasize the new public visibility of religion in politics and the media. Others stress the massive numbers attracted to religious events such as the World Youth Day and the election of a new Pope. There are others still who have observed an increase in the number of Internet entries on the subject of religion. A long list of phenomena demonstrating the vitality of religion in Europe has been compiled by Friedrich Wilhelm Graf (2004: 56ff.). To justify his theory of the ‘Return of the Gods’, he points to the increase in the number of conversions, especially among the smaller religious communities

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and free churches; to the continuing presence in people’s everyday lives of magical practices, ideas of reincarnation, exorcisms, miracle cures, and predictions about the future; to the new occultism even among natural scientists and critics of religion; to the stability of the major church organizations with their traditional monopoly on rituals, their observation of feast days, and their financially powerful charitable organizations, which people have high expectations of; to the quasi-religious cults of consumerism, of shopping malls as temples of a community worshipping the market; and to religious forms of popular culture manifested in television series and in Harry Potter’s world of dreams and magic; in pop music with its religious citations and themes of redemption. As a rebuttal of secularization theory, however, use is made of one phenomenon in particular: the emergence of a new social form of religion that is increasingly taking hold of larger segments of society (Luckmann 1967). For Luckmann, this new form is marked by a high degree of diffuseness, individualism, and syncretism; it replaces the claim to competence made by the churches with immediate experiential access to the transcendental; and it exists less within the churches than on their margins or outside them, which is why it is not affected by their undeniable decline. Hubert Knoblauch (2009), for instance, attributes the upswing in religion that he has observed not only throughout the rest of the world, but also in Europe itself, to the growing importance of spirituality, the belief in reincarnation, occultism, esotericism, and magic, along with the blossoming of Charismatic and Pentecostal movements, and at the same time argues that these forms of alternative religiosity exert an influence that is anti-institutional and ubiquitous (Knoblauch 2002: 298, 303). Alternative religiosity, he argues, disempowers the religious experts, and usually takes up a position outside the established religious institutions (Knoblauch 2002: 302); as such, it is part of a cultural process of dedifferentiation during the course of which the boundaries between the sacred and the profane are dissolved, religious communication migrates from the religious domain and is encountered today in the rituals of sports fans as well as in televised weddings, the rituals of mass-media confessions, or in the world of punk rock (Knoblauch 2008: 5). These processes of dedifferentiation prompt Knoblauch to regard modernity as already being on the way to a ‘spiritual society’ (2009). Other social scientists argue that a new, fluid form of religious syncretism—often labelled bricolage or patchwork religiosity—has emerged, one that is compatible with modernity, bears an individualistic stamp, and comprises the most varied religious forms, including some that are not identifiable at first glance as religious at all; these social scientists observe a blurring of the borders of the religious domain (Davie 1994, 2002; Hervieu-Léger 1990, 2000; Krüggeler and Voll 1993; Roof 1993, 2001; Wuthnow 1998; Fuller 2002; Inglehart and Baker 2000). Heelas and Woodhead (2005) even describe the religious changes currently taking place in Europe as a spiritual revolution.

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Others are less whole-hearted in their claims. To understand the religious changes that are currently observable, they attempt to strike a balance between secularization theory and the claim of the return of the Gods (Gabriel 2008a). In their eyes, neither theory carries a great deal of conviction. Again, there are others who oppose the universalistic claims of secularization theory but still consider its assumptions justified in the case of Western Europe. For them, Europe is not a yardstick to use for the rest of the world, but a special case. After his criticism of secularization theory, Peter L. Berger, for example, treats Western Europe as the exception. He explains: ‘The world today, with some exceptions […], is as furiously religious as it ever was, and in some places more so than ever’ (Berger 1999: 2). Apart from Western Europe, the other exception is provided by academics educated in the Western World. Reversing what counts as a rule and what counts as an exception does not achieve a great deal, of course. Instead of the old, we now have a new universalistic yardstick to orientate our analysis. But was criticizing the universalistic implications of secularization theory not in fact about avoiding universalistic assumptions? An interesting strategy for demonstrating the untenability of the claims of secularization theory is pursued by Grace Davie. On the one hand, she joins Berger in treating Europe as ‘the exceptional case’. In an admonitory tone, she states: ‘Europeans assume both the normality of their own situation and, which is even more damaging, that the conceptual apparatus developed to understand a specifically European phenomenon can be used indiscriminately’ (Davie 2002: 25). On the other hand, to be able to reject secularization theory, Davie sees that it is clearly not enough simply to criticize European assumptions of normality, for, at the same time, she announces: ‘I am hesitant about the unqualified use of the term secularization even in the European context’ (Davie 2002: 5). Even if Europeans have ceased taking an active part in the practices of their religious institutions, they have given up neither their ‘deep-seated religious aspirations’, nor their ‘latent sense of belonging’ (Davie 2002: 9). Is Europe, then, not quite as exceptional as initially claimed? To refute secularization theory, Davie incorporates a dual safety mechanism in which the two items of evidence are of course mutually exclusive. Such errors are avoided by those who are content to describe the religious landscape in Western Europe as highly plural, and who adorn such a description with the benevolent identification of countervailing developments and of ubiquitous diversity without fully grasping this diversity, as has been the case recently, especially among scholars of religious studies (Lehmann 2004; Kippenberg 2007; Kippenberg et al. 2009). The thesis that everything is more differentiated, more complex, more plural, and more diverse than previously thought is of course always correct, but its contribution to pushing forward knowledge is minimal. It is more difficult for the still considerable throng of secularization theorists remaining, who have in the meantime taken to adopting a lamenting tone. As

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they can no longer lay claim to being at the forefront of scientific debate, the only choice they have, it seems, is to present themselves as the last remaining champions of this contested truth. Steve Bruce (2011), for example, published his recent paper about secularization theory with the subtitle: ‘In defence of an unfashionable theory’. But they also make it too easy for themselves in avoiding the effort of subjecting their claims to empirical examination (see also Liedhegener 2012: 489). The theories that have developed about religious change in Western Europe are as diverse as they are controversial. To test their plausibility, we need to move to the level of empirical research. So what do the data tell us about this hotly disputed reality? It is obvious that data are always complex and cannot be interpreted unambiguously. Their selection alone requires justification. Let us start with an overview of religious change in the last thirty years, for which there are relatively reliable sets of data available, and examine the three dimensions of the religious that have been worked out above (affiliation, practice, and belief), for each of which we have selected some central indicators (see p. 60). In the course of our investigation, we shall incorporate further variables in our argumentation and pitch the period of time for our analysis deeper. For a first impression, however, the data presented here will probably be sufficiently informative. A look at the data in Tables II.1–II.3 shows that the religious situation in the countries of Western Europe is in fact subject to considerable variation. There are highly religious countries such as Ireland and Italy next to less religious Table II.1. The development of churchliness in selected countries of Western Europe, 1981–2008 (agreement in %) Country

Belgium Denmark France West Germany Great Britain Iceland Ireland Italy Malta Netherlands Northern Ireland Norway Spain Sweden Finland (1990) Portugal (1990)

Denominational affiliation

Frequency of church attendance (weekly)

Confidence in the church (a great deal + quite a lot)

1981

2008

1981

2008

1981

2008

84 94 74 91 91 99 99 94 100 63 97 96 91 93 89 72

57 88 49 84 55 92 87 82 97 49 78 80 75 66 76 81

30 3 12 22 14 2 82 36 92 27 53 6 41 6 4 33

11 3 6 10 12 4 40 34 77 15 41 6 17 5 4 23

65 50 56 47 49 71 78 61 86 41 71 50 51 39 32 57

36 63 41 44 36 64 54 67 77 35 65 44 31 39 47 67

Sources: EVS 1981, 2008.

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Table II.2. The development of religiosity in selected countries of Western Europe (agreement in %) Country

Belgium Denmark France West Germany Great Britain Iceland Ireland Italy Malta Netherlands Northern Ireland Norway Spain Sweden Finland (1990) Portugal (1990)

Belief in God

Importance of God (6–10)

Importance of religion in life (very + quite important)

1981

2008

1981

2008

1990

2008

87 68 68 82 83 81 97 90 100 72 97 76 92 60 76 86

61 63 52 73 65 72 90 91 99 58 91 56 76 46 69 86

60 34 39 52 50 63 84 69 97 51 75 42 64 29 52 66

41 27 33 54 40 57 71 76 93 43 66 34 52 29 50 67

45 31 43 37 45 56 84 70 92 44 67 40 54 27 38 56

41 30 36 40 41 52 64 76 87 40 59 38 37 22 30 57

Sources: EVS 1981, 2008.

ones such as France, the Netherlands, and Great Britain. At the same time, it is not difficult to identify initial correlations and patterns. In 2008, in countries where the majority of the population are Catholic, such as Ireland, Italy, Malta, Northern Ireland, and Portugal, the level of churchliness and religiosity was above the European average with respect to frequency of church attendance, belief in God, the significance of God in people’s lives, and the importance of religion. This is in stark contrast to those countries with a Protestant majority. There are also exceptions, however—Spain, for example, which has mostly average values. In Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, we find the familiar Scandinavian pattern of religiosity with a relatively high degree of denominational organization, a low rate of church attendance, and an average to below-average intensity of belief. In terms of belief, Finland is somewhat above the Scandinavian average, although the deviations are not serious. As we can see, denomination has a considerable influence on the level of churchliness and religiosity, but is not able to determine these and shows regional discrepancies. In multi-denominational countries, individual churchliness and religiosity do not achieve any values higher than the average of the European countries overall, but tend to be somewhat lower. The familiar hypothesis of economic market theory that religious vitality increases with religious plurality (Stark and Finke 2000) is not confirmed by this finding.

Table II.3. Forms of non-church religiosity in selected countries of Western Europe (agreement in %) Country

Belgium Denmark France West Germany Great Britain Iceland Ireland Italy Malta Netherlands Northern Ireland Norway Spain Sweden Finland (1990) Portugal (1990)

Own way of connecting with God (4–5)

How spiritual would you say you are? (very interested + somewhat interested)

2008

2008

41 51 47 47 41 59 61 35 24 33 61 24 42 47 47 51

49 41 42 47 51 67 61 61 75 61 54 47 49 45 48 55

Good luck charms sometimes do bring good luck(definitely true + probably true)

Some fortune tellers really can foresee the future (definitely true + probably true)

Some faith healers really do have Godgiven healing powers (definitely true + probably true)

A person’s star sign at birth, or horoscope, can affect the course of their future (definitely true + probably true)

Belief in reincarnation*

1991

1991

1991

1991

1991

2008

18 13 25 24 33 31 32 27 31 13 24 38 33 17 34 29

17 19 23 27 28 36 30 19 20 20 23 18 23 23 22 31

31 23

20 23 31

32 42

2008 27 28 21

38 52

2008 28 32 31

32 30

2008 21 33 27

40 25

27

21 23

*Do you believe in reincarnation, that is, that we are born into this world again? Sources: EVS 2008; ISSP 1991, 2008.

2008

34

29 33

15

66

62

24 70

27

18

25

18 19

33

15

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As far as acceptance of non-church forms of religiosity is concerned (see Table II.3), we can observe that there is a substantial minority of 20–30 per cent that are attracted to magical forms of belief, to the belief in the efficacy of amulets, horoscopes, and prophesies about the future. About as many claim that they believe in reincarnation—that is, that they will be born into this world once again. Interest in spirituality is more widespread. The formulation of the question, however, is also kept relatively vague. It covers those who are somewhat, or very much, interested in spirituality. We cannot of course decide on the basis of this single indicator the extent to which the high number of those who answer this question positively expresses a tendency to religious individualism. It does become clear at this point, however, that it would be erroneous to describe Western Europe as secularized. The data presented here give no indication of this. Clear secularization tendencies, however, do become apparent if we now take a second step and consider changes between 1981 and 2008 (Tables II.1–II.3). With a few exceptions, there are no upward tendencies visible. Occasionally, the declines can even be dramatic, above all in some predominantly Catholic countries, if we for example look at the changes in the frequency of church attendance in Ireland or Spain (Table II.1) or the drop in the assessment of the importance of religion in these two countries (Table II.2). In a strongly Catholic country such as Ireland, the proportion of those attending weekly mass fell by 40 percentage points, from 80 per cent to 40 per cent, within three decades (Table II.1). But church attendance in Ireland is still one of the highest in Western Europe. In almost all West European countries, belief in God declined as affiliation to a church declined, too (Table II.2). Even the indicators for non-church religiosity, assuming that they allow a time comparison, reveal no upwards trend (Table II.3). Rather, gains and losses effectively balance one another out. The proportion of those who claim to hold esoteric and magical beliefs often accounts for only a quarter of those who believe in God, and has not risen recently to any significant extent. This gives rise to certain misgivings about the claims of the individualization theorem, which assumes that the conventional characteristics of religious affiliation are tailing off, and are being replaced increasingly by alternative forms of religiosity. And yet there are some countries that are scarcely affected by the general tendencies towards decline, countries in which religiosity and churchliness rather remain at a high level or are even partially rising. This holds true for Portugal, Italy, and Malta. If we want to find out something about the factors affecting religious change, we must ask why it is that not all countries are caught up in the general downwards trend. Why is it that in Italy in the last thirty years people’s confidence in the church has risen, whereas in most other countries it has weakened? Why is it that in Italy the assessment of the importance of religion is increasing slightly, whereas, with two exceptions, it

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is otherwise everywhere in decline? Clearly various factors are at work in the different countries and are exercising an influence on religious development. In order to isolate them, we want to investigate these factors individually by means of separate country studies, and enrich the analysis by means of detailed historical investigation. In this way, we are taking to heart the demand that is often made not to rely on general assumptions about religious change alone (see Höllinger 1996: 115f.; Gorski 2003: 112f.), but to reconstruct historically the distinctive features of the individual case. It is of course important not to ignore in the country studies the general approaches described in Chapter 3 to explain religious change. The extent to which they are applicable to the individual case needs to be examined. In addition to generalized explanatory approaches, however, we will use in the country studies case-specific observations to foster the discovery of new explanatory models. For these case analyses, we have selected three countries that differ sufficiently from one another: Italy, as one of Western Europe’s most religiously lively countries that reveals slight increases in the religious domain and scarcely any downward trends; the Netherlands, which is considered to be one of the most strongly dechurchified countries of Western Europe, and is marked by an above-average level of secularization, particularly when we observe the high level of religiosity that it still possessed in the 1960s; and West Germany, which reveals a moderate level of dechurchification with intermittent slight growth. In analysing changes to religion and church in the separate countries, we aim to understand country-specific conditions for the development of religious change and the factors involved in bringing it about. After the studies of individual cases, however, we want to treat the question of whether and to what extent the findings gathered in separate case studies can be generalized.

4 Between Dechurchification and Religious Persistence West Germany

In 1955, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer travelled to Moscow in order to obtain from the Soviet Union the release of the last German prisoners of the Second World War. When, after Adenauer’s mediation efforts, the former German soldiers arrived at the refugee camp Friedland on 7 October 1955, the returnees spontaneously began singing with their families the hymn ‘Now thank we all our God’. Many of the children and wives held up signs with the names of their loved ones or with photographs from the war because they were not sure whether they would still recognize each other after so many years of separation. There were tears on the faces of many returnees and their family members. They expressed their gratitude by singing a Christian hymn that German soldiers had so often sung in the past after surviving a battle. More than three decades later, the Germans had another reason to be grateful. To the complete surprise of everyone involved in the East and the West, the SED leadership opened the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, and thousands of East Germans who had been locked in for decades crossed that same night into freedom in West Berlin. Helmut Kohl, who happened to be on a state visit to Poland at the time, flew back immediately, and, as the party leaders from government and opposition stood together on the balcony of the Schöneberg town hall in West Berlin, a song was again sung. This time, though, it was not a Christian hymn, but the German national anthem. No one thought this time of saying a prayer and thanking God for this wonderful event in German history. Even Helmut Kohl, who would occasionally evoke the mantle of history to give his words weight, held back. And, when the Federal president Richard von Weizsäcker gave the official speech at the ceremony for the ‘Day of German Unity’ on 3 October 1990, he also did not think of giving thanks to God. Rather, he pointed to the peaceful character of German unification and to the peaceful settlement of the European continent, and promised to turn the borders to other nations into bridges (Weizsäcker 1990).

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In the space of just thirty-five years, expressions of gratitude to God had become a speech about peace in Europe; instead of a Christian hymn, the national anthem. Are such changes expressions of processes of secularization? Not a few studies that deal with religious change in the Federal Republic in the period leading up to 1990 interpret the empirically observable tendencies of the church’s break in tradition and the decline in the social significance of church and religion as secularization (Daiber 1995; Pickel 2010, 2011c). Symptomatically, a recent overview of the development of faith and church in Germany since 1945 was published under the title ‘The losing heaven’ (Großbölting 2016). For Großbölting, Christianity, which had saturated the whole of life in Europe for over fifteen hundred years, and even up until the second half of the twentieth century, has, in many ways, now been pushed to the margins. While in Germany, religion and society were still closely bound in the nineteenth and much of the twentieth centuries, with church values strongly underpinning ideas about social order and nation, the roles of men and women, and norms regarding family, upbringing, and sexuality, many of the close bonds have now been severed. ‘“Christian Germany” no longer exists’, Großbölting concludes (Großbölting 2016: 10). And this is probably irreversibly so, with Großbölting ruling out the possibility of there being a ‘rediscovery’ of the lost transcendence (Großbölting 2016: 4). There has been an upswing in some popular religious practices such as Far Eastern mysticism and related meditation techniques, but these have largely remained fringe phenomena.1 Other analysts see things very differently, however. They emphasize that religion has gained in social significance not only outside Europe, but also in Western Europe and Germany, and point to the increased need for religion in Germany, for trust in system, for civil–religious rituals such as the ceremonial burial of fallen soldiers, and for religious education in state schools (Schieder and Meyer-Magister 2013). If we take into account the reach that Christian culture has, then Germany ‘is still today a Christian country through and through’ (Hölscher 2005: 15). Whether it is expressed in people’s efforts to renovate village churches, in their religiously charged support for a football team, or in their shared belief in human rights, religion can be found in the most diverse domains of social life (Schieder and Meyer-Magister 2013). When sociologists of religion emphasize the declining importance of the religious, then they are usually working with a limited concept of religion, one that reduces religiosity to churchliness. But, so these analysts argue, if we widen our perspective, then we will see that the changes that have occurred in modern societies have not caused religion to lose its relevance, but have merely altered its dominant forms. The church no longer determines the individual’s 1 Großbölting does not wish to talk of secularization, however (Großbölting 2016: 7). But that does not prevent him from describing religious change in Germany as a ‘breach with tradition unprecedented within the religious field’ (Großbölting 2016: 5).

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religious orientation. Rather, the individual has become the author of his or her own religiosity, and assembles it from a diverse range of Christian and non-Christian traditions (Beck 2008; Knoblauch 2009). Not secularization, but religious individualization—this, so the argument goes, is the central feature of the religious change that has occurred in the last few decades. A careful analysis of the religious changes that have occurred in the Federal Republic since its founding will have to consider the religious losses as well as the sometimes astonishing resistance of religious and church entities, but also the observable religious awakenings and new beginnings. Is it really the case, as has often been claimed, that there has occurred a break in tradition in terms of people’s ties to the church? In which periods was religious change particularly dynamic, and in which, less so? Did this change occur in the Catholic and Protestant churches in parallel? Are there counter-movements when it comes to free churches and small religious communities such as the charismatic churches? How have individualized forms of religiosity developed, especially those of non-church religiosity, in comparison to traditional religiosity? Are these individualized forms in an alternative relation to traditional religiosity? What impact has increasing religious plurality had on the integrative capacity of Christianity? Does the increasing diversity of religious communities, including the increasingly visible public presence of Islam, pose a challenge to Christianity, one that actually helps to strengthen it? And what contextual conditions are the basis of the religious changes that can be observed? The following analyses are based on the distinction developed as a categorical pattern (in Chapter 2, see pp. 46ff.) between the different dimensions of the religious. By distinguishing between religious affiliation, religious practice, and the world of religious ideas and experience, we can order the religious landscape internally and delimit it externally. We begin by presenting our findings descriptively, and that as accurately as possible. Researchers tend to make far-reaching claims that are based on a small number of arbitrarily selected empirical observations, and this often simply leads to confusion. In contrast, we attempt to capture the data available as precisely as possible and in a systematic and comprehensive manner, so that subsequent interpretations will have a solid base from which to work. After a descriptive part, we attempt a sociological explanation of the patterns, trends, and discontinuities observed.

4 . 1. D ES C R I P T I O N

4.1.1. Dimension of Affiliation A simple glance at the development of denominational affiliation in West Germany since the Second World War is enough to show the remarkable

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persistence of the Christian churches in the Western part of Germany (Table 4.1). The Catholic Church in particular was able to maintain its level of membership up until 1990, this level remaining at around the 43–4 per cent mark. It was only after reunification that the level fell. But the Protestant Church also shows remarkable resistance. Until 1965, there was not much change, with about half of the West German population belong to the Protestant Church. After 1965, though, a slow but inexorable process of minoritization began, one which, interrupted only by a slight delay in the 1980s, has not yet come to a halt today (Table 4.1). What was once a Protestant majority has shrunk to less than one third of the population in the space of sixty years. Protestantism, which once formed the dominant culture in Wilhelmine Germany, now has the status of a minority denomination. Yet, in contrast to the authoritarian and unjust system of the former GDR, but in contrast also to the secular constitutional state of France, the political and legal conditions of churches in the Federal Republic since its inception were characterized by policies friendly to church and religion. The explanatory questions arising from these observations are concerned with why the number of members in both churches remained broadly stable until 1965; why the Protestant churches lost so many members in the period thereafter, while the Catholic Table 4.1. Denominational affiliation in West Germany, 1950–2010 Population, former Federal territory 1950 1955 1960 1961 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1989 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

50,798 53,518 55,958 56,589 59,297 61,001 61,645 61,658 61,020 62,679 63,726 64,172 65,027 65,698 65,426

Members of Protestant Church

In % of population

Members of Catholic Church

In % of population

26,172

51.5

28,400 29,079 28,378 27,184 26,104 25,106 25,132 25,156 23,653 22,846 21,986 20,863

50.2 49.0 46.5 44.1 42.3 41.1 40.1 39.5 36.9 35.1 33.5 31.9

22,518 23,457 24,583 24,956 26,142 27,206 27,011 26,713 26,308 26,746 27,423 26,634 25,854 25,030 23,848

44.3 43.8 43.9 43.9 44.1 44.6 43.8 43.3 43.1 42.7 43.0 41.5 40.0 38.1 36.5

From 1950 to 1990, including West Berlin and Saarland; from 1995 to 2010, without Berlin. Spaces are empty where reliable figures are not available. Sources: Statistisches Bundesamt, Statis; for 1950, results of the census, see Kirchliches Jahrbuch 1958, 430f.; for Catholic membership, Liedhegener 2006: Table A 2.1 and Sekretariat der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz 1990 and 2010; 1990 figures for West Berlin estimated according to IKSE 1997, estimates for 1995 as well; for Protestant membership in 1961, see Kirchliches Jahrbuch 1987, 417; otherwise: Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland 1997: 78; 2006: 6; 2011: 6.

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Church was able to maintain more or less its share of the total population; and why the Catholic Church has also been affected by a decline in membership since 1989. The level of church membership is affected by decisions to join and leave the church, as well as by developments in rates of baptisms and deaths. As for changes regarding the number of people leaving the church, what is striking is the low number of those doing so from the 1950s to the mid-1960s, when annually no more than twenty to thirty thousand people left the Catholic Church and thirty to forty thousand, the Protestant Church (see Table 4.3). This represents an annual rate of 0.1 to 0.2 per cent (Fig. 4.1). The number of Catholics joining or rejoining the church amounted to between 15,000 and 20,000; the number of Protestants, to about 35,000. These numbers were therefore barely below the numbers leaving the respective churches. In other words, the numbers joining more or less matched the numbers leaving in the years between 1950 and 1965. In the second half of the 1960s, however, the number of people leaving the church increased more or less ‘overnight’ (Gabriel 1992: 46). The increase began in the Protestant Churches in 1967/8; in the Catholic Church, one year later. The number of Protestants leaving the church reached its peak in 1974 (216,000), which was more than five times the number in 1965; the number of Catholics leaving the church in the same year was 83,000, which was three and 1.2 1 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2

19 00 19 06 19 12 19 18 19 24 19 30 19 36 19 42 19 48 19 54 19 60 19 66 19 72 19 78 19 84 19 90 19 96 20 02 20 08

0

Protestant

Catholic

Fig. 4.1. Numbers leaving the church in Germany, 1900–2010 as a percentage of members. Germany: until 1945, Reich territory according to respective territorial status; from 1945, Federal Republic of Germany; 1990–2010, former Federal Republic Sources: Kuphal 1979: 28f., 37; also for the Catholic figures: Kirchliches Handbuch Vol. XXV 1957–61: 441–52; IKSE 1997: 35; Sekretariat der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz 2014; for the Protestant figures: Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland 2006: 6; 2011: 6.

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a half times the level of 1965 (see Table 4.3). Within three years, then, the number of people leaving the church tripled in both the Protestant and the Catholic Church (see Table 4.3). As suddenly as the curve showing exit rates rose, so it levelled off again from the mid-1970s (Fig. 4.1). Although it did not regain the low level of exits seen in the 1950s, it did remain at a moderate level for a good ten years before climbing steeply again in the wake of reunification. Although it fell again after a few years, it sank to a level that was higher than the low level of the 1980s. The number of baptisms took a parallel course between 1950 and 2010: it collapsed between 1965 and 1975, and, after a slight recovery in the 1980s, plummeted again in the period after reunification (Table 4.2).2 Falls in membership were always significantly higher for the Protestant churches than for the Catholic Church—at least, this was so until a few years ago (Table 4.3). In the period between 1967 and 1989, the number of people leaving the Protestant Church was in some cases more than double the Table 4.2. Live births and infant baptisms in West Germany, 1950–2010

1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

Births

Prot. baptisms

in %

Cath. baptisms

in %

Total

in %

772,850 785,082 947,124 1,044,328 810,808 600,512 620,657 586,155 727,199 660,841 636,102 560,092 542,345

358,733 367,368 425,053 476,057 345,994 217,104 221,982 223,798 257,312 233,569 209,881 178,681 154,184

46.4 46.8 44.9 45.6 42.7 36.1 35.7 38.2 35.4 35.3 33.0 31.9 28.4

389,370 400,931 470,775 502,559 368,518 249,821 257,584 254,090 293,835 255,240 227,450 190,910 165,016

50.4 51.1 49.7 48.1 45.4 41.6 41.5 43.4 40.4 40.1 35.8 34.1 30.4

748,103 768,299 895,828 978,616 714,512 466,925 479,567 477,888 551,147 488,809 437,331 369,591 319,200

96.8 97.9 94.5 93.7 88.1 77.7 77.3 81.5 75.8 74.0 68.8 66.0 58.9

Births and baptisms before 1956 without Saarland and West Berlin; between 1957 and 1961, with Saarland and without West Berlin; after 1961, with Saarland and West Berlin; after 1995, again without West Berlin. Sources: Statistisches Bundesamt; Kirchliches Handbuch Vol. XXIV 1952–56: 352; Vol. XXV 1957–61: 548; Sekretariat der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz 2013; Kirchliches Jahrbuch 1954, 303; 1957, 258; 1992/3, 489; Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland 1997: 78; 2006: 8; 2011: 8.

2 In their statistics on the development of church membership, Eicken and Schmitz-Veltin (2010) include baptisms, instances of joining the church and converting to another church, instances of leaving the church, mortality rates, as well as gains and losses incurred by the Protestant and Catholic Church through migrations. Their information is not always reliable, however. For example, for 1990, they give the total population for the reunified Germany, while the number of baptisms for the same year relates only to West Germany (Eicken and SchmitzVeltin 2010: 589). The number of Catholic baptisms for 1956 relates to West Germany without West Berlin, whereas, for 1957, it relates to West Germany with West Berlin—they do not always make clear the different sizes of the geographical areas to which they are referring.

Table 4.3. Baptisms, conversions, instances of rejoining the church, deaths, and instances of leaving the church in West Germany, 1950–2010 Protestant Church Children New Increases Deaths baptized members in total

1950 1955 1960 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

358,733 367,368 425,053 476,057 475,843 462,931 441,137 399,158 345,994 217,104 221,982 223,798 257,312 233,569 209,881 178,681 154,184

34,000a 36,000a 34,735 33,749 30,928 28,840 23,217 20,990 18,080 30,148 38,414 42,456 46,787 51,877 54,883 49,399

401,000a 461,000a 510,792 509,592 493,859 469,977 422,375 366,984 235,184 252,130 262,212 299,768 280,356 261,758 233,564 203,583

310,000a,b 332,000a 350,000a 356,000a 355,000a 381,000a 385,000a 379,000a 381,000a 358,610 349,769 347,844 320,412 298,095 288,075 284,947

Catholic Church

Instances Losses of leaving in total the church 53,058 39,461 34,595 39,611 40,272 44,456 60,807 111,576 202,823 168,641 119,814 140,553 144,143 223,696 159,724 103,115 124,855

350,000a 367,000a 390,000a 396,000a 399,000a 442,000a 497,000a 582,000a 550,000a 478,424 490,322 491,987 544,108 457,819 391,190 409,802

Net

+51,000a +97,000a +121,000a +114,000a +95,000a +28,000a −75,000a −215,000a −315,000a −226,294 −228,110 −192,219 −263,752 −196,061 −157,626 −206,219

Children New Increases Deaths baptized members in total

389,370 400,931 470,775 502,559 500,000a 480,000a 452,000a 422,000a 368,518 249,821 257,584 254,090 299,796 259,797 232,920 196,371 170,339

30,674 19,390 19,615 14,214 13,000a 11,000a 9,000a 7,000a 5,857 5,798 7,733 8,727 8,888 10,141 12,013 16,168 10,979

420,044 420,321 490,390 516,773 513,000a 491,000a 461,000a 429,000a 374,375 255,619 265,317 262,817 308,684 269,938 244,933 212,539 181,318

260,000a,b 274,282 284,193 286,000a 288,000a 306,000a 310,000a 304,736 309,810 295,781 292,650 297,179 299,858 284,685 283,783 285,780

Instances Losses of leaving in total the church 33,536 21,292 23,889 22,791 22,043 22,499 27,995 38,712 69,455 69,370 66,438 74,112 143,530 168,244 129,496 89,565 181,193

280,000a 279,000a 307,000a 308,000a 310,000a 334,000a 349,000a 375,000a 379,000a 362,000a 367,000a 440,709 468,102 414,181 373,348 466,973

Net

+140,000a +211,000a +210,000a +205,000a +181,000a +127,000a +80,000a −1,000a −123,000a −97,000a −104,000a −132,025 −198,164 −169,248 −160,809 −285,655

a

rounded to the nearest 1,000; b value for 1956. Births and baptisms to 1956 without Saarland and West Berlin; births to 1961 without West Berlin; births from 1961 with Saarland and West Berlin; new members including conversions, readmissions, and adult baptisms; Protestant Church: from 1995, West Germany without West Berlin; Catholic Church: from 1990, Germany as a whole.

Sources: Kuphal 1979: 37; Eicken and Schmitz-Veltin 2010: 589; Statistisches Bundesamt; Kirchliches Handbuch Vol. XXIV 1952–6: 352, Vol. XXV 1957–61: 548; Sekretariat der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz 2010, 2013, 2014; Kirchliches Jahrbuch 1954: 303, 1957: 258, 1992/3: 489; Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland 1997: 78, 2006: 6, 8, 12, 2011: 6, 8, 17.

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number of people leaving the Catholic Church (Table 4.3). After 1989, the number of people leaving the Catholic Church came close to the number leaving the Protestant Church, although the latter still remained higher. Only in 2010 was it different, when probably because of the cases of child abuse that became known and widely discussed did the number of people leaving the Catholic Church exceed the number leaving the Protestant Church. In the following year, though, the normal ratio had re-established itself. Up until reunification, the Catholic Church generally outperformed the Protestant Church with regard to increases, too (Table 4.3). This had nothing to do with higher numbers of people joining the church, or crossing from one church to another, or rejoining the church (these numbers were always higher among Protestants than among Catholics), but with higher baptism rates. Despite its lower level of membership, the Catholic Church had more baptisms in every year since the founding of the Federal Republic than the Protestant Church. This can be explained by the higher number of children born to Catholic parents, by the higher percentage of baptisms of those children, and by the fact that children born to Catholic/Protestant mixed marriages were for a long period of time more frequently baptized Catholic than Protestant (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland 1997: 7). More than 85 per cent of children who had at least one parent who was Catholic had a Catholic baptism in the 1950s and 1960s (Arbeitshilfen 2007: 11), while only 78 per cent of children with at least one parent who was Protestant were baptized during the same period (Kirchliches Jahrbuch 1980: 268). Since the second half of the 1970s, though, the rate of Catholic baptisms has converged with that of Protestant baptisms (Arbeitshilfen 2007: 11). This convergence, but also the increase in the proportion of Protestant baptisms among children from Protestant/Catholic mixed marriages, contributed to the fact that the Catholic advantage with regard to growth in membership increasingly diminished before 1990, and even fell behind after reunification. There is also the increased number of people joining the Protestant Church, which now accounts for four times the number of people joining the Catholic Church (Table 4.3). If we totalize all gains and losses since 2005, then, despite having higher numbers leaving, the Protestant Church in West Germany has lower net losses than the Catholic Church (Table 4.3). This means that, for the first time in the history of the Federal Republic, membership of the Catholic Church is now falling more rapidly than it is for the Protestant Church. Up until 1968, both churches still recorded nominal gains in membership,3 with these being higher in the Catholic Church than in the Protestant Church (Table 4.3). Then the development reversed. The decline began in the Protestant Church a little earlier than in the Catholic Church, and had a greater 3

But not according to Benjamin Ziemann (1999: 93), who thinks that the balance has been negative since 1952.

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effect on the former than on the latter. In the 1970s and 1980s, net losses among Protestants were always more than double the net losses among Catholics. After reunification, the numbers gradually converged, and in 2005 Catholic losses began to exceed Protestant losses. Interestingly, the rates of people leaving the Catholic and Protestant churches developed in complete parallel with one another (Fig. 4.1). This points to the fact that leaving the church was influenced primarily by factors external to the churches, and less by the actions of the churches. Such contextual factors to explain the wave of people leaving the church, which began at the end of the 1960s after years of church stability, are certainly the economic, social, and cultural upheavals of the time—student unrest and movements critical of Western civilization, changes to the traditional family structure and the role of women in society, the increased level of prosperity and the new opportunities for entertainment and recreation that this brought, the liberalization of the media and the politicization of public life. But what also played a role was the financial burden on households at the time, particularly the economic surcharge of 1970 and 1971. The wave of people leaving the church after 1990 is clearly connected to the social, political, and economic changes triggered by reunification, to the social uncertainties accompanying it, to the increased financial burdens on people (the solidarity surcharge, for example), as well as to the shifts in denominational structure caused by reunification, which turned overnight the number of people without religious affiliation in Germany as a whole into a significant group amounting to a third of the population, and weakened the norm of church affiliation. A look at developments regarding the number of people leaving the church (Fig. 4.1) also shows that, as mentioned above, the rate of people leaving the Protestant Church was up until 2010 consistently higher than the rate of people leaving the Catholic Church. In turn, the numbers of people joining the Protestant Church are also higher than the numbers joining the Catholic Church—in some cases, even considerably higher. While in the last sixty years the Catholic Church has been more successful in holding on to its members, the Protestant Church has been more successful in attracting new members. This corresponds to the fact that the Protestant Church has more support and trust among the population than the Catholic Church (Allbus 2012: Variable 55, 56). The social ties to the Catholic Church are clearly stronger than those to the Protestant Church, but its level of social acceptance is lower. What is most striking, though, about developments in the number of people leaving the church in the last sixty years is that the plateau in the rate of people leaving the church has increased steadily after each respective wave of exits, and that the church exit rate no longer falls to the initial level. This suggests that the process of erosion affecting churches is accelerating, that it even possibly has its own momentum, and that a deceleration in this process of erosion cannot be expected in the near future. Besides those who have

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already left the church, we also need to consider those who have already often thought about leaving and who may take this step before too long without having done it so far. In surveys conducted since the beginning of the 1970s, a constant proportion of 15 to 20 per cent of members of the Protestant Church in West Germany (there are no comparable survey results for the Catholic Church) have said that they are considering leaving the church (Kirchenamt der EKD 2003: 14; KMU V, 2012). This proportion has not decreased over the last forty years. The minoritization of Protestant communities has therefore not led to a higher sense of attachment to the church.4 Rather, the sense of attachment has remained much the same in the last few years. At the end of the 1960s, it was mainly the higher educated, men, city dwellers, and the better off who left the church (Kuphal 1979: 56–107). Those leaving the church were in that sense especially those who had been responsible for the dynamic social change of the 1960s. By withdrawing from the church, they revoked their consent for the post-war conservative consensus of the economically prosperous Federal Republic. For the younger, urban, and often left-wing intellectuals, leaving the church was at that time a means of protest against the bourgeois establishment of the increasingly wealthy Federal Republic (Pittkowski and Volz 1989: 104). In the meantime, leaving the church has now lost much of its political and emancipatory character. Among the younger generation it is no longer the highly educated who leave the church to a disproportionate extent; rather, leaving the church has found its way equally into all layers of the population (Engelhardt, Loewenich, and Steinacker 1997: 317). Leaving the church today is therefore no longer an expression of protest of a social avant-garde, but has (and this is especially true for the younger generation) become largely normalized. The question of whether a person has been brought up religiously or not, of course, has a strong influence on his or her willingness to leave the church, with those being brought up religiously tending less towards leaving the church than those not experiencing any religious socialization. Not having to pay church tax has always been one of the most important motives for leaving the church (Table 4.4). In addition, the respondents (included here are only those who have left the Protestant Church)5 say that they have become indifferent to or alienated from the church, and that the church has become implausible for them (Table 4.4). Annoyance at the pastor and other church staff hardly plays a role at all, and annoyance at the statements made by the church (memoranda, guidance) also has no great 4 In the last survey of church membership conducted by the EKD in 2012, there was a slight polarizing tendency with regard to the feeling of connectedness, with both the proportion of those church members highly connected and those not connected at all having risen slightly (EKD 2014: 12, 87). This means that the proportion of church members with a moderate level of connectedness has declined, without the average level of connectedness changing. 5 Detailed survey results are not available for the Catholic Church.

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Table 4.4. Reasons for leaving the Protestant Church among those having left the church: mean values (MV) from 7 (= completely true) to 1 (= completely untrue) I left the church because… I am indifferent to the church I was annoyed about pastors or other members of church staff I was annoyed about the statements made by the church I can save on church tax I found a different religious belief I can also be a Christian without the church I do not need any religion in my life I find the church untrustworthy It was/is normal in my environment not to be in the church The faith no longer means anything to me I was put under political pressure I wanted to save myself (and my children) from unnecessary conflict The church has become alien to me

West MV

East MV

4.78 2.96 3.78 5.51 1.67 5.58 4.42 4.94 2.46 3.99 1.39 1.77 4.25

4.93 2.35 2.95 5.25 1.51 3.88 5.44 4.53 4.17 5.05 1.68 2.25 4.90

Source: KMU IV, 2002.

importance. More important is the motive that faith no longer means anything, and that the person regards religion as not necessary for his or her life. The primary reason for leaving the church given by those without religious affiliation is therefore not the poor quality of pastoral work or annoyance at specific church pronouncements, but rather the individual’s distance from the institution of the church and from religion in general. Despite leaving the church, they do not want to be seen as non-Christians, and the motive for leaving the church that is most often given in Western Germany is that a person can still be a Christian without the church (mean value = 5.58), which is even more important than saving on church tax. Apparently, Christianity in Western Germany, where the majority of people still see themselves as Christian, is still a phenomenon accepted across the whole of society. The reasons for leaving the church that are based on alienation from faith and the pointlessness of religion are much more relevant in the East than in the West (Table 4.4). In the East, the Christian horizon of values has faded and the distance to Christianity, religion, and faith is a more important reason for leaving the church than in the West. That a person has found a different religious belief does not represent, either in the East or the West, a reason for leaving the church, though. We are therefore unable to confirm the hypothesis often forwarded that a person’s distancing from the church has no effect on individual religiosity, and does not mean a turning away from religion, but only its internalization and individualization (Luckmann 1967; Davie 2002; Knoblauch 2009). Leaving the church is often a result of a longer process of becoming closer to and more distant from the church, a process in which the person constantly weighs up the various arguments for and against staying in the church before

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finally coming down in favour of leaving the church only after a long period of indecision (Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach 1993). When so many leave the church because the church has become meaningless and alien to them, then that probably has much to do with the fact that something else in life is more important to them and that their interest in the church has become relativized through the dominance of other interests. But why do people belong to a church at all, and why do they adhere to it? The structure of motivation is of course complex and cannot be reduced to a central motive. A factor analysis based on data from the EKD’s 2002 survey of church membership (not shown as a Table here) gives three bundles of motives. For many, value-rational and affective motives are crucial—for example, that a person accepts the Christian doctrine, defines himself or herself as religious, and considers the Christian faith to mean something, or that the church provides comfort and support in difficult times, provides an answer to the question of the meaning of life, imparts inner security, and offers a sense of community. What must be distinguished from these motives are purposive-rational motives directed at the social benefits of the church: a person is in the church because it does a lot of good in the world, is committed to the poor, the sick, and the elderly, and campaigns for justice. Third, there is also a conventional, ritualistic motive for membership—namely, a person’s parents were also in the church, being in the church is simply part of life, and a person does not want to do without church rituals such as a wedding or a funeral. Among the reasons for membership, the conventional-ritualistic motive that a person belongs to a church because he or she does not wish to do without a church wedding or funeral is the most important,6 with 68 per cent of Protestants in West Germany giving this motive as the reason for their church membership. On the other hand, the somewhat contrary statement that a person belongs to a church because it provides opportunities for meaningful participation is in second-from-last place (36 per cent). Most people stay in the church not because they want to become involved and realize themselves individually in it, but because the church helps them to fulfil their need for ritual accompaniment at key moments in their life. The church is important to the individual as an institution with a particular expertise in the ritual accompaniment of biographically relevant transitions, and as an institution that supports families through rituals in situations of shared joy or sorrow. It also represents for most people, though, not simply an institution of convention to which they adhere because it is simply part of life or because their parents were also members of the church. The purely conventional motivation for membership is weaker than the value-rational motivation, with 44 per cent saying that they are in the church because it is simply part 6

We follow here the argumentation in the study Kirche: Horizont und Lebensrahmen, which one of the authors participated in (Kirchenamt der EKD 2003).

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of life, and two thirds stating that they are in the church because the Christian faith means something to them and because they agree with the Christian doctrine. The motive based on the church’s benefits to society is also more important than the motive of pure convention, with 66 per cent giving the church’s commitment to the poor and sick as a motive for their belonging to a church. Church membership is therefore a result of a mixture of different motives, among which purposive-rational reasons occupy an important position, but among which the intrinsic motives of the correspondence with Christian values and the Christian faith also play a relevant role. Custom and tradition, although apparently less significant, are also relevant. When people are asked whether they belong to a church because their parents were or are members, too, then a reasonable 61 per cent say that that is the case. In contrast, the motive for belonging to a church that is based on people’s willingness to participate and be involved is significantly weaker (36 per cent). The motivation structure looks significantly different, depending on whether we are dealing with highly committed or distanced church members (Fig. 4.2). Those who are highly committed and go to church every Sunday are motivated to belong to the church primarily by the fact that their values I am religious (13)

86

9

85

I agree with the Christian doctrine (7)

17 74

It gives me comfort at difficult times (9)

14 74

It gives me inner support (8)

16 73

It does something for the poor, elderly, and sick (2)

29 72

I do not want to do without a church wedding or funeral (1)

59 68

It provides me with an answer to the question of the meaning of life (12)

11 67

I think about what comes after death (5)

23 65

It does a lot of good in the world (11)

12 63

It campaigns for justice in the world (10)

13 61

I need the feeling of community that it provides (14)

8 54

My parents also are or were in the church (3)

28 52

Gives me the opportunity for meaningful participation (16)

5 52

Opens a perspective onto questions that are not everyday (15)

6 41

I think about my children (6)

19

It is simply part of life (4)

26 0

20

37 40

every Sunday

60

80

100

never

Fig. 4.2. Reasons for church membership among Protestants in the old Federal states according to frequency of church attendance, 2002 (in %) Question: ‘I belong to the church because…’ In parentheses: order of importance of membership motives for those church members who say that they never go to church Source: KMU IV, 2002.

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correlate with those of the church and by their own religiosity. They also find it important that the church helps them cope with their personal crises and supports them affectively. The personal and social benefits of the church are of medium importance for their church membership. Least important to them is the motive of convention—that people belong to a church because it is simply part of life or because their own parents are or were in the church. For those who are distanced from the church, however, it is the function that the church has in terms of the personal and social benefits that it brings that is most important, with people’s interest in being accompanied by the church through baptism, wedding and funeral occupying first place (Fig. 4.2). Then comes the motive of convention, while the correlation of values and the assistance in personal situations of crisis are regarded as being of least importance. Compared to the tendency of church members to leave the church, the readiness to join the church among those who are not in the church is very low. Approximately one per cent of those without religious affiliation say that they are thinking about joining the church, or have already almost decided to take this step (KMU V, 2012: Variable 1005a). For more than 95 per cent, though, joining the church is definitely out of the question. The number of people joining the church may have risen in the last twenty years (see Table 4.3), but the number is still at a low level, and the increase concerns only the Protestant Church. As before, the number of people leaving the church far outweighs the number of those joining. Those who join the church are disproportionately married couples with children and people aged over fifty (Volz 2005: 5ff.) As motives, these two groups say that they do not want to do without a church funeral, that their partner is already in the Protestant Church, or that they want to have their children baptized. The church affiliation of family members clearly plays a prominent role in people’s readiness to join or rejoin the church, as does also, though, a certain purposive rationality on the individual’s part, which we have already noticed (p. 84) with regard to motives for church membership. Besides the family context, the integration into non-family church networks and milieus can also encourage people to join the church (Hartmann and Pollack 1998: 38ff.). The primary form of entry to the church is, of course, baptism. Despite the significant decline in the proportion of baptisms to the number of children born (see Table 4.2), which itself is mainly due to the growing number of people without religious affiliation, baptism has a high acceptance among those who belong to the church. Today, there are three Catholic baptisms for every four infants with at least one Catholic parent (Arbeitshilfen 2007: 12). Equally high is the proportion of baptisms among Protestants (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland 2011: 11). If at least one parent is Catholic or Protestant, then, for every one hundred births, there are today more than ninety Catholic or Protestant baptisms (Arbeitshilfen 2007: 12).

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Almost all children from denominationally homogeneous marriages are baptized. Among children from denominationally mixed marriages, the proportion of baptisms is approximately 20 per cent lower (Ahrens and Wegner 2006). In contrast, only 40 per cent of children born to Protestant mothers outside of marriage are baptized. The family context in each case is of upmost importance for the transmission of church affiliation to the next generation. Generational transmission is more likely if the family is denominationally homogeneous and if the family consists of two parents bringing up the children. Baptism is very rarely the result of a decision made by the person himself or herself. Rather, it is still very much the parents who decide on affiliation to the church. The proportion of adult baptisms rose among Catholics in Western Germany to about 2 per cent of the total number of people baptized (Arbeitshilfen 2007: 12); among Protestants, to about 9 per cent (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland 2011: 9). While 19 per cent of Protestants in West Germany say that people should make their own decision concerning baptism, a majority of 78 per cent of Protestant respondents still advocate an infant baptism (among others, Huber, Friedrich, and Steinacker 2006: 442). That means that church affiliation is still seen mainly as something that is ascribed rather than acquired. For the majority of people, church affiliation should not be decided by an individual him or herself. This is a finding worthy of consideration in light of the notion of the right of individual self-determination that is otherwise strongly argued, and also in view of the widespread theory of an increasing religious individualization. Overall, church membership is connected by about two thirds of Protestants in West Germany to the ideas of faith, to their own religious belief, and, as such, to value-rational motives; but membership is also motivated purposively by the fact that the church helps the poor and vulnerable, and provides ritual accompaniment for people at transitional moments in life and in times of crises, and is furthermore shored up both by being integrated into the family context as well as through habit, custom, and tradition. Ties to the church are characterized not by a high degree of passion and certainly not by a readiness to be involved. Typical, rather, is a medium level of attachment. Also absent in West Germany, though, is a strong anti-clericalism, and emerging forms of an anti-church sentiment remain weak.7 By and large, the churches in the Federal Republic of the West are well accepted as institutions that do much good, that pass on Christian values, and that contribute to social integration. About three quarters of West Germans think that Christianity is the foundation of their culture (WArV 2010: v15_12). Nevertheless, the social relevance of the

7 The degree of organization among those without religious affiliation is extremely low. Only 40,000 are organized in freethinking and humanist associations, and this with several million people who have no religious affiliation.

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churches has weakened significantly in recent decades, and, especially since the late 1960s, their power to integrate has declined sharply. What remains to be explained is why membership levels in both churches remained largely stable up until 1965, why they began to lose their ability to bind people to them in the second half of the 1960s, why there was a slight recovery in the 1980s, why the downward tendencies affected the Protestant churches more than the Catholic Church (particularly in the period prior to reunification), and why the Catholic Church was more strongly affected by these tendencies after 1989. Representatives of the market model (see Stark and Finke 2000: 219) argue that there is a correlation between the decline in importance of the large religious communities, that is, the Catholic and the Protestant Church, and an increase in the social appeal of small religious groupings, such as the Methodists, the Baptists, the Seventh Day Adventists, as well as the Pentecostals and the Evangelicals. This is actually the case in West Germany with regard to many religious communities from the Charismatic and Evangelical spectrum—for example, the Federation of Free Evangelical Churches (BFeG) and the Federation of Pentecostal Churches (BFP), although the growth of the latter is very much due to immigration (Fig. 4.3). Many Evangelical groups do not so much grow as more or less maintain their levels—for example, the Union of Evangelical Free Church Congregations (BEFG). Even the sharp rise in the number of Jehovah’s Witnesses has been stagnant for about two decades. However, the traditional free churches, such as the Evangelical Methodist Church (EMK), the New Apostolic Church (NAK), and also the Seventh Day Adventists, have, like the two great churches, lost members. We also have to bear in mind that the growth of the small religious communities takes place at an extremely low level. Statistically, the domain comprising free churches as well as Evangelical and Charismatic groups does not exceed the 2 per cent mark in West Germany. In a representative survey from 1997, only 0.5 per cent of respondents said that they belonged to a new religious community (Infratest Burke 1997). Today, that number is estimated to be about 1 per cent of the total population (REMID 2012. Regarding this low number, we must remember that the new religious scene is not highly organized socially and that what prevails in this scene are market-based exchange relationships between service providers and customers who have to pay for the satisfaction of their spiritual needs. While there may seem to be something like network relationships, these are nonetheless extremely fluid (Hero 2010: 186ff.). Although the new religious scene is heavily influenced by the presence of East Asian religious practices, only a few define themselves as Buddhists or Hindus. In terms of membership, about 0.3 per cent of the German population are Buddhist; 0.12 per cent belong to Hindu religions (REMID 2012). Identification with Buddhism or Hinduism is only slightly higher at about 2 per cent. How low this number is becomes clear when we bear in mind that the proportion of those who identify with

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450,000 400,000 350,000 300,000 250,000 200,000 150,000 100,000 50,000 19 0 19 0 3 19 0 47 19 5 19 2 5 19 5 5 19 8 61 19 6 19 4 6 19 7 70 19 7 19 3 7 19 6 79 19 8 19 2 8 19 5 8 19 8 91 19 9 19 4 9 20 7 00 20 0 20 3 0 20 6 0 20 9 12

0

NAK EMK

BFeG BFP Jehovah’s Witnesses

BEFG Adventists

Fig. 4.3. Development in membership of Protestant free churches and congregations (1890–2012) (We would like to thank Dennis Kuhl, Berlin, who carried out extensive research here and also provided the figure.) Sources: NAK (New Apostolic Church): data from church; BFeG (Evangelical Free Church Congregations): data from church, ideaSpektrum 38/2006; Adventists: Heinz 2000; BFP (Federation of Pentecostal Churches): BFP statistics; BEFG (Federation of Free Evangelical Churches): BEFG statistics, ideaSpektrum 36/2006; Jehovah’s Witnesses: Netzwerk Sektenausstieg, Annotationen zu den Zeugen Jehovas Statistiknotizen 2000.

Christianity in West Germany is more than two thirds and in the East more than half (Pollack et al. 2014: 26).

4.1.2. Dimension of Practice It is often claimed that church attendance says little about people’s religiosity (Luckmann 1967; Davie 2002; Hervieu-Léger 2004; Knoblauch 1999: 94; 2009). Using figures on church attendance is considered superficial, an expression of a limited concept of religion that reduces religiosity to churchliness, and an upgrading of a merely external indicator of religiosity that has little or nothing to do with the life of faith, and let alone with the spirituality of individuals. As a detailed examination of the empirical data shows, however, church attendance is a surprisingly good indicator of religious practice, and, indeed, in a sense, of individual religiosity as a whole, too. It is closely linked to many other religious practices, such as participation in evangelizations, theological seminars, Bible circles, or groups for women, mothers, and senior citizens, events with church music, and other church events (Church Office of the EKD 2003: 23). There is only a relatively small number of church members who participate in church life and use what the church has to offer without also

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going to church (see pp. 94f.). As we will see, though, church attendance also correlates with traditional forms of individual religiosity, such as belief in God, in heaven, hell, miracles and resurrection, as well as with the significance that a person assigns to religion in his or her life. To map religious practice, we use as indicators not only church attendance, but also frequency of prayer, frequency of meditation, and the frequency with which people use other ritual practices (baptism, first communion, confirmation, wedding, and funeral). It is well known that survey results concerning church attendance do not correspond to the numbers of churchgoers counted by the churches. The survey results usually give higher numbers than the church statistics. In 2012, for example, 23 per cent of Catholics living in Germany reported going to church every Sunday (Table 4.5), while the statistics of the German Bishops’ Conference gave a figure for 2012 of just 12 per cent (Sekretariat der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz 2013: Eckdaten; for 2010 see also Table 4.6). This discrepancy is just as strong, if not stronger, among Protestants. The proportion of those belonging to the Protestant Church who said in surveys conducted in 2012 that they attend church regularly was 8 per cent (Table 4.5), well below the figure for the Catholic Church. The proportion determined through countings was even lower, however, and in 2010 amounted to no more than 3.5 per cent (Table 4.6; Evangelische Kirche 2011: 20). Sociologists of religion such as José Casanova (2006a: 17) and others (Davie 2002: 124f.) repeatedly claim that it is only in the US that actual participation figures are lower than the survey figures, and that in Europe the actual figures are higher than the survey figures. But in fact, there is no difference in how people respond to surveys when it comes to church attendance between European countries (among them also Germany) and the US (see also Presser and Stinson 1998, and Hadaway and Marler 1997). Casanova does not provide empirical evidence for the conclusion that he reaches, which is based on a miscalculation, that the empirically observable phenomena of secularization in Western Europe is a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’, and that Western European secularization can therefore be explained ‘better in terms of the triumph of the knowledge regime of secularism, than in terms of structural processes of socioeconomic development such as urbanization, education, rationalization, etc.’ (Casanova 2006a: 17; 2006b: 84). Casanova’s conclusion does demonstrate, though, the daring constructions that sociologists of religion can grasp hold of when, motivated by the fundamental reservations that they have for secularization theory, they refuse to take note of the empirical facts. If people claim that they attend church service, even though they do not participate in it, then they apparently want to testify that, despite their failure to participate, they still see themselves as active church members (see Chaves and Stephens 2003: 90). The desirability effects produced by the survey show not only the distortions that surveys can generate, but also how respondents want to be perceived. Just as a sailor who has not been to sea for a long time can still

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consider himself a sailor, so it is not unlikely that someone who gave up going to church a long time ago can still define himself or herself as a churchgoer. Churches not only in the US but also in Germany apparently enjoy a high level of social recognition, which encourages respondents to claim that they are churchgoers, even when they are not. To interpret secularization as a triumph of the European knowledge regime therefore represents a culturalistic reduction of the real changes in religious practice observable in Europe. The survey results and church statistics show that the years between 1950 and 1965 were characterized by high church attendance which remained at more or less the same level. According to the respondents’ own accounts, the proportion of people regularly going to church, both Catholic and Protestant, even increased slightly between 1952 and 1963 (Table 4.5). For the decade from 1965 to 1975, though, there was a collapse in church attendance. In the years after the collapse, the rate of church attendance continued to sink, albeit at a slower pace. Overall, though, the losses after 1975 were also considerable. They affected the Catholic Church more than the Protestant Church, and were disproportionately high among the young generation. While church attendance among 16- to 29-year-olds was still almost average in the first half of the 1960s in both the Protestant and the Catholic Church, it is now in both churches less than a tenth of the proportion of churchgoers among the over-60s (Table 4.5). Church attendance will therefore continue to fall, with this decline probably even accelerating in the future. The investigation of church attendance in the last sixty years has shown that the periods of rapid and slow change correspond fully to those periods in the development of the dimension of affiliation. After a period of relative stability, there followed from 1965 to 1975 a period of accelerated decline, which in turn was followed by a long period of moderate decline with retarding moments in the 1980s. The scaling-down of church communities was not accompanied by an intensification in the practice of church membership. On the contrary, the decrease in the proportion of churchgoers in the total number of church members outstripped the decrease in the proportion of church members in the total population. While the latter has declined by about 30 per cent over the past sixty years, the former has declined by 75 per cent in the Catholic Church and by more than half in the Protestant Church. This finding is quite telling, since it appears very plausible to assume that the minoritization of church communities will bring about an increased commitment among those who remain in the church: as long as church membership is a self-evident matter supported by society, people may have a low incentive to participate in church life; but, if it ceases to be a commonly shared convention, then it becomes instead an object of conscious individual decision, making those who make that decision likely to be more strongly involved. Precisely this effect, anticipated also by representatives of the market model, has not yet appeared in the Federal Republic, however, where participation numbers are falling

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disproportionately compared to membership numbers. If we look at church practice, then what we can see is more of an inner erosion of churches that an intensification of membership relations. As membership associations, the churches are better externally than in their internal conditions. The frequency of church attendance had already fallen slightly in the Catholic Church in the 1950s, when its membership was still completely stable, and it then collapsed almost like a landslide, when the church ties of Catholics also weakened in other respects (see, for instance, the fall in the rate of baptisms, as well the rise in the rate of people leaving the church). What this shows is that the Catholic Church in its religious practice, as measured by church attendance, has suffered greater declines than the Protestant Church, which of course began from a lower level. Church attendance is higher in rural areas than it is in urban areas. Education exerts a positive influence on church attendance (see Table 4.25), with the proportion of churchgoers higher among people who have gained higher school qualifications than among those who have not. In addition, the number of older people who go to church is disproportionately high. Finally, also of importance is whether a person has children, and, if so, how many. There is a 50 per cent chance that Protestants with four children attend church at least once a month; with three children, 30 per cent; with no children, only 17 per cent (Table 4.7). The family situation again proves to be an influential factor here in determining a person’s ties to the church. How important the family is for participation in church life is also reflected, though, in the fact that of those who go to church with others at least occasionally do so mostly with members of their own family. Ninety-four per cent say that they go to church with their (marriage) partner; 64 per cent go with their Table 4.5. Regular church attendance among Catholics and Protestants in West Germany, 1952–2012 (in %) Regular church attendance

1952

1963

1967/9

1973

1982

1991

1999

2005

2012

Catholics in total Catholics aged:

51

55

48

35

32

33

26

23

23

16–29 30–44 45–59 60 and above

52 44 50 63

52 51 56 64

40 42 53 62

24 28 46 57

19 26 29 54

17 21 34 54

10 15 24 50

6 12 18 41

4 14 17 41

Protestants in total Protestants aged:

13

15

10

7

6

8

7

8

8

16–29 30–44 45–59 60 and above

12 7 13 23

11 10 16 24

6 6 11 22

3 3 7 12

4 4 6 12

4 4 7 17

4 3 6 15

3 8 5 13

1 6 6 15

Sources: Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach 1978ff.; Köcher 1987: 175.

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Table 4.6. Proportion of those who go to church every week among Catholics and Protestants in West Germany, 1950–2010 (church countings) (in %) Catholics

Protestants

52.4 50.6 48.6 46.0 44.9 37.3 33.7 32.6 29.1 25.8 21.9 18.6 16.5 14.3 12.6

– – – 7.0 – – 5.0 5.5 5.4 5.4 4.1 4.2 4.0 3.7 3.5

1950 1955 1960 1963 1965 1970 1973 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

Sources: Liedhegener 2006: Appendix A 2, Grunddaten zur Kirchenbindung unter Katholiken; Rohde 1987: 433; Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland 1990ff.; Sekretariat der deutschen Bischofskonferenz 1990ff.

Table 4.7. Church attendance and number of children among Protestants and those with no religious affiliation in Germany, 2012 (in %) Church attendance

Not often Often Total N

Number of children 0

1

2

3

4

83.0 17.0

83.0 17.0

78.4 21.6

70.7 29.3

50.0 50.0

100 1,056

100 757

100 811

100 294

100 88

Source: KMU V, 2012.

family, while only 36 per cent go with friends or acquaintances, 21 per cent with neighbours, and only 6 per cent with work colleagues (KMU V, 2012). Protestants living in a predominantly Protestant area are more likely to attend church than Protestants who do not (KMU V, 2012). And for the Catholic Church it is also the case that church attendance is higher in areas where Catholics are in the majority than it is where Catholics are in the minority (Arbeitshilfen 2007: 23). In terms of church attendance, we are therefore also unable to substantiate the claim made by the market model that religiously plural contexts have a mobilizing power.

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As can be demonstrated statistically, church attendance is closely related to other religious practices. People who often go to church are also more likely to attend other church events, to be involved in church activities on a voluntary basis, to participate in church choirs, to go to senior citizens’, women’s and men’s groups, as well as to youth groups or discussion groups, and otherwise take an active role in the community. When asked whether they participate in church life apart from going to church, about a quarter of Protestant church members (whom we again have to focus on here due to the lack of comparable studies for the Catholic domain) replied that they did (Table 4.8). Apart from going to church for religious service, three quarters do not participate in any church event, be it church concerts, seminars, lectures, women’s or senior citizens’ groups, or meditation evenings, and are also otherwise not involved in the church community. Of those who attend church service at least once a month, 60 per cent also participate in other church activities; of those who attend church service less often, the proportion of those involved in other church activities amounts to just 5 per cent (Table 4.9). And, according to the KMU V survey, of those who never attend church service, none take part in other forms of church life. That means that the church service is the central church event not only theologically but also sociologically, the event that is able to bind church members if ever they do become involved with the church. Other forms of church activity play no independent role. Therefore, the assertion often made that there is a range of different forms of church involvement independent of Table 4.8. Church activities outside the church service Apart from attending church service, do you participate in church life? (Multiple answers possible.)

No, not at all Taking on leadership tasks (church council, leadership of a youth group, or other church group) Active participation in church services (e.g. in a preparatory group, as reader, leader of children’s church service) Attending concerts and cultural events in church and parish Attending church events (seminars, lectures, meditation) Participation in choirs or music groups Participation in a women’s group, a men’s group, a senior citizens’ group, a youth group, or a discussion group Regular participation in the parish (e.g. parish newsletter, visiting service, helping with schoolwork, practical activities, etc.) Project-related work (e.g. parish festival, handicraft, peace work, One World, etc.) Do not know, no answer Source: KMU V, 2012.

Answers N

Percentage of cases

1,162 62

75.7 4.0

57

3.7

130 109 95 177

8.4 7.1 6.2 11.5

106

6.9

110

7.2

2

0.1

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Table 4.9. Church activities outside the church service according to attendance at church service (in %) Frequency of church attendance

Number of activities

Total

0 1 2 3 or more

At least once a month

Less often or never

Total

40.0 20.5 16.9 22.5

95.0 2.9 1.2 0.9

75.8 9.1 6.7 8.5

100

100

100

Source: KMU V, 2012.

the church service, and that these may also even be able to justify talking about different types of church membership—an altruistic and solidarity-based Christianity, an educational Christianity, a cultural Christianity, a projectbased Christianity—stands on weak empirical foundations. Although quite a few people do participate in other church activities, they usually do so as part of the church congregation. There is a large overlap between the congregation at Sunday service and the community of volunteers. For example, of those who participate in at least one church activity besides church service, four fifths also attend church service at least once a month; of those who participate in at least three church activities, that figure increases to more than 90 per cent (not shown here). Both groups are, however, far from being identical. If 5 per cent of the church members who attend services less than once a month participate in other church activities, the absolute number of these people amounts to almost as many as committed churchgoers due to the small numbers of those who attend Sunday services regularly and the large number of those who do not. It seems that the social contacts condense to the extent that they are part of the congregation at church service. In any case, the number of highly active church members who, as well as attending church service, go to other church events or are otherwise involved in the church seems to be not inconsiderable. That number probably amounts to more than 20 per cent of Protestant church members. By and large, participation in church events is declining. While 623,000 participated in children’s and youth groups in 1980 within the Protestant Church, only 267,000 (fewer than half) did so thirty years later (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland 2006: 18; 2011: 26). The Protestant Church suffered similar declines regarding Bible days, women’s and mothers’ groups, seminars on social issues, and even senior citizens’ groups. Only at Christmas service do the Protestant churches reach the levels attained by their Catholic counterparts. For years, participation in vespers and matins on Christmas Eve has remained at about 30 per cent of church members in the Western Protestant churches (Table 4.10); in the Protestant

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Religion and Modernity Table 4.10. Proportion of those attending religious service on Christmas Eve in the total number of Protestants in West Germany (church countings) (in %) Proportion of churchgoers 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

20.8 26.0 29.5 29.4 30.8 31.9 32.8 29.7

Source: Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland 1990ff.

churches in the East, that number has now even climbed to more than 55 per cent (Evangelische Kirche 2011: 15). The high numbers attending Christmas church services again indicate the particular importance of the family for people’s readiness to make use of what the church offers. People go to vespers and matins on Christmas Eve not alone, but in the circle of their immediate family. For many, going to church is simply part of the Christmas festivities in their families. The dimension of religious practice also includes the full range of ritual practices. Even if the majority of church members in the Protestant and Catholic churches do not participate intensively in church life, there is still a high demand for church rituals such as baptisms or funerals. We have already pointed out that about 90 per cent of children who have at least one parent who is Protestant or Catholic are baptized in West Germany (Arbeitshilfen 2007: 12; Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland 2009: 6). The burial rate, that is, the proportion of church funerals compared to the number of deaths of church members, is more than 90 per cent among Catholics, and still 85 per cent among Protestants (Arbeitshilfen 2007: 17; Evangelische Kirche 2011: 17). Only in big cities is it significantly lower. Contrary to some assertions, the churches therefore still have very much a monopoly on rituals when it comes to baptism and burial. There is one ritual that is in steep decline, however: the church wedding. Today, of those marriages in which at least one of the partners is Catholic, only 30 per cent are married in church (Fig. 4.4). Of those marriages where at least one of the partners is Protestant, the figure is 33 per cent (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland 2011: 15). Here, the weakening of the marriage rate is affected not only by the decreasing willingness to have a church marriage, but also by the decreasing likelihood of a denominationally homogeneous pairing, which is itself due to changes in the denominational landscape. However, even when

Dechurchification and Religious Persistence: West Germany 80 72.8 70

97

75.1 70.8

68.2

63.7 58.7

60

57.5 52.3 48.3

50

41.4 40 33.9 29.8

30 20 10 0 1951

1955

1960

1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

Fig. 4.4. Catholic marriages in West Germany, 1951–2005 (from 1990, the whole of Germany) to every 100 civil marriages, where at least one partner is Catholic (without marriage ceremonies with a dispensation from the Catholic form of marriage) Sources: Arbeitshilfen 2007: 16; Kirchliches Handbuch Vol. XXVI 1962–8: 547.

both partners are Catholic, there are only 48 Catholic marriages to every 100 civil marriages; and, when both partners are Protestant, only 56 Protestant marriages to every 100 civil marriages. At the beginning of the 1960s, those figures were 95 per cent for Catholic couples (Kirchliches Handbuch Vol. XXVI 1962–8), and 85 per cent for Protestant couples (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland 1997: 13). The high use of baptism and burial, but also of confirmation and first communion, indicates that the Protestant and the Catholic Church have an almost unbroken importance in the area of transitional rituals, something that is confirmed also by membership surveys. According to such surveys, the majority of church members want the church to accompany them through baptism, confirmations, wedding, and funeral at the turning points of their lives, and to give them their blessing (Kirchenamt der EKD 2003: 27). Among church members, it is only the work of the church for the elderly, sick, disabled, and socially disadvantaged, its conducting of church services, and proclamation of the Christian message, that enjoy the same level of appreciation as church rituals. Where the church concerns itself with everyday issues and with people’s working lives, offers cultural events, or even has something

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to say about fundamental political questions, however, then it is not so much in demand. The church should operate in those areas where it is competent, but not in those areas where other more competent institutions, such as political parties, trade unions, or service companies, are available; it should be active where people are faced with old age, sickness, and distress, where they are struggling to cope, as well as in cases of biographical upheavals and personal insecurity, such as birth, becoming an adult, and death; and it should fulfil its religious core function of keeping the channels of spiritual communication open by proclaiming the Christian message and holding religious services. The church represents the unavailable; it is the institution in the background that people like to fall back on in times of need, but whose practices they themselves rarely participate in, an institution that people largely consider to be irrelevant for their daily needs. Even though most church members are barely involved in the church at all, they do want to be able to take advantage of its benefits when needed.8 The reason that people do not participate more in church life is therefore not because they reject and criticize the church. Rather, it is because being involved in the church is not particularly important. When church service is held, people have other things to do that matter more to them: having a lie-in, reading the newspaper, visiting friends, going off somewhere with the family, finishing off work. Of all the reasons that people give for not going to church (and again we are including here only Protestants), the most important is that they consider the church service as being unimportant for their faith, followed by the fact that they want to relax at the weekend (Huber et al. 2006: 455). The two motives seem to belong together. People consider the church service to be unnecessary for their own faith, and have other things to do that they consider to be more important. In contrast, it is only a minority who feel discouraged from participating in church service by, for example, the sermons given or the singing of hymns. The dimension of religious practice includes not only practice in public, but also practice in private, which we shall gauge here according to frequency of prayer or meditation. In West Germany, about 20 per cent of the population say that they pray daily, and a further 15 per cent pray at least once a week (Allbus 2012: Variable 271). The frequency of prayer among Catholics is significantly higher than it is among Protestants. In the East of Germany, where the majority of people have no religious affiliation, only about 7 per cent pray daily and only another 5 per cent do so weekly. Asked whether they take time for meditation or inner contemplation, a few more in both West and East say that they do. While, according to the reliable surveys of Allbus, no more 8 This is also true to a limited extent when it comes to children’s upbringing, with churches considered important when it comes to the teaching of values. Three quarters of all West Germans believe that children should receive a religious upbringing (C&R 2006: Variable Q9 C).

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than 10 per cent of the total population go to church every week in West Germany, the proportion of those who pray at least once a week is almost three times that number. The private practice of worship seems to have a higher intensity than religious practice carried out in public, which can be interpreted as supporting the individualization thesis. As is shown by the differences mentioned in the frequency of prayer between Catholics and Protestants, and between East and West, though, the private practice of prayer also clearly correlates with church attendance. This is already evident from the fact that, over the last thirty years, not only church attendance has waned, but also the frequency of prayer and meditation (Table 4.11). Correlation analysis confirms that church service and prayer are very strongly correlated (r = 0.811). There are no data available for the practice of prayer beyond the past thirty years, although in the 1960s the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research did record statements regarding the commonness of the table prayer, and we can draw on this instead. The table prayer has now largely disappeared from the daily life of families. In 1965, almost two thirds of the West German population could still remember that in their childhood the family prayed before or after dinner (Allensbacher Archiv, IfD-Umfragen 1098, 4008). Of those who were over sixty at the time, nearly four fifths said that this had been common in their childhood. That means that, in the period before the First World War, the overwhelming majority of families prayed at meal times. Eight decades later, when the Allensbach Institute repeated the question, this family ritual was only practised by a minority, with three quarters of the population saying in 1982 that they never prayed at meal times. Besides the traditional forms of Christian religious practice, we must also take account of religious practices which have only recently become more attractive and which, according to media reports, have become particularly popular: fasting, pilgrimage, and meditation. None of these alternative practices have attained the level of prayer or going to church service, however. In West Germany, no more than 15 per cent of the population have participated Table 4.11. Proportion of those who pray, according to age groups, 1981–2010 (in %) EVS-wave

Age

under 30 30–44 45–59 60 and older

Total

1981–4

1990–3

1999–2001

2008–10

47.4 60.7 70.2 85.0

54.9 64.2 74.4 83.1

50.3 59.1 55.5 72.3

38.6 47.9 48.5 73.1

67.3

69.7

60.2

54.0

Question: ‘Do you take some moments of prayer, meditation, or contemplation, or something like that?’ Source: EVS 1981–2010.

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in a pilgrimage, with 9 per cent having done so on several occasions (C&R 2006: Q6). According to data provided by the Religion Monitor, 5 per cent of people say that they meditate daily. According to the same source, the proportion of those who pray daily amounts to almost five times that number (23 per cent) (Religion Monitor 2012: F24).

4.1.3. Dimension of Religious Ideas, Beliefs, and Experiences To understand religious ideas, beliefs, and experiences, we rely here on one indicator in particular: the question of the extent to which people say that they believe in God. Belief in God is highly correlated with many other beliefs, such as the belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the belief in the coming of the kingdom of God, and the belief in heaven and hell. It forms a central element in the individual’s world of religious ideas and experiences. But we also need to take account of religious worldviews and experiences outside the church, such as New Age, theosophy, esotericism, Ayurveda, and Reiki, since these phenomena often have a non-theistic character. The question here is not only how important such non-theistic and non-Christian religious ideas and experiences are, but also how they relate to the theistic world of Christian ideas. In contradiction to the individualization thesis, we must assert to begin with that not only church ties but also belief in God have been in decline for decades. Even if the decline is not constant, the overall trend is unambiguous. In West Germany, 9 per cent of the population said in 2008 that they now believe in God, but had not previously done so, whereas 16 per cent said that they used to believe in God, but no longer do so now (Table 4.12). In 1991, the difference between the two responses was even greater, with 23 per cent saying that they no longer believed in God, and 9 per cent saying that they had found God. This downward trend in people’s belief in God is evidenced also if we not only rely on retrospective assessments, but also look at the development of what people say themselves about their belief in God over the last few decades. In 1949, nearly 90 per cent of the German population said that they believed in God, 78 per cent without reservation, and an additional 10 per cent according to their own non-church ideas (Table 4.13). This belief in God was much less widespread among those respondents with a university degree than among the average population. At the same time, the proportion of those who said that they believed in God according to their own non-church ideas was disproportionately high among university graduates (Table 4.13). Twenty years later, in 1968, more than 80 per cent of the West German population still believed in God (Table 4.14). Then, in just seven years, the proportion fell by about ten percentage points. Since then, the proportion has declined only slightly and has levelled off at a value of just below the 70 per cent mark (Table 4.14). As

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these survey results show, we can neither claim that individual belief in God is independent of church affiliation (‘believing without belonging’—Grace Davie), nor talk of a return of the gods (Friedrich Wilhelm Graf). On the contrary, younger people believe less in God than older people (see Table 4.12: ‘always believed in God’). In addition, the proportion of those who say that they have stopped believing in God is the greatest in the youngest age group (comprising 18- to 29-year-olds). However, the decline in the belief in God does not seem to have been as dramatic as the decline in religious practice, such as in church attendance. The correlation between the two indicators emerges in the fact that the greatest losses occurred in the same time period: between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s (see Tables 4.5, 4.6, and 4.14, and Fig. 4.4). The two variables then diverged, however. While church attendance continued to fall sharply, the acceptance of belief in God remained at approximately the same level and weakened only slightly after 1975 (Table 4.14). Can we see signs here of a tendency to religious individualization, in other words, the strengthening of a form of individual religiosity independent of the church’s religious message? What would support this claim is the fact not only that belief in God has declined more slowly than church attendance, but also that this decline has been accompanied by a change in people’s ideas of God. More and more people no longer believe in a personal God, but instead in some sort of a higher spiritual being or life force, and in West Germany it is now even the case that more people believe in a higher being than in a personal God (Table 4.15 and

Table 4.12. Increases and decreases in the belief in God according to age, West and East Germany, 1991 and 2008 (in %) Belief in God

West 1991

East

2008

1991

Total 18–29 30–44 45–59 60+

2008 Total 18–29 30–44 45–59 60+

Never believed in God

10

11

21

12

10

6

51

65

78

82

71

48

Not now, but used to

23

16

23

14

15

16

25

14

12

6

8

23

Now yes, but did not used to

9

9

10

11

11

7

5

6

3

3

7

9

Always believed in God

58

64

47

64

64

71

20

15

7

9

14

19

Source: ISSP 1991, 2008.

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Table 4.13. ‘Do you believe in God?’, differentiated according to gender and level of schooling, in West Germany, 1949 (in %) Yes

According to own religious ideas

No

No answer

Total

Total Men Women

78 71 84

10 12 8

6 9 4

6 8 4

100 100 100

Level of schooling Basic GCSEs A-levels University

80 75 75 63

8 12 12 16

7 4 5 5

5 9 8 16

100 100 100 100

Source: Noelle and Neumann 1956: 123.

Table 4.14. Belief in God in West Germany, 1968–2008 (in %) ‘Do you personally believe in a God?’ Yes No Don’t know/no answer

1968

1975

1981

1990

1999

2008

81

72

72 16 12

63 18 19

70 21 9

67 24 9

NB: The deviations from the data in Table II.2 can be explained by the fact that here, in contrast to the data in Table II.2, the category of those who answered ‘I don’t know’ or gave no answer was also included. Source: Gallup Opinion Index; EVS.

Allbus 2012: Variable 185). The West Germans are typical here, since, in most other Western European countries, the image of God that people have has shifted from a concrete and personal one to an image that is abstract and impersonal (see Table 10.8 in Chapter 10 of this volume on the United States). In the East of Germany, only 28 per cent (Allbus) or 26 per cent (EVS) of people believe in God. But there, too, it is the case that those few who still believe in God at all have the idea of an impersonal higher being rather than that of a personal God. Eleven per cent of people in the West and 15 per cent in the East describe themselves as agnostic: they do not know what they should believe (Table 4.15). But, if the group of agnostics are forced to decide either for or against believing in God, then something remarkable emerges: 32 per cent of the group of agnostics in the West would, despite their uncertainty, believe in God, while, in the East, that proportion is only 10 per cent (Table 4.16). The difference between East and West is not random, but is something that occurs systematically. If the religiously undecided are asked about their denominational affiliation, then the difference becomes even greater. In West Germany, 77 per cent of the agnostics belong to a denomination, while, in the East, that figure is only 17 per cent (Table 4.16). Similar differences, albeit not quite as striking, can be found when it comes, for example, to the extent to which

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people assess themselves as religious, and to the importance that people ascribe to religion in their own lives (Table 4.16). There are even differences between deists, who believe in a higher life force or a spiritual being, but not in a personal God, in the East and West: in the West, 92 per cent belong to a religious community, and 84 per cent believe in God, while, in the East, the figures are 49 per cent and 56 per cent respectively (Table 4.16). We assume that these systematic differences between East and West are attributable to the effectiveness of the respective denominational majority culture. When faced with the decision of belief, the agnostics and deists tend to fall into line with their respective majority culture. In the West, where the majority of people still belong to a church, they are more likely to give answers favourable to religion; and, in the East, where the majority of people have no religious affiliation, they tend to give answers that express their distance from religion.9 This assimilation to the respective majority culture10 cannot be seen among theists, that is, those who believe in a personal God, however. For this group, denominational affiliation, belief in God, religious self-evaluation, and assessment of the importance of religion, are almost equal in East and West. We must clearly make a distinction here when it comes to belief in transcendence between a strongly internalized belief in a personal God and a belief in a higher being that is more strongly supported culturally. While the former seems to be relatively resistant to the effects of the denominational majority culture, the latter is apparently more sensitive to the normative standards that are culturally rooted. The belief in transcendence has not disappeared in the West Germany of today, which makes it wrong to claim that the heaven over

9 These findings are confirmed in a comparison with Eastern European countries. In strongly secularized Estonia, for example, 19% of those who answered the differentiated question about ideas of transcendence with ‘I do not know what to think about it’ answered the dichotomous question concerning belief in God with ‘yes’, and 66% with ‘no’; in the Czech Republic, which is also one of the most strongly secularized countries in Europe, the ratio was 11% to 64%. In those countries of Central and Eastern Europe that are shaped by church and religion, on the other hand, this ratio is reversed: in Poland, it is 72% (‘yes’) to 16% (‘no’); in Slovakia, 53% to 22%; Romania, 90% to 5%. Of those who believe not in a personal God, but in a higher being or a spiritual force, only about every other person in Estonia (55%) and the Czech Republic (59%) identify themselves as religious when it comes to the simple question about belief in God, while in Poland (94%), Slovakia (88%), and Romania (98%) almost everyone from this group classify themselves as believing in God. It is the case again here, then, that these two groups, when faced with the simple question about belief in God and having to decide whether they are religious or not religious, answer ‘yes’ under ‘pressure’ from the majority in the countries whose culture is heavily shaped by church and religion, and ‘no’ in the countries in which significant portions of the population hold secular positions. We gratefully draw on the results of analyses provided by Olaf Müller in his dissertation (see Müller 2013a: 124). 10 It is easy to see that the theorem of majority confirmation, as we shall call it, is inspired by Émile Durkheim. Durkheim (1995: 208ff.) traces the power of religion to the power of society over the individual, to the individual’s dependence on society, which is superior to him or her, to the pressure and physical coercion exerted by society, but also to its moral authority, its spiritual aura, and the public opinion that prevails within it.

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Table 4.15. Belief in God or in a higher power (in %) West Germany

East Germany

25 44 11 15 5

9 17 15 55 4

100

100

Belief in a personal God Belief in some sort of spirit or life force I don’t really know what to think I don’t really think there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force No answer/don’t know Total Source: EVS 2008.

Table 4.16. Denominational affiliation, belief in God, religious self-assessment, and importance of religion, according to different ideas of transcendence (in %) Denominational affiliation

Belief in God (yes/no)

Religious person (yes/no)

Importance of religion

West Germany personal God spirit or life force agnostic sceptical

94 92 77 51

97 84 32 8

83 62 20 12

67 43 19 7

East Germany personal God spirit or life force agnostic sceptical

87 49 17 5

88 56 10 1

82 47 8 1

67 34 10 1

Personal God: ‘There is a personal God’; spirit or life force: ‘There is some sort of spirit or life force’; agnostic: ‘I don't really know what to think’; sceptical: ‘I don't really think there is any sort of spirit, God or life force’; denominational affiliation: proportion belonging to a religious denomination; religious self-assessment: threepoint scale (‘religious person’—‘not a religious person’—‘convinced atheist’), proportion of those who categorize themselves as a religious person; belief in God: dichotomous question, proportion of those who answer ‘yes’; importance of religion: four-point scale, proportion of those who consider religion to be ‘quite important’ or ‘very important’ in their life; all figures in percentages. Source: EVS 2008.

Germany is losing (Großbölting 2016). It is true, though, that belief in transcendence is weakening and shifting its content, with belief in an impersonal higher being becoming increasingly important. It is precisely this form of belief in transcendence that is more strongly dependent on the religious beliefs of the respective majority than personal belief in God, and that relies on the support of society. This support, of course, is decreasing more and more. The difference between belief in a personal God and in a higher being is also reflected in the fact that the former generally has a higher priority in the mental system of the individual than the latter. Those who believe in a personal God ascribe to religion a more important role in their lives than

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those who believe in a higher being (Allbus 2012). Theists also ascribe their religious beliefs a greater importance in the upbringing of their children and in their relation with their partner than deists, and the former tend more to believe that their religious beliefs affect their political opinion than the latter (see Table II.4 in the Conclusion to Part II). The extent to which a tendency towards religious individualization can be seen from the fact that the weakening of belief in God is only slight in comparison to that of church attendance can therefore be viewed critically. Belief in God represents, in its abstractly general form of belief in an impersonal higher power, a relatively conventional feature of individual religiosity, while personal belief in God is more individual, more discriminating, and more formative. It is precisely this kind of personal belief, though, that fewer and fewer people in West Germany hold. The proportion of those who see themselves as religious sceptics or atheists, and who say that they do not believe in God, is not very great in West Germany. Although the number has risen in recent years, it still amounts to only 15 per cent in the West. In the East, however, religious sceptics and atheists represent the majority with a proportion of the population of 55 per cent (Table 4.15). Not only belief in God, but also other Christian beliefs, have declined. In 1967, 59 per cent of the West German population still believed in the Last Judgment, 39 per cent in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, 36 per cent in the virgin birth, and 49 per cent in the descent of man from Adam and Eve. As Fig. 4.5 shows, these beliefs lost much of their approval over the next twenty-five years. In only one instance has approval remained about the same: on the question of whether there is life after death. Table 4.17 demonstrates the development of this form of belief in transcendence more accurately and for a longer period. At the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, belief in life after death dropped significantly. This corresponds to the general trend during this period, as we have already seen from other indicators, such as church affiliation (among Protestants), church attendance, baptisms, and belief in God. From the mid-1970s, the approval values for belief in life after death rose, which also paralleled the general trend. They then climbed in the 1990s, but this time to an unprecedented level, an increase that cannot be observed for the other indicators of religiosity, only to fall back again slightly thereafter. The exceptional increase in the values in the 1990s was probably due to a substantive change in the meaning of belief in life after death. Whereas, in the 1960s, people had perhaps understood this belief primarily as an expression of Christian hopes in the afterlife, people in the 1990s possibly interpreted it more as a form of extension of the individual life. It is striking in any case that belief in life after death is more common among younger people than it is among the older, something that runs counter to the age distribution that we otherwise see in the affirmation of ideas of transcendence. Agreement with numerous Christian beliefs has declined since the 1980s, such as belief in the divine

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creation of the world, in the resurrection of the dead, in the Trinity, or in the status of Jesus Christ as God’s son. For example, 47 per cent of West Germans believed in 1986 that God had created the world, while, in 2012, that figure had dropped to only 35 per cent (Mein Glaube 2013: 25). In other areas, though, religiosity in the last thirty years has increased in in contrast to the general trend— for example, when it comes to belief in miracles. To what extent we can justify empirically talk of a process of religious individualization in West Germany is a question, though, that we can answer less by pointing to developments in the belief in God and in other Christian beliefs prescribed by the church, and more by pointing to changes in the area of non-Christian religiosity that individuals freely choose from on the market of religious goods. This area has not been covered particularly well empirically. While there has been a wealth of qualitative studies on non-church forms of religiosity, on spirituality, esotericism, New Age, psycho-cults, the cult of the body, magic, metempsychosis, and reincarnation (Bochinger 1994; Klosinski 1996; Gross 2000; Knoblauch 1989, 1991, 1993, 2009; Widl 1994; Bochinger et al. 2009), none of these can provide reliable information on developments in this field over the last few years and decades. Representative data have either not been used at all, or used only selectively, but they have not been compared systematically with each other over a longer period on the basis of consistent criteria and questions. There is a lack of empirical evidence for the repeated

56

There is a God

68

38 38

God is all-powerful

50 48 50

There is life after death There is a Last Judgment

59

30 30

There is Original Sin 24

There is hell

34 29

Jesus is the Son of God

42 42

Jesus raised the dead

53 77

Jesus healed the sick 33

Jesus rose bodily 22

Jesus was born to the Virgin Mary Jesus fed the 5,000 with five loaves of bread and two fish Jesus had brothers and sisters

36 40

0

20

50 57

43

32

Man derives from Adam and Eve

82

39

49 40 1992

60

80

1967

Fig. 4.5. Development of religious beliefs in West Germany, 1967–92 (in %) Source: Der Spiegel No. 25 (15 June 1992), 46.

100

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Table 4.17. Belief in life after death in West Germany, 1956–2006 (in %) ‘Do you think that there is some form of life after death?’ 1956 Yes No Don’t know/no answer

42 34 24

1963 1964 1971 1975 1980 1982 1992 1997 2001 2004 38 34 28

39 35 26

35 42 23

36 40 24

40 35 25

42 31 27

44 33 23

50 26 24

47 26 27

47 24 29

‘Do you believe in life after death?’ 1961 1968 Yes

38

41

1975 1981 33

36

1990 38

2002 2005 38

43

Source: Allensbacher Archiv, IFD-Umfragen 093, 1082, 1086, 3021, 3077, 4046, 4060, 4079, 5064, 6043, 7008, 7057.

claim that there is a growing interest in meditation, full-body techniques, Reiki, pendulums, astrology, and other forms of non-Christian religiosity. We can also only speculate here when it comes to the phenomenon of nonChristian religiosity. We do so, though, on the basis of reliable empirical data, which enables us to make probability statements concerning trends. Before discussing how non-Christian religiosity has changed in West Germany, we wish to make a few observations on its current distribution. There is no doubt that the level of people’s openness to forms of non-church religiosity is quite high in West Germany. At the end of the 1990s, about one third of people expressed an interest in inexplicable phenomena such as clairvoyance or telepathy, about a quarter in questions of metempsychosis, and about one fifth in esotericism (Das Sonntagsblatt 1997: 65), and interest in such phenomena has certainly not declined since then. According to a survey by the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research, a fifth of Germans thought in 2001 that people should take a closer look at astrology, while, in another study, about 10 per cent of people were in favour of finding out more about colour therapy, Tarot, Reiki, and anthroposophy (Noelle-Neumann and Köcher 2002: 376), and a total of 61 per cent of West Germans found at least one interesting esoteric practice among the 22 presented to them (NoelleNeumann and Köcher 2002: 376). Also, the proportion of those who report at least occasional experiences with such practices is by no means insignificant. As Table 4.18 shows, the proportion in the West German population who have experienced phenomena such as New Age, anthroposophy, theosophy, Zen meditation, mysticism, magic, and spiritual healing is generally only between 2 and 7 per cent. But far more people (usually between 20 and 25 per cent) say that they have had experience with pendulums and divining rods, with tarot cards and fortune telling, with astrology, yoga, Tai Chi, Reiki, and Ayurveda. If we add all those

Table 4.18. Experience of non-church religiosity in West Germany, 2002, 2012 (in %) Do not know

Have experienced

What do you think of it? a lot

New Age, Age of Aquarius Anthroposophy, theosophy Zen meditation, wisdoms of the Far East Reincarnation Gemstone healing, Bach flowers Mysticism Magic, spiritualism, occultism Miracle healers, spiritual healers Pendulum dowsing/divining Tarot cards, fortune telling Astrology, horoscopes Yoga, Tai Chi, Qi Gong Reiki, Ayurveda, Shiatsu, etc. Source: Allbus 2002, 2012.

a little

nothing at all

2002

2012

2002

2012

2002

2012

2002

2012

2002

2012

61.1 61.0 41.7 33.1 28.5 24.8 12.4 10.3 10.2 9.0 3.2

61.7 62.4 39.1

2.8 6.0 5.6 2.0 13.5 4.1 5.5 6.5 21.0 17.0 29.1

2.6 4.8 6.2

1.9 4.9 11.5 4.7 8.9 4.0 2.4 4.1 9.2 3.7 8.2

2.1 3.9 10.1

11.5 16.8 24.8 19.6 30.1 26.3 15.4 19.9 30.7 18.3 39.5

12.8 15.1 27.5

20.8 14.2 16.4 37.3 29.6 41.4 67.2 63.5 47.8 67.0 47.2

19.0 14.0 17.3

24.6 14.6 10.2 11.7 9.3 4.5 7.9 18.3

4.3 5.3 6.9 16.3 12.5 25.1 25.8 19.5

2.2 3.1 6.0 2.8 5.3 28.9 21.4

17.0 16.9 23.3 13.4 33.2 39.6 37.1

63.2 66.7 56.3 72.2 54.5 20.8 19.3

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together who claim to have experienced any of these practices, then we reach a figure in West Germany of 58 per cent. This is a significant percentage, one that forces us to look in more detail at the field of non-Christian religiosity. We first have to state that the field of non-Christian religiosity is extremely diverse, and that the techniques and systems of ideas asked about address a wide range of meanings—from problems of predicting the future to a holistic interpretation of reality, from questions about life after death to possibilities of expanding consciousness, from concerns with the possibility of influencing human destiny to physical training. A factor analysis crystallizes three different dimensions (Table 4.19). A first factor comprises primarily phenomena of older forms of non-Christian religiosity, such as magic, spiritualism, occultism, pendulums, divining rods, astrology, and fortune telling. A second factor consists of newer forms of non-Christian religiosity, such as New Age, Zen meditation, anthroposophy, and mysticism. And the third factor comprises alternative body and healing practices, such as yoga, Tai Chi, Ayurveda, Reiki, homeopathy, Bach flower remedies, and others. The three factors can be separated relatively easily. Only the item ‘miracle healer/spiritual healer’ cannot be assigned to one of the factors, for which reason we have excluded it from our analysis. If we look again more closely at the phenomena of non-Christian religiosity according to the different factors, then different distribution patterns clearly emerge. In the case of the old forms of non-Christian religiosity, the proportion of experiences is now only 32 per cent. Eighteen per cent have only had experience of one form, most with astrology and horoscopes. If we ignore Table 4.19. Principal components analysis of forms of non-church religiosity; rotated component matrix Components 1 New Age, Age of Aquarius Zen meditation, wisdom of the Far East Anthroposophy, theosophy Mysticism Magic, spiritualism, occultism Pendulum dowsing/divining Astrology, horoscopes Tarot cards, fortune telling Yoga, Tai Chi, Qi Gong Ayurveda, Reiki, Shiatsu, etc. Homoeopathy, Bach flowers, etc.

2

3

0.714 0.661 0.643 0.631 0.643 0.570 0.723 0.700 0.738 0.733 0.721

Extraction method: principal components analysis; rotation method: varimax with Kaiser normalization; factor loadings below 0.4 are not displayed. Source: Allbus 2012.

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astrology as a form of entertainment made popular by the mass media, we then have a proportion of only 14 per cent who have had personal experience of old forms of non-Christian religiosity. When it comes to the new alternative religiosity, then the proportion of those reporting having experienced at least one of the methods falls again: to 10 per cent, with only 3 per cent having experienced more than one of the methods. When it comes to the alternative healing practices, however, the proportion of those who have tried at least one of them rises to as much as 48 per cent. Alternative medical body techniques such as yoga, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, Reiki, Ayurveda, and Shiatsu therefore enjoy considerable acceptance among the German population, for whom the line between religious and medical practice is fluid. Many therefore understand these techniques less as religious rituals than as alternative health methods, and use them primarily as practical sources of help in their lives. We can therefore define the field of alternative religious practices in the stricter sense as being relatively small. Barely more than 10 to 15 per cent, and at most 25 per cent, of the West German population have ever experienced non-Christian forms of religiosity. The catchment area for alternative religious practice, with its fluid transitions to alternative medical body care, is significantly larger, however. This allows us to confirm a thesis put forward by Hubert Knoblauch (2002, 2008), one that he has long held without yet offering empirical evidence for it: the thesis that the religious is diffused throughout society. Our analyses do indeed suggest that a process of religious saturation of society is taking place, a process that forces open systemic borders to other functional areas such as medicine, and that redraws the boundaries between religion and non-religion.11 Even if the proportion of those who have tried alternative religious practices not only once (perhaps out of curiosity), but again and again, and even perhaps belong to a new religious scene, is relatively small, it is still the case that more than half of West Germans have at some point had dealings with such practices. Esotericism, spiritualism, holistic body practices—these have a presence in society as a whole. But what do people think of esoteric and therapeutic methods? Usually fewer than 10 per cent of the respondents say that they think a lot of the forms of non-church and holistic religiosity (see Table 4.18). If they know anything at all about them, then most think only a little or nothing at all of them. One

11 We can also observe similar processes of dedifferentiation in the relationship between religion and science, as well as between religion and art. If in the humanities a post-empirical theory of science has taken root, one that treats reality as inaccessible, prefers qualitative to quantitative methods, interprets objectively intentioned statements primarily as an expression of subjective preferences and interests, and sees everything as being connected to everything else, then the holistic thinking of esotericism has indeed penetrated far into academic life. On boundary work on the religious field, see Reuter (2009a, 2009b); on the dispersion of the religious, see Ebertz (1999); on the dissolution of the religious, see Bourdieu (2009: 243f.)— these are terms that describe in different ways the diffusion of the religious in society.

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exception here are the body therapies in alternative medicine such as yoga, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, Reiki, Ayurveda, and Shiatsu, with about a quarter of the West German population having a high opinion of them. These body techniques are probably appreciated above all as healing practices and body-awareness exercises. More meaningful for assessing the significance of non-Christian religiosity is therefore the question of whether people believe in the efficacy of alternative religious methods. Unfortunately, this question has only rarely been asked in representative surveys. In the study ‘Church and Religion in an Enlarged Europe’ (C&R 2006), 25 per cent of West Germans said that they thought that there was at least something to the argument that amulets, stones, or crystals can be helpful (Table 4.20), 12 per cent said that they believed in the efficacy of magic, spiritualism, and occultism, and 18 per cent said that they believed in astrology and horoscopes. Despite the boom in esotericism often claimed by the mass media, belief in these ideas and practices remains far below the acceptance of belief in God. While according to the data of the Religion Monitor 2012, 47 per cent of West Germans believe strongly, and a further 13 per cent believe quite firmly, that God or something divine exists, and yet a further 13 per cent are moderately convinced of His existence, the proportion of those who believe strongly in magic, spiritualism, occultism, and Nirvana is only 3 per cent, and of those who believe moderately, 9 per cent. To sum up, then, we can see that approximately 60 per cent of West Germans are open to phenomena of non-Christian religiosity and would consider dealing more closely at some point with one or the other esoteric practice. More than half have already tried out alternative religious practices. Most do not think much of them, but are still curious. Ten to 25 per cent believe, if not strongly, then at least a little, in the effectiveness of certain alternative religious practices. No more than 10 per cent (and probably closer to 5 per cent than 10 per cent) are strongly convinced esotericists. As a source Table 4.20. Distribution of belief in forms of non-Christian religiosity in West Germany (in %) Reincarnation Astrology Definitely Probably Probably not Definitely not

9.1 18.7 32.9 39.2

4.5 12.2 22.8 60.5

Amulets, stones, Magic, spiritualism, Nirvana crystals occultism 8.0 17.3 22.9 51.8

2.7 9.1 18.9 69.2

3.0 8.9 32.9 55.1

Response categories for the question of belief in astrology, in the efficacy of amulets, stones and crystals, as well as in magic, spiritualism, occultism: ‘agree strongly’, ‘agree somewhat’, ‘disagree somewhat’, ‘disagree strongly’ (C&R 2006); response categories for the question of belief in reincarnation and nirvana: ‘Yes, definitely’, ‘Yes, probably’, ‘No, probably not’, ‘No, definitely not’ (ISSP 2008). Sources: C&R 2006; ISSP 2008.

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of ideas and a resource for practical behaviour, esotericism has a broad influence on society, but only a minority accept esoteric ideas and practices. Since we lack reliable figures that cover a number of years, an analysis of age distribution of non-Christian religious ideas could perhaps prove fruitful here. This approach treats age differences as indices of emerging historical changes, but cannot rule out that changes occur in the course of a person’s life that contradict the assumed historical trend. Where belief in astrology and horoscopes is concerned, there are, though, hardly any age differences (C&R 2006), and the same is true of belief in reincarnation (ISSP 2008). In the case of belief in magic, spiritualism, and occultism, though, there are age differences, with younger people agreeing with this form of belief more strongly than older people (C&R 2006), and this is the case with belief in Nirvana, too (ISSP 2008). In contrast to Christian beliefs such as belief in God, in heaven, in resurrection, and in sin, the likelihood that people agree with non-Christian religious ideas is therefore at its greatest not among older people but among the younger. Unless it is a life-cycle effect, we can deduce from this that there will be an increase in these forms of non-Christian religiosity in the future. Does this mean that we are dealing here with a decrease in the importance of traditional forms of Christian religiosity and, conversely, with an increase in non-Christian religiosity—and therefore, in actual fact, with a tendency to religious individualization? We cannot rule that out. Processes of religious individualization are indeed also taking place within the church. An unreflective acceptance of church prescriptions has not been observed for a long time now. More and more church members have a selective relationship to church dogma and church rituals, and still approve of these only on the basis of their personal preferences. To expect religious individualization to occur always and only outside the church, and in critical dissent from it, would be to underestimate the religious individualization that takes place within it. In a way, belief that is distanced from the church, which underpins its scepticism towards the church and supposes that true faith exists above all beyond the church and in distinction from it, can even be called thoroughly conventional. In the West of Germany, the majority of people represent at any rate a diffuse belief in transcendence without participating in the church. If, as is common practice, we take the rise of forms of non-Christian religiosity as an indicator of processes of religious individualization, though, then the age distribution in terms of believing in such forms speaks more for such individualization tendencies than against. This deliberately cautious statement takes into account the fact that the number of those who believe in spiritualism, occultism, magic, and Nirvana is extremely low. NonChristian religiosity is not the most significant phenomenon in the religious field in West Germany; rather, the most important representatives of the religious in West Germany are still, and despite all the processes of shrinkage

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that they have undergone, the Christian churches. Belief in God and religiosity are most likely in their proximity (see p.114). We should also bear in mind that the age differences are extremely low. For example, according to C&R (2006), 12 per cent believe at least a little in magic, spiritualism, and occultism, and among the 18- to 29-year-olds that figure is also only 18 per cent. In the group of strong believers, there are no age differences at all, and the differences between age groups for other indicators are weak, too. Sometimes, followers of non-church religiosity are to be found not so much in the youngest age groups but in the middle ones. This would suggest that people’s tendency to turn to New Age, Zen meditation, Bach flower remedies, Reiki, and so on, increases when they have the necessary resources to pay to attend alternative religious courses, and then weakens again when they are older—it is, then, perhaps also a life-cycle phenomenon in the critical mid-life period and not only a growing social trend. In any case, the sometimes weak and sometimes non-linear age differences do not allow us to conclude that we are dealing here with a strong counter-tendency to the dominant decline in the significance of the religious, a counter-tendency that might even be able to absorb the dramatic losses suffered by the major Christian churches. Finally, we must also remember that non-Christian religiosity and Christian religiosity are not alternatives to each other and certainly do not mutually exclude one another. If the slight increases that are observable in non-Christian religiosity were a counter movement to secularization and de-Christianization, then the indicators of conventional Christianity and non-Christian religiosity would correlate negatively with each other. But that is not the case. If we look at the correlations in Tables 4.21 and 4.22, we then notice to begin with a high statistical correlation between church affiliation and church attendance, as well as between these two variables and belief in God. Even this is not an insignificant result, since research critical of secularization theory often assumes that church attendance is merely external behaviour that has little or nothing to do with individual religiosity (Luckmann 1967). This is wrong. The more often a person goes to church, the more likely he or she is to believe in God. Although a majority of West Germans claim, regardless of whether they are denominationally tied or not, that people can also be religious without the church, and can believe in God without going to church service (Pollack 2009: 190; 2012: 170), the case is in fact that belief in God is declining along with church affiliation and church practice (Table 4.21). There is also always of course a considerable number of people who say that they believe in God without participating in church activities (Pollack 2009: 191). However, when spirituality is communicated, as is the case in church, then the likelihood grows that people will believe in God, which is hardly surprising since all forms of imagination gain in intensity when shared socially. The semantics of individuality and individual religious practice are clearly diverging, and the sociology of religion should not

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rely solely on how religious actors understand themselves, but instead relate this self-understanding to their actions. In terms of the correlation between Christian and non-Christian religiosity, there are, as Tables 4.21 and 4.22 demonstrate, either no statistically demonstrable correlations at all, or correlations that are even positive. Therefore, we cannot confirm empirically the thesis of individualization theory (Luckmann 1967; Knoblauch 2002, 2009; Hervieu-Léger 1990, 2004; Davie 1994, 2002), which claims that institutionalized forms of religion and individualized forms of religiosity are increasingly diverging, with the latter increasingly taking the place of the former. That means that the so-called alternative religiosity is not alternative at all, but sometimes even goes hand in hand with conventional features of Christianity (Tables 4.21, 4.22). Non-Christian religiosity does not represent an opponent to conventional Christianity, and can therefore not benefit at the latter’s expense. Rather, it is also affected by the declines experienced by conventional Christianity, but not to the extent that it cannot also experience limited growth. It is instructive to compare the correlations in West Germany with those in the East of Germany (Tables 4.21, 4.22). Overall, the East German correlation coefficients are significantly higher than the West German. This is true for the correlations within conventional Christianity, such as between church membership and attendance at church service, and also between church attendance and belief in God. Higher correlation coefficients can also be found, however, between indices of conventional Christianity and non-Christian religiosity. It seems that the degree of religious pluralization is less pronounced in East Germany, and that both the different dimensions of religion—the dimension Table 4.21. Correlations between traditional churchliness, individual religiosity, and non-church religiosity in West Germany, 2008

Denominational affiliation Church attendance Belief in God Subjective religiosity Belief in reincarnation

Church attendance

Belief in God

Subjective religiosity (Scale 1–7)

Belief in reincarnation

Belief in Nirvana

0.356**

0.438**

0.473**

n.s.

n.s.

0.376**

0.537**

n.s.

n.s.

0.679**

0.178**

0.083*

0.197**

0.077* 0.633**

** The correlation is significant at the level of 0.01 (2-sided); * the correlation is significant at the level of 0.05 (2-sided); n.s.: not significant. Source: ISSP 2008.

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Table 4.22. Correlations between traditional churchliness, individual religiosity, and non-church religiosity in East Germany, 2008 Church Belief Subjective Belief in Belief in attendance in God religiosity reincarnation Nirvana (Scale 1–7) Denominational affiliation Church attendance

0.495**

0.635**

0.719**

0.273**

0.176**

0.572**

0.604**

0.248**

0.204**

0.857**

0.411**

0.257**

0.386**

0.239**

Belief in God Subjective religiosity Belief in reincarnation

0.684**

** The correlation is significant at the level of 0.01 (2-sided). Source: ISSP 2008.

of belonging, the dimension of practice, and the dimension of belief—and the different forms of religiosity are more closely linked than in the West. This is not surprising, since, because of the high social pressure that the majority without denominational affiliation exerts on the minority with denominational affiliation, the differences between the different religious orientations recede, and the contrast to the majority without religion gains in significance. In the West, however, the religious field is wider and is not challenged by a majority without denominational affiliation, so that the differences internal to religion can develop more. If we want to link processes of religious individualization to the growth in forms of non-Christian religiosity, we can therefore in actual fact talk with some justification of such processes. At the same time, though, we should not overestimate such tendencies towards non-Christian religiosity. They seem to be part of a strong process of secularization and dechristianization, and relate to this process in a way that is complementary, and only slightly contrary, or not contrary at all. It is for that reason that these tendencies have not yet been able to stop this process of secularization and dechristianization. In our attempt to locate forms of non-church religiosity, we have used here a variety of clearly defined variants of non-Christian religiosity. Would our results have been different had we investigated not definite, but indefinite, forms of religiosity? Is there not, as sociologists of religion and theologians repeatedly claim (Hervieu-Léger 2003: 103; Zulehner 2008), a widespread need in society for religion, for ultimate meaning, for certainty, orientation and support, a search for religious ties? To illustrate this complex of themes, we draw here on the question of whether people are looking for religion. Possible expectations that we might have that people have a certain enthusiasm for religious experimentation, or even that there is something of a widespread longing for religion among the population, are dampened, though, by the

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answers that respondents give, with only about a tenth saying that they are searching for religion (KMU V, 2012). About 14 per cent of Protestants and 3 per cent of those without religious affiliation define themselves as being in search of religion, while 76 per cent of Protestants and 92 per cent of those without religious affiliation reject such a search outright. Just as the ideas of non-Christian religion listed above correlate more positively than negatively with Christianity, so the search for religion independent of the church is also more common among those tied to a denomination than among those not tied. Believing without belonging? Free-floating religiosity beyond the church walls? No: non-church forms of religiosity and beliefs not approved by dogma are more likely within the church than outside its walls. How inappropriate it is to regard processes of religious individualization as the dominant feature of the religious landscape is also evident in the fact that most West Germans say that their own religiosity is not composed of different religious traditions. The statement ‘I draw on the teachings of various religious traditions’ is rejected by three quarters of West Germans, with only one quarter agreeing with the statement (C&R 2006). The religious orientation of most people is clearly only to a limited extent the result of a reflexive process of selection in which people peruse the different religious goods on offer before finally deciding on what they consider to be the most compelling mixture. The patchwork religiosity (Luckmann 1967, 1972; Roof, Carroll, and Roozen 1995: 247ff.; Hervieu-Léger 2004: 25; Zulehner 2008) often cited as evidence of religious individualization is practised only by a minority. In contrast to the areas of career, partnership, or friendship, where we are forced to make decisions, religion is an area that many people do not consider important enough (see Table II.2)12 to reach a decision for which they are personally responsible. In religion, there is no compulsion to choose, to commit heresy, as Berger (1979) argues. In this sphere, many questions can remain open, without the individual necessarily experiencing this openness as detrimental to the quality of life or as otherwise disadvantageous. Faith, religion, and church are for many simply something traditional, conventional, passed on, something that they may not reject, but something also which they do not pursue consciously. Many may also make similar use of the goods offered by non-Christian religiosity. They will use them occasionally, sometimes reject them, add them occasionally to other goods, and sometimes simply ignore them. Where people do compose their own religious patchworks, this is often an expression of conventional attitudes, since alternative religiosity is also now part of the mainstream of our consumer culture. 12

According to the Religion Monitor, too, West Germans tend to assign religion to the less important areas of life. Approximately 90% of West Germans consider leisure time and career to be very important or quite important; about two thirds, politics; in contrast, 54% say that they consider the area of religion to be important, while that figure is only 32% when it comes to spirituality (Pollack and Müller 2013: 14).

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Surprisingly widespread are phenomena usually classified as superstition, such as belief in the influence of shooting stars, chimney sweeps, four-leaf clovers, or horseshoes. If we bring all the approval values together, then 68 per cent of the German population attend in some form to these magical, occult, or superstitious ideas, and think that they might perhaps be significant (Allensbacher Archiv, IfD-Umfrage 7086, February/March 2005). The formulation of the question used to capture the forms of superstition was somewhat vague,13 though, and, had it been sharper, then the proportion would certainly have been smaller. Nonetheless, the high level of openness to superstitious ideas is surprising. The relatively strong approval that people expressed for superstition was something that had already been pointed out by Allbus, who asked people about their beliefs in lucky charms, fortune tellers, faith healers, and horoscopes. Approximately one third of the total population both in East and West Germany supported the occult ideas asked about in Allbus (see Pollack 2012: 90). What is noticeable is that the proportion of people who believe in magic in East and West is at the same high level in the studies both of the Allensbach Institute (Allensbacher Archiv, IfD-Umfrage 7086, February/March 2005) and of Allbus. It seems that these superstitious patterns of interpretation are a form of religion distinct from Christianity, a form that appears to be based on the broad cultural undercurrent of religious folk traditions. Whether we classify such ideas as religious or not is a different question. But apparently our everyday life, despite its focus on rationality and planning, is marked so strongly by insecurity and uncertainty about the future that it is often charged with superstitious and magical ideas (see Stenger 1989).

4.2. AN ATTEMPT AT E XPLANATION To be able to identify the key determinants of religious change in modern societies, we need to explain the following phenomena, which we noticed in our descriptive account of the changes to the religious landscape in West Germany: 1. Why did the second half of the 1960s witness a dramatic decline in people’s ties to the church and in individual religiosity, seen in the increasing numbers of people leaving the church, in plummeting church attendance, in the falling numbers of baptisms, in the receding belief in It reads: ‘Even if you yourself are not superstitious—when reading this list through once, what do you believe could perhaps have a meaning, and what do you yourself always watch out for?’ 13

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2.

3. 4.

5.

6.

Religion and Modernity God? Why had people’s religious and church ties been relatively stable up until then? Why did people’s ties to the church continue to decline rapidly in the decades after 1970 with a slight deceleration in the 1980s, while their belief in God fell only slightly and church membership also remained relatively high in comparison to church practice? Why is it that the Protestant Church is more affected overall by tendencies of decline than the Catholic Church? How can we explain the significant declines in the level of membership of the Catholic Church after 1989/90, after it had remained virtually unchanged in the decades before? To what can we attribute the counter-movements that occur at certain points, such as going to church service at Christmas or believing in life after death? Why were there growths in the field of non-Christian religiosity, and why were they at the same time so low?

1) We can begin to understand the causes of the unprecedented decline in religion and church in the 1960s by looking at the social groups involved. As Armin Kuphal (1979: 56–107) has shown, those who left the church in the 1960s were mainly the better-educated, men, urban dwellers, and the socially better-placed. We can therefore suggest a close relationship between the decline in religion and church, and the processes taking place at the time of expansion in education and shifts in values, of urbanization and the reorganization of agriculture, and of economic recovery and increases in prosperity. These changes played out at the time not only in West Germany, but in all Western European societies, and they affected all areas of society—the economy and politics, the mass media, literature, and art, but also the whole range of everyday culture and of forms of how families lived together, lifestyles, consumer behaviour, gender relationships, and sexuality. We want to focus here on the three areas that are probably strongly correlated with changes in other spheres of society: with changes to family structures (1.1), value systems (1.2), and the economic sector (1.3). 1.1) A look at changes to family structures reveals surprising parallels with changes to religion and church. Like the area of religion and church, family structures between 1950 and 1965 were characterized by a surprising level of stability. The rate of first marriages was high, the divorce rate was low, the birth rate was high, and the rate of illegitimacy was low. The traditional family pattern comprising a married couple and children had a high level of approval in society. It was not only a natural norm for an overwhelming majority of people, but had also more or less become a universal given at the level of individual behaviour (Peuckert 2012: 17).

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Until the beginning of the 1960s, the rate of first marriages, at about 110 per cent, was extremely high (Table 4.23). But, after 1968, it began to fall, until at the end of the 1970s it had levelled out at just over 60 per cent, where it would remain until 2000. Similarly, the divorce rate was remarkably low in the 1950s and 1960s. After the war-related high, it fell immediately after 1950 to the lowest level of the post-war period, and only rose again in the second half of the 1960s (Table 4.23). The birth rate was also unusually high in the 1950s and 1960s. Despite the introduction of the contraceptive pill in 1961, it even continued to grow until 1965, and only fell sharply after that; in the decades after 1975, though, it remained relatively constant (Table 4.23). And the second half of the 1960s was also the turning point for the rate of illegitimacy, with the proportion of children born out of wedlock declining until 1966, and then increasing rapidly in subsequent years (Table 4.23). Changes to marital and family structures always occurred in the second half of the 1960s, a time that also saw upheavals to religion and church. In the first fifteen years of the Federal Republic, the ideal of the traditional family was the model for marital and family practice, even if practical behaviour would perhaps often deviate from this ideal during this period (Friedeburg 1953: 48f.). Table 4.23. Changes to family structures in West Germany, 1950–2010

1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

Number of first marriages among women for every 100 unmarried

Number of first marriages among men for every 100 unmarried

Number of divorces for every 100 marriages*

Total number of births**

112

135

106 110 97 75 66 60 64 60 62 56 57

106 91 90 73 64 58 60

16 10 9 12 17 28 27 35 29 38 44 52 50

2.10 2.11 2.37 2.51 2.02 1.45 1.44 1.28 1.45 1.34 1.41 1.36 1.39

56 53 54

Number of illegitimate children for every 1,000 births* 97 79 63 47 55 61 76 94 105 129 186 231 270

* Since 1990, without West Berlin; ** since 2001, without West Berlin; the total number of births shows how many children a woman would have in the course of her life, if her birth behaviour were the same as for all women between 15 and 49 in each respective year under consideration. Sources: Engstler and Menning 2003: 65; Peuckert 2012: 32; Council of Europe 2000; Grünheid and Mammey 1997: 386; Rytlewski and Opp de Hipt 1987: 46; http://www.destatis.de; http://www.bmfsfj.de/doku/ Publikationen/genderreport/4-Familien-und-lebensformen-von-frauen-und-maennern/4-1-Einleitung/4-12-zur-veraenderung-der-geburtenziffern-in-deutschland.html; http://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/zahlenund-fakten/soziale-situation-in-deutschland/61550/geburten; Destatis 2012: 24, our own calculations.

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What probably lies behind the correspondence between developments in family structure and developments in the church is the general orientation to a traditional model of order, as it was typical for large parts of the population in the young Federal Republic. After the destructions of the war and the experiences of economic hardship, shortages, corruption, and chaos in the post-war period, people longed for the restoration of ‘normality’, for existential security, ordered political and social conditions, as well as for familial support and moral decency (Herzog 2003; Schildt and Siegfried 2009: 95ff.). The production of normal family relationships fitted just as well into this pursuit of order as the compliance with the church’s norms and expectations regarding behaviour. As many advocated a state system legitimated by Christianity, so many gave affirmation also to Christian ideals of the family.14 Basing state action on Christian principles, as well as combining Christian faith and family order, promised security in a world shaped by fear of a new world war, of price increases and economic crises (Noelle and Neumann 1956: 117; 1965: 193). When it comes to tracing exactly how the religiosity of a person is related to his or her family situation at the individual level, we must first point out that we only have available to us more recent data. These data show first of all a clear positive correlation between the religiosity or churchliness of a person and the number of children that he or she has. The higher the number of children, the more likely a person is to be tied to a denomination (Table 4.25), to attend church service (see Table 4.7), to accord belief in God a high priority, and to see himself or herself as religious (Table 4.25). But people’s religious and church ties correlate not only with the number of children that they have, but also with whether they bring up their children alone or with a partner. As Table 4.24 shows, single mothers are more likely than people who bring up their children with a partner to remain distant from denominational communities, to never go to church, to define themselves as non-spiritual, to consider belief in God as being unimportant, and also to assign the religious upbringing of their own children a low importance. Whether here the number of children and the entering into a partnership influence people’s religious and church ties, or whether the direction of influence is the other way around, or whether both variables are influenced by a third factor, such as certain conservative attitudes regarding values, cannot be decided on the basis of the correlations alone. Mothers and fathers engaged with religion and the church probably tend to orientate themselves towards a Christian family image, just as couples with children may experience Christian ideas and ritual practices as helpful in the upbringing of their children. In addition, having a large number of children gives parents the 14

Großbölting (2016: 35) does, however, claim that marriage and cohabitation of man and woman were already in the 1950s ‘detached from Church tutelage and interpretation’.

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Table 4.24. Bringing up children alone or as a couple, and indices of churchliness or religiosity Denominational affiliation (in %)

Church attendance (in %)

Importance of belief in God

Spirituality Role of religious upbringing

Not a Member of a Never Every Mean value Mean value Mean value member denomination week (1–7) (1–10) (1–10) Single parent Parent with partner/ marriage partner

24.3 9.6

75.7 90.4

35.7 15.9

4.3 10.2

4.08 4.64

3.31 4.02

3.55 5.50

Total

12.2

87.8

19.4

9.2

4.57

3.89

5.16

Source: Allbus 2012.

frequent opportunity to celebrate in church, be it for baptism, confirmation, or wedding ceremony, and it is likely that such rites of passage strengthen the connection that people have to the church. 1.2) That the correspondence between developments in family structure and religious or church ties was caused to a large extent by people’s orientation towards a traditional model of order is confirmed by the changes in values. Until the mid-1960s, values such as hard work, obedience, order, and discipline dominated the alternative value of independence (Fig. 4.6). Although people’s acceptance of the values of order had already been in decline before 1965, it was only between 1965 and 1972 that there was a reversal in the hierarchy of values. Only from that time did individualistic values such as independence, self-determination, and self-realization dominate collectivist values of obedience and acceptance. The characterization of these years as a period of mental upheaval is further suggested by the fact that at this time the statement ‘We are living today in what is all in all a happy period’ gained in approval and exceeded from 1970 the statement ‘We are going through quite hard times’ (Noelle-Neumann and Piel 1983: 25). It is also strengthened, though, by the fact that people’s view that they are living in a happy period had already receded in the first half of the 1970s and collapsed in the transition to the 1980s. The late 1960s were marked by a rapid change in values, which caused individualistic and postmaterialistic values to replace materialistic and collectivist values, and an optimism that the world could be formed anew to take hold. A short time later, after the oil price shock of 1973 and the widely discussed report of the Club of Rome of 1972 on the limits of growth, though, optimism about progress decreased again significantly. As analyses of the correlation between changes in values and religious and church ties have repeatedly shown (Meulemann 1985: 409; Pollack and Pickel

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80 67

70 60

54

50

45

44

28

30

32

32

1972/3

1979

1986

1989/90

38

40 30

65

59

28

29

1957/8

1965/6

28

20 10 0 independence

1996

obedience, order, discipline

Fig. 4.6. Changing values in West Germany, 1957–96 (in %) Question: ‘Which characteristics should the upbringing of children strive for above all: obedience and subordination, orderliness and diligence, or independence and free will?’. Sources: Emnid-Information 1957–1996; Meulemann 1996: 76; Gensicke 1996: 10; Allbus 1996.

1999: 635f.), the rise of individualistic attitudes weakens conventional religiosity, and our own investigations (Table 4.25, Inglehart index) point to this connection, too. Conventionally materialistic value systems have a positive effect on religious ties, church attendance, religiosity and belief in God, while postmaterialistic value systems have a negative effect. Churches in Germany in the 1960s responded to the challenges posed by the shift in values by going on the offensive. They opened up to the world, to methods of understanding reality from the social sciences, to the claims of the individual for self-determination, and were willing to engage in a dialogue with the secular world. The actions of the church were no longer to be determined by monological preaching from the top down, but by dialogical engaging with the needs of the world, with injustice, poverty, and violence, with the needs of the individual, taking into account not only the individual’s spiritual needs, but also his or her social situation (Richter 2010). The 1960s were a time of reforms, of optimism that things could be shaped anew, of renewal and change not only for politics and society, but also for the churches. Hierarchies and authorities should be abolished, walls of exclusion broken down, closeness to people aimed for, and functional links to social interests established. Church representatives hoped to be able to keep up with the world, with the Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council and the Protestant Church’s ecumenism representing this hope.

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The instability of the position of the churches had become apparent by the end of the 1960s at the latest, however. Both the Catholic and the Protestant Church in Germany commissioned social-scientific analyses of their present situations. Gerhard Schmidtchen (1972: 80ff.) came to the conclusion in his investigation that the value system demanded by the church and value preferences held by individuals are diverging. For Schmidtchen, the church supports tradition and order, altruism and community, stability and eternal salvation, whereas the individual is interested in a free and independent life, in dismantling superfluous structures of authority, in making progress and having fun, in social justice and scientific progress. According to Schmidtchen, people’s turning away from the churches is explained by this discrepancy in values. In contrast, the investigations of the Protestant Church revealed relative stability (Hild 1974). These investigations found criticism of the church to be widespread, but also expectations of the church to be high. Despite some reservations, especially among the young and highly educated, the majority of Protestant church members felt relatively connected to their church and wanted the key moments in their life to be marked through official acts by the church (Hild 1974: 59ff.). In fact, we should not overdramatize the tensions between the value system of the church and the value preferences of its members. Although not an inconsiderable number of people left the church in the 1960s in protest against society’s privileging of the churches, against their hierarchical style of leadership, and their dogmatic strictures, there was also something like a basic acceptance of the churches among both Catholics and Protestants. For example, in a survey from 1971/2 (Noelle and Neumann 1974: 100), when criticism of the church reached its peak, about half of the Catholics and more than a third of the Protestants agreed with the statement (the Protestants sometimes expressing reservations, though): ‘I am a faithful member of my church and stand by their doctrines.’ In addition, the conflict resulting from the tension between different value systems was not the only impetus behind people’s rejection of the church, with many simply being indifferent to the church. A quarter of the Catholics and a third of the Protestants declared in the same survey: ‘I feel that I am a Christian, but the church does not mean much to me’ (Noelle and Neumann 1974: 100). Besides discrepancies in the value systems, people’s emotional indifference towards the church also contributed to their distancing themselves from the churches. Attachment to the church, conflict of values, and indifference cannot always be separated cleanly. It is precisely among the Catholics that the feeling of attachment to the church is likely to go hand in hand with strong reservations concerning its moral and theological teachings. According to their own statements, many Catholics, and in particular younger Catholics, have particular difficulties with the pronouncements of the church regarding contraception, sex, the indissolubility of marriage, and the authority of the Pope (Noelle and Neumann 1974: 100). Since the 1960s, when above all the encyclical Humanae Vitae on birth control

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and contraception played a central role, many Catholics have had a tense and ambivalent relationship to their church. But, because of their close ties to the church, the critical attitude of Catholics towards the church usually does not lead to their leaving the church. Rather, it is precisely their ties to the church, interspersed with rejection and criticism, that typifies the relationship that many Catholics have to their church. Today, however, no longer half, but only a fifth, of Catholics see themselves as faithful members of the church (Köcher 2009: 802). People’s distancing from the church has continued in the past few decades. The conflict between the church’s system of values and the value preferences of believers has been an important factor in this development, but it is certainly not the only one. 1.3) However, the processes of dechurchification and the associated change in values were probably caused above all by the unprecedented increase in economic performance in Western Europe, including the war-torn Federal Republic, in the decades following the Second World War. This economic boom drastically changed human living conditions in all social areas, not only in the workplace, but also in politics and the public sphere, in the everyday world, in music and leisure preferences, in consumer behaviour and in the form of cohabitation of the sexes. While people’s lives had for centuries, and even for millennia, been characterized primarily by poverty, scarcity, hard physical work, little free time, legal insecurity, lack of education, lack of freedom, an insufficient supply of medical care, epidemics, disease, physical pain, and war, Western Europe experienced after 1950 an unprecedented period of sustained peace and economic prosperity. According to economic historians, the gross domestic product per capita in Europe increased slowly between the year 1000 and the year 1800 (Maddison 2007: 382; see Table 1.1). After 1800, it increased significantly faster, and, in the first half of the twentieth century, then increased by a mere one third. Between 1950 and 1989, though, it increased thirteen times more than in the previous fifty years, and many times more than in the previous century and a half (Fig. 4.7; Geißler 2008: 69f.). In absolute terms, the increase in the 1950s alone was twice as high as for the entire period between 1800 and 1950 (Miegel 1983: 176ff.). Beginning already in the 1950s, the economic upswing therefore clearly commenced before the changes in the religious landscape. We therefore need to see it as the engine of the processes of change in the areas of politics, the media, culture, everyday life, the family, and also religion, all of which had their starting point later, and, in some cases, significantly later. Due to the increases in economic power, education could be expanded, resulting in an increase not only in the educational level of diverse sections of the population, but also in people’s willingness to participate politically, and health care and the social security system could also be improved.

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25,000

20,000

15,000

10,000

5,000

0 18 70 18 80 18 90 19 00 19 10 19 20 19 30 19 40 19 50 19 60 19 70 19 80 19 90 20 00 20 10

18 6

18 5

0

0

Fig. 4.7. Gross domestic product per capita in Germany, 1850–2010 (in 1990 Int. GK$) Source: Maddison Historical GDP Data 2014.

With economic growth, the volume of available leisure time increased and the proportion of hard physical work decreased. As work has repeatedly demonstrated since the groundbreaking work of Ronald Inglehart (1977, 1990), the increase in living standards also brought with it the change in values already described from a materialist to a postmaterialist orientation, a change which then impacted, for example, on consumer behaviour, on leisure activities, on lifestyles, and on gender roles. The decades following the Second World War were characterized by a level of material well-being and existential security that enabled people to switch their focus from the satisfaction of basic economic needs to meeting their growing needs for individual self-determination and self-realization, for political involvement and social influence. The economic upswing also had an effect on the intensity of people’s ties to religion and the church, though. For one, according to Norris and Inglehart (2004: 19), the need for religious reassurance and stability receded with the guarantee of existential security; in this case, therefore, functional equivalents such as material and legal security, as well as the security provided by the welfare state, replaced religious support, comfort, and confirmation. But there is perhaps another causal mechanism that can explain the mutual dependency between economic growth and the decline in the significance of religion, since economic power also increases the diversity of leisure activities, consumer opportunities, entertainment options, and career chances on offer, as well as providing individuals with the

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material resources to enable them to take advantage of these new possibilities (Stolz 2009; Hirschle 2010). In this case, besides religious practices and forms of community, new secular alternatives therefore appear that are able to deflect individual interest from religious and church practices and to steer it in a non-religious direction (pull-effect). Without people necessarily being dissatisfied with what religion and church have to offer or losing their faith, competing interests could encroach on religious activities and displace them. This case is met when people answer the question of why they do not go to church by saying that they have something else to do at this time (Huber, Friedrich, and Steinacker 2006: 455; see p. 98). Finally, though, as we have already indicated in section 4.1.3, there is also perhaps a substantial conflict between the values of religion and church, and modern values, a conflict that could weaken the intensity of people’s belief and their commitment to the church. The first explanation is based on the model of functional equivalence; the second, on the concept of competition; and the third, on a schema of conflict. The reasons for the comparatively intense ties that the West German population had with church and religion in the post-war period15 are closely related to the causes behind the tendencies of collapse which began at around the middle of the 1960s. In the 1950s, there was in the Federal Republic something like an anti-totalitarian consensus which, heavily influenced by the fear of a Third World War, of inflation, and of renewed economic hardship, focused on economic reconstruction, on integration with the West, on political stability, and social order, and which was characterized by a high esteem for conservative values such as hard work, discipline, and authority, but also by a focus on guiding principles such as community and a sense of togetherness, as well as marriage and family. Church and religion were part of this consensus of conservative values. Valued by the allies, who recognized the churches as a point of contact in post-war Germany and set them to reorganize the life of society, drawing on widespread public appreciation, and favoured by laws friendly to them, the churches could have a direct influence on many areas of society through voicing political opinions and memoranda, through religious teaching at school and theological faculties at university, through charitable organizations (Diakonie and Caritas for the Protestant and the Catholic Church respectively), through broadcasting councils and military chaplaincies, through church associations and lobby groups, and through academies and church congresses. They could affect political debate, the design of the educational system, the shaping of the welfare state, the formulation of basic

15

Benjamin Ziemann (2006: 384) interprets many of the forms of religiosity resurgent after 1945 as ‘nothing more’ than ‘a Potemkin village whose facades were designed to maintain the illusion of a successfully mobilized religiosity of the “many” ’. The schema surface-essence, facade-core is largely followed by Großbölting (2016) in his interpretation of the situation regarding religion and the church in the 1950s.

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ethical principles of the social market economy, the politics of reunification, and the reconciliation of the peoples of Eastern and Western Europe. At that time, ideas accepted by the whole of society regarding social order and nation, upbringing and morality, as well as family and sexuality, were heavily influenced by the positions taken by the church. The relatively high capacity of the churches in the Federal Republic of the 1950s to tie members to them can be explained above all by this close intertwining of religion and church with all areas of society. 2) But what are the reasons behind the continuing process of dechurchification in the aftermath of the turbulent 1960s, for the slowing down of the decline in the 1980s, and the only slight losses in the dimension of religious belief, and in particular concerning belief in God? To find answers to these questions, we shall first carry out a statistical analysis of indicators of religiosity and churchliness according to socialstructural features. This analysis will illustrate once again the many mutual dependencies already known, but will also bring new insights to light. Table 4.25 shows the positive correlation already mentioned between gender, age, marital status, and number of children on the one hand, and church affiliation, church attendance, religiosity, and importance of belief in God on the other. Women, older people, married couples, and people with children have a higher level of traditional religiosity and churchliness than men, younger people, unmarried/divorced people, and people without children or with few children. Similarly, employment, place of residence, net income, and postmaterialistic value systems also correlate in a statistically significant way with religiosity. Those who are in employment, live in a city, have a higher net income, and are postmaterialistic are ranked lower on the scale of conventional religiosity and churchliness than average. Particularly enlightening are the effects of education and class affiliation. Education has a negative effect on people’s subjective religiosity and their assessment of the importance of belief in God, but has no effect on church attendance. Affiliation to a high social class has no effect on belief in God and religiosity, but it does on the frequency of church attendance, and indeed that effect is a positive one. Apparently, a higher level of education and social class are more compatible with church attendance than with belief in God and subjective religiosity. But what is also interesting is how the employment of the respondent’s mother influences the religiosity of children when they are adults. The effects of the employment of women on their own religiosity are only marginally significant, especially when considered according to age. But the influence of the employment activity of the mother on the religiosity of her children in adulthood is clearly significant. Mothers in employment contribute to the religious formation of their children less than mothers who are not in employment. If there has been a widespread dechurchification in

Table 4.25. Indices of religiosity and churchliness according to social-structural features (Pearson’s correlation coefficients) Denominational Frequency Spirituality Importance of affiliation (1=member, of church (scale 1–10) belief in God 0=not) attendance (1–7) Gender (1=male, 2=female) Age Married and living with spouse Divorced Number of children at home Number of children General school-leaving certificate In employment In employment, only women In employment, only women under 65 Mother of the respondent in employment Self-description of place of residence (1=city, 2=town, 3=village) BIK-classification of the size of the place of residence Subjective classification of class Respondent: net income Household income Inglehart index (1=postmaterialist, 4=materialist) Frequency of church attendance as child Role of religious upbringing in the family home (0=none, 10=very large)

Subjective religiosity (1–10)

0.092** n.s. 0.096** 0.093** 0.065** 0.109** −0.099** −0.080** −0.114** −0.069*

0.075** 0.153** 0.162** −0.051* 0.095** 0.193** n.s. −0.067** −0.065* n.s.

0.060** −0.068** n.s. n.s. 0.053* n.s. 0.109** n.s. 0.119** n.s.

0.174** 0.205** 0.172** n.s. 0.091** 0.226** −0.142** −0.139** −0.179** −.0074*

0.150** 0.165** 0.146** n.s. 0.086** 0.198** −0.075** −0.108** −0.108** −0.049

0.148** −0.171** −0.153** 0.126** n.s. −0.098** 0.085** 0.125** 0.176** 0.092**

−0.086**

−0.079**

0.044*

−0.104**

−0.074**

0.097**

0.119**

0.093**

n.s.

0.097**

0.084**

n.s.

−0.116**

−0.069**

n.s.

−0.068**

−0.060**

n.s.

n.s. −0.132** −0.067** 0.157**

0.058** n.s. n.s. 0.084**

n.s. −0.090** n.s. 0.169**

n.s. −0.062** n.s. 0.148**

0.277**

0.362**

0.115**

0.319**

0.330**

0.348**

0.456**

0.158**

0.489**

0.520**

n.s. n.s. n.s. −0.052*

** The correlation is significant at the level of 0.01 (2-sided); * the correlation is significant at the level of 0.05 (2-sided); n.s.: not significant. Source: Allbus 2012.

Non-church religiosity— old

n.s. −0.048* n.s. −0.056** n.s. −0.054**

Non-church religiosity— new 0.043* n.s. −0.061** 0.058** n.s. n.s. 0.165** 0.077** 0.117** 0.087** n.s. −0.044* n.s. 0.087** 0.056* 0.052* −0.143**

Alternative healing practices 0.208** −0.135** n.s. 0.050* 0.064** −0.054** 0.288** 0.184** 0.244** 0.174** 0.065** −0.042* n.s. 0.194** 0.049* 0.140** −0.201**

n.s.

n.s.

n.s.

n.s.

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recent decades, then that is partly because, since the 1960s and 1970s, the deinstitutionalization of families, the incorporation of women into working life, urbanization, increases in income, and rises in prosperity have continued, and because the church is apparently linked to a traditional model of social order that is increasingly disappearing.16 With the individualization of lifestyles, the proliferation of family forms, the increasing dissolution of normal working conditions, and growing regional mobility, those cultural patterns to which the actions of the church are aligned (the high regard for family, marriage and having children, the annual-cyclical culture of celebration shaped by agricultural society, the sacralization of the rhythm of the working week, the institutionalization of feudal forms of gathering, and the high regard for communal togetherness) are seemingly losing more and more acceptance. It seems to be becoming less and less easy to connect the rituals and forms of community of the church with the life, work, and time divisions currently dominant. That processes of dechurchification slowed down in the 1980s probably has much to do with the fact that at that time the explosion in prosperity came to a halt and the rates of economic growth weakened significantly (Geißler 2008: 69). With the flattening of economic growth went a ‘stagnation in the shifting of values’ (Klages 1985: 21), which led to a renewed acceptance of such materialistic values as hard work, achievement, discipline, and order (Pollack and Pickel 1999: 635f.). The conservative turn after 1982 gave a higher priority to values of order and tradition in the public domain, too. The slight deceleration in the process of dechurchification, a process that continued nonetheless, is probably related to these changes. To explain why belief in God has barely fallen since the mid-1970s is not easy. This state of affairs is probably due primarily to the well-known discrepancy between attitude and action. While to maintain practices requires their constant performance, to maintain beliefs is effortless. We therefore assume that, in the process of dechurchification, church practice will be relinquished first, and only thereafter beliefs and affiliations, whose maintenance costs less. A decline in belief in God is to be expected in the future, however, since, if there is a correlation between church attendance and belief in God (see Table 4.21), then the decline in the religious interactions maintained in the churches will also be followed by a decline in the religious beliefs that they promulgate. If we also consider that it is not only the young but also the highly

16

The correlation between the weakening of church ties and changes to demography and family structure has also been confirmed by Lois (2011). According to his analysis, there is very probably a correlation ‘between the long-term decline in church attendance and the postponement of the first marriage, the sinking fertility rate, the increase in divorce rates, the expansion of education, and the increasing participation of women in employment’.

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educated who are more distant from belief in God than the average population, then it is clear that a further increase in the level of education among the next cohorts will lead to a continued decline in belief in God. As for the relative stability in the level of church membership, an important reason might well be the inertia of the culture of the denominational majority. Leaving the church requires a decision that many do not want to make. More than 60 per cent of Protestants say that leaving the church is out of the question for them, and a further quarter say that, even if they have thought about leaving the church, they would ultimately not do so (Kirchenamt der EKD 2003: 14). What prevents them are their ties to the ideas and values of the church, as well as their appreciation for the church’s work in the performance of religious rituals, in the mediation of Christian norms, and in caring for the sick and the elderly (see p. 84). But what also plays a role is that leaving the church would involve leaving the family context in which people are located and in which church affiliation is often deemed a self-evident part of tradition. In leaving the church, a person would break the line of transmission through which denominational ties are passed from generation to generation. And, finally, leaving the church would also mean being different to the majority. These contexts are certainly significant for those affiliated to a denomination, with a considerable proportion saying that they belong to the church because their parents also belonged or still belong to the church, and because it is simply part of life (see pp. 84f.). The importance of family, neighbourhood, and regional contexts is illustrated by the fact that these contexts determine to a surprising extent the formative power of religious upbringing. In East Germany, where the majority of the population have no religious affiliation, about two thirds or half of those who were brought up in a faith still belong today to the Catholic or Protestant Church (Table 4.26). In the West, where the majority do belong to a denomination, the effectiveness of religious upbringing in families and elsewhere is much greater. There, over 90 per cent and over 80 per cent still belong to the church today. In West Germany, only about 5 per cent of those brought up Catholic, and about 15 per cent of those brought up Protestant, have since turned their backs on the church. In the East, however, these figures are one third and one half respectively. Movement among those brought up without religious affiliation to the church is extremely low in the East, however, and does not exceed the 5 per cent mark—and this despite the fact that it has been very possible since 1990 to commit openly to the church without being politically stigmatized. In the West of Germany, about half (49 per cent) of those brought up without religious affiliation had turned to one of the two churches in 1991, while in 2008 that figure was still nearly a quarter (22 per cent). As seems to be the case, the respective denominational majorities exercise a considerable influence on the stability of church membership levels. As

Table 4.26. Passing on of denomination from one generation to the next, 1991 and 2008 (in %) 1991

2008

West Germany

Cath. upbringing Prot. upbringing No religious upbringing

East Germany

West Germany

East Germany

Cath.

Prot.

No affil.

Cath.

Prot.

No affil.

Cath.

Prot.

No affil.

Cath.

Prot.

No affil.

91 2 15

2 85 32

6 11 51

63 0 0.3

3 53 5

34 45 95

92 1 4

2 80 18

5 17 77

66 0 0

0 47 3

35 52 97

Question: ‘What religion, if any, were you raised in?’ Respective proportion of those brought up Catholic, Protestant, or without religious affiliation, with regard to their religious affiliation at the time of the survey (in %). Source: ISSP 1991, 2008.

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we have already seen when dealing with belief in a higher power (see Table 4.16), less explicit forms of religiosity and churchliness are strengthened when shared by a majority. We assume that the relatively high membership levels of churches in West Germany is partly due to the influence of the Christian majority culture, and we can confirm here the Durkheimian explanation of the social relevance of religion as arising from the power of society over the individual (theorem of majority confirmation). The diffuse, noninstitutionalized, and implicit form of this contextual influence also explains, though, why high membership levels are not accompanied by a high level of church involvement. Church membership is a traditional convention in West Germany, something that is usually not taken up by the individual himself or herself, but something that is transmitted from parents to their children. If we consider the discrepancy between the negligible level of church practice and the still considerable proportion of church members in the total population, then we gain the impression that the Christian churches are major institutions that have survived from a bygone era, institutions still equipped with powerful tools, but with their best times already behind them. Two reasons that are sometimes given for the continuing processes of dechurchification can probably be largely discounted, however. The decreasing ability of the churches to integrate people probably has little to do with the fact that the churches lack commitment, resourcefulness, professionalism, and management, and also a willingness to become involved in issues of social injustice or to work for democracy and the rights of the individual (as is argued, though, by Graf 2011; Joas 2012: 79). On the contrary, as we have already pointed out, the churches have, since the first slumps in the 1960s, become significantly more open to society, ready to talk, client-oriented, liberal, and professional. The Protestant Church has undertaken drastic structural reforms, built up the services that it provides, increased the number of personnel, raised professional standards, established forms to supervise parish activities, relativized their dogmatic teachings, withdrawn their claim to truth, opened themselves up to people’s individual needs, campaigned for justice, peace, and the sanctity of human life, and thereby become involved in socially relevant problems, reinforced its ecumenical relations with other churches, and has done much else besides to increase its points of contact with society and to enhance the attractiveness of its offers. The Catholic Church has also made considerable efforts to counter the trend of dechurchification, and not least with the Second Vatican Council. It has recognized other religious communities, declared its support for religious freedom and therefore for a central principle of modernity, reduced hierarchies in the church, introduced the national language into the liturgy, compensated for the shortage of priests by increasing the number of pastoral trainees, and discovered the autonomous individual as the point of contact for Christian teachings.

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However, despite upgrading their organizations and turning to people and the world, neither the Protestant nor the Catholic Church has managed to reverse the downward trend in membership levels and to stop the dramatic loss of churchgoers. The churches may have been able to increase their financial resources significantly due to their participation in the economic upswing of the Federal Republic and the state collection of church tax (Fig. 4.8). And the increase in church tax revenues may have allowed them to increase significantly the number of people employed in the face of decreasing membership levels, and therefore to extend greatly their opportunities for action (Table 4.27). But this has done them little good. Membership figures have continued to fall, as have participation figures, and people’s ties to the institution have also failed to strengthen. The fact alone that the Catholic and Protestant churches have seen similar exit in recent decades (see Fig. 4.1) shows how little the churches are masters of their own destiny. Regardless of what the churches do or do not do, what theological model they follow in their actions, and what political positions they represent, the numbers of people leaving the church increase or decrease. More influential than their actions are usually economic, political, and social processes of change (although there are exceptions, such as the increase in the number of people leaving the Catholic Church in the wake of the cases of abuse in 2010). The Christian churches in Germany seem in many ways barely to be able to exercise influence on their own development, and appear to be exposed to external factors that they can do little to resist.

6,000,000 5,000,000 4,000,000 3,000,000 2,000,000 1,000,000

19 6 19 8 7 19 0 7 19 2 7 19 4 7 19 6 78 19 8 19 0 82 19 8 19 4 8 19 6 8 19 8 9 19 0 9 19 2 9 19 4 96 19 9 20 8 0 20 0 0 20 2 0 20 4 06 20 0 20 8 1 20 0 12

0

Catholic Church

Protestant Church

Fig. 4.8. Net church tax revenues in Germany, 1968–2012 (in Euros) Source: Statistisches Bundesamt, according to church figures.

Table 4.27. Employees and priests/pastors in the Catholic and Protestant churches in Germany, 1950–2008 (without Caritas and Diakonie) Catholic Church Total number Active parish of employees priests 1950 1960 1973 1984 1991 2000 2008

65,500 71,060 91,109 190,646 218,298 212,457 203,525

16,690 16,600 14,145 10,691* 11,172 9,677 7,953

Protestant Church

Church members Church members per employee per active parish priest 382 381 302 190 129 126 122

1,501 1,632 1,950 2,560* 2,524 2,771 3,134

Total number Active parish of employees pastors 1954 1960 1973 1984 1990 2004 2008

55,798 58,293 117,028 199,504 212,703 – 195,121

12,383 13,368 12,263 12,029 12,999 15,261 14,727

Church members Church members per employee per active parish pastor 478 457 237 128 117 – 126

2,156 1,994 2,263 2,120 1,922 1,679 1,664

1950–1990: West Germany; 1991–2008: united Germany; Total number of employees: all statuses and contractual relations (without Caritas/Diakonie); Active parish priests/pastors: all priests or pastors working in parish pastoral work; *value from 1989. Sources: Lührs 2010: 275–6; Kirchliches Handbuch; Sekretariat der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz 1990ff.; Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland 1990ff.

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Just as the actions of the churches have little effect on their attractiveness, so also of little significance is the influence that the pluralization of the religious landscape has. While in 1949 there were hardly any religious communities besides the two major Christian denominations, members of religious communities that belong neither to the Protestant nor the Catholic Church now amount to about one tenth of the total population in West Germany (Remid 2012). Does this not challenge members of the majority religion to strengthen their own religious identity? In fact, the increasing diversity of religious groups and communities is certainly perceived as a problem by the majority of the German population. Three quarters of West Germans consider the growing diversity of religion as a source of conflict (Fig. 4.9; see also Pollack et al. 2014: 17–19). Two fifths think that their country is threatened by foreign cultures. Although about a half consider the growing religious pluralization as an enrichment, only 12 per cent would want to live in the neighbourhood of a greater variety of religious groups and organizations. There are, though, no significant correlations to be found between the feeling of being threatened by foreign cultures and the intensity of church attendance, of belief in God and people’s assessment of themselves as religious (C&R 2006; WArV 2010). The feeling of cultural threat leads not to a higher level of churchliness and religiosity that can be verified statistically. There are no significant correlations to be found even between the feeling of threat that people experience and their claim that Christianity is the foundation of their culture. Although 75 per cent of West Germans consider Christianity to be the foundation of their culture, this view is not strengthened by a sense of threat (WArV 2010; Pollack et al. 2014: 26). The theorem of ‘cultural defence’ is one of the most common arguments discussed in the sociology of religion. It states that the religiosity of a group increases with the perception of being threatened by foreign powers, and is a view held by both representatives of the economic market model (Stark and Finke 2000: 239ff.) and by Steve Bruce (2002: 31ff.) as a defender of the theory of secularization. In Germany, not only the degree of religious plurality has increased in recent decades, but there also exists a feeling of being threatened by others among a considerable proportion of the population. Both, however, have no effect on religious practice and religious belief. Presumably it is the weak anchoring of Christianity in the population that prevents a revitalization of people’s own religion despite the sense of conflict and threat caused by other religions. Although the majority of West Germans belong to one of the two major Christian churches and are committed to belief in God, only two in five of them consider their faith to be important here (see Table II.2). Given such a passionless relationship to Christianity and to faith and religion as a whole, it is plausible to argue that the perceived challenge posed by foreign religions does not lead to people thinking about their own Christian roots. The theorem of ‘cultural defence’ must therefore be considered anew. Not only the strength

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of the perceived challenge should be included in the theorem, but also the intensity of the relationship to the group challenged. What would also need to be taken more into account is that the correlation between challenge and selfassertion does not have to be linear. It could also be the case that religious selfassertion only occurs when a certain level of religious plurality has been reached, a level that has perhaps not been reached yet; in other words, it could be the case that the majority situation in West Germany today is still too unequivocal. 3) Three factors are pointed out to explain the differences in the downward trends between the Protestant and Catholic Church. First, these differences have much to do with the different concept of the church in Catholic and Protestant theology. Although the Catholic Church has, since the Second Vatican Council, abandoned the doctrine extra ecclesiam salus non est, and admitted that there are also ‘many elements of sanctification and truth’ outside the Roman Catholic Church, the fullness of the means of salvation are still to be found only in the Roman Church (Lumen Gentium 8; see also Lehmann 2007: 60f.). The clerics are holy persons, distinguished from the laity through their consecration and celibacy; the Pope is the representative of Christ on earth, and he talks with divine authority when he speaks ex cathedra, his word then even being considered as infallible. 80

73.3 74.5

70 60

53.3

50.1

46.3

50

40.7 40 30 20 10

12.2

9.6

0 greater diversity is desirable

cultural enrichment West Germany

source of conflicts

threat from other cultures/nations

East Germany

Fig. 4.9. Religious pluralism—enrichment or threat? 2010 (in %) Questions: ‘I would like to see a wider variety of religious groups/organizations in my neighbourhood’; ‘The increasing diversity of religious groups in our society is a cause of conflict’; ‘The increasing diversity of religious groups in our society is a cultural enrichment’; ‘I believe that our country is threatened by foreign cultures/nations’. Source: WArV 2010.

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Among Protestants, however, doctrine is represented by the priesthood of all believers; ordination is not a sacrament; and whether the church is necessary for salvation is a matter of controversy. Many Protestant theologians argue that the believer stands directly before God and therefore does not need sacramental mediation by the church. People’s distancing from the church is therefore something moored in Protestantism itself. Of course, such an understanding of the church will also be reflected in a lower level of church affiliation and a higher religious individualism. Second, the stronger proximity of Catholics to the church is also due to the greater willingness and ability of the Catholic Church to integrate folk practices of religiosity. While Protestantism, especially in its Calvinist variety, insisted on eradicating all magical practices, the Catholic ritual has linked up with an abundance of magical and popular religious practices, with veneration of saints and pilgrimages, with forms of belief in the positive effect of crucifixes, rosaries, and icons, and the veneration of holy places. Many of these practices have a local flavour and are therefore able to blend feelings of regional connectedness with Catholic identity, thereby strengthening the latter. Even communion is understood in Catholicism as something magical, whereas in Protestantism it has been stripped of much of its magical elements, to the point that it is celebrated among the Reformed purely as a memorial meal. The Holy experiences in Catholicism are a symbolic representation and sensual decoration, while its communication in Protestantism is carried out somewhat more reluctantly or even treated as non-communicable. Catholicism is therefore better able to satisfy people’s needs for tangible reassurances of salvation. Finally, historical lines of tradition are also likely to play a role, a role that they still play today. Already in the nineteenth century, the Catholic Church in the German Reich managed much better than the Protestant churches to oppose tendencies of secularization. While Protestantism, as the dominant political culture, was associated closely with power structures, Catholicism formed a densely networked milieu in contradistinction to the ruling denominational culture and the Prussian apparatus of power; this milieu comprised a variety of associations and organizations, permeated all areas of life, was held together by a Catholic interpretation of the world, and in the German Centre Party (Deutsche Zentrumspartei) even had political representation. It was not only the Catholic workers’ and journeymen’s associations, the leisure and sports associations, the denominationally supported school system, and the upgraded press system that contributed to the development of a strong Catholic identity. Also important was the fact that the integration of people into the denominational milieu was able to connect to their membership of other social units and was thereby able to develop a structure-forming, worldview-constituting and boundary-setting force. In Emsland, milieu mobilization was already used in 1848 as a defence against the anti-Catholic

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aspirations of an imposed rule, and strengthened itself again when, after the transfer of the Emsland region to Prussia, itself supported by the anti-Prussian sentiment, there was cooperation between the Centre and the Guelph Party (Schmiedl 2001). In the Ruhr area, a Catholic milieu arose in the 1870s when, as a result of rapid industrialization, a Catholic-dominated workforce faced an entrepreneurship committed to Protestant national liberalism (Jäger 1996). Similarly, the origin of the Catholic milieu in Saarland was also ‘a genuine product of industrialization’ (Paul 1995: 29). There, the Catholic workforce, which had increased greatly due to the expansion of the mining industry, responded to the gestures of cultural superiority of the dominant Protestant ‘ruling class’ in the upper echelons of administration and industry through the formation of an underdog mentality and a retreat into the denominational ghetto. In other words, the formation of milieu structures occurred especially where denominational affiliation was strengthened by lines of conflict of modernization, by political, social, or economic stress lines (Loth 2006: 30f.).17 In these cases, religion served as a medium for the staging of political conflicts, as an instrument of self-assertion against a social class perceived as culturally and economically superior, as a place to form community networks of solidarity, as a means of protection against the demands of modernity, as a haven to create patterns of moral order, mutual relations of recognition, and social respectability. If the lines of conflict lay across people’s ties to denomination,18 then this was not conducive to milieu formation. These are the findings of a large number of milieu studies conducted in recent decades (Mallmann 1986; Loth, 1991; Weichlein 1996). Milieu formation therefore occurred together with the start of modernization processes (Arbeitskreis für kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, Münster 2000), when, as Klaus Tenfelde (1996) has convincingly shown, pre-modern feudal bonds were no longer able to grip, and it was successful to the extent that denominational identity combined with the fulfilment of other, political, socio-economic, cultural, ethical, and socialdiaconic functions. Although the Catholic milieu no longer achieved that level Wilfried Loth puts it more sharply: ‘Milieu structures developed only [sic!] where the awareness of denominational affiliation was superimposed by one or more lines of conflict of modernization.’ 18 This applies, for example, to cities such as Berlin, Hanover, and Nuremberg, where the power of assimilation of urban life and the accompanying diversity of ethnic, linguistic, social, and political orientations weakened the ability of Catholicism to bind people to it. For a city like Bochum, Liedhegener (1997: 462) has observed an intensification of economic disparities and thereby a further divergence of the lives of Catholics belonging to different social layers, which has resulted ultimately in the formation of a relatively independent sub-milieu of Catholic workers within the church milieu. Mergel (1994: 279) has also analysed the dissociation of denominational and social lines of tension in the Rhineland, where reservations on the part of the Catholic middle class regarding the ultramontanist movement gave rise to the creation of a separate middle-class milieu within Catholicism. 17

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of control once exercised by the denominational churches (McLeod 1997: 36), but was limited both in its scope and in its density and depth of penetration (Loth 2006), it has strongly influenced over generations the religious practice and world of ideas of Catholics, and is still influential today. Due to its proximity to political rule, Protestantism could not develop this cultural, mental, and organizational resistance. Especially after 1870, it fell into the vortex of nationalistic enthusiasm, which at first made it attractive, but then, because of its close ties to the Wilhelmine Empire, caused it to lose with the Empire’s downfall an important moral and political support. Protestantism was much more affected than Catholicism by the defeats of Germany in the First and Second World Wars, with the Catholic Church surviving much better the national tragedy of Germany due to its greater distance from the political establishment, even though it was of course also not free of nationalistic tendencies.19 4) But how can we explain the disproportionate losses incurred by the Catholic Church since 1990? It seems that the power to influence held by the Catholic milieus has been dwindling over the last few decades, and that, after the melting of the milieus in the 1960s, their long-term effects have become ever smaller. If this is correct, then that would mean that in the Catholic Church over the last twenty years processes have been taking place that had already taken place in the Protestant Church, processes in which the church’s ability to pass on faith has weakened. If parents and children still have strong ties to the church, then, if the influence of the milieu declines, then the parents may probably still hold firmly to their church ties, but are no longer able or willing to pass this affiliation to their children. In the third generation, the children then give up their church ties, but still have memories of church teachings, until the fourth generation finally expunges these memories as well. If there is a core of truth to this, then what would need to be explained would be less the weakening power to integrate of the Catholic Church after 1989 than its attractiveness in the decades before. We assume that the West/East conflict has made a significant contribution here. While the Protestant churches in West Germany had a certain mental inhibition regarding their desire to distinguish themselves sharply from the communist East due to their close ties to the Protestant churches in the GDR, the polemics of the Cold War in the Catholic Church could gain a foothold more easily and connect itself

19 As Jürgen Falter (1991) has discovered, Catholics were largely immune to the NSDAP up until Hitler’s seizure of power. In 1932, only 17% of those who voted for Hitler came from predominantly Catholic regions; 83% were non-Catholics. The stronger resistance of Catholics to the NSDAP is closely related to the density and cohesion of the Catholic milieu. It is this involvement in neighbourhood, community and family contexts of life that still has a stronger formative influence on the lives of Catholics than it does on the lives of Protestants.

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with a strong Catholic self-awareness. Quite a few Catholics understood their church as a bastion against communism, possibly also as a way of contrast to the Protestant Church, which was more open to the East. What is also important is the shortage of priests, which has become so drastic in the Catholic Church that it has partially impaired the ability of Catholic communities to function. The shortage of priests has forced the church to restructure parishes and to merge them more and more, with some then becoming extremely large. The sense of belonging to the parish then weakens and the feeling of anonymity grows. For every priest there is an average of about 3,100 believers in the Catholic parishes, while, in the Protestant, that figure is approximately 1,700. Furthermore, the superannuated priests are often overstretched by parish duties, in particular administering the sacraments, and sometimes burned-out mentally and spiritually. Many have the impression that they now thoroughly lack the energy necessary to be able to shape parish life. Sometimes the parishes have a life of their own, which can produce wild growth and chaos. The shortage of priests can only partly be absorbed by foreign priests, who often only speak the German language to a limited extent, or pastoral assistants, who are not entitled to administer the sacraments. Finally, the cases of abuse and the public naming and shaming of priests have also probably contributed to the decline in the number of church members. Although in 2010 the rate of people leaving the Catholic Church exceeded for the first time the rate of exits from the Protestant Church, we should not overestimate the impact of the cases of abuse on people’s readiness to leave the church. The rate of exits grew only from 0.5 to 0.73 per cent, and returned to the initial level in the following year (see Fig. 4.1). Clearly the binding force of the Catholic Church is still relatively high. As mentioned above, though, the relationship that Catholics have to their church is characterized by a high degree of ambivalence. Despite a strong sense of loyalty to the church, people’s reservations, especially regarding the church’s sexual teachings, are particularly pronounced. When it comes to critical events, when public opinion changes, when negative experiences accumulate—then this may have a disproportionately strong impact on people’s sense of connectedness to the church and tip the balance between people’s ties to the church and their reservations. We have quite possibly had in West Germany in the last two decades among Catholics just such a tipping in the balance. 5) The observable counter-movements to the dominant downtrend are connected to a number of factors, and we shall mention three here. First, those church events that are anchored in the family are gaining in importance. These include, for example, church service at Christmas, which people go to with their family and which is simply part of Christmas festivities for many families, but also the family church service, which people have increasingly attended over the last few decades, as they have Christian vespers and matins

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on Christmas Eve (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland 2006: 14). People attend church service most often with their partner or immediate family. This shows the anchoring of church practice in family life. As we have seen, as the number of children that a person has increases, so does his or her commitment to the church. The close connection between family and church practice also becomes visible, though, through the fact that baptism and church burial are in high demand. It is clearly important for many families that the church accompanies them through their life, and people’s ties to the church are also strengthened by the religious upbringing that they had in their family. But religious and church events, such as the Catholic Church’s World Youth Day or the Protestants’ Church Day, also have considerable powers of attraction. The special appeal of these events appears to be based on their multi-functionality. Of course, these meetings of the faithful are about a renewal of spirituality, but they are also about a mutual communicative reinforcement of faith, the coming together of like-minded people, the celebration of a festival, the intensification of experience, and the living out of people’s needs to shape themselves. But those religious ideas and practices that allow people to fulfil their claims for individual self-realization have also grown. The fact, for example, that belief in life after death did not decline between the 1970s and the 1990s, but actually rose, certainly has much to do with the semantic reorganization of this idea, which people now understand more than before as being above all a continuation and intensification of their own individual lives and no longer simply a belief in an afterlife. 6) But we can also explain the growths in esotericism and alternative religiosity from the tendency towards religious individualization. As Table 4.25 shows, people who are younger, unmarried, divorced, without children, more highly educated, and in employment are over-represented among followers of a non-Christian religiosity. Among followers of nonChristian religiosity of the newer type can also be found an above-average number of people with a higher income. For all forms of non-Christian religiosity, regardless of whether of an older or newer provenance, or also of whether they are in close proximity to forms of healing practice, there is a particular closeness to postmaterialist values. The tendencies across the whole of society towards an improvement in incomes, an increase in education, and a structural individualization in the form of cohabitation also promote, then, an increased openness towards forms of non-Christian religiosity. If, on the other hand, the growth in alternative religiosity and spirituality has remained within certain boundaries, then this is more than likely to have something to do with the fact that the religious sphere of life is not of paramount importance for many people. In contrast to partnership and family, as well as career and

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friendships, it is therefore, as has been shown above (p. 116), not so important for many people to make individual decisions in religious matters. But if more and more people do not make any decisions in religious matters, and, perhaps due to a lack of interest, do not want to make such decisions, then it is not surprising that processes of religious individualization should only be weak and an attitude of consumerism, of being waited upon, and of indeterminateness should often dominate in religious matters.

5 A Stronghold of Catholicism Italy

Barely anywhere else in Western Europe does church life have such an obviously high level of dynamism as in Italy, where the entire country is pervaded by a variety of church seminaries, schools, charities, retirement homes, and religious retreats. With Rome as the seat of the head of the Catholic Church, Italian Catholicism can avail itself of a spiritual and political centre which every year attracts millions of visitors from around the world. In the Holy Year of 2000, an estimated thirty to thirty-five million pilgrims visited the Eternal City. But it is not only the centralism of Italian Catholicism that is so distinctive, but also its regional plurality. Each and every village has its bell tower, which can often be seen from afar. Apart from the official rituals, there are also a large number of local cults that are maintained in people’s prayers to statues of the weeping, or even bleeding, Madonna, as well as in their worship of important regional saints. Catholic positions on bioethical issues, on issues of poverty and justice, influence public debates. Priests in their full regalia, nuns hurrying by, religious processions—these are normal sights in the towns and villages of Italy. What is also obvious, though, are signs of the Church’s decline, with a gap between the religiousness of the older and the younger generations that the foreign visitor cannot fail to notice. One has only to sit once on the benches at the back of an Italian church in the early evening to notice that it is mainly older women who devote themselves to the Sacred Heart of Jesus or who pray to the rosary. While politicians of conservative parties may still speak up for church values in public, and are then supported in this regard by the Church, they otherwise pursue a lifestyle that is extremely secularized. In actual fact, quite a few social scientists now question the claim often made concerning the high religiosity and churchliness of the Italian population. Castegnaro and Dalla Zuanna (2006), for example, question the figures acquired in surveys regarding church attendance. Following on from Hadaway’s classic studies, they compared claimed with actual frequency of church attendance, and found that the number of those going to church on Sunday lay far below the

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number indicated in surveys. Also, according to Marco Marzano (2013: 305f.), if we take a historical view, then the idea that there has been an unbroken tie between the population and the Catholic Church becomes difficult to maintain. Marzano points out that the proportion of religious marriages compared to the total number of marriages has declined in recent decades, while the number of civil weddings has increased, and that the number of ordained priests has also decreased over the last sixty years. In his comparison of 18- to 26-year-olds with their parents’ generation, Marzano also found that, with regard to all the indicators that he used, there was a reduction by half in the values of religiosity, be it belief in God, belief in the real presence of Christ at the Last Supper, or interest in religious celebrations. Looking at significant measures to gauge people’s church ties and their belief yields mixed results, however. Marzano is quite right when he points to significant age differences when it comes to church practice, with the proportion of regular churchgoers being twice as high among those over 60 (50 per cent) than it is among those under 45 (24 per cent) (EVS 2008: V303, V109), and the differences between younger people and older people also being considerable as far as frequency of prayer is concerned. When it comes to the dimension of belief, however, there are only minor differences between the age groups, with 93 per cent of those over 60, and more than 80 per cent of those under 45, describing themselves as religious (EVS 2008: V303, V109). As far as belief in God is concerned, the age differences are even smaller, while the differences are slightly larger when it comes to belief in heaven and hell. We can therefore certainly agree that there is a discrepancy between the generations with regard to the dimension of religious practice; when it comes to the dimension of belief, however, such a discrepancy is less pronounced. And what is indeed striking is the relative similarity in terms of the religious attitudes that the different generations have, something that contrasts sharply with the generational differences in other Catholic countries in Europe, such as Spain or Ireland. What is also incorrect is Marzano’s argument that church ties have loosened considerably in Italy in the last few decades. The proportion of those with no religious affiliation has indeed increased since 1981 (from 6 per cent to a current 18 per cent) (see Table II.1 in the Introduction to Part II), and we can also observe a decline in the number of ordinations and in the proportion of church weddings compared to the total number of weddings. If we consider our central indicators, however, such as church attendance, frequency of prayer, confidence in the church, belief in God, religious self-assessment, and agreement with religious ideas, then we cannot see any decreases during the three decades since the beginning of the 1980s. Weekly church attendance has consistently been a little above the one third mark (see Table II.1); confidence in the church has even increased slightly (EVS 2008: V303, V109); belief in God has remained at the high level of about 90 per cent; God and religion are assigned a slightly higher importance now than they were

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thirty years ago; and belief in life after death, and in heaven and hell, has even increased significantly over the past thirty years (Fig. 5.1). To characterize, as some do, religious practice and the faith of the majority of the population as superficial, formalistic and folkloric (Milani 1958) may therefore not be justified after all. About two thirds of Italians say that they follow their own path in order to come into contact with God (ISSP 2008: V 47). In Poland, a country that is just as strongly Catholic as Italy, that proportion is little more than a half. While we cannot claim a dramatic decline in church adherence for the years since 1980, we can for the decades beforehand. According to Clark (1996: 371), there was a halving in church attendance in Italy between 1956 and 1972, that is, within a period of about fifteen years. In 1956, the proportion was still 69 per cent; by 1961, it had fallen to 53 per cent. In 1968, 48 per cent of the population still went to mass every week; in 1972, that proportion had fallen to only 35 per cent. Others have confirmed this decline in participation in church life. To characterize the period between the 1950s and the 1970s, Aquaviva (1979: 82), for example, has talked in terms of a decline in people’s feeling for the sacred. According to Aquaviva, there were already significant differences with regard to participation in church service between men and women, and between urban and rural areas, at the beginning of the 1960s, a time when church attendance was 60 per cent in rural areas and only 43 per cent in urban areas, and when it was 61 per cent among women and 39 per cent among men (Aquaviva 1979: 79). To explain religious change in Italy, we therefore have to address three analytical problems.1 First, we have to understand how it was that Catholicism had such a strong position in Italian society in the early 1950s that it was able 100

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1

We would like to thank Max Livi, Münster, for his valuable comments here.

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to include in its practice of rituals almost the entire population (Section 5.1). Second, we need to understand why participation in church life fell so rapidly and dramatically in the years following (Section 5.2). Third, we need to explain the fact that, after this collapse, both church practice and people’s ties to their faith have remained more or less stable since the 1980s, and that tendencies of decline can only be detected with regard to a few indicators of churchliness, such as religious affiliation, the number of priests, or the proportion of church marriages (Section 5.3).

5.1. THE DOMINANCE OF CATHOLICISM A F T E R 1 9 45 To explain the high level of churchliness immediately after the Second World War, we shall point to five factors within the framework established here. First of all, we need to deal with the politicization of the Catholic Church that had already taken place immediately before the end of the Second World War. After decades of political restraint, the Catholic Church finally gained public visibility for the first time between 1943 and 1945. After the failure of the liberal state and fascism had become apparent with the demise of Mussolini, the transfer of Italy to the allies, and the dissolution of the army in the summer of 1943, the Catholics felt a greater need than ever to assume political responsibility. In one fell swoop, the Catholic Church was the only system of reference still functioning in Italy, and it drew the hopes of the population to it. It was in this context that the Democrazia Cristiana was founded at the end of 1943. Second, we shall expose the deep embeddedness of Italian Catholicism within Italian civil society. The ruling class of the liberal state did not manage after its inception in 1861 to anchor the values that it represented culturally (Pollard 2008: 179f.). Liberalism always remained an ideology and a project of the urban middle class and of the rural upper class, but did not become an issue for broad sections of the population. In contrast to other countries like Prussia or France, Italy never managed to establish an effective and general secular system of education to convey the educational ideals of liberalism to the younger generation. Other powerful ideologies, such as fascism and secular humanism, also remained relatively weak and were not able to create a laical culture in the long term. If anyone did challenge Italian Catholicism, that was the Communist Party, since after the Second World War it was able to gain a partial foothold in Italian society and to influence not only workers in the industrialized regions, but also sections of the rural workforce and of the urban and rural middle class. With its close-knit local networks, its celebrations and festivals, as well as its numerous other activities, the Communist Party sometimes managed to create something of a counter-culture, a kind of

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‘political church’. Up until the 1970s, it counted over a million members and repeatedly won over 30 per cent of the vote in elections. But the Communist Party always remained second in power in Italy, and never managed to attract more than a third of the electorate, with a greater success being prevented by the confrontation between Western Europe and the Soviet Union and its satellite states that had begun in the 1950s. Many people were also able to reconcile their commitment to the Communist Party with their Catholic faith, and, despite what they did at the ballot box, remained practising Catholics. This was also possible because the PCI, as a laical party, always defended Catholic identity. Clerical Catholicism could thereby maintain its dominance in public life. After finding its way back into national politics with Pope Leo XIII following a long period of political abstinence, Catholicism was able to penetrate all areas of society, including the political; and, since then, every political power, the liberal political class just as much as the Communist Party, has had to come to some kind of arrangement with it. The potency of political Catholicism was of course linked not only to the fact that it influenced all aspects of society, but also to the fact that it kept a certain distance from the directives of the Church. Although the Vatican sought to gain a direct influence on politics, and often had problems observing the democratic rules of the game, the Democrazia Cristiana (Christian Democrats) made clear after its overwhelming electoral victory in 1948 that it did not see itself as the recipient of commands emanating from the Vatican. Throughout its history, the Party repeatedly exhorted the Church hierarchy to refrain from making any direct intervention in political matters (Guasco 2005: 31, 39), and stressing its independence probably helped rather than hindered acceptance of political Catholicism. Had the Party not kept a certain distance from the Catholic Church, then resistance to the omnipotence of the Democrazia Cristiana coming from society would certainly have been greater. Due to its cultural anchoring in the population and the relative weakness of ideological opponents, political Catholicism was able to dominate political and public life in Italy for more than four decades—up until the Democrazia Cristiana was disbanded in the 1990s in the wake of the disappearance of its Catholic base in the north and east of the country, and its involvement in the clientelist structures in the south. Third, the strong position of Catholicism in the immediate post-war period is also due to the rapprochement between Catholicism and Italian nationalism. For decades, the Vatican, as an international actor on the political stage, had demanded that the Italian state recognize it as a separate state in itself, therefore acting as an obstacle to the emergence of a cohesive national identity. Under the regime of the Democrazia Cristiana, though, there developed for the first time a sense of belonging to a Catholic Italy after the Second World War (Pollard 2008: 187). Fourth, the fact that Italy was up until the 1950s primarily an agricultural country also played a role. As studies have shown, the loosening of people’s

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ties to the Church began in urban areas and among working men (Aquaviva 1979: 79), and the rural nature of Italy therefore helped to anchor the Church within the population. Finally, the high level of religiosity can also be explained by the fact that there is a close link between Catholic religiousness and magical folk practices, a link that has been characteristic of religious life in Italy since the nineteenth century. Besides Catholic rituals, there have always been regional cults with a strong magical element, which the Church has partly opposed, but has also partly tolerated and sometimes even adopted and incorporated. The strong intertwining with these local practices has lent Catholic religiousness a particular proximity to, and practical relevance for, everyday life.

5.2. THE DECLINE IN THE CHURCH ’S INTEGRATIV E CAPACITY SINCE THE SECOND H A L F O F T HE 1 95 0 S There is one factor in particular that is responsible for the onset of the decline in church adherence in the mid-1950s: the so-called economic miracle in Italy.2 The economic recovery, no less dramatic in Italy than it was in West Germany, contributed not only to a rise in the standard of living, to a proliferation of entertainment and consumer goods on offer, to an increase in disposable incomes—and therefore to a significant widening of the range of leisure pursuits provided outside the church, pursuits that competed directly with church events and activities. The extraordinary economic growth of the 1950s and 1960s affected not only the lifestyle and attitudes of Italians, who turned increasingly away from values such as discipline, submission, and obedience, and instead prioritized values such as enjoyment of life, self-determination, and self-realization, who increasingly saw authorities as being open to criticism, institutions as malleable, and traditions as mutable, and who looked to the future with growing optimism. Such changes were also evident in the prospering post-war Germany of the 1950s and 1960s, where, as we have already seen, they also led to the loosening of people’s ties to the church and the weakening of their religious orientations. What marked Italy out was an extraordinarily high level of migration, first of all and as early as the 1950s within the country itself, from the agrarian south to the industrially burgeoning north, but also beyond the borders of Italy, to France, Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland. Pietro Scoppola (1985: 20) has written: ‘While the Catholics conducted heated arguments in the public squares with Communist organizations, which they saw as posing the biggest threat to the faith of the Italian people, […] the real enemy was creeping up behind their back, silently and unnoticed, in the form of consumer society, which destroyed the faith of the Italian people, and all the more for going unremarked.’ 2

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This emigration tore people from old family and neighbourhood relations, destroyed established community networks, weakened communal ties—and therefore loosened church structures, too. The mobility of Italians in the 1950s and 1960s meant, however, not only a weakening of the close link so characteristic of the south between church and family, neighbourhood and local community. What also happened is that the emigrants coming from the warm religiosity of the south often did not feel at home in the cool religiosity of the north, with many losing their ties to the church as a consequence. Migration from the south to the north reached its zenith between 1959 and 1974, falling significantly thereafter (Table 5.1). This period was also the period when the church experienced its most significant setbacks. Embedded in the economic, political, and social upheavals of the 1950s and 1960s were processes of a partial religious individualization, which may also have contributed to the growing sense of distance that people had from the Catholic Church and its rituals. At the beginning of the 1970s, more than 40 per cent of Italians already expressed reservations about the institution of the church, be it that they thought that there was no need for the church, or that they considered religion to be a private matter, or that they regarded religion as an intimate experience that only the individual could have in his or her own way (Cipriani 2003: 314). Despite the individualizing tendencies, traditional values still enjoyed a high status, though. The image of the family was mostly conventional, with 60 per cent of respondents believing that women should not have an important job, but instead support their husband in his career. However, people even then insisted on a high level of independence when it came to their personal life (for example, how they conducted their sex life). This independence also expressed itself in how people lived their faith, with respondents always naming their own conscience as the point of reference for their decisions regarding their faith (Cipriani 2003: 314). Any aversions that Table 5.1. Average annual migrations to and from different regions of Italy (1955–88) (thousand people)

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97.3 179.8 89.9 105.1 65.6 13.6 2.8 −13.5 16.0

−38.3 −35.8 −4.3 7.3 15.8 16.9 17.0 9.4 27.0a

16.7 32.3 27.0 27.7 23.8 18.8 17.8 18.0

−57.4 −122.3 −74.7 −94.8 −75.0 −36.4 −29.1 −13.4 −4.3b

−18.3 −54.0 −37.4 −45.3 −30.2 −12.9 −8.5 −0.5

a

Overall value for the regions of the North-east and Central; b Overall value for the regions of the South and Islands. Source: Martinelli et al. 1999: 60.

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people had towards the Catholic Church were nonetheless only to do with specific aspects of its character as an organization, but not with its nature as an institution for transmitting faith (Cipriani 2003: 314). The picture that we have of the Church’s ability to integrate at the beginning of the 1970s is therefore mixed. On the one hand: tendencies of religious individualization and distancing from an institutionally encrusted and authoritarian Church. On the other: the appreciation of traditional values and the acceptance of the Church as a community of faith. The majority of people are not affected by the individualizing tendencies, but a certain minority are.

5.3. REMAINING RELIGIO US AND CHURCH V I T A L I T Y S I N C E 19 8 0 If we now try to explain the remarkable stability of people’s ties to the church since 1980, we must first bear in mind that, since the 1970s at the latest, a highly modern country with a developed functional differentiation has emerged from agrarian Italy. The standard of living was then barely lower than in West Germany, lifestyles in the urban centres were the same as in the other highly developed countries of Western Europe, and politics and public life assumed a secular character. While the Lateran Treaty of 1929 still recognized the Catholic Church as the official church of Italy, the constitution of 1947 legally separated church from state, Article 7 stating: ‘The State and the Catholic Church are independent and sovereign, each within its own sphere’ (Guasco 2005: 21). The Concordat of 1984 confirmed the separation of church and state—Catholicism was no longer ‘the only religion of the Italian State’ (as it had been in the Lateran Treaty), but was stripped of its privileged position. Other religious communities could also sign treaties with the state, a right that the Waldensians, as the largest Protestant denomination in Italy, made use of just three days after the conclusion of the Concordat. Church and state were separated not only legally, however; the separation was increasingly supported by the majority of the population, too. In strongly Catholic Italy, it is only a minority of 17 per cent who now consider politicians who do not believe in God to be unfit for public office (Fig. 5.2), that figure having been even lower in 1991 (EVS 1991: V26). Two thirds of Italians are against the idea that religious leaders should influence government decisions— as high a proportion as in the other more strongly secularized countries of Western Europe (Fig. 5.3). The differentiation of religion from other areas of society apart from politics is now similarly well advanced. For example, the Church now exerts only a limited influence on school education. While in Italy, as in most countries of Western Europe, there are Catholic schools, these are attended only by

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a minority of pupils (Garelli 2007: 11). Religion is also taught at state schools, but the teaching of the Catholic religion is no longer treated, as it still was in the Concordat of 1929, as the ‘foundation and crowning of state schooling’; rather, the Ministry of Education is concerned today with the question of whether, given the growing religious diversity in the country, a diversity reflected in the religious and cultural identity of pupils, classes in religion should be turned into courses on ethics and the history of religions (the press from 26 September 2012). It has been evident since the referendums on divorce in 1974 and on abortion in 1981 that Catholic teachings on the family and morality can also no longer influence the legal system. The Catholic Action group still tried in the 1950s to permeate the entire life of society and to influence the workers’ union Cisl, the sports centre and women’s associations, as it did the union of teachers, of judges, of doctors, and of technicians; in contrast, church associations such as Communione e Liberazione are now content with seeing Catholic identity as a clearly distinguishable entity in a largely secular culture and society (Garelli 2011: 148, 152). How has Catholicism managed for the most part to preserve its position in society in the face of this clear differentiation between religion and state, religion and law, religion and civil legislation, in the face of rises in living standards and the accompanying change in values? First, we could argue that it has only been partially successful, since, besides the increase already mentioned in the proportion of people with no religious affiliation since the beginning of the 1980s, there are other indicators pointing to the loosening of people’s ties to the church. For example, the number of baptisms has decreased since 1980, although this decrease is also influenced by the growing proportion of immigrants from non-Catholic countries. While almost every new-born child in Italy was still baptized as a Catholic in the 1970s and 1980s, that proportion is now as low as 73 per cent (Fig. 5.4). And, as we have already mentioned, the proportion of civil marriages compared to the total number of marriages has increased: from 19 per cent in 1996 to more than twice that figure today (Marzano 2013: 305). Despite these developments, which, as the gentle downward curve in Fig. 5.4 suggests, are in any case not dramatic, the data already presented regarding church practice and religious ideas indicate that there is a high level of constancy in people’s ties to church and religion. It almost seems as though the tendencies of secularization observable after 1980, tendencies driven by the same forces that had brought about the profound changes in the decades before, were being hampered by strong counterforces. Our task now is to locate these counterforces, and to identify the forces behind the Church’s remarkable stability. One important factor can be easily identified: the effect of national pride on religiosity and churchliness. Those who are very proud of their Italian citizenship are twice as likely to participate in church service than those who are not proud at all (Fig. 5.5). Individual religiosity, belief in God, the importance of belief in God, the emotional benefits of individual faith, and the frequency

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Fig. 5.4. Catholic child baptisms in Italy, West Germany, and the Netherlands, as a percentage of births Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Italy; Mitchell 1975; ISTAT: http://demo.istat.it/; DESTATIS (Federal Statistical Office, Wiesbaden): https://www.destatis.de/DE/Startseite.html; Statistisches Bundesamt; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Netherlands; CBS Statistic Netherlands: http://www. cbs.nl/en-GB/menu/themas/bevolking/nieuws/default.htm; Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae 1970–2010.

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Fig. 5.5. Regular church attendance in Italy with regard to national pride, 2008 (in %) Question: ‘How proud are you to be an Italian citizen?’ Source: EVS 2008.

of prayer—these also increase in line with national pride. To illustrate this with just one further example: more than 80 per cent of those who are very proud to be an Italian citizen claim to draw comfort and strength from their faith, while the figure is only 46 or 49 per cent among those who have little or

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no pride in their Italian citizenship. What is more, pride in citizenship is much higher in Italy than it is, say, in Germany. We can therefore identify national pride as an important predictor of people’s ties to church and religion in Italy (see Pace 2007: 90). So the Catholic Church, which for decades hindered rather than helped the emergence of a national Italian identity, has now in fact become one of the most faithful defenders of the united Italian state, opposing both the separatist aspirations of the Northern League with its quest for the separation of the north from the south, and Padanian nationalism with its pursuit of independence from Rome. Socio-structural features, such as family structure, level of education, size of community and region in which a person lives, also have a sometimes considerable influence on people’s religious and church ties. Particularly influential is the number of children that a person has, with people with three or more children going to church about twice as often as people with no children or only one child (Fig. 5.6). What is also significantly higher among those with more than three children than among those with no children or only one child is people’s evaluation of their own religiosity, of the importance of God for their own life, of their belief in God, and of how frequently they pray (EVS 2008: V114, V129, V119, V132). We have already discussed above in the context of similar observations in West Germany (pp. 120f.) the question of whether behind the correlation between number of children and religiosity is a traditional image of the family and therefore a generally more conservative system of values in which religion, alongside other values, also occupies a high status, or whether the number of children 80 70 60

18

50

19

40 30

13

15 51

20 10 0

39 24

25

0

1 once a week at least

2

3 or more

once a month at least

Fig. 5.6. Regular church attendance in Italy with regard to number of children, 2008 (in %) Source: EVS 2008.

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increases the opportunities that people have to renew their contact with the church through baptisms, confirmations, and weddings. It is probably the case that both play a role. We cannot, however, confirm the obvious assumption that the number of children has particular significance since the birth rate in Italy is higher than average. The birth rate in Italy was indeed higher than in Germany in the 1970s (Martinelli, Chiesi, and Stefanizzi 1999: 56; Statistisches Bundesamt 2013: 34; https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-fa ctbook/rankorder/2054rank.html); now, it has settled at the level that it is in Germany, though. Female employment, though much lower in Italy than it is in Germany, also has an influence on religiousness. While in the 1960s, only about 25 per cent of women over 14 were in employment in Italy (Martinelli, Chiesi, and Stefanizzi 1999: 151), in Germany that figure was about 47 per cent (Federal Statistical Office: micro-census, http://www.bpb.de/system/files/ pdf/O4NQPA.pdf). The difference today between the two countries with regard to female employment is still twenty percentage points, although the number has now risen to just over 45 per cent in Italy. Working women attend church in Italy much less often than do women who are not in employment, and the same applies to Germany, too. A further explanation for the particular closeness between the church and the Italian people, and something that distinguishes Italy from Germany, is therefore the relatively high proportion of women who stay at home instead of going to work, and we can assume that the relatively low number of working women also has an influence on the teaching of religious values and ways of behaviour to children growing up in families. The level of education that people have also has a certain effect, with more highly educated people going to church less often than people with a lower level of formal education (EVS 2008: V109, V336_r). This contrasts with the situation in Germany, where the level of education does not affect church attendance. What is more, there is a much higher proportion of people with a low level of education in Italy than there is in Germany. As far as the dimension of belief is concerned (such as the belief in God, for example), the differences between the levels of education are minimal in Italy, but significant in West Germany (see Table 4.25). We might expect that where a person lives—the size of the town or village, as well as the region—plays a role here, too; and, in fact, churchliness and religiosity are somewhat higher in rural areas than they are in towns and cities, although the differences are not very great (EVS 2008: V370). Moreover, there are differences between north and south Italy that are mainly to do with religiousness and how people live their religiousness. In the south, subjective religiosity is a little more intensive than in the north; above all, though, people’s religious worldview is more dualistic in the south than in the north. While barely half the number of people in the north say that they believe in

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hell, that proportion is almost two thirds in the south (EVS 2008: Q136, V121). But what is surprising is the insignificance of the differences between north and south, with no differences whatsoever regarding church attendance, for example. Given the significant economic differences between the north and south of Italy, we might have expected a stronger level of alienation from the church in the north. But the church’s level of provision for parishes is significantly better in the north than it is in the south: there are 32.2 clerics per 10,000 inhabitants in the north, while that number is only 19.5 in the south (Diotallevi 1999: 80). If the density of clerics has an effect on the level of religiosity and churchliness, then we might have found here an important factor in explaining the insignificance of the differences between north and south. It seems as though the church’s ability to exert an influence on an individual’s religiosity counteracts the effects of modernization. Nonetheless, to deny entirely that the south has a higher level of religiosity than the north, as Diotallevi (2002: 139f.) does in his attempt to refute secularization theory, does not appear to be justified. Overall, then, socio-structural analysis proves to be both informative and somewhat limited. It is family structure, especially the number of children in a family, as well as women’s employment, that have the strongest impact on religious attitudes and practices, while other socio-structural features, such as education and where a person lives (in a town or a village, and in which region), are only of partial significance. The fact that socio-structural specifics are only of medium importance could indicate that religion and church in Italy still have wide acceptance in society, and that, although the majority of the Italian population no longer attend weekly mass, Catholicism nonetheless has a significant presence in the whole of society. To explain the high level of religiosity and churchliness in Italy, more recent research has pointed again and again to one factor above all others: the extraordinary diversity of charitable institutions, political, spiritual, and charismatic movements, social and political projects, and independent spiritual communities that have organized themselves under the umbrella of the Catholic Church. This might well be an important factor, one that can indeed help us to solve the mystery of the religious vitality of Catholicism in Italy. Italian Catholicism is characterized by a strong level of internal differentiation and diversification, something that distinguishes it from the religious landscapes in other countries (Diotallevi 2002: 147; Garelli 2007: 26–32, esp. 28; Marzano 2013: 311). Many movements and organizations that now have a presence worldwide, such as Focolarini and Communione e Liberazione, as well as the community of St Egidio, originated in Italy, or, like Cammino Neocatecumenale, enjoyed their first successes there. The range of issues that these movements, communities, and initiatives address is very broad. Whether it is environmental problems, issues of international justice, poverty, malnutrition, flood disasters, bioethical questions, the

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meaning of life and death, euthanasia, pre-implantation diagnosis, abortion, the preservation of family values, the coexistence of people from different ethnic and religious communities, the relationship between church and state, religious freedom, and national identity—the movements and groups address the widest variety of social issues and relate them to religious values and principles. There are of course also spiritual movements that focus on strengthening individual faith, on sanctifying the person, on expanding the bounds of religious experience, and on practising new liturgical forms, movements that neglect questions of political and social commitment, just as there are some groups that focus primarily on helping the poor and liberating the oppressed, groups that welcome the secularization of society and the diminishing power of the church (Garelli 2007: 30). Most, though, are concerned with socially and politically relevant issues, which they interpret from a religious and Catholic perspective. During the time of Catholic Action, Catholicism attempted to speak with one voice and to feed its teachings directly into politics, culture, law, and education; in contrast, the initiatives and movements that exist today are characterized by their high level of diversification and fragmentation (Diotallevi 2002: 147). Nonetheless, they are still concerned with maintaining the presence in society of the Catholic faith and the Catholic interpretation of the world, and with demonstrating their relevance to the most diverse areas of society, such as the upbringing of children, the cohesion of families, the treatment of foreigners, the fight against poverty and injustice, and the determination of the boundaries of what is possible and what is knowable. To what extent is this commitment to the translation of beliefs into the realm of civil society and culture a reaction to tendencies of secularization, a kind of act of self-assertion by Catholicism in the face of widespread apathy towards meanings of transcendence? This is a question that we can perhaps leave open here. It is certainly a motive behind the activities of religious movements, as the comments of their protagonists show, although it is perhaps not significant for all their actors (see Garelli 2007: 27). About 12 per cent of the Italian population are involved in such religious movements, associations, and communities, with the percentage having remained constant in recent years, despite a change in membership. If we count together all those who are currently active in movements, or once were, then we come to a figure of 25 per cent (Garelli 2007: 26). Many of the groupings and communities have a great influence on how their members live their lives, are committed to the strengthening of the family, and support a more rigorous sexual morality than the church. These movements compete, as it were, for resources, personnel, finances, time, and public attention, which is why Diotallevi (2002: 143) talks of an economic variable to characterize this competition. For Diotallevi, this variable is able to explain the higher level of religiosity in predominantly Catholic countries than in other contexts where there is a religious monopoly. According to Diotallevi, the ‘Catholic effect’

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which appears in many studies—meaning the relatively high religiosity of predominantly Catholic regions, which can be proven again and again, even when religious pluralism and state regulation are checked for (Chaves and Cann 1992: 285)—should therefore be ‘de-Catholicized’, since it has nothing to do with the ‘essence’ of Catholicism; rather, the effect is to do with a pluralism internal to the church that is widespread in some Catholic regions, and with a competitive situation resulting from this which allows Catholics to choose between different religious options and to become more strongly involved. As far as Diotallevi is concerned, the question of whether a pluralism internal to the church comes about is all down to decisions made by church authorities (Diotallevi 2002: 151). The higher religious vitality of internally pluralized Catholicism certainly depends not only on the competition between religious movements and the religious options for action resulting from it, but also, and probably especially, on the relationship of religious movements to the traditional structures of the Catholic Church, to the church hierarchy, and to the dioceses and the parishes. Marzano (2013: 311f.) claims that the religious movements are in a relationship of tension to the Catholic Church, and that they either ignore each other or are even in open conflict with one other. For Marzano, some spiritual communities, such as the Neocatecumenali and Rinnovamento dello Spirito, pursue a project of declericalization and deinstitutionalization, represent a self-produced popular theology, and oppose the church’s cosy arrangement with the world with a sectarian consciousness of their own election by God. Other researchers, such as Garelli (2007: 26f., 29f.), Pace (2007: 88ff.) and Diotallevi (2002: 147–9), do not deny that there are tendencies of autonomization among the religious movements, but give greater emphasis to the interaction that exists between church structures and religious movements. According to these researchers, the majority of communities, associations, and movements make use of church resources, availing themselves of church funds, facilities, and personnel; and, in many cases, the clergy up to the level of diocesan bishops are themselves involved in these movements. For Diotallevi (2002: 148), for example, there may well be competition both between the groups for church resources, and also between the movements and the church communities, but the religious unity of the Catholic Church in Italy is in no way under threat. Alongside the well-organized traditional structure of the Church, there is a parallel structure—or, to be more exact, a plurality of parallel structures that are less tightly organized. Even if the Church’s repeated calls for its members to work together often go unheeded, so these researchers argue, the authority of the Pope remains undisputed. He is the figure who guarantees the unity of the Church, and, in fact, both John Paul II and Benedict XVI recognized the importance of these religious movements for revitalizing the Church, and worked hard to integrate them (Galli della Loggia and Ruini 2009). Seeing such movements as a bulwark against rampant

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secularization, different Popes have repeatedly stood up for them, protected, and encouraged them (Miccoli 2007). At the same time, though, they have stressed the importance of keeping the religious energy of these movements under control and incorporating their activities into the Church. Italian Catholicism may lack something like an organizing centre that is able to steer and coordinate the activities of its free groups and movements, and of its individual churches, but the authority and charisma of the Pope holds together the multiple religious and church structures that are sometimes more and sometimes less strongly organized. In that sense, the partial tendencies of autonomization do the vitality of Italian Catholicism more benefit than harm, since they widen the areas of contact that the Church has with society while providing people with a means to satisfy those religious needs that find no home in the traditional structures of the Church. Due to the diversity of their activities and their great willingness to engage in socially relevant issues, the religious movements have an important presence in the public sphere. They form the hard core of Italian Catholicism; around this core is a much larger circle of practising believers, who participate in church life and feel strongly connected to their church, but who do not belong to the voluntary organizations and movements. Institution and movement, organization and community, hierarchy and spontaneity—these complement each other in the relationship between the Catholic Church and independent religious associations, forming a malleable and durable connection that is not free of tensions, or even conflicts, but that can develop its own dynamic for that very reason. Religious communities and initiatives would be much less potent if they did not have the support of the clergy and the Church. They attach themselves to the dense network of clerical organizations and structures, drawing on their resources for their own activities, and are therefore able to count on the support not only of the Pope, but also of bishops, priests, and members of religious orders. If we want to explain the strength of Italian Catholicism, we should also therefore look at the situation regarding the clergy. Although the proportion of priests compared to the total population shrank significantly during the twentieth century, the density of clerics is still greater in Italy than in any other European country. At the beginning of the twentieth century, there was one priest to 500 Catholics in Italy; in 1951, one to 1,000; today, there is only one to 2,000 (Molina 2005: 46). But, compared to other European countries, the Catholic Church in Italy is still much better equipped in terms of personnel, with a third of all bishops in Europe practising their office in Italy, which means that in Italy there are about 225,000 Catholics to one bishop, while the ratio in Poland and Germany is about 1:370,000 and 1:400,000, and, in France and Spain, 1:450,000 and 1:500,000 (Garelli 2007: 10). The number of priests in Italy is also significantly higher than in all other European countries: in Germany, the ratio between active priests and number of parishioners is

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not 1:2,000, but 1:3,100, and, if we add to the diocesan priests (2006: 32,000) members of religious orders (17,000) who often perform duties in the parishes and thereby compensate for the shortage of priests, then in Italy there is one priest to about 1,100 inhabitants. Together with nuns, the religious personnel in Italy amounts to about 160,000 people, which means that there are in fact only about 350 inhabitants per ordained person (Garelli 2007: 23). Such a high number of personnel obviously means that the contact between clergy and parish is much closer in Italy than it is in other countries, that the church’s provision of events and activities to parishes is more intensive and diverse, that it is in a better position to perform rituals, and that it can offer many activities that might otherwise not be possible elsewhere. If we assume that the priest plays a key role in people’s perception of the Church and in their feeling of connection to it (EKD 2014: 13, 97), then the importance that the high number of personnel has cannot be overestimated. It is also obvious that, given such a high density of personnel, the presence of the Church in civil society and in the public sphere increases in strength, and we can also ascribe the significant presence of religious and church issues in Italy’s media to the high number of church personnel in the country. Alongside the commitment of Catholic lay movements, we can therefore identify the high number of personnel employed by the Catholic Church in Italy as a second important factor that may help us to explain the high level of religiosity in the country. The Catholic Church in Italy obviously has a much stronger power to mobilize and self-organize than the Catholic Church in Germany. Despite all the internal differentiation, we should not underestimate the considerable homogeneity of the religious landscape in Italy. The proportion of those with no religious affiliation may have risen to 18 per cent, but the proportion of those belonging to non-Christian religions does not exceed 3 per cent (Pace 2007: 88). For most Italians, being a Catholic is something that they more or less take for granted, although this sense is being increasingly challenged by the growing number of people not bound to a church, and by the increasing presence of non-Christian religions, especially Islam. In public, and in particular in the eyes of committed Catholics, Italian Catholicism with its rich tradition assumes the character of a majority religion called into question—a religion which is in danger of becoming a minority religion; which has lost referendums on such essential issues as abortion and divorce, and therefore on the conservation of Catholic values and norms; which is threatened with the loss of the cultural power and political influence that it wielded for over forty years through the Democrazia Cristiana; and which therefore now has to compete against other religious options, but especially against rampant secularism. For the most part, this is only a perceived challenge, a dramatized threat, in which the awareness of Catholicism’s former dominance over all areas of society still resonates. Nevertheless, it is precisely

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such a sense of threat that can have a mobilizing effect and produce a fear of decline that justifies formulating claims to recover ground lost to opponents. This strategy of self-assertion can then be equipped with a sense of responsibility to conjure up the ethical crisis and moral disorientation of society triggered by secularization, and to offer Catholicism as a means of salvation (see, for example, Garelli 2011: 157, 162 passim). While in Germany growing religious pluralism and an increase in religious indifference have barely led to a return to the Christian roots of its own identity (see p. 135), the far less threatening tendencies of pluralization and secularization seem to have precisely this effect in Italy. Catholicism in Italy is still probably powerful enough, and also sufficiently battered and bruised, to be able to bring forth such a tension of forces. In Germany, however, where efforts at self-assertion are weak, Christianity is apparently no longer vital enough to be able to produce such reactions, despite the existential challenges, such as growing religious pluralism and increasing secularization, that it faces. What is also perhaps important here is the fact that Italian Catholicism can draw on its experiences of the threat of communism and is already well versed in the appropriate rhetoric of self-assertion, something that of course does not prevent it, and did not prevent it in the past, from making compromises and building alliances with the supposed enemy. Catholicism in Italy, which appears militant in the public domain, has internally an effect that unifies and motivates. It might of course be possible to find other important factors to explain the remarkable resistance of the Catholic Church to processes of pluralization, individualization, and differentiation. We could, for example, point to the interlacing of official church rituals and local cults, to the mixing of Catholicism with magical beliefs and practices, to the clarity of devotion to the saints and Mary, but also to the significant media presence of the Pope and to the well-organized mass events of the Church such as the World Youth Day. Two factors seem to be central here. One is the extraordinary variety of different initiatives, movements, organizations, groups, and communities, which have an effect on society with their different and sometimes opposing intentions (critical, reflexive, moderating, defensive, or even rejecting), which have their say in public debates, and which mutually reinforce each other precisely in their confusing multiplicity. They cling to the lavish structures of the Church, use them, but also distance themselves from them, and in that sense are in a conflictive relationship of cooperation with them. Secondly, though, the high level of churchliness in Italy may also have something to do with the deep-rooted traditionalism of broad swathes of the Italian population, among whom there is a developed awareness of religious belonging linked to a strong nationalism. This nationally tinted Catholic traditionalism hardly manifests itself in aggressive or combative forms, but resists secularizing tendencies and is able to preserve the cherished values of family, fatherland, and Catholicism. The nimble Catholic movement of initiatives and associations with their

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political and social commitment therefore meets a traditionally influenced Catholicism of habit, and acquires through it a kind of atmospheric support. Diversity in unity—that would be the shorthand for the comparative success of Italian Catholicism. Just as the Catholic movement is supported vertically by the high density of personnel and the developed institutional structures of the Catholic Church, so it is embedded horizontally in the climate of acceptance of Catholicism practised as a habit. At the same time, it is able to convey mobilizing impulses both to the hierarchy of the Church and to its members.

6 Religion in Free Fall The Netherlands

The Netherlands are among the most secular countries in Western Europe, with the proportion of those without religious affiliation now accounting for more than 60 per cent of the Dutch population (Table 6.1). At risk of exaggeration, we could even say that the Netherlands are something like the East Germany of Western Europe. As in other Western European countries, such as Italy and West Germany, the binding power of the church diminished significantly in the Netherlands in the 1960s. In contrast to Italy and West Germany, though, the decline in church membership began much earlier in the Netherlands, and was much steeper. In 1930, the proportion of those without religious affiliation already accounted for around 15 per cent, the highest figure of all Western European countries (Knippenberg 1992; Höllinger 1996). In the second half of the 1960s, the proportion stood at a level that has still not yet been reached in Italy or West Germany: more than one third (Table 6.1). Today, only a little more than 30 per cent of Dutch people still belong to a church. When it comes to religious practice, the declines are equally dramatic. In the early 1960s, the Netherlands had the highest rate of church attendance in Europe (Rooden 1997: 131). In 1960, the proportion of regular churchgoers was 87 per cent among Catholics (Sengers 2010: 442). According to the Catholic Church, almost two thirds of Catholics still attended religious service every week in the mid-1960s (Sengers 2004: 136). Fifteen years later, that proportion was still 25 per cent. Today, the figure is only 7 per cent (Kregting and MassaarRemmerswaal 2009: 25). In the communities of the Dutch Reformed Church, church attendance has not fallen as dramatically. The decline started at a lower level and has not reached the low point experienced by the Catholic Church. Church attendance in the Reformed Church had clearly weakened in the decades before the Second World War, and currently about 20 per cent of church members go to church on a weekly basis (Sengers 2010: 446). In turn, church attendance among neo-Calvinists remained for decades at the level that it was in

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Table 6.1. Proportion of church members in the general population of the Netherlands, 1958–2011 (in %)

Without religious affiliation Roman Catholic Reformed Neo-Calvinist Other denomination Muslim

1958

1966

1970

1975

1983

1991

2000

2011*

24 42 23 8 3 0

36 30 17 14 3 0

39 34 16 8 3 0

42 30 16 10 3 1

50 28 12 6 3 2

57 22 11 7 4 3

65 17 9 6 4 5

68 13 4 3 5 7

* The numbers from 2011 are based on extrapolation and are therefore prone to inaccuracy. In 2004, the Dutch Reformed Church, together with the neo-Calvinists (Gereformeerde Kerken) and the small EvangelicalLutheran Church, merged to become the Protestant Church of the Netherlands. Since the merger, there are no longer reliable figures on the members of the formerly independent churches. Source: Becker and Hart 2006, Bijlage B3: 4, 10.

the 1950s (80 per cent or more). In the meantime, though, the frequency of church attendance has also declined in the strictly reformist neo-Calvinist communities, with only about 50 to 60 per cent of members now still attending church service once a fortnight (Becker and Hart 2006, Bijlage B3: 5). Belief in God, which is our third central indicator of religiosity, is only marginally different from the other two variables, with the Netherlands among the Western European countries with the lowest rate of agreement concerning belief in God. According to EVS data, only 58 per cent of Dutch people say that they believe in God (see Table II.2), while, according to other surveys, that figure is only 51 per cent (Becker and Hart 2006, Bijlage B3: 2). In the 1950s and 1960s, that figure was still at around 80 per cent (see Fig. 10.6). The decline in belief in God began later than the decline in religious affiliation, but is nonetheless also exceptionally strong—stronger than in West Germany, Switzerland, and Belgium (see Fig. 10.6). However, belief in God or a higher being is currently affirmed not by a minority, but by a small majority. This means that a significant percentage of those who have turned their backs on the church still hold to the belief in a transcendent power. But it is not only the degree of belief in God that has altered in recent decades, but also its form. The proportion of people who believe in a personal God halved in the course of forty years (Table 6.2), while the share of those who believe in a higher power has increased somewhat. Above all, though, the proportion of agnostics and atheists has increased. This overview of developments in church and religion in the Netherlands over the last few decades raises three questions. First, why did the power of religious and church ties weaken disproportionately in the Netherlands in comparison to other Western European countries, and that despite the fact that rates of participation were once above average? Second, why was the Catholic Church more strongly affected by this decline than the Reformed

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Table 6.2. Belief in God and a higher power in the Netherlands, 1966–2006 (in %) 1966

1979

1996

2006

There is a God who takes personal care of the destiny of each individual person.

47

33

24

24

There must be something like a higher power that determines people’s lives.

31

40

39

36

I don’t know whether God or a higher power exists.

16

18

27

26

6

9

10

14

Neither God nor a higher power exists. Source: God in Nederland 1966, 1979, 1996, 2006.

Church, and more strongly affected not only than the strict Gereformeerde (Reformed Churches), but also than the more liberal Nederlands-Hervormde Kerk (Dutch Reformed Church)? In all parts of Europe, the decline in participation in religious service is stronger among Protestants than it is among Catholics. If this is different in the Netherlands, then we need to provide an explanation. Third, can we observe in compensation for these losses by the churches an increase in importance in the field of a highly individualized— Christian or non-Christian or syncretistic—religiosity? The fact that the group of believers is larger than the group of church members does appear to suggest that forms of an individual spirituality are especially important.

6.1. THE E MERGENCE OF DENOMIN ATIONA L MILIEUS A ND THEIR DISINTEGRATION We can answer the question of why the religious and church ties of Dutch people have weakened to such an extent in recent decades only by returning to that denominational and ideological structure that social scientists and historians refer to as pillarization (Kruijt and Goddijn 1965; Lijphart 1968; for a discussion, see Molendijk 2007). Emerging in the late nineteenth century, pillarization existed up until the 1960s. The phenomenon of pillarization is characteristic not only of the Netherlands, but is also found in Austria, Belgium, and Switzerland (Steininger 1975). The term refers to the emergence of denominational and political or ideological group cultures that form networks within themselves of social organizations, associations, and clubs based on ideological or religious foundations, and that sharply differentiate themselves externally from other group cultures. Through the institutions, organizations, and associations active within them—be they trade unions or insurance companies, sports associations or schools, charitable organizations or recreational clubs, newspapers or radio stations (Post 1989: 15)—the pillars have a strong influence on how individuals live their lives. Due to the mutual

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compartmentalization of the pillars, people lead their lives in largely closed-off spaces. Catholics attend Catholic schools, read Catholic newspapers, buy meat at the Catholic butcher’s, play football in Catholic clubs, and of course also marry within their own religious community. Contact with members of other milieus is therefore weak. Within the pillar, a leadership position is taken by the clergy. The particular milieu often has its own political party, which represents in public the political, social, economic, and cultural interests of the milieu. In this way, religious, ideological, political, and socio-structural characteristics coincide in the pillars, which are in a relationship of competition, or even of conflict, with each other. The emergence of pillar structures can be traced back to processes of liberalization and modernization, but we should also see the contingent reasons for their emergence. In the Netherlands, pillarization represents a response to three lines of tension: to the conflict between Catholics and Protestants on the one hand, and liberals on the other; to the long confrontation in history between Catholicism and Protestantism; and to the tension between rich and poor. The conflict between liberals and those tied to a denomination revolved partly around the question of the legal and financial equality of Christian teaching in the primary school1—a question that has occupied the conflicting parties since the mid-nineteenth century. Liberals were in favour of a religiously neutral state education system, but did not reject denominational private schools, provided that they were not supported by the state. Those tied to a denomination called for state and denominational schools to be legally and financially equal. The conflict came to a head with the creation of the Primary School Act of 1878. On the one hand, the Act sought to raise the level of education by demanding better qualifications among teachers, by increasing teacher pay, and by improving school provision, while on the other hand it prohibited the state subsidization of private Protestant and Catholic schools. This Act was viewed by the denominational side as a threat to its faith and to its educational authority over the younger generation, since the churches were not able to meet the rising costs of the new quality requirements. Abraham Kuyper, a strict Reformed pastor who had long fought for financial equality in education, saw the Act as being almost a declaration of war (Koch 2006: 178ff.). When the Act came into force, he then, in what was an unusual step in the compromise-friendly political culture of the Netherlands, mobilized a broad extra-parliamentary protest movement and founded his own party. By claiming a so-called anti-thesis, in which he opposed liberals, socialists, and the neutral state as representatives of the modern world to Protestants and Catholics, and again characterized Protestantism and Catholicism as two mutually antagonistic principles, he brought the conflict to a head. He saw the entire history of Holland as being characterized by the conflict 1

Another conflict related to the church’s care of the poor, which the state increasingly tried to bring under its control after 1848—a conflict that is often underestimated.

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between Catholicism, Calvinism, and liberal humanism. After his followers left the Dutch Reformed Church in 1886, the Alliance of Reformed Churches in the Netherlands came into existence under his leadership in 1892, which brought together orthodox secessionists. Kuyper and his followers created not only their own church and their own political party, but also associations, a newspaper, denominational schools, and even an independent university (the Free University in Amsterdam), so that a separate system of moral and religious institutions arose, one supported by the community. For Kuyper, this was primarily about protecting his followers from governmental influence, about ‘sovereignty in his own circle’ (Zahn 1993: 203f.). The unintended consequence of building this independent network of organizations and associations was that now the Catholics also started to build parallel structures. What was designed by the Protestants to strengthen and protect their own clientele became the occasion for the formation of competing institutions, with a large number of Catholic organizations and associations coming into being that expanded into the cultural, political, and economic spheres of society somewhat later, at the turn of the century (Rooden 1997: 147). Finally, the Catholics also even founded their own political party to represent their public interests.2 Triggered by the agitation of Abraham Kuyper and the mass mobilization that he had organized, a second conflict intensified alongside the conflict between those tied to a denomination and liberals, a conflict that could build on the centuries-old tension between Catholicism and Protestantism, and that derived from the emergence of the Netherlands through its military detachment from Catholic Spain. Since its beginnings, the Netherlands had defined itself as a Protestant nation, even if a sizeable minority of about one third of its population were Catholics. The conflict between the two denominations was in that sense also a conflict over the Protestant character of the nation and its cultural-denominational hegemony. Despite this conflict, Protestants and Catholics built a united front when it came to the school question, with the Education Act of 1878 practically driving them together. But they shared similar interests in other respects, too—for example, when it came to working for the poor and disadvantaged in their own ranks. The Catholics had comprised for centuries an underprivileged denominational group that had barely been involved in the formation of elites, that enjoyed only a low social prestige, and that had a lower level of education than average. Kuyper’s alliance of orthodox churches also represented a reservoir of ‘little people’. The opposition between rich and poor, lower layers of society and elite, thus formed another line of conflict, one that overlapped with the denominational line of conflict. In their commitment to improving the social position of the underprivileged, members of the Catholic

2

It was initially a collection of local electoral associations, from which a party then emerged.

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and the neo-Calvinist milieus were as close together as they were in their struggle for the equal rights of denominational private schools. The denominational and ideological pillars therefore had different functions to fulfil.3 First, representatives of the pillars were concerned with protecting their own clientele from state interference, and preserving their own independence and ways of life specific to the milieu. The denominational pillars were also responsible for supporting the socially disadvantaged in their own ranks. The Poor Law of 1854 declared care of the poor to be primarily the task of non-state initiatives and ruled out state control of non-state assistance (Sengers and Noordegraaf 2013: 256). A second task of the ideological and denominational pillars was therefore to offset partially the escalating social inequalities accompanying urbanization and industrialization, and to mitigate the demands made by the modern period. In addition, the pillars provided within them a space of mutual recognition, of community, security, and solidarity. Fourth, precisely through providing assistance and support networks, they also contributed to the social integration of the disadvantaged into society. Fifth, they also functioned as the means of social advancement, of imparting education, and therefore of social and political emancipation. Pillarization was made possible above all through the creation of a liberal law. After the definitive separation of church and state in the Constitution of 1848, the churches had new opportunities for autonomous self-organization that some took full advantage of (Wielenga 2008: 27). Up until the late eighteenth century, the Netherlands represented a social order that was based on denominational differences and legitimized by religion, a social order in which political and religious structures were closely intertwined and the political elites had strong rights to intervene in church matters. The urban elites in particular controlled church affairs and restricted their autonomy. Political authority and religious order were not differentiated. The Reformed Church was the official church, and it held a monopoly on the public practice of religion. The Catholics and Free Church dissidents, such as the Arminians and Mennonites, were tolerated, but at the same time were given a subordinate position in the hierarchical order of denominations (Eijnatten and Lieburg 2011: 217). Their places of worship were not allowed to have public visibility, and dissidents, such as Catholics, were excluded from a large number of social and political positions. These positions were reserved 3 The pillar formation is attributed different functions in the literature. Blom (1985: 13ff.) emphasizes the following aspects: the efforts at emancipation of groups lagging behind, the motive of protecting religious life worlds against secularization tendencies and the liberal state, as well as the element of social control. It is clear that the functions are not clear-cut and do not mutually exclude each other. Pennings (1991: 2) divides the attempts to explain the emergence of the pillars into three groups: emancipation and protection theories, elite and disciplining theories, and modernization theories. The pillars of course fulfil several functions at once. The question is, which of these are considered dominant.

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for members of the Reformed Church, which was thereby closely connected to the political elite (Rooden 1997: 138). Denominational and political order were closely intertwined. However, there were already in the middle of the eighteenth century revolutionary movements influenced by the Enlightenment and national ideas that challenged the denominational state. They prioritized the autonomy of the morally acting individual above his or her affiliation to collective groups, and thereby called into question the religious and political hierarchy (Rooden 1997: 141). After an uprising was put down in 1780, French troops installed a satellite state in which the defeated revolutionaries occupied leading positions. They built their politics according to the French model, introduced the separation of church and state, formally (though not practically) lifted the political and social discrimination of denominational minorities, and transformed the fragmented and decentralized urban republic of the Netherlands into a modern nation-state. The kingdom of the Netherlands that was established after the fall of Napoleon partially absorbed the legacy of the revolutionaries. It committed itself to the ideal of nation-building, entrusted political responsibility not to local elites, but to a central government, and no longer founded the social order on a hierarchy of religious groups, but on the sovereignty of the free citizen. No longer did the difference between denominationally defined groups determine the social order; rather, the social order saw itself as a national community of autonomous individuals to which Protestantism wanted to contribute through the moral education of individuals. The Reformed Church, which broke away from the fundamental structures of Calvinism, regained its ‘national character’ (Eijnatten and Lieburg 2011: 294). It now defined itself not in contrast to the nation, but saw in the national community of morally acting individuals the true expression of Protestantism. The pastors of the Reformed Church were integrated into bourgeois high culture and derived from their privileged position the responsibility to teach and to civilize the common man. They supported the state system of schooling favoured by the liberals, a system that was officially neutral regarding religion, but that had in fact, like public life and culture, a strong Protestant character. If we see an intricate intertwining of the disintegration of the social hierarchy based on religion, the resultant release of the citizen from a religiously based social order, the political project of nation-building, the emphasis on moral teachings, and the effort to enforce a religiously neutral state schooling, and then add to that the quest by influential liberal circles for unlimited free-trade policies, for the introduction of voting rights graded economically, and for the creation of a national constitution (Höllinger 1996: 211; Damberg 2005: 165), then we could summarize the tendencies expressed in these developments by the term modernization. It is not surprising that there was soon resistance to the dominance of free citizenship, state education policy, the Reformed Church and high culture. A small group of orthodox Calvinists belonging mainly to the lower layers

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split from the Reformed Church in 1834 (Afscheiding) and returned to the Calvinist doctrine of the Synod of Dordrecht. The orthodox Calvinists not only distanced themselves from the bourgeois establishment of the Reformed Church, though, but also rejected the ideas of the Enlightenment, of the French Revolution, and of liberalism. When Kuyper, whose party also saw itself as antirevolutionary, founded the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (Reformed Churches in the Netherlands) in 1892, they joined their numbers. The disobedience of the orthodox Calvinists makes clear how little there was a religious or political consensus in the first half of the nineteenth century. Lines of conflict that would later become sharper, such as those between liberals and strict believers, between the well-to-do and the socially marginalized, between rich and poor, and also between Protestants and Catholics, were already present at the beginning of the century. The liberal constitution of 1848 can therefore also not be traced back simply to the political activities of a small band of committed liberals. It was more a contingent event than the inevitable outcome of long-lasting developments (Wielenga 2008: 24). Its introduction was largely due to the fickleness of King Willem II. Alarmed by the revolutions of 1848, the king mandated the liberal avant-gardist Johan Rudolf Thorbecke to develop a modern constitution, which, since he had already done some preliminary work, he was able to produce within a few days. In substance, the constitution included the abolition of the indirect suffrage based on social position, and the introduction of direct suffrage for tax-paying men, the guarantee of liberal freedoms such as the freedom of assembly and of the press, as well as the definitive separation of church and state. The radically liberal constitution was far ahead of developments. The separation of church and state in particular created entirely new structures of opportunity, which paradoxically would benefit not the liberals, but above all those tied to a denomination. Thus, the constitution’s separation of church and state, and its guarantee of religious freedom, including freedom of assembly and freedom of the press, opened up the possibility to the Catholic Church of re-establishing the dioceses that had been defunct since the revolt against Catholic Spain in the sixteenth century. The restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in 1853 was accompanied not only by a strengthening of the authority of the Church with regard to the faithful, but also by a sharper distancing from Protestants and liberals. In papal pronouncements, the Netherlands was even described as a land of ‘Calvinist heresy’. The Reformed side responded with protests against the institutional strengthening of the Catholic Church, which had been carried out offensively and with little skill. They feared for the Protestant character of the country. The intensifying mechanism of conflict between Protestants and Catholics had already begun. But it was not only the Catholics who benefited from the liberal constitution, but also the orthodox Calvinists, who grew from an insignificant minority to a

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proportion of 4.2 per cent of the total population.4 Abraham Kuyper’s split in 1886 meant a further weakening of the national Reformed Church. It is not clear to what extent Kuyper aimed with his neo-Calvinist movement to transform the whole of Protestantism into a neo-Calvinist church on the model of the seventeenth century. He must have realized by the end of the 1880s that the forces were not sufficient to take over Dutch Protestantism in its entirety. He then founded the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland in 1892, which united his followers with the group of orthodox Calvinists, and aimed from then on to particularize the Reformed Church, which saw itself as representing the nation. This strategy also determined his behaviour regarding the school question. Kuyper also abandoned the attempt here to base the state system of primary schools on orthodox foundations, and preferred instead to establish denominational schools outside the state system. Through his support for denominational schools and opposition to the state school system, he could enter into a strategic alliance with the numerically much larger group of Catholics who also wanted to establish their own denominational schools. With his so-called anti-thesis, he was able not only to justify the alliance of neo-Calvinists with the Catholics, but also to devalue the state system of schooling as nothing more than an instrument of particular group interests. The Protestant character of the nation was threatened not only by the re-establishment of the Catholic hierarchy made possible by the constitution, but also, and especially, by the efforts at segregation of the neo-Calvinists. The emergence of neoCalvinist and Catholic pillars therefore meant not only a strengthening of the lines of conflict between the denominational cultures, but also an intensification of the conflict between those tied to a denomination and liberals, a conflict that was very much expressed in the national question (Damberg 2005: 165). Both Catholics and strict members of the Reformed Church questioned the central idea of the nation as a superior moral community. They were concerned, though, not only with weakening the nation state, but also, as is made clear, for example, by the demand for state subsidization of denominational schools, with using the state for their own purposes. ‘The ghettos took over the nation’ (Rooden 1997: 148). Instead of the idea of a nation of morally acting individuals, the idea arose of a society consisting of separate denominational groups. The denominational groups that challenged the identification of the nation with general Protestantism and made use of the nation for their own purposes were largely able to maintain their membership levels, or even increase them. The formerly official church, however, lost more than one third of its members between 1870 and 1930 (Knippenberg 1992: 266–89). Some of those who left went over to the stricter directions of beliefs, but most joined the group of 4

In this and the next paragraph, we follow the arguments of van Rooden (1997: 143ff.; 2004b: 151ff.).

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people without religious affiliation. The high proportion, unique in Europe, of those without religious affiliation in the Netherlands in 1930 can be explained by the losses incurred by the Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk, losses incurred not least through the stealing of its members by the more radical forces. Pillarization in the Netherlands was a reaction to processes of modernization, to the collapse of the political order of the ancien régime based on denomination, to the separation of church and state, the differentiation of state education and church, as well as the strengthening of individual autonomy. It was facilitated by the radical liberalization of the law, which challenged and set free the capacities of denominational groups to organize themselves. Not by accident did its emergence occur during industrialization, which had its decisive breakthrough in the Netherlands in the 1870s (Wielenga 2008: 52). The pillarized milieus offered enclaves of protection and comfort against the shock waves of socio-economic modernization (Wielenga 2008: 31). Although the fight against poverty became increasingly the responsibility of the state, it remained until 1935 primarily in the hands of the churches (Sengers and Noordegraaf 2013: 257). Contingent factors also played a role in the emergence of the pillars, however, such as the attitude of the Dutch monarch in the revolutionary year of 1848, the efforts at mobilization of Abraham Kuyper, and the segregationist tendencies of Catholics that these efforts provoked. Although pillarization was a reaction to processes of modernization, it itself is primarily an anti-modern phenomenon. In the pillars, the processes of differentiation already under way in society were put into reverse again, and the individual areas of society, from school education and care for the poor, through professional and cultural associations, trade unions and newspapers, to political representation, were overarched and permeated by religion. It was not functional differentiation that characterized the inner contexts of living and communication within the individual pillars, but dedifferentiation. The second feature of the modern pointed to above, that is, the drawing apart of the levels at which society is constituted (see pp. 29ff.), was also weakened by the pillarized structure of the Netherlands. The individual was included as a whole person in the ideological community, and was subject to social observation and exposed to the atmospheric pressure of the denominational majority. Not only were the individual’s religious practices and ideas influenced by context, but also his or her everyday behaviour and political attitudes, and even lifestyle, including dress code and way of speaking. During the period when pillarization was at its most solidified, the Dutch could tell immediately or after a few spoken words the respective religious identity of individuals (Rooden 2004b: 152). Denominational affiliation had become an internalized habitus. Not only custom and tradition or contextual ties may have contributed to this internalization, but also methods of social control and domination. Due to conflict with the other milieus, deviations could be easily branded as disloyalty, and, due to the social disparities internal to milieus, it was easy to

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control and direct the behaviour of the lower levels. Because all resources were managed by the milieus’ own organizations, help and support could be linked to conformity to norms. For example, the use of poor relief was made dependent on the extent to which people went to church (Sengers and Noordegraaf 2013: 256). Individuals no longer understood themselves primarily as autonomous individuals, but defined themselves above all through their group membership. But free competition in society—the third feature of the modern identified above—was also limited because the individual was barely able to cross the milieu’s borders. Only the political elites of each respective milieu were in contact with each other and entered strategic alliances with each other or negotiated political compromises. For the lower levels of society, competition and exchanges were limited to the pillar milieu. Even the football teams of different milieus did not play against each other; rather, each pillar had its own football league, even if this attempt ultimately failed. Finally, the pillars can also be regarded as anti-modern phenomena, in that the orthodox Calvinists and the ultramontane Catholics understood themselves as implacable enemies of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and modern liberalism. They defined themselves as ‘anti-revolutionary’, and wanted to return to the idealized conditions of the seventeenth century (for a different perspective, see Damberg 2005: 165). They of course integrated modern elements into their actions, by, for example, using the means of modern mass mobilization, or founding political parties, building effective organizational structures and employing the instruments of the mass media, such as newspapers and the radio, to disseminate their goals. But it would nonetheless be absurd to regard them, as van Rooden does (1997: 150), as ‘modernizing forces’, as ‘the most important means by which people were integrated into larger worlds’. As van Rooden himself has convincingly shown, their desire was above all to enforce their particularistic interests at the expense of society as a whole, and to prevent both the opening-up of their communities to general society conceived as a national project, and the autonomization of the individual. The neo-Calvinists were of course children of their time, and they used modern means to pursue their interests. But they used these means to resist the processes of modernization. It is therefore anything but coincidental that, when the processes of modernization and liberalization asserted themselves against the forces of denominational isolationism towards the outside world and of internal social control, the pillar system in the Netherlands should have collapsed like a house of cards (Eijnatten and Lieburg 2011: 386). As in Italy and West Germany, what was decisive was the sudden increase in the standard of living after 1945. Due to the exponentially increasing power of the economy, the social state could be developed and the system of state care extended. The many socio-political measures introduced since the 1950s, such as the Unemployment Act of 1952, the General Old Age Pensions Act of 1957, the General Widows and Orphans

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Act of 1959, the Child Benefit Act of 1963, the Health Insurance Act of 1964, the Social Assistance Act of 1965, and the Incapacity to Work Act of 1967, not only provided individuals with greater existential security, but also made them less dependent on their denominational and ideological milieu, since these measures were directed not at denominational charitable organizations, but at private individuals (Bax 1988). The individual had a legal right to social assistance from the state, and was no longer forced to fulfil conditions to receive social assistance that were not directly related to this (Sengers and Noordegraaf 2013: 253f.). With the expansion of the welfare state, the influence of denominational milieus also decreased because the state increasingly subsidized, and finally financed completely, the charitable initiatives and institutions of the churches, and was therefore able to gain ever greater control over them. The state tied its financial support, which did not go directly to the churches, but to their various charities, to the fulfilment of standards of quality and professionalism, as well as to the guarantee of the general accessibility of the services that they provided (Sengers and Noordegraaf 2013: 262). With the professionalization of welfare organizations and their inter-denominational opening-up, their ideological character weakened. The state also increasingly demanded their neutrality towards the churches (Sengers and Noordegraaf 2013: 262). The acquisition of state funds for the financing of their charities and social-welfare organizations therefore made the churches increasingly dependent on government action. Precisely the use of the state for their particularistic goals and its utilization by the churches led paradoxically to their disempowerment in civic society. Although the pillar structure of welfare remained in place formally, their organizations and initiatives have since become largely secularized. With increased prosperity came also an expansion of the education system, growth in the production of consumer goods, an increase in incomes, a reduction of the working week, extension of the service sector, and the expansion of leisure and entertainment activities. This made available as an alternative to the milieu-specific forms of community secular options that were able to distract attention from the concentration on the forms of communication and action internal to the pillars. The expansion of national and city transport, the increasing private ownership of cars, the emergence of mass tourism increased geographical mobility. Radio, television, and other mass media expanded the intellectual horizon. The telephone facilitated crossregional interaction. All these changes helped to break the narrow limits of denominationally closed milieus (Molendijk 2007: 323). For the first time there emerged something like a political public and a national culture— denominationally neutral spaces that were in principle accessible to everyone and where people could meet, regardless of group boundaries (Sengers 2004: 443). The new possibilities of contact relativized the compulsoriness of milieuspecific values and norms, and undermined group loyalty. Affiliation to a

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denominationally oriented group ceased to be something that was taken for granted and that was repeatedly confirmed by a person’s own community, and became instead an object of subjective reflection and personal decision. It acquired the character of something that had to be justified. Due to improved living conditions, people’s lifestyles also changed. They now placed more emphasis on fashionable clothes, a comfortable home, face and body care, leisure activities and entertainment, social recognition and respect, political participation, and cultivation of the self. The increase in the level of education, the raising of living standards, the feeling of existential security, the extension of leisure—all this allowed them to focus on the fulfilment of their own emotional and intellectual needs, and to question their own wishes and aversions. Collective identities, traditional institutions, and religious conventions had to prove themselves increasingly according to the standards of the self. Scepticism to authority and to closed communities was now just as much the social norm as had previously been the observance of church rituals and beliefs, and the subordination to political and religious leadership personalities (SCPO 1995: 525). More and more people were tired of the paternalistic behaviour of the pillar organizations, and defended themselves against the control exerted in the closed milieus. The transformation in how people thought and behaved, from subordination to self-determination, therefore also contributed not insubstantially to the collapse of the pillar structures. Whether this was a conflictual confrontation between traditional authorities and emerging tendencies of individualization, or more a silent substitution of one by the other, we can leave open here. Both probably played a role, even though the departure from the closed and authoritarian structures apparently occurred, according to van Roodens (2004a), rather quietly. The new legal, material, and social securities made the pillar organizations superfluous in many cases, even where they themselves had contributed to material betterment, to social welfare, or to educational attainment. When the once underprivileged Catholics, neo-Calvinists, and socialists achieved equality, and increased their social status and social recognition, the pillars simply lost the need to exist. The new opportunities for self-realization in the public, professional, and leisure spheres apparently exercised such a force of attraction that the ties to the pillars simply dissolved in many cases. Whatever individual mechanisms of change were in effect here, what is striking is that the economic, legal, political, cultural, social, and religious dynamics of change formed an intricate web of connections and did not separate out into different contingent sub-processes. The main thrust of modernization theory finds further confirmation in the case of the Netherlands. What initially made the pillars strong—namely, the connection of religious with political and socio-structural interests—also contributed ultimately to their disintegration. Detached from political and social entities, and left to fend for themselves, religious identities lost their integrative force.

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In contrast, the central assumptions of economic market theory are not confirmed by the example of the Netherlands. As Frank Lechner already argued in 1996, the degree of religious pluralism in the Netherlands increased after 1945 and the state regulation of the religious field remained either stable or even weakened, while organized religion and subjective religiosity decreased (Lechner 1996a: 257). He concludes that the explanatory factors put forward by market theory did not produce the expected effect in the Netherlands, and that the economic approach must therefore be rejected. Religiosity and ties to the church were not at their strongest when competition between religious providers was strong, but when competition was limited, when religious communities isolated themselves from each other, and a limited number of religious providers divided up the market among themselves (Lechner 1996a: 258).5

6.2. THE SPECIAL CASE OF DUTCH CATHOLICISM But why was the Catholic Church more affected by the process of depillarization than the Reformed Church? Why did participation rates decline to a greater extent among Catholics than among Protestants? These questions are fiercely debated in the literature. Some, like Jan Thurlings or Erik Sengers (2004), see the process of depillarization of Dutch Catholicism as being primarily to do with factors internal to the church, while others, such as Frederik van Heek, consider external influences to be crucial. Adopting the rational-choice argument of the market model, Erik Sengers (2004: 129f.), for example, claims that the more a religious community is in conflict with the society that surrounds it, the more it grows. For Sengers, such a community demands of its members a higher level of commitment, possesses, due to the higher investments that its members make, more financial and human resources, and can therefore also offer its members more. When a religious community is in line with society, though, its ability to mobilize is low, since membership hardly makes a difference to its members. For as long as the Catholic Church separated itself from society, Sengers (2004: 132) argues, membership was attractive. But, when, between 1930 and 1960, it became more and more an integral part of society, when its members rose to the status of respected and equal citizens and acquired a social status not inferior to that of others, its attractiveness declined. The declines in church involvement and in the use 5 In their response to Lechner, Stark and Iannaccone replace the competition model with a conflict model, and see the high level of religiosity in the period before 1960 as lying in the conflict between the closed pillars: ‘For many years, the Netherlands enjoyed a high level of religiousness because these groups stood in vigorous opposition’ (Stark and Iannaccone 1996: 269). Lechner (1996b) rightly points out, though, that this changes the argument and relinquishes the explanation.

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of church sacraments reached dramatic proportions, as the Catholic Church began in the 1960s to abandon its hostile attitude to modern society and to link the practice of belief and modern life together, as well as allowing its members to join non-Catholic organizations (Sengers 2004: 136). This explanation of the rise and fall of the Catholic Church in the Netherlands is only partially convincing, however. And it is so for two reasons. First, it explains not the growth or shrinkage of church communities, but variations in the intensity of individual ties to the church. We can perhaps trace the high participation in church life back to the cultural nonconformity of the Catholic Church and its social cohesion, but not the increase in its members.6 On the other hand, church participation and the Church’s social nonconformity seem to affect each other in exactly the opposite way to how it is presented in the model. The church hierarchy clung to the pillar ideology up until about 1960. After their experience of national unity during the Second World War, many Catholic groups, such as Catholic Action and the St Willibrord Society, did speak out in favour of overcoming pillarization and advocated the breakthrough (Doorbraak) (Eijnatten and Lieburg 2011: 358); however, Catholic bishops rejected such thoughts of breakthrough and did everything to rebuild the Catholic pillar. In a bishopric letter of 1954, they threatened to withdraw the sacrament from Catholics who were endangering the unity of the Catholic Church by being members of social-democratic organizations or reading social-democratic texts, although the Catholic People’s Party had had a coalition with the Labour Party since the 1946 election (Jacobs 1998: 249).7 For the bishops, Doorbraak ideas would lead to the disintegration of Catholic communities and to their infiltration by non-Catholic ideas. The 1950s are generally considered to be the high point of organizational pillarization (Kruijt and Goddijn 1965: 130ff.; Zahn 1993: 206). The formal registration of members in the pillar organizations, from the choice of elementary school, through membership of youth organizations, to subscription to a broadcasting newspaper, was at that time as high as it had ever been, and not only in the Catholic milieu, but also in the orthodox Protestant milieu.8 When the Catholic bishops still held fast to the pillar structure and the formal integration into this structure reached its peak, however, the church practice of members and their ties to the church were already falling, as Sengers (2004: 133) himself

6 This argument is one that Marwell already used against Iannaccone in the 1990s (Marwell 1996). 7 The elites of the pillars were in permanent contact with each other, but that did not prevent their exercising internally a strong social control. Steininger (1975: 270ff.) has shown that the elites always had to mobilize their base, and precisely for that reason had a socially polarizing effect (Molendijk 2007: 321). 8 According to Zahn (1993: 206), 90% of Catholic children went to a Catholic school in 1955, 80% of Catholics read a Catholic newspaper, and 85% voted for the Catholic People’s Party. The marriage homogeneity among Catholics at this time was 95% (Bax 1988: 131).

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shows.9 Not only did the growth in church membership bottom out; church attendance in the big cities also fell.10 If this is correct, then the opening-up of the Catholic Church to society which began at this time and which gained momentum after 1960 is perhaps not so much the cause of the decline in people’s ties to the church as a reaction to it. In any case, the rational-choice model offers no explanation for the disproportionate losses of the Catholic Church. Instead, we trace it here to three factors. First, the rigid attitude of the church hierarchy in the period after the Second World War, when significant parts of the church’s core already sought to overcome the closed pillarization; then, the sudden opening-up to the ideas of church reform, which included the entire Catholic Church in the Netherlands in around 1960; and, finally, in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, the withdrawal of the liberalizing tendencies that had been introduced. Due to the conservative attitude of the episcopate, there were already severe tensions between the church hierarchy and parts of the church’s core in the years following the end of the Second World War. Although the desire to renew the church gained ground, the efforts to open up could be suppressed at this time not only because the episcopate received support from the Vatican, but also because the faithful held their bishops in great esteem (Jacobs 1998: 247). But, precisely because of the integrationalist route taken by the church leadership, the tensions internal to the church intensified. The sharpness of these tensions explains why Catholics in the Netherlands greeted the announcement of the Second Vatican Council in 1959 with great enthusiasm. Many were tired of having everything regulated by the church leadership (Sengers 2004: 443), and were hoping for more individual freedoms. The reform ideas of the Council were not only in line with those in favour of renewal in the communities, but also had a great resonance because they corresponded to strong tendencies of reform and renewal throughout society, and were buoyed by the political and social upheavals taking place outside the church. The idea that the Catholic Church should now be characterized not by closedness but by openness, not rigid morality but tolerance, not apologetics but ecumenical breadth, not

9 The extent to which the Second Vatican Council and its associated trends of opening-up to society triggered people’s distancing from the church is a matter of wide discussion. Greeley and others (Greeley, McCready, and McCourt 1976: 116ff.; Greeley 1985: 55ff.; Hout and Greeley 1987: 332ff.) rejected this argument years ago. Dobbelaere (1988: 88ff.) points out that the sharp decline in people’s ties to the church began not only in the Netherlands but also in Belgium and France before the effects of the Council were felt. In addition, the weakening of church attendance was not limited to the Catholic Church, but affected at the same time the Protestant churches in the Netherlands, in Germany and elsewhere. ‘This decline in church attendance in the Protestant churches cannot be explained by Catholic institutional factors’ (Dobbelaere and Billiet 2010: 139). 10 It seems that the first cracks in religious practice appeared at a time when organizational pillarization was at its strongest.

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denigration of liberalism and modernity but a willingness to be contemporary (aggiornamento) enjoyed a broad consensus. The Council, which took place in Rome between 1962 and 1965, encouraged the new aspirations of Dutch Catholics. Following MacSweeney (1980: 236–9) and Hellemans (2001: 117–19), we can see its significance as lying in the fact that, for the first time, the Catholic Church gave up its rejection of modernity and made peace with the principles of freedom and democracy. It neither withdrew judgementally and contemptuously from the modern world, as it had done during the period between the French Revolution and the pontificate of Pius IX, and nor did it fight the modern world through organization and mass mobilization, as had been its main strategy since Leo XIII. Rather, it defined itself as a partner to the modern world, as having to learn from that world, to adapt to it, and to build with the positive forces of modernity a common house for all people (Hellemans 2001: 118). The reforms agreed at the Council concerned the relationship of the Catholic Church to the outside world, that is, above all to modern society and to other religious communities, as well as internal matters. The Council strengthened the autonomy of local churches and thereby carried out a moderate decentralization of the ecclesiastical structures. It enhanced the status of the laity and therefore ameliorated the sharp distinctions in the church hierarchy. In Lumen Gentium, the Council defined the Catholic Church as the Body of Christ and the ‘wandering people of God’, and thereby avoided a purely institutional understanding of the church. Connected with this changed understanding of the church was an attitude to other religious communities that was less focused on separation. Although the Council held on to the claim that the ‘one true religion’ subsists in the Catholic Church (Dignitatis Humanae 1), it did not rule out that ‘many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structure’ (Lumen Gentium 8) Above all, though, it recognized the religious freedom of the human person (Dignitatis Humanae 2), and therefore limited the absolutist claims of the Catholic Church to a spiritual claim.11 It 11 What the recognition of religious freedom means for the Catholic Church’s claim to truth and salvation is still open to theological debate. The willingness to recognize this fundamental human right has been strongly influenced by the reports of the Council Adviser John Curtney Murray concerning the beneficial effects for the church of religious freedom in the USA and the experience of oppression of the churches and Christians in Eastern Europe (Gabriel, Spieß, and Winkler 2010; Schockenhoff 2012). But even more influential has probably been the pressure of the Western public’s high expectations, which the Church itself awakened, expectations that the Council Fathers apparently did not want to disappoint and which they complied with at literally the last moment, on the evening before the end of the Council. A certain amount of contingency may well have played a role here. The occasional attempt to trace religious freedom back to deep lines of theological tradition (Siebenrock 2010) must be rejected as apologetic. External influences were more decisive. Murray still had a publication ban until shortly before the beginning of the Council. Even if the doctrine of the dignity of the person as the image of God contained some preliminary work for the recognition of religious freedom, the break with the theocentric theology of the pre-conciliar period is so serious that it cannot be attributed to processes of

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relinquished the principles that the Church, as representative of the true religion, should be granted precedence in social life over ‘the fallacy’, that public life and all divisions of the state should act according to Catholic principles, and that religious freedom should only be granted where the Catholic doctrine is not able to prevail in society. The decisions of the Second Vatican Council were not only met with great approval by Dutch Catholics; they were also developed further and radicalized. Many were alienated by the traditional form of church activity, by the forms of parish life, but also by the moral prescriptions of the church. The new paths taken by the Second Vatican Council had confirmed them in their scepticism towards church traditions and at the same time raised their hopes for further reforms. The Pastoral Council of the Dutch Church Province, which met between 1968 and 1970 and which was intended to contribute to the implementation of the Vatican Council, went far beyond the resolutions of the Council. The free debates that it made possible unleashed new ideas and expectations. The provincial council recommended to the bishops transferring church functions and offices, including presiding over Eucharist celebrations, to women, allowing priests to marry, and open communion (Jacobs 1998: 263). But that went too far. In as early as 1967, the new Dutch Catechism for Adults, which had made the starting point of its argument not the commandment of God, but the person searching for God, was banned by the Congregation for the Clergy in Rome. The tensions between Rome and the Dutch bishops, who largely supported the reform movement, became ever more visible. When, in 1968, the encyclical Humanae Vitae put forward a sexual morality perceived by many as antiquated, and the Vatican in the early 1970s appointed as bishops in Rotterdam and Roermond conservative officials who supported a pre-conciliar understanding of the church (including Johannes Gijsen, who had emerged as a sharp critic of Dutch bishops), disillusionment set in. It became increasingly clear that further reforms could no longer be expected. The Second Vatican Council had encouraged and increased new expectations. The Dutch provincial council fuelled them further. Now they were dashed. The disappointment of hopes was not the only factor in the disproportionate collapses suffered by the Catholic Church, but it was a very strong factor. Added to this was the fact that the Catholic milieu was more strongly screened against the outside world at the time of pillarization than the other pillars, including even that of the orthodox Protestants (Righart 1986: 30ff.). The eroding effect of the contradiction between resistance to reform

change internal to the church. The Council introduced precisely those civil liberties that the Syllabus had just passed judgement on. Now it denied state jurisdiction in religious matters, in whose name the previous doctrinal documents had justified state coercion. The explanation for this change does not lie in the Catholic Church, and nor does it in its organizational form, which made it compatible with modern institutions, but must be sought beyond them.

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and the desire for renewal, which we have shown here in its three steps, can also be explained against the background of the high coherence of the Catholic group culture and of the group conformity dominating within it during the time before. Precisely because dechurchification tendencies had been hampered by a particularly strong isolationism, they broke all the more violently with the opening-up after 1960 (Höllinger 1996: 215). After the Catholic pillar, as the largest denominational milieu, collapsed, the other pillars fell like a house of cards.

6.3. RELIGIOUS UPSWING OUTSIDE THE CHURCH? Can we observe in the Netherlands an increase in individual beliefs to compensate for the weakening of church ties in recent years, be these beliefs of a Christian or a non-Christian nature? The individualization thesis mentioned above (see pp. 53f.) claims precisely this. It assumes that the process of secularization has been in reverse for several years and that forms of a nonChristian, individually coloured and syncretistic religiosity have gained in importance and are in a position to take the place of traditional churchliness. James C. Kennedy (2005), for example, argues that the processes of secularization have reached their limit; that we are standing ‘at the beginning of a “post-secular” age’ (Kennedy 2005: 41); and that the growth of individual spirituality has become the dominant religious motif in the Netherlands (Kennedy 2005: 38). For Kennedy, the new therapeutic culture, which, especially in its reversal, certainly has historical links to strict Protestant religiosity, is in the process of replacing traditional religion rather than merely mingling with it (Kennedy 2005: 38). Others disagree. Like Kennedy, Anton van Harskamp (2005) observes the emergence of an individualistic spirituality in the 1980s, which replaced the once strong ethically defined belief in God of the 1960s and 1970s; however, he considers it a cliché to bestow on this change only the concept of transformation and to avoid the term secularization (Harskamp 2005: 43). Following Steve Bruce, he characterizes the new spirituality as a diluted form of religiosity, which can be found not only outside the church, but also within it (Harskamp 2005: 50). This new spirituality is no longer based on the centuries-old doctrine of guilt, sin, and fear, he argues, but is characterized by affirmation of life, joy, emotion, and trust, as well as by a high evaluation of the human self. In contrast to the traditional notion, the new spirituality now understands God as humane and loving; it is holistically oriented and tolerant; it discovers truth in all religions; and it possesses a tendency towards the vague and incomprehensible. Even though interest in this New Age religiosity is increasing throughout society, he argues, its influence on how individuals live

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their lives is nonetheless minimal (Harskamp 2005: 52). It has no particular shaping power either for the individual and nor for the public domain, partly also because it appears to be socially acceptable. Ultimately, says van Harskamp, such religiosity must be regarded as a market-formed component of consumer society, which it can oppose only to a limited extent. Which of the two theses is more plausible? Can we reach a decision on the basis of empirical analysis? As we have already seen (Table 6.2), the acceptance of belief in God has declined over the last few decades in the Netherlands, as has denominational affiliation and church attendance—but not to the same extent. In addition, the proportion of those who profess to believe in a personal God has clearly decreased since 1966, whereas the proportion of those who consider the existence of a higher power to be possible has increased slightly (Table 6.2). Could this be interpreted as a first indication of the spread of forms of individual religiosity outside the church? A look at the data of the European Value Study (see Table II.3), which asked people to what extent they have their own ways to come into contact with the divine, does not confirm the assumption to begin with. The proportion of Dutch people who answer this question in the affirmative does not exceed the proportion of those belonging to a denomination in the Netherlands, and is below the European average: one third. If we consider the question also included in Table II.3 concerning the strength of interest in spirituality, we gain a different impression, however. Here, it is 61 per cent of Dutch people who profess to be interested or even very interested in spiritual matters, a figure higher than the European average. On the other hand, though, the age differences in the distribution of these spiritual interests do not indicate that they have increased in recent years, with these interests not being significantly higher among the younger cohorts than the older. The picture is therefore mixed. The question asked in the ISSP concerning belief in Nirvana also does not suggest that non-Christian religiosity is significant in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, it is 14 per cent who answer this question in the affirmative; in West Germany, 11 per cent; in Spain, 16 per cent; and, in Italy, Portugal, and Ireland, about a quarter, and therefore significantly more than in Holland. As for belief in reincarnation, the Netherlands are at the European average of about 25 per cent (ISSP 2008). Different again is the picture with respect to openness to spirituality. Asked whether they considered themselves to be spiritual, but not religious, more people agree in the Netherlands than anywhere else in Western Europe (Fig. 6.1). While the figure is 13 per cent and 11 per cent in West Germany and Italy, it is double that in the Netherlands. If we consider, moreover, that the proportion of those who define themselves as neither religious nor spiritual is also relatively high in the Netherlands, then this confirms again the already familiar picture for the Netherlands of a strong rejection of church-defined religion. At the same time, though, it is clear that this rejection runs in two directions—in the direction not only of people

Religion in Free Fall: The Netherlands 11 41

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I don’t follow a religion, I am not a spiritual person I don’t follow a religion, I am a spiritual person I follow a religion, I am not a spiritual person I follow a religion, I am a spiritual person

Fig. 6.1. Spirituality and religiosity, 2008 (in %) Source: ISSP 2008.

having no religion, but also of a spirituality defined areligiously. What is the significance of this areligious spirituality? What is its socio-structural anchoring? How does it relate to forms of traditional churchliness? Seen in socio-structural terms, areligious spirituality is only profiled weakly.12 The younger age groups are a little above the average (Fig. 6.2), with their overrepresentation being mainly to do with the fact that the over-60s hardly ever define themselves as purely spiritual (Fig. 6.2). Among the areligiously spiritual, there are slightly more people with a higher level of education and people who live in cities (ISSP 2008, not shown here). Higher income groups, however, are not more strongly represented among the areligiously spiritual than average. Positive effects of education can be seen even more clearly in the group who see themselves as neither religious nor spiritual. And also the effects of urbanization and income differences are more significant in the group of people who are neither religious nor spiritual. If the age differences indicate future developments and the level of education, income level and the degree of urbanization should continue to rise, then the group of areligious spirituality

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Fig. 6.2. Religiosity and spirituality according to age categories, 2008 (in %) Source: ISSP 2008.

could grow slightly in the future. At least as strongly or more strongly still is of course likely to be the growth of the group of the areligious non-spiritual. The significance that alternative spirituality has for how individuals live their lives is not easy to determine. The EVS asks the question about the importance of religion for people’s own lives. If we correlate this question with selected indicators for forms of spirituality, such as people’s assessment of themselves as spiritual and also their belief in an impersonal life force, then the correlations are much weaker than, say, those with the variables for traditional religiosity such as denominational affiliation, church attendance and belief in God (EVS 2008, not shown here).13 When it comes to belief in reincarnation, 13 Perhaps spirituality is not perceived as a form of religion. But the question of whether children should learn at home to believe also correlates less strongly with the question of whether people consider themselves spiritual than with the variables for church affiliation, frequency of church attendance, and belief in God. Even stronger are the differences regarding belief in a personal God and belief in an impersonal higher being. Those who believe in a personal God very probably also advocate bringing up children religiously at home (r = 0.578**); those who believe

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the correlations, in fact, are even negative. In the Netherlands, in other words, religion has a lower significance for people who have a proximity to spiritual forms of belief than for conventional Christians. And those who believe in reincarnation even attribute less importance to religion than those who do not share this belief. This negative correlation is found neither in Italy, where there is no significant correlation between the two variables, and nor in West Germany, where the correlation is even slightly positive.14 This implies for the Netherlands a pattern in the relations between church and non-church forms of religiosity that we do not see in other European countries. In West Germany and in many other Western European countries, there are either positive or no (and in any case usually no negative) correlations between traditional churchliness and non-Christian religiosity (see Table 4.21). At the most, such negative correlations can still be identified in highly Catholic countries. The comparison carried out above between East and West Germany (compare Table 4.21 with Table 4.22) suggested that the different forms of meaning of the religious come closer together, the more a country is secularized. The Netherlands deviate from this trend. Although the country is as strongly secularized as barely any other Western European country, the correlations between church and alternative religiosity range from not significant to significantly positive and significantly negative (Table 6.3). What is striking here is that some traditional items correlate particularly positively with each other, and some traditional and alternative items particularly negatively, as is typical for societies with a high religious vitality (such as those dominated by Catholicism) (see the correlation coefficients for Ireland in Table 6.3), but also that the correlations between different alternative forms of religiosity are particularly high. It seems that the shrunken segment of religious orientations and practices in the Netherlands is characterized by a particularly high religious plurality and potential for conflict. The tendency otherwise encountered in secularizing societies to flatten religious differences is apparently on hold in the Netherlands. But in other areas, too, the younger cohort has shown an upward trend recently, and not just in the EVS data. The SCP, a study by the Dutch Social and Cultural Planning Office, has found that, since 1985, the proportion of those in the group of 16- to 30-year-olds who believe in life after death has

in a life force consider the religious upbringing of children in the family home to be much less important (r = 0.075*) (EVS 2008). 14 The correlation in West Germany is extremely low and only weakly significant: r = 0.086*. The correlation coefficient for the relationship between the importance of religion and belief in God is, in contrast, r = 0.486**, and, for the relationship between the importance of religion and church attendance, even r = 0.608**. For West Germany, too, then, it is the case that, according to what people themselves say, the importance of religion is much higher for churchgoers and believers in God than it is for believers in reincarnation.

Table 6.3. Correlations between traditional churchliness, individual religiosity, and non-church religiosity in the Netherlands (NL), Denmark (DK), and Ireland (IRL), 2008 Country

Church attendance

Belief in God

Belief in reincarnation

Denominational affiliation

NL DK IRL

0.521** 0.255** 0.395**

0.681** 0.251** 0.477**

n.s. 0.069** 0.109**

Church attendance

NL DK IRL

0.525** 0.511** 0.421**

−0.149** n.s. n.s.

Belief in God

NL DK IRL

Belief in reincarnation

NL DK IRL

Belief in Nirvana

NL DK IRL

Spirituality

NL DK IRL

Fortune telling

NL DK IRL

0.125** 0.239** 0.099**

Belief in Nirvana 0.079* n.s. 0.077**

Spirituality

Horoscopes

0.283** 0.108** 0.198**

n.s. 0.098** 0.057*

n.s. 0.109** n.s.

0.143** 0.149** 0.205**

−0.084* 0.083** −0.084

−0.142** n.s. −0.080**

0.184** 0.170** 0.093**

0.487** 0.403** 0.429**

0.090** 0.252** 0.060*

n.s. 0.193** n.s.

0.798** 0.667** 0.610**

0.570** 0.435** 0.247**

0.488** 0.446** 0.284**

0.490** 0.394** 0.228**

0.488** 0.364** 0.242**

0.444** 0.345** 0.255**

0.438** 0.359** 0.207**

0.423** 0.404** 0.161**

0.389** 0.367** 0.113**

−0.078* n.s. n.s.

** The correlation is significant at the level of 0.01 (2-sided) * the correlation is significant at the level of 0.05 (2-sided); n.s.: not significant. Source: ISSP 2008.

Fortune telling

0.556** 0.586** 0.544**

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risen from 45 to 56 per cent, while the proportion among the older cohorts either remained the same or decreased (Becker and Hart 2006: 22). According to this study, more younger people than older people say today that they believe in life after death. Similarly, according to the same source, the proportion of those who believe in heaven increased in the youngest age group, while the proportion either remained the same or collapsed among the older cohorts (this collapse was especially among those aged over 50), again with the effect that now a higher percentage of younger people believe in heaven than older people. According to ISSP data, which are generally quite reliable, similar trends can also be observed in regard to belief in miracles and magic. Thus, the proportion of those who believe in miracles in the age group of 18- to 29-yearolds rose between 1991 and 2008 from 30 to 44 per cent, the proportion of those who believe in the efficacy of good luck charms rose between 1998 and 2008 from 27 to 31 per cent, and the proportion of those who believe in fortune tellers rose in the same period from 35 to 40 per cent (ISSP 2008). Other magic and occult beliefs have become less acceptable—for example, the belief in faith healers or in astrology. Overall, we gain the impression that religious orientations and practices in the Netherlands constitute a contested field, one that is characterized not by uniform developments, but by contested boundaries, by gains and losses, as well as by commingling and self-assertion. Even if the field has undoubtedly become much smaller in recent decades, the individual religious orientations are in relationships of considerable tension with each other, and perhaps even compete with each other. There are small Evangelical groupings with a high frequency of church attendance which younger people in cities are finding increasingly attractive; followers of a New Age spirituality who are distanced from the church and who are now a little older and may already have their best years behind them; inactive believers in magic who are also not tied to the church and who are increasing slightly in the youngest age cohorts; but also conventional Christians of the church, who are mainly found among the older cohorts and who are losing their social significance. This smaller religious landscape in the Netherlands has a remarkable vitality. At the same time, it is clear that the upswings that we can observe are changes on a smaller scale and cannot compensate for the overall decline in the social significance of religion in the Netherlands. The growths are around the 10 per cent mark and always involve only minorities. How low the gains are in the religious-alternative sector is also evident in the fact that the reported contact with an alternative faith healer per year has increased over the last twenty-five years in the Netherlands by only about three percentage points, from 4 to 7 per cent (Becker and Hart 2006: 25). It remains to be seen whether the modest increases in the youngest age cohort are permanent.

Conclusion 1) What we already noticed at the beginning of Part II, when we surveyed the changes in the religious situation of the countries of Western Europe (see especially Tables II.1–II.3), we can now confirm after having examined three selected case studies. In view of the evidence obtained there, we may state that, in Western Europe, religion is suffering a widespread decline in significance at the individual level. Neither in terms of affiliation to religious communities nor in terms of religious practice, nor even along the dimension of religious belief, can we report any counter-movements worthy of mention. As we have seen in the case of the Netherlands, for example (pp. 185ff.), some slight growth has been observed recently among the younger age cohorts, especially in the realm of alternative religiosity and spirituality. All in all, however, this growth is too weak for us to question the overall diagnosis of a widespread weakening of individual religiosity. Even countries such as Ireland and Spain that were once very religious have been caught up in partially dramatic processes of secularization (Tables II.1–II.2). There are of course major differences in levels of religiosity between European countries. But even countries displaying above-average religious vitality such as Italy and Portugal have not been spared the negative developments observed in the last seventy years. These have been less severe in recent decades than they were in the period of radical upheaval of the 1960s. The decline in the significance of the religious is closely connected with the transformation of its dominant forms. Even if today more than half of Western Europeans report that they believe in God, in West Germany and the Netherlands there is no longer a majority among the believers who imagine God as being how the Bible describes Him—namely, as a person who influences the course of the world and actively intervenes in the life of the individual (see Tables 4.15 and 6.2). Rather, for most believers in the two countries investigated, God is an impersonal being or a higher force whose influence cannot be experienced directly (see Tables 4.15 and 6.2). Religious ideas are also tending to become blurred in other Western European countries, too (see Table 10.8). The increase in their positive acceptance may derive mainly from the fact that, as vague imaginings, they are less subject to criticism

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Table II.4. Correlation between ideas about God and the influence of religion on a person’s own way of life (mean value of five variables) Country

God or the divine is like a person you can speak to

God or the divine is like a higher power, but definitely not like a person

0.402** 0.354** 0.380** 0.462** 0.541** 0.403** 0.271** 0.156** 0.441** 0.599** 0.406** 0.392**

−0.098** −0.073* −0.091** 0.004 −0.033 −0.062 −0.076* −0.046 −0.092* −0.229** −0.041 0.022

Austria Switzerland Italy France Spain Great Britain Poland Russia South Korea USA West Germany East Germany

Category 0: In each case, all others who had a valid answer to both questions. The negative correlation coefficients observable in some countries among those who imagine God as an impersonal higher power indicate that those in these countries who imagine God as a person are clearly the majority. The fact that the vague belief in transcendence has less impact on the different forms of lifestyle, such as bringing up children, relationship, and the organization of work or leisure, than the belief among all the others has to do with the fact that, among these, those who imagine God as a person are in the majority; ** the correlation is significant at the level of 0.01 (2-sided); * the correlation is significant at the level of 0.05 (2-sided). Index made up of the following questions: religious beliefs affect the upbringing of your children, religious beliefs affect your relationship with your partner, religious beliefs affect your work, your occupation, religious beliefs affect your free time, religious beliefs affect your political opinion. Source: Religion Monitor 2007.

and less deniable than specific ideas of transcendence. In becoming less concrete, however, their individual relevance also declines. Both in the Netherlands and in West Germany, religion is for people with a vague notion of God, as they themselves affirm, less important than for those who believe in a personal God (see pp. 104f., 184f.; see also Voas 2009: 164). This correlation applies not only to the Netherlands and West Germany, but also to other countries in Western and Eastern Europe, and even to countries outside Europe such as the US, South Korea, and Brazil (Table II.4). In all these countries, those who regard God as a communication partner and a person confirm much more often that their beliefs affect how they bring their children up, their relationship with their partner, their political opinion, and their work as well as their free time than those who perceive God as a higher power, but definitely not as a person. The correlation is similar when it comes to spirituality or forms of non-church religiosity, such as belief in reincarnation (EVS 2008). As far as non-church forms of religiosity are concerned, it becomes apparent that, in both the Netherlands and West Germany, and in other countries as well, less significance is attached by adherents of esotericism and spiritualism to the religious sphere of life than it is by churchgoers and those who believe in a personal God.

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Consequently, the claim of secularization theory that there is a weakening in the significance of religion, and the assumption of individualization theory that there is a structural change in its form as can be seen in the increasing numbers of adherents to spirituality and vague religious ideas (see pp. 53f.), are not mutually exclusive but actually complement one another. The transformation of the religious from religious beliefs rooted in Christianity to alternative nondogmatic religious forms is directly related to its decline in significance. There can be no doubt that in countries such as West Germany and the Netherlands there is a strong interest in esoteric practices and holistic religious ideas. Similar remarks may apply to Western Europe’s other highly developed nations, with the exception of those where the majority are Catholic. As our analyses in West Germany have shown, the boundaries between esoteric practices and alternative bodily and healing therapies are fluid and, what is more, there are also partial overlaps between spiritual ideas of wholeness and post-empirical forms of scientific thinking and postmodern art forms. The less clear religious beliefs are, the greater the likelihood is of their seeping into other social spheres. At the same time, this diffusion is evidently not so much the result of aggressive seizures of territory by religious entrepreneurs than the likelihood that holistic tendencies in medicine and physiotherapy, or in science or art, as well as magical and esoteric movements, are involved in cultural trends that permeate our entire society. Our investigations of West Germany suggest that vague notions of transcendence, unlike specific ideas of God, rely very strongly on cultural support (see pp. 103f.). Should this be correct, then the spiritual and esoteric tendencies are more the expression of a cultural mainstream than an offering that is an alternative, engendered by disappointed religious needs, to the large religious institutions and the way that they are often portrayed and frequently also portray themselves.1 Even if the psychological and esoteric markets are teeming with an abundance of religious micro-entrepreneurs, business-minded naturopaths, alternative religious group-therapists and self-proclaimed prophets (Hero 2010), this scene is evidently based on a Zeitgeist whose mood is more or less broadly sceptical of Enlightenment and progress, a mood that is primarily not religious, but displays qualities that are generally critical of institutions, technology, and rationality and above all that obeys the laws of the market and fashion. Correspondingly, despite the wide interest in esotericism and spiritualism, commitment in this scene is extremely low, characterized as it is by experimentation, fluctuation, and a minimum of obligation. 1

As we have seen, in Germany and other Western European countries, esotericism and magic do not offer a direct alternative to church religiosity, but overlap with it. At any rate, Qi Gong, Tai Chi, Yin Yang, and Feng Shui have become a firm part of the programmes of Protestant and Catholic academies, church meetings, houses run by the church, and even of many local congregations and parishes.

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In any case, countries such as Germany and the Netherlands for the most part attach no great individual importance to religion. Only very few embark on the quest for religious meaning. According to information from respondents in West Germany, only approximately 3 per cent of those with no religious affiliation are in search of spirituality (see p. 116). The number is somewhat larger within the church itself. It is not primarily a broad need for religion,2 a longing for spirituality, that can found behind the esoteric, magical and occult practices and ideas. A more apposite approach might be to treat it as part of a consumer culture that is critical of civilization and provides opportunities for self-exploration and culture-critical confirmation in the form of naturopath offerings, consultancy sessions, and meditation courses that are easily accessible. If by the term individualization is meant an increase in individuals’ self-determination and resoluteness, we are more likely to come across religious individualism among believers within the churches than among spiritual consumers on the market for esotericism. The esoteric scene in Western Europe is rather the manifestation of a postmaterialistic alternative culture3 than the result of religious individualization.4 This does not rule out the idea that in the spectrum provided by alternative religious culture there is also a segment of religious virtuosos that sets itself apart from the religiosity of the Christian church to map out alternative formats (see Kennedy 2005: 38).5 It seems that tendencies towards collapse in people’s ties to religion and church begin in the dimension of practice. In the 1950s, the majority of the population were involved in church practice both in the Netherlands and in Germany; today, it is only a minority who are actively involved in the church. For instance, there has been a rapid fall in the frequency with which prayers are said, as we were able to show in the custom of saying grace at table (see p. 99). Significantly less are declines in membership of a specific denomination and least of all in belief in God. We regard the cardinal reason for the disproportionate number of cessations in religious practice as being attributable to the fact that the investments made by the individual in maintaining religious practices are disparately larger compared with keeping up 2

And perhaps not even for the meaning of life. In 2012, only 7.8% of Germans stated that they thought very often about the meaning of life; a further 27.4% said that they thought often about the meaning of life (Statista 2014: http://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/274799/ umfrage/haeufigkeit-des-nachdenkens-ueber-den-sinn-des-lebens/ (downloaded 18 November 2014)). 3 See the educational, income, and age level of the spiritually oriented in Table 4.25. 4 As emerges from the data on Italy and other countries where the majority are Catholic (see Table II. 3), we encounter a completely different understanding of spirituality. The great interest in spirituality in these countries reveals that spirituality clearly carries mainly Christian connotations. 5 See also Krüggeler (1993). The type of an alternative form of religiosity that is different from church Christianity has also been identified recently again in the Swiss study by Stolz et al. (2014: 74) although they also discovered ‘overlaps and movement between the institutional and the alternative type’. Furthermore, Voas (2009: 162) distinguishes between a vague ‘popular heterodoxy’ (beliefs about a higher power, astrology, magic, and the like) and a more self-conscious ‘Sheilaism’.

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church membership or preserving the Christian faith. Although the development in the various religious dimensions is not uniform, there are relatively high correlations between them. It may therefore be assumed that the developmental tendencies in the dimension of religious practice will follow developments along other dimensions of religiosity. This process can already be observed today in most Western European countries. There are also exceptions, of course, such as the strict Reformed parishes in the Netherlands, which for a long period of time have been able to maintain not only their membership, but also the high level of religious practice within them. Even so, there have been reverse developments in terms of membership and practice here as well (see p. 164). Thus, the diminution of religious communities by no means leads to increased activity, as predicted by market theory. As the religious field becomes smaller, the various dimensions of religiosity tend to become closer and mutually reinforce one another, as we have seen in the comparison between West Germany, East Germany, and Denmark (see pp. 114f., 186).6 Does this perhaps have something to do with the increased pressure exerted by the expanding non-denominational environment? This question takes us from the descriptive to the explanatory level, which we now wish to explore. 2) To explain the religious changes outlined, we can make use of the theoretical approaches listed above, under questions and hypotheses (3.). At the same time, however, we want to put forward some proposals for an explanation that go beyond this, using the presented material as a basis. 2.1) The theorem of functional differentiation can by and large be regarded as corroborated. Where church activity is an integral part of civil society and the church is involved in the political debates of the country, such as was the case in Italy after the Second World War and in post-war Germany, the church exerts a powerful attraction (see pp. 126f., 146ff.). Combining religious with cultural, political, social, and national functions enhances the church’s ability to integrate. We find a similar correlation in the processes of milieu formation underpinned by the denominations in the nineteenth century in Germany and the Netherlands. Wherever denominational affiliation was overlaid by political, social, or economic lines of tension, milieu structures could emerge. There, religion could serve as a medium for settling political conflicts, as an instrument for self-assertion when confronted by a social stratum that was perceived as culturally and economically superior, as the place for forming community networks, as a means of defence against the impositions of the modern age, as a refuge for the creation of paradigms of moral order, for relations of reciprocal recognition and social respectability (see p. 138). On the other hand, if the lines of conflict drawn by modernization lay across

6

The Netherlands reveal a different pattern.

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people’s affiliation to a denomination, as was the case in some of the big cities, with their plurality of faiths or even in the bourgeois strata of the Rhineland, this hindered milieu formation. The same correlation also holds true for the formation of ideological and denominational pillars in the Netherlands. There, too, the formation of a milieu profited, as we saw (see pp. 167f.), from the overlap of denominational differences with the national question, with the conflict between poor and rich, and with the tensions between liberalism and antiliberalism. Conflict overlap and the accumulation of interests are a form of dedifferentiation and help to strengthen religious identities. These are mechanisms that are capable of explaining forms of religious change. The relationship between functional differentiation and religious change, however, may be elaborated even further. In the Netherlands and in Germany, we have interpreted the origin of denominationally isolated ideological and denominational group cultures as the outcome of the collapse of the ancien régime with its strict hierarchy, and as a reaction to the processes of differentiation between politics and religion, law and religion, and education and religion, that accompanied it. In Germany, for example, the churches, which had previously acted in alliance with the early modern state and had functioned as its representatives, were relegated in Prussia’s General Land Law of 1794 to the status of the legal form of an association or ‘spiritual society’ (Hattenhauer 1970: 542–84); the idea established itself in around 1800 of promulgating an education that was independent of origin and status and free of supervision by the church (Nipperdey 1983: 60); the state took over control of education (Nipperdey 1983: 56); and, in place of the denominationally underpinned university, came the university as a state institution (Nipperdey 1983: 65). Also a public space emerged that was independent of the church, with its own market for newspapers and books, as well as an urban community culture that challenged the hitherto uncontested monopoly of the church as a social centre of communication. In this way, the church increasingly lost control over other social domains such as school and university, public space and leisure time, science and law, as well as marriage and the family.7 In the Netherlands, the collapse of the denominationally based ancien régime was followed by processes of differentiation between church and state, between the educational system and the church, the formation of nation structures and the church organization of institutions as well as religion and law, whereby the law acquired a pioneering role through the edict of a liberal constitution that provided for the separation of church and state from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards. By overarching and pervading the 7 Schilling (2009: 326f.) claims that law and certain areas of scientific discourse, for example medicine, the natural sciences, and political thinking, already displayed a great deal of resistance to the claim of the denominational churches to totality during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

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separate social domains that covered everything from school education and the provision of care for the poor, via the professional associations, the unions and newspapers, right up to political representation, the denominational milieus once again reversed the processes of social differentiation that had been building up. They were not only a reaction to the processes of social differentiation but at the same time an attempt to keep these in check through their incorporation and embedding within the denomination. It is therefore anything but coincidental that the milieus largely dissolved again as the inherent dynamics of the political public domain and the mass media, economic expansion and school education, basic legal security and the interests in political participation, the entertainment and consumer industry, were able to assert themselves increasingly against the tendencies of the denominations to wall themselves off, and ultimately win through during the 1960s. This time, it was not the legal system that was the precursor, but the economic system. In the Netherlands, as well as in West Germany, in Italy and in most Western European countries anyway, living conditions underwent a basic change in almost every domain with the upswing of the post-war epoch. The increase in economic power led to a significant improvement in the educational and university system, the social security system, the health service, the state bureaucracy, and the military, along with the working conditions in the factories, the infrastructure in the towns and the municipalities, and the supply of consumer goods. This also meant an improvement in the level of education, the feeling of existential security, the everyday standard of living, opportunities for consumerism, and physical well-being. And with the increase in education came a growth in the demand to participate politically, with existential and legal security came the opportunities for individual self-determination and self-realization, and with the expansion of consumer opportunities came the orientation towards entertainment and a wider range of experiences. The changes in business, politics, the law, education, and in health care, personal hygiene, sexuality, and in the relationship between the sexes formed an intricately interwoven network. They occurred simultaneously, but not because they were linked by functional requirements.8 On the contrary, we wish to replace the functional line of argumentation here with a theory of opportunity structures. It is not on account of functional needs that new social structures emerge. The reverse is true: if changes occur in the political or economic or cultural domains, the resources released in this way make it possible for new structures to emerge. The economic upturn makes the means available for investing in the expansion of the educational, welfare, scientific, administrative, and health systems. The increase in social security provides an

8

See the criticism of holistic functionalism in Schwinn (2009: 458f.).

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opportunity to cease being dependent on the community, the family, and institutional facilities of the church. Everyone may take advantage of the new opportunities for education, even the proverbial Catholic country girl. With the economic upturn, the amount of available free time increases and the proportion of hard physical work is reduced. Economic security, increased levels of education, and available time reserves are important prerequisites for growth in the interest in political participation and for a change in the dominant value orientations. The availability of supra-regional mass media, especially television, offers people an opportunity to expand their intellectual horizons. Improvements in transportation technology and the infrastructure, along with the massive spread of the automobile, allow greater mobility. This in turn increases the probability of coming into contact with people of different origins, with different political and religious convictions and different lifestyles. Extended opportunities for contact, education, and information can lead people to question and to put into perspective the practices that they themselves have adopted, attitudes that they have internalized, and so on.9 All these changes, of course, are also capable of affecting religious and church ties. Not only are they very likely to undermine the validity of accepted religious concepts and rituals (Berger 1969), but they also provide possibilities for activity and experience that allow people to distance themselves from church practices, religious precepts, religious concepts, and ideas. The need for religious assurance and practice may still be evident, but now it is in competition with other needs whose fulfilment may possibly appear more attractive. Instead of attending church on Sunday morning, they prefer to go on a family outing. Instead of preparing the parish festival, they prefer to take an English course. Instead of news about the church, there is more interest in the sports bulletins. People are so preoccupied with their professional obligations that religious contemplation becomes less important. Having an enjoyable dinner with friends at the local Italian restaurant is a more satisfying experience than devotions in church. Art, sports, theatre, and politics are more important than religion. The theory of opportunity structures assumes that, on account of the widening range of opportunities for action, discovery, and experience in the modern age, it is easier to be distracted from one’s ties to the church, from being aware of what the church offers, and from internalizing religious ideas and explanations of the world, than it used to be, when there were fewer alternatives available, and other things are now more important than the pre-occupation with religious questions. Let us call this the distraction hypothesis. 9 Moving from the functional to the opportunity-structural line of argumentation brings together the macro and micro levels. The change in structures of opportunity at the level of social institutions needs to be identified and implemented by individuals. Only in this way do the separate social domains, such as the law, politics, the economy, family, etc., become interwoven.

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This hypothesis is supported by the empirical findings of our investigations so far. If people do not attend church, it is because, as is claimed in the investigation into church membership of the Protestant Church in Germany, they have other things to do, and because they want to relax on Sunday morning and because they do not think they need to go and worship (see p. 98). On the other hand, rather few claim that they are kept from going to church by the sermon, the singing of hymns, or the atmosphere of worship. If people leave the church, according to a further finding of the same study, it is mainly not because they are annoyed at the pastor or the official statements of the church, but because the church is a matter of indifference to them and because they do not believe they need religion in their lives (see pp. 82f.). The number of those who give religious indifference as the reason for leaving the church has once again increased significantly in the last ten years and now occupies the top position among the reasons given for leaving the church, even ahead of saving on church tax. And if there are people with depersonalized ideas of transcendence, as we have seen in the Netherlands, Italy, and West Germany, who regard religion as being less important than those with a personal image of God, then the tendency for religious ideas to become more fluid confirms once again the notion that religion is losing its significance compared to other walks of life. People attach the least importance to religion in comparison to other areas of life and invest a great deal more time in their training, their job, their family, friendship, and all manner of leisure time pursuits than they do in prayer, their beliefs, or other religious practices, but at the same time there are scarcely any anti-clerical tendencies in secularizing societies such as West Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark—even in France, where anti-clericalism once enjoyed great popularity, laicism has weakened. These facts also support the distraction hypothesis advanced here, which claims that people are turning away from religion and the church primarily not because of massive dissatisfaction with the church or because of crises of faith, but because there are other things they find more important. They leave the church without a sound, no longer seeking certainty in salvation, and even giving up the search for religious meaning. It may not even be correct to attribute people’s distancing from religion and church mainly to the competition between religious and secular offerings, as for example Jörg Stolz (2009; 2013) suggests. If the critical mechanism were competition, such as competition between religious and secular interpretations of the world, leisure pursuits, promises of salvation or meanings in life, then changes in the religious landscape would need to be described mainly as a struggle between religious and ideological entrepreneurs to secure market shares, attention and time, and the rejection of what religion has to offer as individual decisions by consumers. A model of this kind can be found at the level of market suppliers and mainly reproduces the perspective of the church which, even given the background of its erstwhile monopoly, is still afraid of

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losing shares in the market. At the individual level, using this model, the competitive situation would be oversubscribed and the level of indifference in religious matters underestimated. Any action would be misunderstood as decision-making—an error that occurs repeatedly in rational-choice approaches. Naturally, the rejection of church and faith may result from considering a trade-off between religious and worldly goods, between religious promises of salvation and secular feel-good promises, between religious devotions and secular leisure-time activities, between religious commandments and amoral adventures, between religious doctrines and scientific explanations. It may also be the case— and this is more likely—that religious activities are superimposed by nonreligious activities, and are gradually superseded by them. Attracted by secular possibilities of action and experience in the leisure sector, at work, in the family, in the world of eroticism, sport, or art, attention is increasingly deflected from religious practice and contemplation so that it fades into the background. This theory is supported by the high percentage of those in the countries of Western Europe who are neither committed to a church nor pursue esoteric inclinations, nor see themselves as staunch atheists, but whose relationship to Christianity and belief is a conventional one that involves the occasional practice of religion. The distraction hypothesis does not aim to rule out other explanations of religious change. One quite compelling argument is to assume, along with Gerhard Schmidtchen (1972), that the reason that people shun the churches, as demonstrated in the 1960s, lies, among other things, in the discrepancies between the order of values represented by the church and the preference for values displayed by the population at large; or, with Norris and Inglehart, to attribute processes of secularization to the non-religious satisfaction of the need for existential security; or, with Jörg Stolz, in bringing into play the effect of rivalry between secular and religious offers of meaning. Along with these explanatory models, we should at this point like to advance the distraction hypothesis as a further illustrative concept. It dovetails with the functionalist approach adopted by Norris and Inglehart (2004) in the way that it observes the meaning of religious needs and the way that they vary; it differs from this approach, however, as it does not consider the striving for existential security as the only religious requirement, but also in that it does not ascribe religious affiliations, practices, and convictions to religious needs alone. It reveals congruities with Jörg Stolz’s theory to the extent that it also works with the difference between the religious and the secular. By observing that religious and secular offerings, discourses, and creations of meaning not only compete, but also coexist, with one another, it once again departs from this theory. There does not have to be any competition between secular and religious activities; the two can also co-exist without conflicting. Discourses that are religious and aesthetic, religious and scientific, religious and economic, religious and medical, may similarly coexist without competing with one another. To set off the processes of turning away from religion and the church, it is

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enough that attention is transferred from one discourse to the next, that people simply have other things to do than to pray or to reflect on the meaning of life, that they regard theatre performances, whodunits, the solving of mathematical problems, or sex, as more fulfilling than religious revelations, that they would rather have a lie-in in the morning than go to church. It is precisely mechanisms of this kind that are assumed by the distraction hypothesis. It is a specific application of the theory of functional differentiation that also comprehends the relationship between art, sport, religion, science, industry, and politics as not primarily competing, but assumes that the separate spheres complement one another, mutually disencumber one another, and are interchangeable with one another. Competition, or even conflict, would be just one among many conceivable cases.10 Inevitably linked with the theory of functional differentiation, however, is the assumption that religion turns into one social domain among others, and can no longer lay claim to validity for the whole of society; it loses social acceptance to the extent that it fails to make clear its relevance for other domains and to forge a link with non-religious interests. The counter-thesis cited in Chapter 3 is that the functional autonomy of religion provides especially good opportunities for furthering ambitious, vital forms of religion, but so far we have scarcely found any evidence of this in our material. Even where, as in the Netherlands, pillars have evolved on the basis of denominational identity and independently of the outside world, the high level of religiosity to be found there was again based mainly on dedifferentiation, on denominational permeation by welfare establishments and school, by political associations and recreational associations, by newspapers and broadcasting services, and indeed partly on the willingness to observe denominationally defined codes of behaviour exclusively in order to benefit from social services. One exception may be the new religious movements in Italy, which along with their spiritual orientation still frequently pursue social and political interests. Apparently, religion succeeds less than other areas, such as industry, politics, science, or law, to establish a functional independence of its own and take advantage of its own functional specialization. Even though no social subsystem can survive without favourable contextual conditions, imports,

10 Just how different the relations between the various social domains can be is also the subject of Weber’s Zwischenbetrachtung (Weber 1946: 322ff.). It may be assumed that there is competition between the separate spheres of value, indeed warfare and mutual exclusion, whenever religion makes universal claims to validity. Naturally, the distraction hypothesis does not seek to deny that religious discourses are in conflict, or at least in competition with erotic, political, and national, ends-related economic and scientific rational discourses (see also Schwinn 2013), and this competition may contribute to a weakening of religious ties. Its aim, however, is to call attention to the fact that this is not the only causal mechanism involved that has an effect here and is perhaps not even the primary one.

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and external forms of relief, religion seems to be particularly dependent on these outside relations, on embedding, connection, diffusion, and dedifferentiation. At the same time, the effects of functional dedifferentiation that reinforce religious ties also seem to have their limitations. In the case of Italy, we saw that it was not only the embedding of Catholicism in civil society and its alliance with the Democrazia Cristiana that promoted the social recognition of Catholicism, but the acceptance of political Catholicism also benefited from a certain distance that it cultivated from the Vatican. Conversely, in the Netherlands, the mixture of religion, political mobilization, the provision of care for the poor, school and university education, union policy, sociability, sporting activity, and media coverage helped initially to stabilize the denominational pillars, but then in no mean way helped these very pillars to tumble rapidly. The denominational group cultures occupied the civil society associations, seized the nation, plundered the state and ultimately became to a great extent dependent on the very thing that they had instrumentalized for their own interests. For decades, they had lived at the expense of other institutions and associations, drawn their ability to survive from sources other than their own, and in this way cut themselves off from their own roots. The apparent stability of the denominations was a strength only borrowed; they were unable to stand on their own two feet. Over-identifying religion with other social areas, given the conditions of differentiation across society, may lead to a tendency to dissolve the religious into the non-religious. However much the identification with a religious group may be reinforced by the simultaneous fulfilment of religious and political, religious and national, religious and cultural functions, to that extent there is also the danger that religious identity becomes merged with non-religious functions and is absorbed by them. Thus, religiosity is not only reinforced by its connection to other identities, interests, and needs, but also requires a certain distance from these at the same time. We can thus complement the hypothesis of the accumulation of interests and conflict overlap with the absorption hypothesis. 2.2) As we have seen, the processes of vertical differentiation, the pullingapart of the constitutive levels of the social element, which in our context has been treated mainly under the concept of individualization, essentially have a negative effect on religious and church ties, especially on conventional ties to the church. For instance, if we take postmaterialistic values as an indicator of individualization, it is very easy to demonstrate the negative correlation between individualization and features of conventional religiosity such as church membership, attendance at church services, the importance of belief in God, or how people evaluate themselves in terms of religion (see pp. 127f.). The reverse of these correlations, however, can be observed in the case of spirituality, non-church religiosity, and alternative healing practices. These forms of holistic religiosity go hand in hand with variables of individuality.

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Since the increases in the field of alternative religiosity are kept within limits and the individual relevance of spirituality, according to information supplied by those interviewed, is comparatively small, though, we must reject the hypothesis that an increase in the level of religiosity can be attributed to individualization. We regard the theory put forward above as being more likely—namely, that there is a positive correlation between individualization and secularization. At the same time, however, the negative effects of processes of individualization on religious affiliations, practices, and beliefs should not be overstated. The positive correlations between postmaterialistic values and alternative religiosity militate against this. What is more, the processes of religious individualization naturally take place in the church, and Christian religiosity and alternative spirituality are not usually mutually exclusive. We assume, therefore, that, given the conditions of a broad differentiation of socially constituted levels, such as is typical of the modern period, the power of religious integration is higher if there is a balance between individual and community, person and institution, than if the individual with a claim to self-determination and selfrealization has to conform to the rules of the community or institution. Support for this theory can be found in the fact that in the Netherlands the rejection of religion and the church was particularly drastic after the collapse of the denominational milieu on account of the paternalism and control that had been exercised in it for decades and the pendulum swung all the more in the direction of individualism, self-determination, and hedonism, resulting in unparalleled processes of dechurchification for Western Europe (see pp. 181f.). The theory, however, suggests itself mainly because our investigations have shown that there is no contradiction between institutionalized and individualized religiosity, but that in fact there is a very close connection. It is simply wrong to assume that the further it is removed from the institution of the church, the more subjective religiosity blossoms. Naturally such highly subjectivized forms of religiosity exist. More widespread, however, is the combination of individualized religiousness and an institutionally enshrined attachment to the church. Those who attend church more frequently are more likely to consider themselves religious, to believe in God or a higher being, and to define themselves as spiritual (see pp. 113ff.). Religious ideas carry greater conviction if the individual shares them with others. Faith is most lively when it is not confined to the privacy of people’s homes, but shared with others in the community in observing church rituals together, in worshipping together with one’s fellows. This finding is matched by the insight provided by the extraordinary significance that the new spiritual movements have acquired for the vitality of Catholicism in Italy. Here, too, the effectiveness of these movements can be explained by pointing to the connection between individualism and institution, the attachment of these movements to the institutional structures of the church, their use of church resources for the concerns of groupings

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and initiatives, the interaction between individually supported activities and institutionally provided means and opportunities. Just how important the community is for individual religiosity is also shown by the high level of religiousness in the country as compared to the town, and by the negative effects on subjective religiosity created by mobility and migration, and the high number of those who attend church with their partner or family member, or even the above-average level of attendance at church services at Christmas. In all these cases, individual religiosity is reinforced by the involvement of each separate person in joint, neighbourly, and familial networks, and is weakened when the individual is cut off from these networks. It would be a mistake to want to set up an opposition between individual and institution, person and community. An opposition between the two exists only in cases where the individual is incorporated into overall structures that involve incapacitation and control. This may frequently be the case, especially from an individual point of view. And this is why we are not advancing the hypothesis here that religious links are strengthened if the levels constituting the social are mixed or one is superimposed upon the other and perhaps even dominates it, but if they are coupled and linked with one another whilst maintaining their differences. This applies to the relationship not only between micro and meso level, but also between micro and macro level. Individual belief may also be reinforced by the medial presence of the Pope, by the impressively communicated images of the Vatican council of cardinals in their scarlet robes or by the public attention to religious rituals. In the link between the public and individual levels, we can also witness the powerful effect of mass religious events such as the Protestant Church Congress or the Catholic World Youth Day. In the light shed by others, people see and feel confirmation and appreciation of their identity. Sociologically speaking, it would be completely implausible to assume that faith is at its strongest when far removed from the support of institutions and communities, and that the future of religion lies in privatization and individualization. This is why we are replacing the individualization theory with the coupling thesis. This thesis is based on the assumption that individual and institution are not estranged from each other, but that there are a multitude of relationship networks, of sporadic contacts, communication contexts, and associations, between individual and church that are able to connect individuals with the institution of the church. The individual never of course dissolves in the institutional order of the church. In many cases, the individual in fact defines himself or herself in opposition to it, and yet is linked to it in various ways. Here, the family is the most important mediator. Those who are married, have children, go to church much more often than those who are single and have no children. This is true for Europe as well as for America (see pp. 120f., 154, 321f.). Children in particular are an important element in strengthening church ties. Children, who have to be accompanied to religious services for children and Sunday school, also lead their parents to church. Baptism and confirmation, but

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also the church wedding, are repeated occasions for parents to go to church. The religious rites performed by the church, especially baptism and burial, are in high demand even among church members distanced from the church. The only form of worship that has gained in popularity in West Germany in recent years is Christmas service, which people usually attend as part of their family circle. Also very popular are church nursery schools, mother-and-child groups, and schools in church trusteeship. In addition to the family, there are a variety of community groups, circles, and associations, which are also able to mediate between the institution of the church and the individual: prayer groups, Bible circles, discussion groups, visiting services, church choirs, brass bands, groups for the elderly, home groups. These groups do not exist independently of the congregation, but are also not completely identical to it (see pp. 94f.), and in some cases depend on it, sometimes overlap with it, sometimes build partial entities from it, lead individuals beyond themselves, and incorporate the individual into institutional relationships, while also keeping the individual at a certain distance from the large institution of the church. 2.3) As far as the competitive model put forward by rational-choice theoreticians is concerned, we must start by observing that our data provided no evidence of a positive effect exerted by religious pluralism and religious competition on religiosity and ties to the church. Religiously diversified societies displayed no higher level of religiosity than ones that were more religiously homogeneous. Although the level of religious pluralism has grown substantially in all Western European countries, in recent decades the expected rise in religiosity has not occurred. In fact, quite the opposite is true: comparing East and West Germany has shown that the denominationally affiliated majority in Western Germany has helped foster religious attitudes and the propagation of religious connections, whereas the nondenominational majority culture of the East has had a negative influence on it (see pp. 102ff., 130ff.). Even the diminution of the religious communities did not lead to an intensification of religious commitment. Instead, what we observed was that church commitment fell more rapidly than the number of members. Clearly, in West Germany and large parts of Western Europe, the links between church and religion are highly conventional and traditional. There is no doubt that churches live on their reserves. New religious beginnings are rare. The passionless attitude to Christianity evinced by the still denominationally bound majorities also explains why the increase in religious plurality has not produced any mobilizing effects. Although considerable portions of the population consider themselves challenged, even threatened, by the increase in religious plurality and foreign cultures, this does not help to reinforce religious commitment (see pp. 135f.). In most parts of Western Europe, conventional Christianity tends to survive more on confirmation by the majority than by the challenge of competition or conflict (theorem of majority confirmation, see footnote 10, p. 103).

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In a stronghold of Catholicism such as Italy, however, this seems to be different. There, Catholicism is gaining ground not only through being linked with people’s pride in their own nation. It seems that there are appreciable mobilization effects emanating from the comparatively low proportion of non-Christian religious communities, as well as the slowly growing proportion of those who do not subscribe to any denomination. Highly committed Catholics feel especially challenged by the increase in the public visibility of non-Catholic groupings, and present themselves as members of a majority religion that has been called into question and that has to assert itself against the growing presence of the outsider (see pp. 161f.). At other points, we also saw that an impetus in religious growth can come from ideological and denominational conflicts. With his so-called antithesis, Abraham Kuyper in the Netherlands of the 1880s exacerbated the conflict between the strict reformists and other denominations and liberal factions, and was able to achieve substantial successes in mobilizing them, ultimately at the cost of the majority denomination (see pp. 171f.). The respective denominational majority seems just as likely to be plundered by more radical forces as it is capable of bolstering conventional attitudes. Apparently, religious conflict has a mobilizing effect whenever we have to do with groups that are putting their faith in separation and forwarding the idea that they are something special, but not where conventional and traditional groups are concerned. With the aid of strategies that exacerbate conflicts, minorities are able to grow at the expense of majorities. We have been able to observe this not only in the Netherlands, but also in West Germany, where the small free-church alliances, although scarcely in a position to recruit members from the ranks of those with no denomination, can draw on the majority churches instead. We may call this recruitment strategy, which is based on delimitation, growth through parasitical attachment.

Part III Religious Renaissance in Eastern Europe?

Introduction After the fall of state socialism in the countries of Eastern and Central Europe, many expected a religious renaissance. And with good reason. The systems of state socialism had pursued anti-religious and anti-church politics for decades, the aim of which was to alienate the faithful from the churches, to exclude the churches from public life, and to restrict the scope of what they could do both legally and financially. Marxism, which treated religion as illusion, was state doctrine. Those who committed themselves to the church had to expect disadvantages in their school and academic education, and in their professional life. Was it not obvious that, given the decades of oppression of believers and religious communities, religion and church would regain their social, political, and cultural significance after the demise of the anti-church regime? Had Marxism not left a spiritual vacuum that now had to be filled anew? Did the churches and religious communities not have an important task in reconstructing the civil society destroyed by state socialism, and, indeed, had they not already performed an important role in the transition to democracy, a role that made them particularly predisposed to taking on such political functions? The thesis of the return of religions, as put forward in the historical and social sciences since the 1990s, seems to be particularly applicable to the processes of religious change in the former communist states of Europe. They should give vivid illustration to some of the central arguments of the new discourse on religion, such as the thesis of the dynamic potency of the religious or of its deprivatization and politicization, or also of its compatibility with modernity. And in fact not a few sociologists, political scientists, and historians saw after 1990 a revival of the religious in the post-communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe. According to Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, ‘by any measure, major religious revivals are under way during these days of the postcommunist era in the old Soviet Bloc’. Considering observable indices of religiosity, they pointed to an ‘abject failure of several generations of dedicated efforts to indoctrinate atheism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union’ (Stark and Finke 2000: 73f.). Apodictically, Andrew Greeley also announced: ‘Anti-religious socialism failed completely to crush out Russian religious heritage. [ . . . ] St. Vladimir has routed Karl Marx’ (Greeley 2003: 106). For

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Greeley, religion in Russia is a ‘cultural system with millennium-long roots’, and seventy-five years of atheistic indoctrination could not eradicate a thousand-year-old tradition of Orthodox liturgy, religious art and architecture, sacramental wealth, and monastic ways of living (Greeley 2003: 114–18). After the socialist repression, Greeley argues, there has been an unprecedented rebirth of Orthodox Christianity in Russia, perhaps even ‘the biggest revival ever’ (Greeley 2003: 89). And Irena Borowik and Miklós Tomka (2001: 7) briefly summed up the result of religious change in Eastern Europe with the words: ‘Religion and churches are the new champions after 1990.’ Twenty-five years after the political, social, and economic upheavals in Eastern and Central Europe, we can discern the religious processes of change more precisely than the proponents of the thesis of religious revival in Eastern Europe were able to do ten or fifteen years ago. Changes to the religious landscape in the post-communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe have been marked in recent years by processes not only of revival, but also of decline. In some Orthodox countries, such as Russia and Ukraine, we can certainly see a significant increase in religiosity, while in other countries, such as East Germany and the Czech Republic, we can see more of a decline; and in others still, such as Poland, the changes in the level of religiosity that can be observed seem to be minimal. In order to understand religious change in Eastern and Central Europe, we should therefore probably investigate the difference in religious developments through a comparison between countries. For this comparison, it is necessary to work out both the situation immediately after the fall of communism, that is, at the beginning of the 1990s, and the country-specific religious changes that occurred after 1990. At the same time, it would be impossible to create an appropriate picture of the changes to the religious landscape, if it were not also possible to bear in mind that the dominant forms of the religious might also have changed (Gabriel 1992; Hellemans 2010). The changes could go together with a transformation of the religious, which makes it difficult simply to weigh up gains and losses against each other. We therefore need not only to investigate institutionalized and conventional social forms of the religious, but also to include at the same time non-church and alternative forms of religiosity. In addition to describing differences between countries at a given point in time, and country-specific trends, we will also attempt to explain the differences that we find. In order to do so, we wish to look at the history of religion and church in different countries and discover the contribution that historical particularities and path dependencies can make to our understanding of these differences. It is also important to consider the socio-cultural, politico-legal, and socio-structural and economic context of the religious processes of change. These include situations of religious and cultural majority, for example, the extent of religious plurality, legal stipulations on religion and church that regulate the religious landscape, such as the degree of separation

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between church and state, as well as the underlying socio-structural and economic conditions, including economic growth, increase in levels of education, and expansion of the welfare state. In doing so, we should not—and this is what more recent developments in secularization theory have shown (Warner 1993; Casanova 1994: 217ff., 2001; Blaschke 2000: 46f.; Graf 2005: 236ff., 2006: 53; Gabriel 2008b; Beck 2008: 225, 228)—consider contextual variables at the expense of resources and potentials for development internal to religion. Treating religious change as being exclusively determined from the outside often overlooks important driving forces and capacities for selforganization, resistances, and resources that are internal to religion. The variety of explanatory factors to be considered has a tendency to confuse, and we will therefore need to focus on a few main internal and external variables of influence. Before dealing with them, however, we will first of all outline the current situation and the dominant trends. A look at the religious situation in the early 1990s (Table III.1) shows that there were significant differences between the post-communist countries immediately after the fall of the socialist regime, with highly religious Poland standing in stark contrast to largely dechurchified countries such as Estonia, East Germany, Bulgaria, and the Czech Republic. In between are Slovenia, Hungary, and Latvia, which, based on the indices of religiosity used here, have a medium level of religiosity. If we assume that, in the period before the reign Table III.1. Religiosity and churchliness in selected countries of Eastern and Central Europe, and in selected Western European countries for comparison (in %), 1990 Country

Poland Slovenia Czech Republic East Germany Estonia Hungary Latvia Russia Romania Bulgaria Ireland Denmark West Germany a

Denominational Frequency Confidence Belief Astrology1 Spiritualism1 2000 affiliation of church in the in God 2000 attendance church (a (at least great deal + once a quite a lot) week) 96 74 40 38 13 58 37 34 94 34 96 92 89

66 23 8 9 3c 14 2 2a 19 6 81 3 19

83 39 27 44 54 56 64 65a 72 30 72 47 40

97 63 35 36 46c 65 58 44a 94 40 98 64 78

8 17 17 11 26 25

6 7 9 4 14 8

48 24 20 18c

30 8 8 20c

12b

12c

Value from the WVS 1990; bvalue from PCEND 2002; cvalue from C&R 2006; 1= strong or fair agreement.

Sources: EVS 1990; PCE 2000 (Astrology, Spiritualism).

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of communism, the majority of the population was tied to a church in all the countries investigated, then the strong differences between the countries in the degree of religious affiliation are surprising. The destructive consequences of communism apparently varied greatly between the individual countries. As is clear from the membership numbers for East Germany and Estonia, the countries that were predominantly Protestant are those that were particularly affected by the pressure of the anti-church regime. Although Catholicism seemed to offer at first glance a better protection against the hostility of the communist system, membership of this denomination represents, as can be seen in the example of the Catholic Czech Republic, no guarantee of high membership rates. In the Czech Republic, the proportion of church members in the whole population in 1990 was just two fifths. We can therefore conclude that, although denomination may have played a role in the maintenance of church membership, other factors had an effect, too.1 Where church members make up the majority of the population is often where church attendance is also very high. This is the case in Eastern and Central Europe for Poland, for example, and in Western Europe, for Ireland, but also for countries like Italy and Croatia. A country like Denmark (Table III.1) shows, however, that a high level of church membership is not necessarily linked to a high rate of participation in church life. In Denmark, we find the typical Scandinavian pattern, as we know from Sweden, Norway, and Finland: almost the entire population belongs to the Protestant Church, people are by and large positive towards the church, and have a certain confidence in it. The majority also claim to believe in God and want their children to have a Christian upbringing, which is why they also have them baptized. But only a dwindling minority are willing to participate in church life. Church services are poorly attended, although people attest to the good work of the church, especially when it comes to retirement and health care and to its work with children and schools. In Eastern and Central Europe, some of the Orthodox countries come close to this type of membership. In Russia, for example, confidence in the church in 1990 was above average; church attendance, though, was lower there than it was in almost every other country included in the analysis. Even when, as we shall see, some indices of churchliness increased over the years, such as the proportion of church members, the numbers for church attendance remained at a low level. Involvement in the church and identification with the church seem to be two separate things, which incidentally can be shown not only in low rates of participation with high rates of affiliation, but also in the fact that committed participation in church

1

On the discussion of the factors influencing the maintenance of levels of church membership under state socialism, see Pollack (2001a).

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activities—we can think of some currents of lay Catholicism—does not exclude sharp criticism of the church. Between frequency of church attendance and spread of belief in God there is a relatively close relationship that has often been proven. People who go to church regularly also usually say that they believe in God. The inverse is not necessarily true, however. People can certainly believe in God without being a regular churchgoer. The data presented in Table III.1 document this double link very well. In Poland and Ireland, where frequency of church attendance is at its highest, people’s belief in God is also the highest. But there are certainly also countries such as Estonia and Latvia in Eastern Europe, and Denmark in Western Europe, where a relatively widespread belief in God is accompanied by low levels of church attendance. Even weaker is the relationship between church practice and religious ideas, when it comes to non-Christian and non-church forms of religiosity. If we compare countries that are distanced from the church, such as Estonia and Russia, with countries with a high level of churchliness, then we gain the impression that astrology and spiritualism increase in importance to the degree that conventional forms of Christian religiosity lose their significance (Table III.1). However, low values of churchliness do not have to correlate with high acceptance values when it comes to alternative religiosity, as the example of East Germany demonstrates. As the case of Poland shows, traditional churchliness may even apparently act as a protection against alternative religiosity. This link is also unclear, however, since Slovenia, Hungary, and Romania can be seen as examples of the fact that conventional churchliness is also able to exert a moderately positive effect on the approval of alternative religiosity. Whatever is the case, the approval of astrology and spiritualism is usually well below belief in God as the religious core idea of Christianity. To speak of a spiritual revolution, as happens sometimes (Heelas and Woodhead 2005), therefore appears exaggerated in relation to Eastern and Central Europe. As is shown not only by the figures presented here, but also, and above all, by the data on memberships and intensity of participation in new religious movements (Müller 2013a: 144, 162), only a relatively small group in the post-communist countries of Europe are committed to alternative religious forms such as new mysticism, cabbalism, New Age, esotericism, and occultism. Only Russia seems to contradict this statement, which we shall come to later.2 If we consider processes of religious change after 1989, then we notice that some countries have actually experienced the religious revival that has often 2 It must be remembered that the figures for the belief in the effects of astrology and for the belief in spiritualism, occultism, and magic—as was formulated exactly in the questions—are taken from 2000. Earlier survey results that include as many countries as are presented here are unfortunately not available. In 2000, belief in the influence of the stars on our lives had already increased in Russia (as had, incidentally, belief in God) to such an extent that belief in horoscopes in 2000 was higher than had been belief in God in 1990.

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Table III.2. The development of churchliness in selected countries of Eastern and Central Europe, and in selected Western European countries for comparison, 1990–2008 (in %) Country

Poland Slovenia Czech Republic East Germany Estonia Hungary Latvia Russia Romania Bulgaria Ireland Denmark West Germany a

Denominational affiliation

Frequency of church attendance (once a week)

Confidence in the church (a great deal + quite a lot)

1990

2008

1990

2008

1990

2008

96 74 40 38 13 58 37 34 94 34 96 92 89

95 71 29 23 31 55 65 62 98 74 87 88 84

66 23 8 9 3b 14 3 2a 19 6 81 3 19

53 17 8 4 4 9 6 5 28 6 40 3 10

84 39 27 44 54 56 64 65a 72 30 72 47 40

65 49 20 21 44 43 62 67 85 40 54 63 44

Value from the WVS 1990; b Value from C&R 2006.

Sources: EVS 1990, 2008.

been claimed. In Russia, Bulgaria, and Romania, all signs speak for a religious revival (Tables III.2 and III.3). Not only has church membership increased by about thirty percentage points or more in Bulgaria and Russia in the last twenty years, but also belief in God. Although confidence in the church was already surprisingly high in 1990, the confidence values increased once again. Even a highly religious country such as Romania is characterized by an increase in all indicators of religiosity employed here. Unlike Romania, figures for church attendance in Russia and Bulgaria have remained at an extremely low level, however. The countries to be distinguished from Russia, Bulgaria, and Romania are those in which the indicators of religiosity weakened considerably in both the last two decades (Tables III.2 and III.3). In East Germany, for example, not a single indicator of religiosity has gained in importance. Although the starting level was already extremely low, it has sunk once again. We can also see declines, though, in the Czech Republic, and partially in Slovenia and Hungary, too, although the picture there is very mixed. If we look again at Poland, then there is some evidence of a certain decline in religiosity, although, in view of the above-average level of religiosity in 1990, it is surprising how little the decline has actually been. We can see a sharp decline in confidence in the church, and also some decline in church attendance, but belief in God has remained at the same high level as the attribution of the significance of God in

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Table III.3. The development of religiosity in selected countries of Eastern and Central Europe, and in selected Western European countries for comparison, 1990–2008 (in %) Country

Poland Slovenia Czech Republic East Germany Estonia Hungary Latvia Russia Romania Bulgaria Ireland Denmark West Germany a

Belief in God

Importance of God (6–10)

Importance of religion in life (very + quite important)

1990

2008

1990

2008

1990

2008

97 63 35 36 46b 65 58 44a 94 40 98 64 78

96 66 36 21 48 71 77 77 98 75 90 63 73

85 36 24 27

85 43 30 18 32 49 52 61 88 50 71 27 54

89 44 27 29 19 50 26 34 75 28a 84 31 37

75 40 19 14 22 42 30 51 87 54 64 30 40

46 27 76 25a 84 25 47

Value from the WVS 1990; b value from C&R 2006.

Sources: EVS 1990, 2008.

people’s personal lives. However, the proportion attaching high importance to religion has also decreased. All in all, we therefore have three trajectories to deal with in Eastern and Central Europe: religious renaissance in Russia, Bulgaria, and Romania; religious decline, especially in East Germany and partly also in Slovenia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic; and slight decline against the background of widespread stability in Poland. At the same time, it seems to be characteristic of the scenario of religious decline that a decline in institutionalized religiosity does not necessarily affect belief in God. In Slovenia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, where religious affiliation, church attendance, and confidence in the church were characterized by declines, belief in God remained either stable or even increased. This suggests differences in the development of conventional churchliness and subjective religiosity. To what extent this is confirmed by a development of non-church religiosity that deviates from the values of churchliness is not entirely clear here, since there are for this area no data available for a long period of time to allow a temporal comparison. If we rely on age differences as a proxy indicator to understand changes over time, then we can, however, establish that the social importance of the ideas and practices of non-church religiosity has probably risen (see Pollack 2009: 84): the younger people are, the more likely it is that they accept forms of nonchurch religiosity. If we interpret age effects as generational effects, which of

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course is not unproblematic, then the significance of alternative forms of belief will increase over time. To analyse the different developmental trajectories shown, we wish to focus on three case studies. In the case of Russia, we wish to address the question of how, after seventy years of violent persecution of religion, which dramatically reduced the number of religious communities and believers, a religious reawakening could have occurred within a few years that is unparalleled in the post-communist states. The proportion of church members increased from 34 to 62 per cent, while the percentage of believers in God even increased from 44 to 77 per cent (Tables III.2 and III.3). What conditions allowed for such a religious revitalization? Were the anti-religious church politics practised over decades actually only moderately successful, as Andrew Greeley has claimed? Or do the increases in church ties and religiosity in Russia represent a new phenomenon? Anyone wishing to explain the religious renaissance in Russia will also have to deal with the extent of dechurchification and secularization in the seven decades of Soviet rule. The case of East Germany raises the question of why religion and church, which, after four decades of suppression, had fallen to an unprecedentedly low level, have not recovered since 1989, and why the disappearance of the cause of dechurchification and secularization did not lead to a flourishing of what was previously suppressed. In no other country of the communist Eastern bloc was the impact of the anti-church politics of the communists so profound as in East Germany. In no other country has religious revitalization been so weak since 1989. Such a lack of religious momentum requires an explanation, and such an explanation will in turn have to deal with the question of the effectiveness of the anti-church politics of the communist rulers. When we focus on our third example of Poland, then again we are addressing a double question. First, why, in contrast to all other state-socialist countries, did the church’s capacity for integration actually increase rather than decrease despite persecution and discrimination during the communist period? And, second, why has this capacity, albeit to a lesser extent, also remained more or less constant in the period since the end of communist rule? In order to analyse the developmental trajectories since 1989, we must therefore go further back in history. If there was a deep rooting of Christianity in the population, then the reason for this is located in the past. How strong was this rooting? What was it based on? How strong was it in the period of anti-church repression? To what extent could it be reactivated in the period after 1989? And why did the revitalization of religion fail to appear in some regions? These are the central questions that we will now address.

7 Russia Return of Religion

When Andrew Greeley argues that anti-religious socialism had been unable to destroy Russia’s religious heritage, and that, after the fall of the Soviet Union, St Vladimir had triumphed over Karl Marx, then he is making the assumption that the Russian Orthodox Church was deeply anchored in the Russian population. For Greeley, what had struck down such strong roots in Russian society was not going to be eradicated within a few decades by violence, exile, and persecution. The resurgence of Christianity after 1991 is therefore ultimately traced back by Greeley to the continuing influence of this historical anchoring of Orthodoxy in Russian culture. Rodney Stark, on the other hand, explains the failure of atheistic indoctrination by pointing to the oppositional role that religion necessarily assumes in an authoritative regime. ‘Secular states cannot root out religion, and [ . . . ] to the extent they try to root it out, they will be vulnerable to religious opposition [ . . . ]. In making faith more costly, they also make it more necessary and valuable. Perhaps religion is never so robust as when it is an underground church’ (Stark and Finke 2000: 74). For Stark, then, the religious renaissance after 1991 was the consequence of the church’s resistance to the anti-church politics of the Soviet system. Dimitri Furman and Kimmo Kääriäinen, however, use the model of a spiritual pendulum that swings in the secular direction and then swings back to the religious pole. The pendulum had already swung strongly in the direction of secularism with atheistic thinkers such as Herzen, Chernychevsky, and Bakunin in the second half of the nineteenth century, and with the wellknown agnosticism of the Russian intelligentsia at the beginning of the twentieth century. If a religious boom began after the collapse of the atheistic Soviet Union, then this, for Furman and Kääriäinen, was simply a swing of the pendulum in the opposite direction (Kääriäinen and Furman 2000: 28f.; see also Furman 1997b).

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7.1. THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH—DEEPLY ANCHORED IN RUSSIAN CULTURE? Besides the fact that metaphors such as the pendulum are unable to explain the phenomenon in question, we should also be sceptical about the other two approaches. In terms of its resources, the Orthodox Church was quite strong before the Soviet seizure of power. In 1914, it had about 50,000 lay priests, 230 bishops and auxiliary bishops, 54,000 churches, 25,000 chapels, 350 monasteries with 12,000 monks and 9,000 lay brothers, 470 convents with about 17,000 nuns and 56,000 lay sisters, 37,000 primary schools, 57 seminaries for priests with 23,000 seminarians, and four theological seminaries with 1,000 students enrolled (Adriányi 1992: 12).1 In around 1900, 71.1 per cent of the population said that they belonged to the Orthodox Church, 8.9 per cent to Catholicism, 8.7 per cent to Islam, 5.2 per cent to Protestantism, and 3.2 per cent to Judaism. However, these figures should not distract us from the weaknesses of the Orthodox Church. Since Peter the Great, the Orthodox Church had largely lost its institutional independence. The Patriarchate was abolished in 1722, and replaced by the Holy Synod, which incorporated the Orthodox Church into the state administration of the Russian Empire (Plaggenborg 1997: 276f.). Although spiritual leadership remained with the bishops, administrative management was in the hands of a Chief Procurator who even gained in power over the years. The resistance of the clergy towards this act of modernizing the church, which included not only the abolition of the Patriarchate but also measures to improve the education of the clergy and to restrict the monastic life, was broken with administrative violence, which is why a tendency to reject everything Western emerged among the clergy. The inclusion of the church hierarchy in the state administration system also fostered tensions between the lower lay clergy and those at the tip of the hierarchy recruited from monkhood. While there were hardly any promotion opportunities for the lay clergy, bishops were chosen exclusively from the ranks of the monks. With Catherine the Great’s secularization of church property in 1762, the closure of 600 monasteries and other expropriation measures, the church became even more dependent on the state (Bremer 2007: 120). It was henceforth only allowed to manage about one sixth of its income itself. Finally, the Office of the Consistorial Chief Secretary was introduced in the nineteenth century, which was allotted the task of supervising the bishops in the various dioceses. Besides being weak institutionally, the Orthodox Church was also weak culturally. The intelligentsia of Russia increasingly assumed a fundamentally oppositional attitude towards the state in the second half of the nineteenth

How reliable these figures are can be debated, but they are largely confirmed by other sources. Dickinson (2000: 330) estimates that there were about 40,000 parishes in Russia in 1917. 1

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century, which, because of the close ties between church and state, also had negative effects on its relationship to the Orthodox Church (Plaggenborg 1997: 285). Although it would be excessive to speak of a general rejection of religion by the intelligentsia, there remained a strong anti-clericalism among intellectuals. And, as has already been mentioned, a philosophical atheism developed in the second half of the nineteenth century, one that gained influence within the intellectual elite of Russia. According to identical reports from different sources, atheists and agnostics constituted at the beginning of the twentieth century a significant proportion of the Russian intelligentsia (Kääriäinen and Furman 2000: 28). Although there were isolated attempts to forge links between the church and the intelligentsia, most intellectuals were either uninterested in religion or had a non-church understanding of religion, and there was a particularly high number of non-believers among the young, educated layers of society. According to an article in the Tserkovnaja Vedomosti from 1911, nine tenths of students were either indifferent to religion or simply did not believe (Tserkovnaja Vedomosti from 17 December 1911). Even when currents formed that were open to religion, such as literary symbolism or the Bogoiskatelstvo (God-seeking) movement, the church was not able to open itself responsively to these movements. Reforms of church schooling showed only limited effects. The first Russian translation of the whole Bible was not published until 1876, long after it had been translated for Tatars, Chuvash, Cheremises, and other peoples (Smolitsch 1991: 16ff.). Church membership was obligatory before 1917, but there was a strong tension in Russian Orthodoxy before 1917 between the official church and religiosity in the parishes. We therefore use here a thesis that Gregory L. Freeze has developed in a number of publications. Freeze (2013: 81) argues that the history of Russian Orthodoxy was characterized by a conflict between the church hierarchy and popular religious devotion. Due to its limited means of control, the church was already unable in the sixteenth and seventeenth century to influence effectively the religious practice of believers (Freeze 2006: 296). The problem that it faced was not unbelief, but belief that deviated. Heterodoxy and superstition dominated popular religious devotion, as well as sorcery, black magic, and the worship of unapproved saints and miraculous icons, and the church was generally powerless to counter these heterodox religious practices. The priests, fully occupied with performing rites and administering sacraments, hardly ever gave sermons, and it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that they began to instruct the parishes catechistically. During this period, the church responded for the first time to the religious practices of the rural population not only by trying to suppress such practices, but also by endeavouring to incorporate them (Freeze 2006: 298). For example, it no longer stigmatized the procession of icons as useless or even harmful, but supported such practices, and sought to involve the church laity in the life of the church by holding parish councils and establishing church choirs.

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Tensions between the priesthood and the laity remained considerable, however. Although the number of priests doubled during the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the clergy were still overwhelmed by their daily duties of ritual, since the population grew tenfold in the same period (Freeze 2006: 292). Added to this were the significant financial contributions that parishioners had to pay to the church. After the secularization of the church estates, the church, which was dependent on the state and received only a small budget from it, had no alternative but to exact funds from the parishes, these funds then making up to 94 per cent of parish budgets (Freeze 2013: 84). Above all, though, the tensions were caused by the fact that the priests formed a more or less sharply segregated caste. The seminaries for priests were generally open only to the sons of priests, and the positions for priests in the parishes were usually passed from one generation to the next. In addition, the exemption of priests from paying taxes tended to encourage endogamy. The priesthood was therefore very much isolated from the laity and had limited contact with it, and the cultural gap was widened still further by the fact that the vast majority of priests, whose training significantly improved in the nineteenth century, had a qualification at the end of their seminary, while the mass of parish members remained illiterate. Many documents may point to the religiosity of large sections of the population, especially in rural areas. More than 80 per cent of the population partook of Holy Communion and completed their confessions (Freeze 2006: 299), and that was the case both at the end of the eighteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth. Village life was unimaginable without the church’s blessing and without its sacraments and ceremonies. Nonetheless, because the clergy was isolated, there was also among the peasantry a deep distrust of the clergy.2 The sectarian phenomenon that had long been growing flourished, and the Orthodox Church had great difficulties keeping it under control. People’s lived religious devotion had a character that was strongly private and family-oriented, and even anti-clerical (Pascal 1976: 20), and it was shaped by practices of magic and superstition. Understanding of religious teachings was particularly poor among the peasantry, which accounted for 80 per cent of the population, and a priest wrote in 1858 that perhaps only two out of every thousand knew the Ten Commandments, while, for the farmers, the Holy Trinity consisted of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and St Nicholas (Freeze 1983: 458). Church and popular religiosity appear as two strongly separate domains. 2 Priests, who lived on the payments that they received for their performance of official acts and the cultivation of the land made available to them, were poor and had no social prestige. They had to look after their often large families in economically difficult circumstances. They also often neglected their pastoral duties because they had to work on the land, which also contributed to their low status and downgraded their education. The deacons and psalmists often assigned to them had only a very low level of education and were notorious for their bad behaviour.

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With the onset of industrialization and urbanization in the nineteenth century, the church was faced with new problems, since, when people left their village communities, their distance from religious traditions and customs increased, too. Many religious beliefs and practices also persisted among the workers due to their rural influences, but communal uprooting was also accompanied among the workers by an increasingly strong estrangement from the church (Plaggenborg 1997: 284). Both the financial, administrative, and legal dependency of the church, as well as the tensions between the church hierarchy and people’s lived religiosity, cast doubt on Greeley’s claim that the Orthodox Church had deep social roots in Russian culture. Although the majority of the Russian people still held to the church as a matter of course at the beginning of the twentieth century, the church itself was characterized by a remarkable level of institutional dependence and cultural fragility. Tracing the upswing after 1991 back to the continuing influence of Orthodox traditions rooted deeply in the culture is to overlook the institutional and social weakening that the church suffered prior to 1917. More convincing perhaps would be to link, as Freeze (2013: 81) does, the religious renaissance in contemporary Russia accompanied by low participation in church life with the conflict between official church and communal Orthodoxy among the people. However, the above-average confidence in the church, which we have seen since 1991 (see Table III.2), contradicts the thesis that the religious renaissance in post-Soviet Russia reflects the old conflict between church and popular religious devotion. Rodney Stark’s claim that political repression makes the church resistive, and strengthens rather than weakens its robustness, is even less convincing than Greeley’s hypothesis of rootedness. More appropriate is the opposite argument—namely, that the massive attack on the church in the period of Soviet rule shook the Russian Orthodox Church to its marrow and brought it to the brink of extinction. Immediately after the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, the famous decree on the separation of church and state of January 1918 drastically reduced the church’s room for manoeuvre. Everything still remaining church land was expropriated, religious instruction was banned, and the seminar system to train priests was abolished. All schools, monasteries, and church buildings came into state hands, and the church lost almost all its magazines and newspapers, media which had helped it to make its voice heard in society and among the faithful. The Bolshevik regime repressed the church above all, though, by persecuting, imprisoning, and executing members of the clergy. Although earlier figures were clearly excessive, recent estimates have claimed that the number of clerics murdered still amounted to about 1,500 (Freeze 2013: 89). This number was enough to spread fear and terror, and to intimidate the clergy. The church initially responded to the destruction of church structures and the persecution of its bishops by protesting against the measures of the

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Bolsheviks and excommunicating the revolutionaries. But then Patriarch Tikhon backed down and, in June 1923, swore a public oath of allegiance (the Patriarchate had been reintroduced after the February Revolution of 1917). That benefited the church as little as its resistance had, however. While harsh repression declined after 1923, it is unclear whether the softer approach is attributable to the church’s submission or more to do with the resistance of the parishes, or that the resistance of the parishes was perhaps also a consequence of the withdrawal of the harsh policies of repression. In any case, the politics of the state regarding the church met with considerable resistance from the parishes. Both the confiscation of church valuables to clean up the ailing state finances and the establishment of a pro-Moscow Renovationist clergy outraged the parishes and were boycotted by them. The confiscation of church property therefore only progressed slowly. The establishment of the Renovationist clergy failed completely, in fact. After controlling two thirds of all churches in 1923, the pro-Soviet Renovationist Church then saw its influence dwindle, so that it controlled fewer than one fifth of all Orthodox churches a few years later (Freeze 2013: 94). In the second half of the 1920s, the number of churches even rose slightly again, and donations to the church grew. According to reports of the secret police, about 40 per cent of the population still belonged to a religious community in 1928 (Freeze 2013: 97). The regime then intensified its stance again and took a different course. It introduced impossibly high taxes and obliged all parishes to register again. This was an instrument for the state to close one church after another. While the Russian Orthodox Church had 39,530 parishes in 1917, this number fell to 950 in 1940 (Dickinson 2000: 330), a loss of more than 95 per cent. The Soviet power also used atheistic propaganda to combat the churches. While it made ‘religious propaganda’ a criminal offence in 1929, and introduced its own paragraph on ‘deceitful actions for the purpose of inducing people to embrace superstitions’, it protected ‘anti-religious propaganda’ as a right of freedom. The church was affected above all, though, by the enormity of the Stalinist purges, which made the religious a key target group. At the height of the Terror, in 1937/8, 350,000 believers were executed, 40 per cent of whom were clerics. Hundreds of thousands more were exiled to the Gulag. In 1941, the Russian Orthodox Church had almost ceased to exist (Freeze 2013: 105). Almost all parish churches had been closed. All but four of the more than 200 bishops had been shot or deported to labour camps. Of the 4,600 priests who had once practised in the Catholic Church, only ten were still practising their profession. The Soviets had almost managed shortly before the Second World War to fulfil their aim proclaimed in the five-year plans of abolishing religion. Those members of the clergy who survived went into hiding. As shown by a study commissioned by the Party and conducted in the 1930s, the degree of religiosity and the feeling of belonging to the church among the

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population were still higher than it had expected (Bremer 2009: 64). Religious life, though, had come to an almost complete standstill in both the city and the countryside (Bremer 2007: 129). This, of course, was due not only to the antichurch measures and the indiscriminate use of terror by the state, but also to processes of social, political, and economic restructuring of society, such as the industrialization of the country, the nationalization of businesses, and the collectivization of agriculture. A moderate shift in the state’s church politics only occurred when, requiring the support of the church and the faithful in the fight against Hitler, Stalin permitted a limited toleration of the church. Immediately after the invasion by the German Wehrmacht, the Orthodox Church positioned itself unreservedly on the side of Soviet power, called on the faithful to defend the Fatherland, and collected money to finance weapons. Stalin then met with the church hierarchy, allowed the election of a new Patriarch, and granted more freedoms to the church. Stalin’s concessions were pragmatic in nature, but meant that, even after the Second World War, the massive persecution of the church and of the faithful was initially not resumed. The ban on publishing church and religious writings was lifted carefully; several seminaries for priests were reopened. The number of churches increased to 14,000, although this rapid increase can be explained by the formalization of the catacomb churches. The process of de-Stalinization under Khrushchev at the end of the 1950s saw the resumption of stronger measures against the churches, however. Churches and monasteries were closed again and bishops were forced to retire. Attempts also increased to infiltrate the church through the apparatus of state security. Even high-level representatives of the church hierarchy could be persuaded to cooperate with the KGB. In addition, the church was now deliberately employed to promote the foreign policy interests of the Soviet Union. These were served especially by the ecumenical relations of the Russian Orthodox Church, relations that had been expanded when the Russian Orthodoxy joined the World Council of Churches in 1961 (Richter 2010). At the international level, the bishops of the Orthodox Church appeared again and again as defenders of Soviet peace policy, and denied that religious freedom was restricted within their country. At the same time, though, the Orthodox Church’s international contacts also gave it the opportunity to break through at least partly the spiritual and communicative isolation that it had been forced into by Soviet power. The Communist Party did not refrain from restricting the church’s room for manoeuvre during Leonid Brezhnev’s period of office, either. The Orthodox Church was largely domesticated, although there were bishops who, as a report of the ‘Council for Religious Affairs’ noted, did not behave in a loyal and patriotic way, but who ‘sought to circumvent the laws on cults’ (Hauptmann and Stricker 1988: 885). Dissidents, who had become increasingly vocal since the 1960s, were not supported by the church. Even when dissidents came into conflict with the state due to their religious beliefs, there is no known case of

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the church ‘coming out on the side of the dissidents against the state’ (Bremer 2007: 242). Priests critical of the state were usually suspended from the church at the behest of party bodies. There were repeated criticisms of the state made by dissident circles, and criticism was repeatedly levelled at the Patriarchate for his attitude of loyalty to the state, such as by Gleb Yakunin and Nikolai Esliman in 1965, and by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his Lenten Letter of 1972 (Hauptmann and Stricker 1988: 840ff.), in which he criticized the church for its concessions to the state. However, the Orthodox Church maintained its accommodating position to the state to the end. This was probably less to do with the traditional proximity of Orthodoxy to the state than to its internalized experience of several decades of cruel persecution. Rodney Stark’s claim that the suppression of the Orthodox Church made it into an oppositional force does not correspond to reality at all. Political pressure is not always followed by cultural counter-pressure, and religious potential can also be subject to the anti-religious course of political action. Despite repeated expressions of interest in religious matters during the Brezhnev era, particularly in urban intellectual circles and among young people (Furman 1997b: 291), the integrative power of Orthodox communities continued to weaken in the late period of the Soviet regime. In 1988, 10 per cent of Moscow residents said that they believed in God, and 7 per cent that they believed in life after death (Kääriäinen and Furman 2000: 30). Although the policies pursued by the CPSU failed in many ways, we cannot deny that they had a certain effectiveness with regard to religion. The remarkable renaissance of Christianity that we can observe during the 1990s can therefore hardly be attributed to the continuing influence of deep-seated religious mentalities and certainly not to the resistance of the Orthodox Church during the time of its suppression. How, then, can it be explained?

7.2. INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS REVIVAL I N R U S S I A A F T E R 1 99 0 We can initially exclude two other factors that might come to mind when explaining the religious revival. The religious renaissance in Russia has relatively little to do with the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church, with its social or religious offers, its theological doctrines, or its cult. This is already evident in the fact that belief in God rose in leaps and bounds almost from one day to the next, without the Church’s organization changing dramatically. While, in 1988, 10 per cent of people living in Moscow said that they believed in God, that figure had already risen to 35 per cent three years later (WVS 1991: Variable 166). During this period, the number of officiating priests, religious services offered, and services provided by the church, barely rose. What had changed was official policy on religion, which had liberalized in connection with the thousandth

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anniversary of the Kievan Rus’. Religion and church were no longer stigmatized in public, but enjoyed new political and cultural appreciation. What had therefore changed was not so much the form of church activity as the climate of public opinion. How little the religious revival can be attributed to the activity of the church itself can be seen above all, though, in the fact that, between 1991 and 2008, church membership and belief in God doubled, while attendance at church services remained comparatively low and at the level, for example, of strongly secularized countries such as the Czech Republic, Estonia, and East Germany (see Tables III.2 and III.3). Even if church attendance has increased slightly over the past two decades, it is not interaction with the church, attending church, or the Divine Liturgy that can explain the growth of belief in God. Other forces must also be taken into consideration here. If people ever do set foot in a church, then they do so only briefly, to light candles before their venerated icons, and many do not even pray in the church. When asked whether they partake of the sacrament, more than two thirds of the Russians surveyed have said for years now that they have never taken it (Levada 2012: 10). Eighty per cent of the Russian population said that they had never personally met a priest; only 1–2 per cent said that they had had regular contact with a priest (Kääriäinen and Furman 2000: 41). Only 9 per cent of adherents to the Orthodox Church ever participate in the life of a church community and just 1 per cent participate regularly in such a community (Müller 2013b: 9). Religious upbringing in the family probably also plays a surprisingly minor role in the growth in the significance of religion. Only 16 per cent of people said that they had been brought up religiously at home (Table 7.1). This percentage did not increase during the 1990s. Despite the shift in the public climate of opinion, the proportion of those experiencing religious socialization in their family of origin actually remained the same in the 1990s (Table 7.1). Significantly more than the stated 16 per cent of respondents describe their parents as religious. In 1999, 51 per cent described their mother as religious, and 24 per cent said the same about their father (Table 7.2). If these statements correspond to reality at least in tendency, then that would mean that only a few of those fathers and mothers deemed religious had passed on their faith to their children. They apparently did not consider their faith to be so important as to raise their children in its spirit. It is also striking that the proportion of religious mothers and fathers is significantly lower among younger respondents than it is among older respondents. Whereas, according to the children’s own statements, of those aged over 60, 68 per cent of mothers and 43 per cent of fathers were religious, these proportions shrank in the age group of 18- to 29-year-olds to 39 per cent and 17 per cent respectively (Table 7.2). In contrast, belief remains at the same high level among grandmothers in different age groups. It is always more than 60 per cent of grandmothers that are deemed religious (Table 7.2). In the

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Religion and Modernity Table 7.1. Percentage of respondents with or without religious upbringing in different years 1991

1993

1996

1999

18 80 2

18 79 3

18 78 4

16 80 4

With Without Do not know

Source: Kääriäinen and Furman 2000: 47.

Table 7.2. Relatives’ religiosity among various age groups in 1999 (in %) Relatives’ degree of belief

Mother Father Grandmother Grandfather

Believer Atheist Believer Atheist Believer Atheist Believer Atheist

Age group 18–29

30–39

40–49

50–59

60 or more

Total

39 3 17 10 66 2 31 5

45 5 16 12 60 1 30 3

48 2 20 10 61 3 36 5

56 3 22 9 63 0 44 2

68 3 43 6 65 0 52 1

51 3 24 15 63 1 38 3

Source: Kääriäinen and Furman 2000: 32.

generation of grandparents, at least among grandmothers, belief therefore remained relatively stable over time. In contrast, it diminished increasingly among parents over the years, and also had a dwindling capacity for reproduction. A vital religious upswing should be reflected in the fact that the effects of religious upbringing increase in the younger age groups. However, the religious renaissance in Russia is apparently only supported weakly by the family. This does not mean that there are also not some indicators of religiosity that have higher values among younger people than among those who are older. These relate, for example, to belief in astrology, magic, and sorcery (Kääriäinen and Furman 2000: 35). Belief in God, however, is lower in the younger generation than in the general population, as is church attendance, frequency of prayer, and church membership (Kääriäinen and Furman 2000: 35, 38, 40, 52). We should not conclude from this that there is perhaps an emerging interest among young people in forms of non-church religiosity. Even though this is a little more widespread among younger people, the group of traditional believers with high frequency of church attendance and of prayer, personal relationship with God, and closeness to Orthodoxy have the highest values when it comes to magic, sorcery, and reincarnation—a group consisting predominantly of elderly women and with only 6 per cent of people under 30 among its members (Kääriäinen and Furman 2000: 45). Non-church religiosity is therefore more frequent in the church than outside it, and the

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increases in the young generation remain within limits not only in terms of conventional religiosity (church attendance, frequency of prayer, church membership), where they are particularly low, but also in terms of alternative religiosity, where they are slightly above the average. In general, the signs of a growing religiosity in Russia remain underdetermined and vague. If people do believe in God, then they believe more in a spirit or life force, and not in a personal God with whom they can build an individual relationship (Table 7.3).3 If people are in the church, then they describe themselves quite generally as Orthodox, but they do not want to be seen as supporters of the Russian Orthodox Church—although 75 per cent of Russians do identify with Orthodoxy (Table 7.4). Of these, 43 per cent consider themselves Christian in a general sense, 36 per cent as Orthodox in a general sense, and only 12 per cent as a supporter of the Russian Orthodox Church (Table 7.5). Very few pray, read the Bible, and participate in church life. No more than a quarter of the population pray at least occasionally.4 Religious revival in Russia is like a bubble.5 If we consider that vital religiosity is characterized all over the world by a personal relationship with God, intensive practice of prayer, religious readings, and church attendance, and is strongly influenced by religious upbringing,6 then we must assume that the religious upsurge in Russia does not enjoy broad emotional, experiential, interactive, and practical support. Some observers of the religious change in Russia therefore also interpret the apparent return of religion as a superficial cultural phenomenon that hides a widespread religious indifference. When 3

Favouring an impersonal conception of God does not follow a typically Orthodox pattern. In Ukraine, the proportion of those who believe in a personal God is significantly higher than the proportion of those who affirm the existence of a higher being or a higher power (EVS 2008). 4 75% of the Russian population say that they have barely ever prayed, but at least 7% claim to have read the Bible, as opposed to 46% who have never held the book in their hand, and 35% who say that they have read parts of it (Kääriäinen and Furman 2000: 39, 41). 9% of the total population have taken part in Holy Communion within the last year, that figure being no more than 16% among the faithful (Kääriäinen 2007). The majority of Russians have an icon at home. Among those born between 1917 and 1935, three quarters of those who have an icon at home also pray before it; among the youngest age group, though, fewer than a third pray before icons (Müller 2013b: 18). 5 This statement is of course challenged by social scientists following the fashionable trend of criticizing secularization theory, who argue, like Tomka (2006), for example, that our Western instruments are not capable of doing justice to the specificity of Russian Orthodox religiousness with its emphasis on the harmony of culture, society, and politics, and that such a statement only proves the inadequacy of the methodology used, etc. The evaluation by Olaf Müller (2013b: 20f.) of a survey carried out under the auspices of Russian academics also concludes, however, that, apart ‘from the mere statement of belonging to Orthodoxy’, there is ‘little evidence that there has been a reawakening and deep interest in religion since the fall of communism’. 6 Religious upbringing is the decisive influence on people’s religiosity in Russia, too. 54% of traditional believers, and 5% of atheists, were brought up religiously (Kaariäinen and Furman 2000: 48). The proportion of traditional believers constitutes only a narrow segment of society, however, with only 7% of the Russian population belonging to this group in 1999 (Kaariäinen and Furman 2000: 45).

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Table 7.3. Percentage of various opinions about the nature of God in various years

There is a God with whom you can have a personal relationship There is a kind of spirit or life force I don’t know what to think There is no God, spirit, or life force No answer

1991

1993

1996

1999

2005

7

12

15

18

19

34 39 21

33 26 22 8

35 24 18 8

38 21 16 6

31 26 12

Source: Kääriäinen and Niemelä 2007: 7.

Table 7.4. Russians’ religious identification among the general population and among male and female respondents in 1999 (in %) General

Male

Female

75 4 1 1 4 15

67 4 1 1 4 21

82 4 1 1 4 10

Orthodox Muslim Catholic Protestant Not a religious person Don’t know Source: Kääriäinen/Furman 2000: 53.

Table 7.5. Adherents of various traditions among the general population and among male and female respondents who regard themselves as Orthodox in 1999 (in %)

A Christian in general A follower of the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) An Old Believer Orthodox in general Don’t know

General

Male

Female

43 12

43 11

44 13

1 36 7

1 37 7

1 35 7

Question: 'Do you regard yourself primarily as . . . ’ Source: Kääriäinen and Furman 2000: 53.

people declared themselves as religious, they did so ‘only for political and other pragmatic reasons, for reasons of fashion or conformism’ (Nikonov 1997: 305). In fact, in surveys since the 1990s, between 70 and 80 per cent of people always express the opinion that many people currently want to show their relationship to religion and the church without being religious (Levada 2012: 6). At the same time, about two thirds of Russians say that religion has no major role, or even no role at all, in their lives (Levada 2012: 9). We must therefore clearly distinguish between commitment to Orthodoxy or belief in God and lived religious devotion. Commitment to God or the

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church does not cost much and apparently corresponds to a trend in society as a whole, whereas dealing intensively with religious questions does not seem to be part of such a trend. For us, this existential disengagement also explains the high level of approval for all forms of magic, astrology, occultism, and mysticism, as well as for reincarnation, Zen meditation, and belief in Nirvana. In no other Eastern or Central European country is belief in astrology, occultism, spiritualism, faith healers, as well as the effectiveness of crucifixes, icons, amulets, stones or crystals, as pronounced as it is in Russia (see Table III.1 and Müller 2013a: 158f., 162). It is often between 20 and 30 per cent of the Russian population who profess such beliefs, and sometimes even more. We of course need to link the spread of belief in magic, astrology, and esotericism in Russia to the long tradition of heretical folk religiosity. At the same time, though, we should not overemphasize this link, since it is mostly younger age groups who believe in rebirth and Nirvana, but also in older magic beliefs, such as the efficacy of lucky charms, horoscopes, and the supernatural powers of ancestors (ISSP 2008). While about two thirds of those under 30 believe that talismans, amulets, and the stars have effects on our lives, that figure is just over one third among those over 60. The age distribution among those affirming magical and occult beliefs again casts doubt on Freeze’s argument that the religious renaissance in post-Soviet Russia is a resurgence or continuation of latent, traditional, magical folk religiosity. The high positive correlations between the different forms of religiosity in Russia also contradict the argument that there has been a rise or continuation of a deeply internalized religiosity. Table 7.6 shows that traditional forms of Christianity, such as religious affiliation, church attendance, or belief in God, are sometimes closely linked both to more recent non-church religiosity, such as belief in reincarnation, Nirvana, and spirituality, and to older forms of non-Christian religiosity, such as divination and astrology. Only belief in horoscopes is something of an exception here. Such an alignment of the different dimensions of religiosity is present especially in highly secularized countries such as East Germany and Denmark, but not in highly religious countries such as Ireland, Italy, and Poland (see Tables 4.22 and 6.3). If the religious landscape is characterized by an inner vitality, then it is the case that the various forms of the religious are in greater tension with each other. Finally, the fact that Russian respondents very often select the answer ‘Don’t know’ or ‘I can’t decide’, and overproportionally those groups with the highest values regarding forms of non-church religiosity, that is, the younger age cohorts, do so, also suggests that many do not attach too much importance existentially and content-wise to their belief in the efficacy of stones, stars, and lucky charms. After the collapse of socialism, religion apparently represents in all its many shades a new shelter for many people, a shelter that, as a kind of civil religion, can provide moral and ideological orientation. What also seems to be more important than church activity, family socialization, the continuing effect of latent traditional folk religiosity, and the

Table 7.6. Correlations between traditional churchliness, individual religiosity, and non-church religiosity in Russia, 2008

Religious affiliation Frequency of church attendance Belief in God Belief in reincarnation Belief in Nirvana Spirituality Fortune telling

Church attendance

Belief in God

0.347**

0.720** 0.376**

Belief in reincarnation

Belief in Nirvana

Spirituality

Fortune telling

0.146** 0.204**

0.091* 0.111*

0.292** 0.345**

0.120** 0.189**

n.s. n.s.

0.254**

0.253** 0.743**

0.634** 0.264** 0.290**

0.291** 0.293** 0.309** 0.407**

0.172** 0.269** 0.313** 0.463** 0.566**

** The correlation is significant at the level of 0.01 (2-sided); * the correlation is significant at the level of 0.05 (2-sided); n.s.: not significant. Source: ISSP 2008.

Horoscope

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interaction between believers and church for the religious revival in Russia since 1991 is in that sense the allocation of non-religious functions to the Orthodox Church. Even among non-believers, 61 per cent said in 1991 that religion was necessary for national self-confidence, for democracy (27 per cent) and state administration (31 per cent) (Furman 1997b: 293). With the exception of the President, no other institution in Russia enjoys such a high level of confidence as the church (Table 7.7). And in no other country is such a high level of confidence in the church combined with such a low density of religious interaction. In as early as 1990, when weekly church attendance was less than 1 per cent, almost two thirds of the population said that they had confidence in the church (see Table III.1). Today, confidence in the church in Russia is higher than in Poland and Ireland (see Table III.2). Confidence in all social institutions in Russia was unusually high in 1990 (Table 7.8). While confidence in the church remained unbroken in the years Table 7.7. Confidence in various institutions in 1999 (in %)

ROC Greens Army UNO TV EU Mass media Trade unions Court system CIS countries Police Government Large companies State Duma Political parties

A great deal

A fair amount

Not much

Not at all

Don’t know

Balance

23 14 9 5 5 3 3 6 3 1 3 2 1 2 1

46 50 43 32 45 23 37 27 31 20 25 23 14 13 7

11 11 26 15 32 19 35 29 32 32 37 36 28 40 39

7 6 12 13 12 13 18 24 24 16 30 32 30 38 34

13 18 9 36 5 42 6 13 10 30 6 7 26 7 19

+51 +47 +14 +9 +6 −6 −13 −20 −22 −27 −39 −43 −43 −63 −65

Source: Kääriäinen and Furman 2000: 60.

Table 7.8. Confidence in institutions in Russia, 1990–2008 (mean values) Year 1990 1995/96 1999 2006 2008

Church 2.76 2.79 2.68 2.83 2.86

Armed Parliament Government forces 2.93 2.89 2.81 2.79 2.93

2.39 1.92 1.81 2.04 2.31

– 1.95 – 2.32 2.64

Political parties

Justice system

Social security system

2.37 1.86 – 1.86 1.96

2.32 2.29 2.15 2.21 2.27

2.75 – 2.34 – 2.52

Source: EVS; WVS (0 = no confidence at all, 3 = very much confidence).

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following, it had by 1991 already fallen significantly in terms of non-religious institutions such as parliament, government, and business, and did not rise again during the remainder of the 1990s. At the same time, the 1990s saw an extreme decline in the economic performance of the country, as well as political and legal insecurity, corruption, and growing social inequality. The gross domestic product declined (Table 7.9). The quality of democracy in Russia in the 1990s was even downgraded in the measurements of democracy carried out by Polity IV (Pickel 2007: 233). Confidence in the courts also declined (see Table 7.8). It was not until the years after 1999 that the gross domestic product rose again, and that confidence regarding political, legal and other institutions also increased (see Tables 7.9 and 7.8). There were high expectations of the church in the 1990s concerning its performance of political and social responsibilities. Confidence in the church was probably due then more to the wish for the church to deliver social benefits than to an individual expectation of benefits (Furman 1997a: 27). At the same time, many people did not evaluate very highly the competence of the church to solve social and other problems (Table 7.10). Table 7.9. Growth in gross domestic product in Germany, Poland, and Russia, 1990–2013 (in %) Year 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

East Germany

10.7 12.7 11.9 6.2 2.9 1.8 0.7 2.3 0.9 0.5 1.5 0.5 1.5 −0.2 3.4 2.9 0.6 −3.9 3.2 1.9 0.6 −0.1

West Germany

Poland

Russia

1.1 −2.5 1.5 1.1 0.6 1.9 2.1 2.0 3.4 2.0 −0.1 −0.8 1.2 0.8 3.8 3.3 1.0 −6.1 4.3 3.8 0.4 –

−7.0 2.6 3.8 5.2 7.0 6.1 6.8 4.8 4.1 4.3 1.2 1.4 3.9 5.3 3.6 6.2 6.8 5.0 1.7 3.9 4.5 1.9 1.6

−3.0 −5.0 −14.5 −8.7 −12.6 −4.1 −3.6 1.4 −5.3 6.4 10.0 5.1 4.7 7.3 7.2 6.4 8.2 8.5 5.2 −7.9 4.5 4.3 3.4 1.3

Sources: International Monetary Fund; World Bank; BMWT 2013: 5; BMWi 2015.

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Table 7.10. Competence of the church in selected areas (in %) Country

Poland Slovenia Czech Republic East Germany Estonia Hungary Latvia Russia Romania Bulgaria Ireland Denmark West Germany

Moral problems

Family life problems

Spiritual needs

Social problems

1990

2008

1990

2008

1990

2008

1990

2008

67 39 31 49

54

71 34 28 37

50

80 50 39 53

73

38 32 16 50

31

41 31 37 55 34 41 17 33

26 25 39 37 50 69 63 33 33 26 43

38 18 30 47 27 35 11 29

22 19 25 31 41 52 55 21 27 16 37

51 30 40 70 41 69 41 57

41 30 57 58 68 68 82 47 55 48 49

27 10 22 28 16 32 7 27

15 19 13 18 19 28 32 11 24 13 26

Source: EVS 2000, 2008.

Nevertheless, many spoke in favour of increasing the power of the church. About half the population thought in May 1991 that the influence of the church on government policy was too low (Levada 2012: 2). In no other European country was the proportion of those who thought that the church had too little power as high at that time as in Russia (ISSP 1991; Variable 30). The church, people thought, should speak publicly on issues of peace, disarmament, environmental protection, on Third World problems, unemployment, and political questions (Table 7.11). It should act as an integrative force and convey moral values to society (Levada 2012: 1). More than in any other European country were people supportive of the idea that religious leaders should influence the government (Table 7.12). While the requirement to separate church and state is largely accepted in Europe, West and East, only 43 per cent of respondents in Russia argued in 1991 that church leaders should not influence government decisions. In most European states, agreement with this statement amounts to more than 70 per cent. It seems that the principles of functional differentiation, as they are typical for modern societies in the West, found less support in the 1990s in Russia than in Western, and in many parts of Eastern, Europe, and the church was faced with people’s expectations that it would partially compensate perceived function deficits in other areas of society, in politics, the economy, and the judiciary. People’s high degree of willingness to identify with Orthodoxy and to describe themselves as religious may have much to do with this ascription of function to the church, even if it does not explain it completely. This willingness expresses political, social, and moral expectations of the church, as well as dissatisfaction with the functioning of other social institutions, and perhaps also a certain devotion expressed

Table 7.11. It is proper for churches to speak out on . . . (1991) (in %) Country

Disarmament

Abortion

Third World problems

Unemployment

Ecology and environmental issues

Government policy

Extramarital affairs

49 40 68 83 58 77 59 48 65 43 51

59 21 26 52 45 61 46 31 81 37 48

61 32 43 89 60 44 50 31 92 60 77

47 37 38 62 55 59 30 38 77 33 37

63 47 68 82 70 80 52 61 59 38 51

19 15 32 46 40 53 19 32 34 19 16

55 18 37 32 37 55 54 39 71 47 27

Poland Slovenia Czech Republic East Germany Hungary Russia Romania Bulgaria Ireland Denmark West Germany Source: EVS 1990, 1990–1.

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Table 7.12. Separation of church and state (in %) Country

1991

1998

2008

Ireland West Germany East Germany Poland Russia

69.0 76.3 70.4 71.4 43.1

79.1 72.7 76.2 77.0 74.2

58.2 62.4 63.1 70.0 54.9

Question: ‘Religious leaders should not try to influence government decisions.’ Source: ISSP 1991, 1998, 2008.

to the old system. It is no coincidence that confidence in the church did not correlate positively with confidence in the parties and judiciary in the early 1990s, while there was a positive correlation with the appreciation of the old system (WVS 1991; 1994). Kirill I. Nikonov (1997: 304) argues that the new appreciation of religion and the new demand for sacral meaning in the 1990s ‘were products of a profound social crisis’. Perhaps that is going a little too far, but we do gain the impression that the increased turning to religion and church is, among other things, a concomitant of economic and political problems of development, of increasing social inequality, oppressive poverty, political corruption, unbridled economic competition and political mismanagement, to which people respond by searching for boundary-setting standards, moral orientation, and existential support. The expectation that the church should support social morality and ethics was the most important of all the ascriptions of responsibility to the church in the 1990s, much more important even than the expectation that it should satisfy the spiritual needs of the faithful (Levada 2012: 1). The correlation between the assignment of significance to the church and the economic situation is also evident in the fact that the Orthodox option is chosen less by the younger generation and the highly educated, and more by the elderly and socially less well-off. The group of highly educated people seems even to be increasingly distancing itself from the Russian Orthodox Church (Karpov 2013: 274). In the meantime, though, more people also now support in Russia a strict separation of religion and politics (Table 7.12). Although the majority of people expect the church to intervene in the life of society and to take on social and socio-moral duties, only a minority still think that the church should influence government decisions. Two thirds speak out against such influence (Levada 2012: 3). Twenty-eight per cent of the population even feel that the influence of the church on politics is too great, as opposed to 6 per cent in 1991 (Levada 2012: 2). The economic situation has also improved significantly, though (see Table 7.9). The higher efficiency of politics and economics corresponds to the fact that the proportion of those who expect the church to

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have a stronger influence on government policy has fallen over the last twenty years from almost 50 per cent to 15 per cent, and the proportion of those who expect the church to fulfil spiritual functions has increased (Levada 2012: 1f.). In addition to the dedifferentiation of church and state, the nationalistic nature of Orthodoxy also appears to play a role in the process of religious reawakening in Russia. On the one hand, and in sharp contrast to almost all other Eastern and Central European states, people’s pride in their own nation is weak in Russia. On the other hand, national sentiment is largely determined by the experience of the decline of a world power to which Russians once belonged as a leading nation. After the fall of communism, the Russian Federation finds itself in search of its national identity. Almost all the values of the previous system fell into crisis with its demise. With the disintegration of communism, the interest of the ruling elite in Russia awoke to a new system of values that was able to replace the discredited totalitarian doctrine and to fill the ideological vacuum (Karpov 2013: 267). Yeltsin even once commissioned a group of intellectuals to create a new national idea for Russia. Faced with these problems of national orientation, the church offers itself as a supplier of legitimacy which many apparently expect to provide spiritual unity and which is often used by the state to improve its image. It is no coincidence that the Orthodox Church as the majority church enjoys privileges from the state in comparison to other religious communities. It benefits from tax privileges and state money (Karpov 2013: 268). Church chapels and places of spiritual care have been established in state institutions such as the police, the army, and hospitals. The Patriarchate is present in a prominent place, such as when the President is sworn in. In addition, a new school subject, ‘Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture’, has been introduced and is now compulsory for all pupils at state schools, regardless of whether they belong to the church or not (Bremer 2007: 139f.). Religious symbols have a high presence in the army, in hospitals, colleges, and universities, in the criminal justice system, as well as public spaces in general. Areligiosity and anti-religious attitudes are now stigmatized in public in almost the same way that religion and church once were. Without a doubt, the Russian Orthodox Church takes in post-Soviet Russia a place that is not only publicly especially visible, but also politically privileged. It is frequently used by the state for its own purposes, which also lays claim to a leadership role in competition with other sectors of society, such as the media, the economy, or the judiciary. Putin, for example, claimed in 2007 that the traditional religions were as important for Russia’s security as nuclear protection. This proximity between church and state, or religion and nation, also probably made a not insignificant contribution to the religious revival in Russia. On the one hand, the state promotes church activity, gives the church a strong position in state institutions and the public sphere, gives it

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preferential treatment in comparison to other religious communities, and holds back the influence of foreign religious groupings. On the other hand, many embrace the opportunity to identify with the Russian Orthodox Church. Three quarters of the population broadly support the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church. Only 14 per cent consider the extent of the church’s involvement in public life, and the government support that it receives, as too great (Levada 2012: 2f.). The Russian Orthodox Church is apparently for many a symbol of the former historical greatness of Russia and reflects its former importance. Did Russia not always possess an empire that spanned countries? Was it not in the Soviet era also a world power? Did it not send the first person into space? The Russian Orthodox Church apparently conveys a sense of Russia’s lost power and importance. The increase in church ties and belief in God is probably less to do with religion than with political and cultural factors.7 The nationalist character of the religious renaissance in Russia is also evident in the fact that non-Orthodox religious communities are hardly affected by it. Religious groupings and churches such as the Catholic Church, the Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the Adventists—which, incidentally, were sometimes precisely those churches that showed courage and opposition with regard to Soviet power—remain small. In general, they are not particularly valued. People assemble their own religious beliefs from different religious traditions less in Russia than in other countries. Dominant, rather, is an attitude of distance, indifference, and sometimes even opposition, with regard to other religious communities. Orthodoxy is of course widely accepted. 44 per cent value it very positively, and a further 50 per cent, rather positively (Kääriäinen and Furman 2000: 56). Muslims, though, have only 8 per cent very positive assessments, the Catholics, 5 per cent, and all other groups, even fewer. The identification of the majority of the population with Orthodoxy is therefore accompanied by a critical distance from adherents to non-Orthodox religious communities. To be Orthodox is considered by the majority as something Russian, and most people equate being Russian with being Orthodox. For 85 per cent of all Russians, Russians are Orthodox regardless of whether they have been baptized or go to church (Karpov et al. 2012). Just as the Tatars and the Chechens are Muslims by birth, so the Russians (and Karpov (2013: 258) speaks of ‘ethno-religious identity’ to describe this phenomenon) are practically Orthodox from birth. In addition, 58 per cent of Russians feel threatened by foreign cultures— more than almost anywhere else in Europe (C&R 2006: Q. 10). Identifying with Orthodoxy apparently has the strong character of a cultural defence of 7

Should that have some truth to it, we could expect people’s identification with Orthodoxy to recede after the national euphoria triggered by the accession of Crimea.

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things that are perceived to be threatened. It connects to a considerable extent to anti-Western resentments and assumes a strong ideological connotation. Anti-Western discourses are also very widespread among the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church (Makrides 2009). Only briefly was there an opening-up to Western ideas and institutions, in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since then, the rejection of what is perceived to be the hostile West has predominated. The anti-Western cultural defence of a Russianness defined by Orthodoxy could also be used to explain the religious upturn in Russia. Bringing the factors mentioned here together, we gain the impression that the return of the religious in Russia owes less to the self-organizing abilities and practical competencies of the Russian Orthodox Church, and more to the political and national expectations projected onto it. If this is true, then we should speak of a borrowed religious boom, one that has less to do with the internal dynamics of the religious than with political, cultural, and economic factors. We will also hardly be able to attribute the religious revival in Russia after 1990 to a deep-rooted religious mentality. The religiosity expressed is barely conveyed through upbringing and socialization. Forms of religious practice, from communion, through prayer, to Bible reading, are barely used. The majority of people do not attribute an important place to religion in their lives. The religious renaissance in Russia has less a religious than a national and political character.

8 East Germany No Signs of a Turnaround

The first of the two central questions guiding our treatment of religious change in East Germany—the question of why the level of religiosity fell more here in forty years of communist rule than in any other Eastern or Central European country—appears easy to answer at first sight. Not without reason is the dramatic decline of religion in the time of the GDR regime attributed to the effects of the communist apparatus of repression. However, the repression of the churches in the GDR was not nearly as severe as it was in the Soviet Union and other countries of the Eastern bloc, and yet the process of dechurchification and secularization was more profound. In some communist countries— Poland, Croatia, Bulgaria, and Romania, for example—the churches were more or less able to maintain their membership levels, while in many others, such as Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, and Lithuania, the levels dropped only slightly (Pollack 1998: 18). Therefore, besides the undeniable effect that the persecution, repression, and marginalization of Christians and churches had, other factors must also have played a role in the loosening of people’s ties to church and religion in the former GDR. Otherwise, the high degree of religious decline in East Germany cannot be explained. Nevertheless, the repressive church politics of the SED were undoubtedly the decisive factor in the unique process of minoritizing churches in the GDR. In 1949, the proportion of those belonging to a denomination was at a similar level in East Germany as in West Germany, at over 90 per cent. In 1989, at the time of the demise of communist rule, it was still at almost 85 per cent in the West, while, in the East, the proportion had shrunk to about 30 per cent. About 25 per cent still felt that they belonged to the Protestant Church, and 4 per cent to the Catholic; the proportion of those without religious affiliation had increased in the same period by almost tenfold: from 7 per cent to almost 70 per cent (see Pollack 1994: 373–445). The importance of political power relations for the extent and speed of processes of church minoritization is also apparent if we consider that the

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highest numbers of those leaving the church occurred in the times of strongest political repression, and decreased significantly when the SED liberalized its stance towards the churches. In the years between the founding of the GDR and the Second Party Conference in July 1952, we cannot say that there was a systematic repression of the churches. The SED, which had not yet fully established its rule, was searching in this period for allies and offered them the chance to integrate via the Nationale Front. Even if tensions increased between church and state, the latter largely held back during this period when it came to anti-church actions. However, in the summer of 1952, the communist state then launched a campaign against the Junge Gemeinden (church organizations comprising young people) and encroached upon the financial basis of church work. The number of those leaving the church—and we are referring here and in what follows only to the Protestant churches, since there are no reliable data available for the Catholic Church—rose abruptly (see Fig. 4.1). The number of baptisms also fell significantly (see Fig. 4.2). The church nevertheless survived this first attack on its membership levels relatively well. Church leaders called for people not to be swayed by the state’s threats and not to act out of fear (Hutten 1963: 104). They submitted petitions to the authorities and asked the Attorney General of the GDR to initiate criminal proceedings against those responsible for the press campaign against its Junge Gemeinde (Heidtmann 1954: 343). The church urged young people to fight back wherever attempts were made to deprive them of their faith, and to counter the violence and lies of the world with the love of Christ. Even if God ‘gives the anti-Christian powers so much freedom’ that many have to suffer, He is still ‘greater […] than them all’ (Heidtmann 1954: 334, 337, 352). And, indeed, many young people did prove to be oppositional, preferring to be expelled from secondary school to leaving the Junge Gemeinden. But it was not the resistance of church leaders or members of the church that prompted the SED leadership to change course in its dealings with the churches, but external changes to the political situation. The leadership clique of the CPSU that came to power after Stalin’s death told Walter Ulbricht to withdraw the harsh measures against workers, artisans, farmers, and also against the churches in the GDR. The forced building of socialism had plunged the GDR into a severe economic crisis, which led to difficulties in providing for the population. With the proclamation of the ‘New Course’, the SED leadership admitted to their mistakes and withdrew their harsh measures against farmers, artisans, and shopkeepers. It also relented with regard to the church, reversing the confiscation of church property, readmitting expelled pupils to secondary school, and partially recommencing the suspended payments to the church. The response of the population to the backing-down of the SED was not, as the SED leadership had expected, gratitude and increased commitment to the goals of socialism, however, but participation by large sections in the popular uprising of 17 June 1953. This uprising shocked party functionaries and gave

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them what was probably their most important lesson in the entire history of the GDR. In the wake of 17 June, the SED leadership saw the necessity of heeding the material needs of the workers when implementing its objectives, and of pursuing its own goals in the future with more flexibility and subtlety. The SED’s politics regarding the church were therefore now more longterm, more systematic, and more careful. The strategy of the SED was no longer to weaken the church through open hostility, anti-church measures, and aggressive attempts at disruption, but gradually to restrict, and make administratively difficult, the church’s opportunities to have an effect. The SED also sought to win broad sections of the faithful to its politics and to separate them from the reactionary church leaders (Wilke 1992: 47). A dual strategy was therefore followed: those who supported the politics of the SED were promoted, while others were marginalized and disadvantaged. This strategy of differentiation was the main instrument in its fight against the church. The SED employed its new and relentless, but also flexible, tactics when it introduced the secular coming-of-age ceremony (Jugendweihe). On the one hand, organizers of the Jugendweihe stressed that it was a voluntary, ideologically neutral celebration that was in no sense anti-church and that had nothing to do with the state (Neues Deutschland, 14 November 1954). On the other, though, the Jugendweihe was scheduled at the same time of year as confirmation, was offered to young people at the age of 14, and was performed as an act of consecration with vows, in other words, staged as a functional equivalent to confirmation. With the Jugendweihe, the SED carried out a targeted attack on the church, an attack that presented itself as religiously neutral. It was left to the church to highlight how it contrasted with the state. It did so by stressing that confirmation and Jugendweihe were incompatible, and by excluding from confirmation young people who had participated in the Jugendweihe.1 The church saw participation in the Jugendweihe as breaking the First Commandment and acted according to an awareness of its own strengths, building on its foundations in the population, on the rootedness of confirmation in the denominational culture of society, and on the general unpopularity of the political system. But, when the SED increased its pressure on young people, disadvantaged young people who did not participate in the Jugendweihe at school, college, and work, the church leadership backed down. In a meeting with the government, representatives of the church said that Christians respected the development towards socialism and would contribute to the peaceful building of the life of the people (Kirche in der Zeit 13, 1958, 283).

1

See the statement made by the church leadership of Berlin-Brandenburg on 30 November 1954, Circular 125/55 of the Protestant Consistory of the Province of Saxony on 22 June 1955 (EZA Berlin, 4/KB I 4411/Vol. 1; see also Kirchliches Jahrbuch 1954: 146f.; the newsletter from Bishop Otto Dibelius to the communities of the Protestant Church of Berlin-Brandenburg (Kirchliches Jahrbuch 1955: 112), passim.

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Crucial to this declaration of loyalty may well have been the fact that, unlike in 1952/3, church leaders were not supported in their attitude of resistance by church members. In the short space of three years, from 1956 to 1959, the number of confirmations among young people fell from three quarters to one third, while the number of Jugendweihe soared over the same period from about 12 per cent to 80 per cent. At the same time, the number of baptisms fell from two thirds to one third (Pollack 1994: 384, 415, 425), and the number of people leaving the church rose to more than 2.5 per cent (Figs 8.1 and 8.2). Within a few years, the Protestant Church had collapsed in the GDR.2 After the demise of the GDR, Werner Krusche, long-time bishop of the Province of Saxony, still remembered ‘the absolutely sobering experiences’ that church leaders had when faced ‘with the spirit of resistance of church members regarding the Jugendweihe’ (Krusche 1991: 31). With the introduction of the Jugendweihe, church leaders lost their struggle with the SED regime for the hearts and minds of the population, which proved itself unable to cope with the political pressure exerted on it. If church leaders now wanted to ensure that the church could remain active, they had to go to the state leadership and negotiate with it regarding the rights of the church. Up until the end of the 1980s, when church members suddenly and spontaneously expressed their opinions in public at the Ecumenical Conference, church leaders did not regain their shaken confidence in the population’s power of resistance. Until then, they preferred negotiations behind closed doors to open confrontation. They refrained from fundamentally criticizing the SED leadership, not criticizing the undemocratic nature of the GDR or the SED’s claim to power, and they refrained also from questioning the East–West division of Germany. This they saw as the only way to achieve small changes, to widen the room for manoeuvre for the church’s work, to gain approval for church buildings, to maintain international contacts, to hold special church events such as community festivals and church days, and to prevent discrimination against Christians in the education system. From the mid-1970s, the public stigmatization of Christians and churches subsided, a more pragmatic approach to politics replaced in part the understanding of socialism as class struggle, and churches were granted a certain right to exist in socialist society (manifested, for example, in the fact that parishes were for the first time in the history of the GDR authorized to build new churches and community centres). At the same time, the number of people leaving the church also fell and the number of baptisms even rose slightly (Figs 8.1 and 8.2). The SED no longer relied primarily on a strategy of 2 It was above all the decline in baptisms that was serious. Although many felt such strong ties to the church that they themselves did not leave the church, they apparently wanted to spare their children from discrimination at school and work, from social exclusion, and from conflict, and therefore refrained from having them baptized.

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160,000 140,000 120,000 100,000 80,000 60,000 40,000 20,000 0 49

53

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Fig. 8.1. People leaving and joining selected Protestant churches in the GDR (Saxony, Mecklenburg, Greifswald, Anhalt, Görlitz), 1949–89 Source: Church statistics of the Church Offices and Consistories of Protestant Churches in the GDR.

punishment, warning, and rejection, but adopted instead a policy that would bring believers and clergy into society and motivate them to support the politics of the SED; the church was now to be domesticated and controlled. ‘Tabooing, indoctrination and refusing to discuss matters’ would often lead, as representatives of the state suddenly realized, to an increase in ‘the church’s readiness for conflict’ (Dohle 1988: 181). Having systematized its politics of repression regarding the church in 1954, the SED then took its second decisive change of course when it respected the church as an institution and allowed it certain freedoms. The cessation of overt harassment and discrimination was of course due not to a rethinking on the part of the SED leadership, but mainly to foreign policy. The GDR’s inclusion in the CSCE process meant that the SED leadership was forced, for the sake of the international reputation of the GDR and its capacity to sign treaties, to transform the way that it ruled from overt repression and intimidation to silent surveillance and exemplary sanctions (Lepsius 1994). But the second half of the 1970s was also characterized by the party leadership’s dwindling ability to integrate the population into the project of socialism. People’s willingness to identify with the goals of socialism decreased (Friedrich 1990).

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0 49

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Fig. 8.2. Baptisms and burials in selected Protestant churches in the GDR (Saxony, Mecklenburg, Greifswald, Anhalt, Görlitz), 1949–89 Source: Church statistics of the Church Offices and Consistories of the Protestant Churches in the GDR.

Promises of growth and consumption, which the SED had once made and to which it still adhered rhetorically, could be kept less and less, due not least to the population’s increasing demands. The distance from the economic development of the West became increasingly obvious to everyone. Well-educated young people and young adults in particular saw the system, which could no longer offer them the opportunity to improve themselves, as closed (Mayer and Solga 1994). Politically alternative peace, environmental, and women’s groups formed. Due to the population’s increasing dissatisfaction with the regime and the inability of party and state bodies to respond adequately to this dissatisfaction, the Protestant churches attracted hope and sympathy, and thereby rose to become the representatives of the interests of the population and were expected to fulfil the functions of protest. The churches, though, saw themselves as mediators between the fronts. They wanted to enable the representatives of the state to understand the concerns of the opposition peace groups, while providing these young people with a space to articulate their opinions and to find protection, without coming down on their side. Above all, the churches were interested in containing the opposites, since they had discovered that they could only

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achieve something practical if the state did not feel that its position of power was under attack. The politically alternative groups acting under the shelter of the church were, however, more intent on exacerbating the conflict and challenging the state to make concessions and introduce reforms. The conflict that arose between the peace, environmental, and women’s groups under the umbrella of the church and the church leaders was therefore in some ways inevitable. But conflicts with the state representatives were also unavoidable because the church leaders also repeatedly supported the concerns of these groups. It was important for the SED to separate the church from what it perceived as being the oppositional peace, environmental, and human rights groups. Politburo member Werner Jarowinsky claimed in a speech that he made in February 1988 that the church had gone too far, and called on it to return to the principles of the modus vivendi that had been found between church and state (Jarowinsky 1988: 64). Werner Leich, President of the Federation of Churches, countered in a speech before Erich Honecker on 3 March 1988 that the anti-state activities under the umbrella of the church had their roots not in the church, but in social problems that the state had not dealt with. He demanded more respect for the dignity and maturity of the person, lamented the lack of willingness on the part of the state to enter into dialogue, and called for an improvement in state policy on providing information and complying with political human rights. The fact that the Protestant Federation of Churches was willing to make such a clear statement had one main cause: citizens, and especially Christians, in the GDR had become more confident and courageous. At the ‘Ecumenical Assembly’ that met at this time, church members, theologians, and pastors criticized conditions in the GDR with an openness and vehemence that had not been heard for decades. Since church leaders were no longer alone in their criticism of the GDR system, they were able to talk more openly and explicitly, although their statements were still oriented towards forging understanding and reducing conflict. The church wanted to help close the gap that it claimed existed between citizens and the state, without attacking the power relations in place. It sought balance on all sides. Until the summer of 1989, the church in its pronouncements did not name the source of the rift that ran through society, and it generally never went so far as to highlight the lop-sidedness of power relations. Only in September 1989, when thousands of East German citizens fled across the Austrian–Hungarian border, did it deviate from its path of mediation. It now linked its willingness to compromise with the condition that the fundamental problems besetting people in the GDR would be talked about openly. ‘If accurate and open explanation is an obstacle’, said Bishop Leich, ‘then there will unfortunately be no agreement’ (Protestant Press Service (epd) documentation 43/1989: 15). For the first time in decades, the church was not willing to avoid the truth for the sake of avoiding confrontation with the state power.

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The church had again arrived at the point where, four decades previously, it had started its opposition to the anti-church politics of the regime: in opposition to the official system, and alongside the politically oppressed sections of society. It had laboured for many years under the illusion that it could ensure the conditions for the church to work in and humanize the system without addressing the undemocratic power relations. It is difficult to assess whether the churches could have tied the population more closely to them had they taken a clearer political attitude over the forty-year history of the GDR. When they decided in the 1950s on a path of confrontation, they ultimately failed because the population gave them insufficient support, and so they probably would have lost even more sections of the population had they been more nonconformist. Besides the political relations, other factors caused the diminution of church communities. Their declining power to integrate was due also, among other things, to economic factors. The fact that church membership was higher percentage-wise in the countryside than in urban areas, lower among members of the intelligentsia and workers than among farmers, craftspeople, tradespeople, and shopkeepers, and lower among the more highly educated than among those with a lower level of education (Pollack 1994: 391–402) points to the fact that not only political relations of power, but also processes of modernization, exerted an influence on the degree of dechurchification in the GDR. The SED elite drove forward over decades the process of modernization, industrialization, technologization, and prosperity-raising, a process that affected areas and groups in society differently. Those driving on the modernization process such as workers and the more highly educated had a lower level of churchification than socio-structurally traditional groups such as farmers, craftspeople, and tradespeople. Areas of forced mobility and modernity such as industrial conurbations and cities were less integrated into the church than rural areas. Increases in prosperity, in incomes earned, and in levels of education led to an ever greater availability of cultural leisure pursuits, to a widening of access to the theatre and opera, to discos and the cinema, all of which constituted an alternative to, and competed with, what the church could offer (Dähn 1993). Not least, the everyday secular modernization of GDR society, the increasing focus on consumer goods, fashion, and entertainment, and the accompanying Westernization of lifestyles, also helped to weaken people’s ties to the church. Here, the surge in growth of consumer goods and of the entertainment industry occurred mainly in the 1960s and 1970s, while the 1980s saw a slight worsening in terms of goods and leisure activities, or at least they were less and less able to meet the demands of the population. In contrast to the 1980s, when the attractiveness of what the Protestant Church was offering, especially regarding church music, culture, and education, increased slightly, the power of Protestant churches to attract people to them receded particularly strongly in the 1960s and 1970s.

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Socio-structural processes of restructuring also played a role. As in all societies dominated by a national church, the Protestant churches in the GDR were negatively affected by regional and socio-structural processes of mobilization. The politically enforced expulsion of the propertied middle class, the expropriation of major capital, the collectivization of crafts and agriculture, as well as the exclusion of the educated middle class, the dismissal of teachers, university professors, judges, administrative staff, and so on, led especially in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s to a comprehensive restructuring of the social landscape in East Germany. The elites of the country were disempowered and banished, while representatives of the petty bourgeoisie and the working class were given the opportunity to better themselves. This led to a radical detraditionalization of society in whose wake processes of a cultural narrowing of milieus, a social proletarization and socio-structural levelling began. Members of the underclass became the foundations of society and were also now to shape public life with their aesthetic, political, and cultural preferences. Without cultural capital, with a minimum amount of Western education, and with a low level of professional qualifications, a generation now became dominant that was also alienated from the church. With the disempowerment of the educated and propertied middle class, and the dispossession of the farmers, the church lost the socio-structural backbone that it had still possessed among the East German population after the Second World War. It was not only political pressure on the institution that had a destructive effect on the membership levels of the Protestant Church, but also the social and economic uprooting of the layers of society that had supported the church. The socio-structural restructuring took place mainly in the 1950s, when the numbers of people leaving the Protestant Church were especially high, and partly also in the 1960s, but it then largely lost its social dynamics thereafter. Socio-structural processes of change also affected the church in that the number of divorces and single mothers in the GDR was particularly high. In families with a single parent, the number of baptisms is always lower than in families with two parents. Due to the increasing proportion of those without religious affiliation, the likelihood also increased that, when a couple married, only one of the pair was a member of the church. The baptism rate is lower for children from such religiously heterogeneous marriages than for those from marriages that are religiously homogeneous. For many Christians, too, the increasing proportion of those without religious affiliation meant that the taken-for-granted community of kinship and friendship networks that shared church affiliation fell away. Families whose church membership had so far been based on a milieu comprising a national church suddenly found themselves ideologically isolated. The transition from a majority to a minority church meant a change of cultural climate for small towns, villages, and even whole regions, a change that increasingly left church members to themselves and thereby often left them completely powerless to resist the political pressure exerted on them.

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Protestant churches in the GDR were further weakened since church members, and especially those who belonged to the working class, had had a detached relationship to the church since the nineteenth century (Daiber 1988). Even if people did not leave the church, something that had been legally possible since the second half of the nineteenth century, they barely participated in church life and kept their distance from the institution of the church. The life of the Protestant community was destroyed during the Third Reich, and did not recover again after 1945. When the anti-church propaganda began under the communists, the church was already weak internally, even if the level of church membership was still considerable. Historical path dependencies also played a role, though, insofar as the Protestant Church in the GDR had to refrain from using a source of resistance that in other Central and Eastern European countries was one of the most important resources in dealing with the communist regime: people’s attachment to their own nation. Due to the crimes of National Socialism, the appeal to national traditions was discredited and therefore an important motif of oppositional behaviour towards an externally imposed occupational power could not be mobilized. Many of the churches and congregations had deeply internalized the interpretation of the division of Germany as a result of German guilt. Entanglement in this narrative of guilt made it difficult to fight back against the unpopular rule of the communists with a clear conscience and a feeling of national self-assertion.3 To explain the process of dechurchification, though, we should point not only to external factors such as increasing prosperity, socio-structural transformation or expansion of the leisure and entertainment sector. Rather, we should deal again specifically with church activity itself, which probably also of course influences the social position of churches (Stark and Finke 2000).4 3 To explain the processes of secularization in the GDR, Wohlrab-Sahr refers in particular to the conflict between communist regime and Christian religion, which she sees in the opposition between church membership and party membership, religious ideology and ‘scientific worldview’, Christian ethics and socialist morality of competitiveness (Wohlrab-Sahr, Karstein, and Schmidt-Lux 2009). Through the enforcement of ‘secularity from above’, she argues, historically effective semantics of identity such as ‘community, work and honesty’ have increasingly replaced religious interpretations of the world and patterns of orientation as ‘medium transcendences’. Her assumption that, in the case of secularization, something similar to religion has to take the place of religion will probably be difficult to maintain empirically, however. Many East Germans give the impression that they do not require ultimate values or medium transcendences, and have instead a more pragmatic attitude to life (Gensicke 1994; Tiefensee 2000). As we have tried to make clear, it is not only constellations of conflict that can explain the unique process of secularization in the GDR. Ties to religion and church had already weakened before the socialist dictatorship with its anti-church policies. Other factors, such as the increase in living standards, the expansion of secular leisure activities, the socio-structural transformation of societies such as the collectivization of crafts and agriculture, also played a role. 4 This fact is often underestimated in secularization and modernization theories that begin with macroeconomic and macro-social conditions. It is strongly emphasized, though, in the models of the economy of religion developed in the US (Stark and Finke 2000).

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Because of the conflict with the SED state, the state–church heritage was less of a burden on the church’s activities than was the case in Western European societies. Rather, the problem was primarily that the churches in the GDR were seen by many in the 1950s as being old-fashioned, petty bourgeois, moralizing, and dry as dust, and that it cost the churches a great deal of effort to discard its image of an outdated, ideologically narrow, and authoritarian institution. The Protestant churches invested in the training of pastors, strengthened their youth work, replaced monological forms of proclamation with dialogue, took suggestions from ecumenism to build missionary communities, defined themselves as learning communities, imported the latest knowledge from psychology and sociology, and lowered the barriers to entry to the church as well as softening their membership requirements. Through opening themselves dialogically to society, the Protestant churches were able in the late 1970s and 1980s to be the forum for conflicts and tensions officially suppressed by society, and to take on socially significant functions of representing political interests and mediating between oppositional and alternative groups in society and the state. At the same time, though, the Protestant churches—in contrast to the Catholic Church, which placed more emphasis on avoiding contact—also made themselves more vulnerable through this strategy of openness. It may well be that, in a political system intent on total political control and management, a strategy based on isolation would be better able to maintain its existence as an institution than one based on activity that emphasizes interaction, inclusion, and intervention. By being open to society, Protestant churches therefore, and despite their related gain in political relevance, probably contributed themselves to the weakening of their social position. After the collapse of the communist regime not a few observers of the transformation processes in East Germany expected the East German population to turn once more to religion and church. This expectation was based on the fact not only that the overcoming of communist rule meant also the end of the systematic exclusion, stigmatization, and repression of religion and church that had taken place for decades, but also that the churches in the GDR had played a special role in the transition process from administrative socialism to parliamentary democracy. Had they not shown themselves to be pioneers in the peaceful revolution in the GDR? Had the great demonstrations in 1989 not begun in the prayers for peace in the churches? And had the churches not proven their worth even in the process of social upheaval itself, when they took on the task of moderating between the mutually mistrusting representatives of state and opposition at the round table set up in December 1989? As obvious as the expectation was that there would be a renaissance of church and religion after 1989, so clear is the finding also that this expectation was largely unfulfilled. The baptism rates did increase somewhat and temporarily immediately after 1989, and the number of people joining the church also increased; the church also enjoyed a surprisingly high degree of confidence

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among the population, with people expecting a great deal of the church. In no other post-socialist country in 1990 was the proportion of those who expected the church to take a public stance on political and social problems such as racial discrimination, disarmament, and environmental pollution as great as in East Germany (Zulehner and Denz 1993: Variable A 20). But, after just three years, the moderate signs of church revitalization dropped off again. Even in the year that saw the highest number of people joining the church— 1991—the numbers leaving the church were many times higher. Between 1990 and 2008, the proportion of those without religious affiliation increased by 15 percentage points, while belief in God dropped by more than one third (see Tables III.2 and III.3). And the high confidence that the churches had briefly enjoyed among the population at the moment of German unification collapsed (see Table III.2). There have also been no increases in the area of alternative religiosity. After the collapse of socialism, not a few observers expected a high level of interest in new religious sects and psycho groups, since what they offered would apparently be particularly appealing to East Germans in search of orientation in the face of crisis-ridden processes of transformation (Gandow 1990: 226f.). In fact, though, the boom in sects largely failed to materialize in East Germany, which was the same regarding the turn to the alternative esoteric scene (Fincke 1993: 317). The approval of new religious practices and the extent of people’s experience of them are well below the level in West Germany (Allbus 2008). In addition, there has also been no return to belief in God or quasi-religious forms of belief among young people and young adults, although this is something that has been claimed on a number of occasions (Schmidt and Wohlrab-Sahr 2003: 93; Meulemann 2000). In 1990, 19 per cent of East Germans between 18 and 29 afforded religion an important or very important role in their lives, which was considerably less than the older groups; in 2008, it was 13 per cent, although the distance to the other age groups had decreased (Müller 2013a: 207). But why did the expected upturn in the fortunes of the church not occur after 1989? First, we should point out that what stood at the forefront of practical human action were problems of securing material existence, vocational training and retraining, retaining jobs, and everyday reorientation, rather than problems of finding meaning, ideological orientation, or addressing ultimate questions. Many apparently felt that religion and church were unnecessary to solve these problems. That religion and church were of particular significance in East German biographies at the time of the upheavals can in any case be shown for only a very short period of time (see Storch 2000). We also need to link the fact that the church did not recover from the dramatic effects of the break with tradition caused by the GDR system. Many of those who had left the church during the communist era had in the meantime developed such a strong feeling of alienation from religion and church that

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rejoining the church was simply out of the question. It is possible that they had left the church in the GDR period more due to political pressure than as a result of doubts in their faith, but, for many, such a distance to the church had developed over the years that the barrier was simply too high for them to rejoin. The social importance of churches may also have suffered due to the Stasi debate that began in 1991. Whereas the church was still seen at the time of the upheavals as an institution with integrity whose representatives had shown bravery during the GDR period by supporting the persecuted and giving space to the free expression of opinion, then public opinion soon changed, with the church now being seen as infiltrated by the state security service and as being politically and morally discredited. We should nonetheless not overestimate the importance of the Stasi debate for the church’s image. As the election to Ministerpräsident of Manfred Stolpe in Brandenburg showed, the East Germans did not pay too much attention to opinions created by the media, but drew on their own experiences of the political situation in the GDR to form their own perspectives. In 1992, at the height of the Stasi debate, the majority of East Germans agreed with the statement: ‘In order to maintain a certain freedom of movement and to achieve something for people, the church also had to communicate with the Stasi’ (Engelhardt et al. 1997: 416). Finally, a particularly important reason explaining why people lost confidence in the church, and why its reputation suffered, after 1989 is that the churches, which had represented the people in political and social matters before 1989, were suddenly on the opposite side. With the transfer of institutions from West to East that began in 1989, the church, despite its sometimes harsh criticism of the new conditions in society, which apparently people took little notice of outside the church, was suddenly seen as a Western institution that was victorious, and no longer as the representative of the interests of the population. The conflict emerging in as early as 1990 between the need for recognition of people in East Germany and the assertiveness of West German institutions also played a role in the relationship of East Germans to the church. The massive public presence of the churches in the initial period after the events of 1989 is likely to have done the churches more harm than good. Through their public visibility and the public demand for them, the churches were perceived by the population as being close to the state, which distanced them from people. As paradoxical as it may sound, it was precisely the church that had sought proximity to the people for the first time in German history, and that had criticized the state like no other church in German history, that was now perceived again as a church of the powerful and not as a church of the people. It therefore lost all the support that it had previously acquired through its nonconformist and bold behaviour. The question of why, despite the decline in importance of religion and church, there was a slight consolidation of the national church after 1989, manifested, for example, in increasing numbers of people joining the church

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and of baptisms, can be answered relatively easily. We will probably have to interpret this slight consolidation primarily as a direct effect of the relaxation of the situation in East Germany regarding church policy and the newly acquired public recognition of religion and church. Given the new standing of church and religion in society, many felt that it was attractive to belong to the church and to have their children baptized. People no longer had to live with disadvantages if they did so. An empirical study of people joining the church has been able to show that the absence of state pressure after 1989 has indeed been an important factor in people’s increasing willingness to join the church (Hartmann and Pollack 1998: 146ff.). Conversely, this observation once again points to the fact that the minoritization of churches in the former GDR must be understood primarily as a result of political repression.

9 Poland Unexpected Vitality after the Fall of Communism

Those dealing with religious change in Poland are soon confronted with the myth of the special role of Poland among the peoples of Eastern and Central Europe. Founded in 966 under Mieszko I as a Christian state, Poland was for centuries in a multiple and changing frontline not only against Russian Orthodoxy and Islam, but also Lutheran Sweden, which ‘led to an early identification of religious, political, and national cultural identity’ (Casanova 2003). Poland saw itself as Antemurale Christianitas, as a ‘bulwark’ of Christian Europe, as the most Eastern bastion of Western civilization against the spread of Orthodoxy and the expansion of Islam (Main 2007: 270). Czestochowa, which withstood a month-long siege by the superior might of Sweden in the second Polish–Swedish War in 1655, became the most important symbol of Polish Catholicism (Doktór 2006). In gratitude for being saved from the Swedish threat, King Jan Kazimierz consecrated Poland to the Virgin Mary, who has since been worshipped as the Queen of Poland. In the communist era, the Antemurale myth was brought back to life by Primate Wyszyński during the celebrations marking the 1000th anniversary of Poland, when the masses carried in emotionally charged processions a copy of the ‘Black Madonna of Czestochowa’ throughout the country. Poland lost its sovereignty in conflict with its superior neighbours between 1772 and 1918, and was divided between Russia, Habsburg, and Prussia. However, the loss of national independence only contributed further to the fusion of religious, national, and political values. Complementary to the idea of Antemurale Christianitatis, a national messianism formed which propagated the belief in a deeper sense of the suffering of the Polish nation for humanity as a whole (Morawska 1984). The motif of messianism increased in importance during the Romantic period in particular, strongly promoted by the works of Adam Mickiewicz, who described Poland as ‘the Christ of nations’.

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It is of course not unusual for a nation to understand itself as being special. Serbs, the French, and Americans are also not afraid to portray the fate of their country as totally incomparable. As far as Polish Catholicism is concerned, however, external observers and neutral religious researchers also attribute to it a special position. Charles Taylor (2002: 13), for example, refers to Poland and Polish religiosity as a quite unique case. Others claim that the processes of transformation that began after 1989 from an authoritarian order with a planned economy to a democratic and constitutional order with a market economy have not changed the unusually strong position of religion in Poland (Śpiewak 2004: 11), and that Christianity in Poland is more likely to gain in strength than to weaken (Koźmiński and Sztompka 2004: 197ff.). And José Casanova even trusts Polish Catholicism to disprove the link made by secularization theorists between the modernization of society and a decline in the significance of religion. ‘A modern religious Poland’ could belie the widespread prediction of secularization and teach the secular Europeans the lesson ‘that it is not so much Poland which is out of sync with Europe, but rather secular Europe which is out of sync with the rest of the world and with global trends’ (Casanova 2003). Casanova is imposing a considerable sociological burden of proof on Poland here and, to a certain extent, elevating Polish messianism to the status of a sociological programme. But there are also less normatively charged voices to be heard. For example, Peter L. Berger (2001: 447) argues that, to the extent that Central European countries merge politically and economically with Europe, they succumb to secularization, and that Poland will also undergo this process, but with a certain delay. Similarly, Paul Zulehner argues that Poland will face a similar scenario that the churches in Western Europe faced after the Second Vatican Council (quoted in Firlit 2014: 236). Despite such negative prognoses, though, is there no truth at all to the special-case thesis? Is it not possible that Poland actually does go against the trend of secularization observable in many parts of Europe, and has remained a stronghold of Catholicism after the fall of communism? Although it seems unlikely that Catholicism in Poland will succeed in regenerating European Christianity spiritually and ‘winning back Europe for Christianity’, as Pope John Paul II charged it to do, it could nevertheless retain its cultural roots in the population and prove itself an exception in the broad stream of European secularization. How the Catholic Church in Poland survived the hostility shown to it by the communist regime is already remarkable in itself. Unlike most churches in the former Eastern bloc, it emerged from the afflictions of communism not weakened, but strengthened. Even more remarkable, though, is that the capacity of Catholicism to integrate after the dissolution of the hated regime did not collapse, but largely maintained itself. We wish to discover in this chapter the reasons for the remarkable resistance of the Catholic Church at the time of state socialism and after the change of system.

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9.1. THE GROWING STRENGTH OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN PO LAN D DURING THE PERIOD OF STATE S OCIALISM The close connection between Catholicism and Polishness, and religious and national values, is often, and certainly justifiably, given as an explanation of the special resistiveness of the Catholic Church in Poland.1 This close relationship results mainly from the time when Poland was divided, when the Catholic Church was the only institution able to ensure a certain social relationship between the separated parts of Poland, and to maintain an awareness of national identity against the threat from outside. It was strengthened by the Romantic nationalism of the nineteenth century, when a Slavic messianism initially captured the upper class, but then also spread amongst the Polish peasantry following the Prussian Kulturkampf and the repressive government politics of Russia. Due to the absence of statehood and to the religious tolerance previously widespread in the Polish–Lithuanian kingdom, as well as the weak reception of Enlightenment philosophy, the conflicts between secular state and Catholic Church characteristic of Western Europe did not emerge in Poland, and conflicts between church and an intelligentsia not tied to the church, as well as between church and a socialist workforce, also remained marginal. There was, rather, a far-reaching ‘fusion of class, religious and national identity’ (Casanova 2003). Although tensions between church and state emerged with the establishment of an independent Polish state after the First World War, the church was able to develop quite well due to bourgeois democracy (Adriányi 1992: 66f.). The Concordat of 1925 guaranteed full freedom to the church’s work, and the Constitution of 1935 made the Catholic religion the state religion. The Catholic Church worked its way into public life through its flourishing network of clubs, Catholic homes, libraries, magazines, rallies, and a diverse Catholic press. ‘Catholic Action’ took up its work in 1927. The Caritas, religious teaching at school, and the study of theology were expanded, and the Catholic University of Lublin was founded. The anti-church politics of the Nazi regime, which began with the occupation of Poland in 1939, drove the churches further onto the side of the population. Two thousand priests and many hundreds of monks and nuns were murdered by the Nazis. The Catholic Church, whose resistance was led by the archbishop of Krakow, Adam Stefan Fürst Sapieha, organized relief efforts for the persecuted and, as so many times before in the history of Poland, showed itself to be the guarantor for the preservation of national identity. After the Second World War and the Soviet occupation of Poland, the Catholic Church was strengthened in its role as reservoir of national forces. Nation-building in Poland was a 1

We follow Casanova (2003) here.

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project operated not from above, but from below—a project in which church and population merged. The close connection between religious and national values was also a result of the religious homogeneity that had emerged due to the resettlements after the Second World War. Before 1939, only 64.8 per cent of the Polish population were Roman Catholic; 10.8 per cent belonged to the Eastern Catholic Churches; 11.8 per cent were Orthodox; 9.9 per cent, Jewish; and 2.6 per cent, Protestant. In 1946, however, about 95 per cent of the population of Poland belonged to the Roman Catholic Church. The denominational homogenization due to the East–West shift of Poland after the Second World War and the murder of more than three million Jews was an important condition that allowed the Catholic Church to assume a key position in communist Poland. The fusion of national and religious identity, however, was not the only factor explaining the particular resistiveness of the Catholic Church in the period of state socialism. The peculiar dynamics of conflict in the relationship between church and state also played a role, and a brief overview of the history of this relationship between 1945 and 1989 makes abundantly clear why the Catholic Church grew in importance. As in other Eastern European countries, the nascent state in Poland did not fight hard against the church at the outset. In the first few years after 1945, when its power base was not yet secure enough, the state maintained instead a certain strategic restraint. After eliminating its immediate political opponents, however, the communist state began to attack the church. Through the revocation of the Concordat in 1945, the church had already lost legal assurances (Wiaderny 2004: 20f.). It also lost much of its land in the expropriation of large landowners in 1946. The nationalization of church printing presses, the censorship of the church’s printed matter, the tax assessment of the clergy, the disbandment of all existing Catholic associations and institutions, and the nationalization of every church hospital all occurred in 1949. The media ran an unprecedented public campaign of anti-religious propaganda. And 1949 also saw the forcing into line of Caritas and its placement under the leadership of patriotic priests. Despite the repressive measures, the bishops sought a modus vivendi and left no doubt as to their loyalty to the state (Kopiec 1999: 106). At the instigation of the newly appointed Primate of Poland, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, they suggested to the government that it should appoint a joint commission to clarify controversial issues, and this body soon began its work. Although the bishops decisively rejected the patriotic priests supported by the state (of whom there were no more than 200 amongst the 7,000 priests), there were no penalties imposed on them. In April 1950, they signed an agreement declared as an ‘understanding’ in which they expressed once again their loyalty to the state, distanced themselves from the anti-communist underground movement, and accepted the collectivization of agriculture (Wiaderny 2004:

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36–8). For this, the church was allowed to provide religious education in state schools, continue managing the Catholic University of Lublin, and to practise pastoral care in the military and at hospitals. The liquidation of Caritas and of the church’s ownership of land was confirmed, however. Within a very short time, the Catholic Church had had to suffer losses in its public activity, in its legal status, in what it owned, and in the scope of its everyday work. In order to ensure at least a minimum of freedom in matters of administration, worship, and pastoral care, Primate Wyszyński was ready to renounce church rights and important branches of the church’s work (Adriányi 1992: 71). The state was not yet satisfied with the restrictions on church activity that it had achieved, however. Although the bishops had signed the Stockholm Appeal in January 1950 and had submitted an affirmative statement to the Second World Congress of the World Peace Movement, the state continued to harass the church. More than 900 priests were in custody at the end of 1951. A show trial was initiated against Bishop Kaczmarek of Kielce, and a trial of members of the Krakow ordinariate took place at the same time, which ended in three death sentences. The teaching of religion at state schools was banned in February 1952. When the state laid claim in its decree of 9 February 1953 to control of the composition of church positions, the bishops had finally had enough, and refused any further concessions. Referring to ‘the divine and ecclesiastical right’, they insisted on the autonomy of the church’s jurisdiction, arguing that the episcopate would only appoint priests to their office that it considered suitable and worthy according to its own conscience (Wiaderny 2004: 47f.).2 The Primate of Poland was subsequently taken into custody, where he remained for three years. The regime justified its actions on 28 September 1953 by pointing out that Wyszyński had broken the agreement of April 1950. The episcopate backed down. On the same day, it issued an explanation in which it promised henceforth not to go against the agreement of April 1950, spoke out for a normalization of relations between church and state, condemned activities directed against the state, took a decisive stand against the reactionary views and actions of part of the church hierarchy, and otherwise argued for the preservation of peace and for the strengthening of Poland (Wiaderny 2004: 63f.). Both Wyszyński and the president of the Polish Bishops’ Conference formally asked the government to release the Cardinal or at least to improve his conditions in prison. Their requests remained unanswered.

‘Whoever should dare to accept a church post from the other side should know that he will thereby fall under the severe penalty of excommunication. We will likewise not waver should we be given the choice of either using church jurisdiction as an instrument of secular power or personal sacrifice [ . . . ]. We are not permitted to sacrifice divine things upon the altar of the emperor. Non possumus!’ (Wiaderny 2004: 48). 2

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The turning point came not because of the intransigence of the church, but because of the riots that erupted in June 1956. After the twentieth Party Conference of the CPSU at the beginning of 1956, a process of destalinization and liberalization began which triggered new hopes for change throughout the Soviet bloc, change that led not to greater satisfaction, though, but—as so often in history when political structures of opportunity widen—to social unrest and political protests. Also in Poland the party leadership had tried to win back the confidence of the population and had released political prisoners. Confronted by desperate economic conditions, the Polish population also responded to this concession not with gratitude, though, but with revolt—namely, the Poznań uprising of 28 June 1956, which led to the recall of Gomułka as First Party Secretary. On his initiative, Wyszyński was released from prison to calm the situation. When he returned to Warsaw on 28 October 1956, the population gave him a hero’s welcome. The church was given back some of the freedoms that it had lost. Religious instruction was authorized again, the decree of 9 February 1953 was revoked, and the bishops’ freedom of jurisdiction was restored. The state apparently feared that a popular uprising could break out in Poland as it had in Hungary (Adriányi 1992: 73). But administrative restrictions and harassment soon arose again. In preparation for the millennium celebrations of Poland’s Christianization, Cardinal Wyszyński initiated a great novena for nine years, a movement for the spiritual renewal of Christian life in Poland. It was inaugurated in Czestochowa on 3 May 1957, the Feast of the Virgin Mary, Queen of Poland, which symbolizes the historical bond between the Polish nation and the Catholic Church. In pilgrimages attended by hundreds of thousands, people carried a copy of the ‘Black Madonna’ through the country. The authorities saw it as a form of resistance to communism and laid obstacles in the way of the festivities. They tried to prevent the church celebrations, and called for counter events to celebrate their own seizure of power, the economic and political successes of the regime, and Polish–Soviet friendship (Main 2007: 275). At the climax of the celebrations, the authorities refused permission for the ‘wandering’ of the millennium symbol, with people then carrying an ‘empty frame’ through the parishes of the diocese of Katowice (Świątkiewicz 2014). The conflict between church and state was always a struggle for the symbolic occupation of public space as well. There were new instances of unrest in the country in 1970. After the wave of strikes in Gdansk and elsewhere in December 1970, Gomułka was forced to resign. He was replaced by Gierek, who again conceded to the church some rights that it had previously been denied, and whose period of office did actually see a number of economic and foreign-policy successes. In 1971, the Polish Bishops’ Conference outlined a plan for the normalization of the state–church relationship. After Paul VI assigned Polish bishops to the former German dioceses, the Polish leadership again strengthened its politics

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regarding the church and actually broke its contacts with the episcopate (Adriányi 1992: 74). In 1976 the system fell into crisis again. Dramatic increases in food prices led to strikes, and there even emerged something of a political opposition, the Committee for the Defence of Workers (KOR). Again, the church negotiated with the state. Again, it tried to improve its relations with the regime. Again, the government appeared to back down. Although the Catholic Church operated a policy that resembled in many ways the line of church policy taken by Protestant churches in the GDR, the results of this policy were quite different in Poland. As in the GDR, the church essentially sought understanding with the state authorities. It practised neither fundamental criticism nor rejection. As in the GDR, the church expressed loyalty to the socialist state, and avoided acts of provocation towards it. The aim of negotiating with the state was to expand gradually the church’s room for manoeuvre and to prevent through clever tactics further obstacles and restrictions; it was not to bring about a shift in power relations, though. As in the GDR, the church in Poland also drew a clear line when obedience in faith or the autonomy of the church’s decision-making power was threatened. As adaptable as the church was to the inhospitable conditions in which it found itself, it also proved itself to be inflexible when it was threatened in its core areas of responsibility. As in the GDR, the church in Poland also had, despite its fundamental openness, its relinquishing of opposition, its smooth management of negotiations, and its intransigence when it came to ultimate questions, to suffer sharp cuts to its institutional effectiveness, starting with obstacles to church journalism, through the banning of religious education in state schools, up to the loss of church property. Unlike in the GDR, though, people in Poland did not leave the church in droves, but remained loyal to it. Even after years of struggle between church and state, the church in Poland still had an unbroken vitality. With over 50 per cent regular Sunday churchgoers, religious practice was still at a high level in the 1980s (Kopiec 1999: 122). The number of ordained priests even increased over the years. In 1959, there were 12,713 diocesan priests; in 1965, 14,420; in 1971, only 14,122; in 1978, though, 14,972 (Kopiec 1999: 122). Although there were repeated complaints about secularization, and slight tendencies of dechurchification are indeed observable in the 1960s and 1970s, the Catholic Church in Poland was largely able to retain its rootedness in the population and in some cases even to increase it. Besides the integration of national and religious identity, what was also of great importance for its stability and resistiveness was, as we have seen, the inconsistency and excessiveness of the state’s policy towards the church. The party leadership in the GDR only made the mistake once of overdoing things in their battle against the church—in 1952, when it tried, and failed, to storm the fortress of the church by attacking the Protestant youth (Junge Gemeinden). Thereafter, it operated a church policy that was tactically clever, adapted to the situation,

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and flexible, but that was also relentless in the cause—a church policy that gradually restricted the church’s autonomy. In Poland, the instruments of church policy used by the state were as excessive as they were unsustainable. The Primate of Poland was imprisoned, but then released when the political and social crisis threatened to become unmanageable, which unintentionally revealed that a mistake had been made. There was never a bishop in prison in the GDR, let alone the highest spiritual leader; every priest and every bishop, even the highest, was politically harassed and humiliated, though. In Poland, the political leadership availed itself again and again of the mediation services of the church to bring social unrest and outbreaks of protest under control. But then it again attacked the church and its representatives ruthlessly and did not refrain from using violence and even murder. On the one hand, the problems in economic provision and the massive discontent of the population resulting from this forced the political leadership to back down; and, on the other, it wanted to tear back the power it had relinquished and intimidate people who were growing in courage. It thereby created martyrs while at the same time always showing itself through its policies to be ineffective. This system was perhaps to be feared—in any case, it was to be despised. In the GDR, however, the SED operated not only a more effective economic policy, but was also more capable of giving itself the image of a philanthropic regime that could be trusted. The capacity to integrate the population politically, economically, and culturally was much greater in the GDR. With its attacks on the church, the SED leadership could therefore loosen the population’s already weak ties to the church even further and accelerate people’s alienation from it. In Poland, however, every attack on the church resulted in a strengthening of the bond between church and population. With its disastrous economic policies, its repeatedly militant disregard for religious ties, and its artificial attempts to create a socialist counterculture, the Polish Communist Party represented an unconvincing alternative to Catholicism. By going back and forth between fighting the church and monopolizing it, between attack and backing down, it repeatedly brought the church itself back into play. The communist leadership in Poland was stuck fast in the trap of its own escalation of conflict. When there were strikes again in 1980 due to economic problems, the state backed down again. But this time everything was different. A general strike committee had formed under the leadership of Lech Wałęsa in Gdansk, which the state recognized as an independent trade union. A people’s movement soon emerged from Solidarność. In the years of the so-called Polish Carnival of 1980/1, 9.5 million people felt that they belonged to this movement, whose base was thus five times larger than the membership of the Communist Party. Society had been set in motion. Solidarność was supported by the Catholic Church, and many priests of the lower clergy joined without reservation (Adriányi 1992: 75). Wyszyński gave the members and their activities his

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blessing, but also exhorted them to patience, level-headedness, and moderation (Wiaderny 2004: 180–7). In 1978, Karel Wojtyła was surprisingly elected Pope, which strengthened Polish national Catholicism and clearly shifted the balance of power towards the church in its struggle with the state. What had always been preached from the pulpits—that Poland has its roots in the Christian faith and could only be truly represented by this faith, and that Poland has a special responsibility for the testimony of faith—was now given symbolic confirmation with the elevation of a Pole as Pope. Pope John Paul II’s visit to Poland in 1979 resembled a triumphal procession. The Pope did not need to voice any criticism of the communist regime at all, and in fact did not do so either during his visit in 1979 and nor in 1983 (Kisielewski 1983: 100; Seewald 2013: 44). To brand the atheistic socialist regime as inhuman and anti-Polish, he only had to say that he understood the needs of the people in Poland, their sense of having endured injustice and humiliation (Wiaderny 2004: 231), and that the human being himself cannot understand his essence, his right, and his dignity without Christ, just as the history of the Polish nation cannot be understood without Christ.3 If the Pope called out to the people, ‘Do not be afraid. Open wide the doors for Christ’,4 then this Christian wake-up call against the background of the exclusive binding of humanity to the Christian faith5 could hardly be interpreted as anything but a call for political revolution. To urge people to follow their conscience, to defend themselves against the disintegration of morals in society, and to call good and evil by their names, was hardly necessary anymore—every religious statement had become a political message. The regime repeatedly complained that the Pope’s sermons had a political character and that they incited people and encouraged them to rebel (Wiaderny 2004: 232). The episcopate, though, pretended to share the regime’s concerns that the Pope’s visit would pass off quietly, and dismissed the charge that the Pope had called for rebellion and a war of faith as slander (Wiaderny 2004: 233). In addition to the fusion of religious and national values, and the specific conflict dynamics of the church’s struggle with the state, it was the actions of Pope John Paul II that we can identify as the third key factor in the remarkable resistance of the Catholic Church during the period of communist persecution.

3 Address made by Pope John Paul II on 2 June 1979 at Victory Square in Warsaw, https://w2. vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1979/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19790602_poloniavarsavia.html (accessed 15 March 2017). 4 Address made by John Paul II at the beginning of his pontificate on 22 October 1978, https:// w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1978/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19781022_iniziopontificato.html (accessed 15 March 2017). 5 Despite the considerable political impact that the position of John Paul II had, we cannot help but refer to this position as fundamentalist. If the human being can only find his true nature through Christ, then that means relinquishing the Enlightenment insight that human and moral action is not tied to religion, and making a particularistic position the foundation of the whole.

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The fourth and final factor is the structural conservatism of agricultural production in Poland. In 1990, about 27.5 per cent of all employees in Poland were in agriculture. Compared to the agricultural sector in Western European countries, where the proportion of employees had shrunk to fewer than 5 per cent by 1990 due to extensive technological and organizational changes, agriculture in Poland at that time was still strongly traditional. In addition, only about 10 per cent of the arable land was nationalized in the communist period. Compared to other Eastern bloc countries, Poland also had a conservative structure with regard to relations of rural ownership. But, Polish Catholicism had always had its strongest support from the countryside. In his speeches and the programme that he designed for the millennium celebrations, Cardinal Wyszyński always focused on the needs of the traditional rural population, which in 1967 still accounted for 50 per cent of the total population. He encouraged a popular religiousness based on ritualism, conservatism, and national identity, for which he was often reprimanded in the circles of Catholic intelligentsia, which argued for a modernization of the Catholic Church in line with the Second Vatican Council (Main 2007: 276). But it is especially the countryside that has to date remained a stronghold of conservative Polish Catholicism (EVS 2008), which is often reputed to have a strongly ritualistic religiousness (Borowik, quoted in Hainz 2014: 45). The intellectuals in Poland who criticize Catholic traditionalism still comment sceptically today on this strong ritualization of religious life, and suspect that many of their compatriots only have a superficial faith lacking knowledge and enlightenment, and even strong religious convictions. They describe them as ‘practising unbelievers’. These are certainly typical academic stereotypes. Nevertheless, we should note that it is precisely the ritualism and symbolism of traditional Polish Catholicism that have contributed significantly to its resistiveness. Believers have again and again mutually reinforced their faith and kept present in their daily lives the omnipotence of the sovereign God through pilgrimages and processions, by wearing monstrances and crosses, venerating holy images and devotional objects, and being involved in church festivals and celebrations. The real tangibility of God made the sacred particularly accessible. Under the leadership of Cardinal Glemp, who in 1981 replaced Wyszyński as Primate of Poland, the church continued its attempts to find a balance between the different forces in society, and in particular between the government and the opposition that had been forced underground. Whereas Wyszyński, despite his willingness to communicate with the regime, had repeatedly, and especially in the late period, spoken up for the observance of human rights, including freedom of association, assembly, and expression (Wiaderny 2004: 178f.), Glemp acted more cautiously. At the same time, though, it was the Catholic Church under Glemp that procured the release of Lech Wałęsa and other opponents of the regime in the 1980s. With its mediation efforts, it helped to bring the negotiations to a round table in the spring of 1989, which finally

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culminated in the collapse of communism (Pollack and Wielgohs 2010: 284). Only because of the authority that the church enjoyed did Wałęsa enter negotiations with the state without preconditions.

9.2. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AFTER THE COLLAPSE OF THE STATE S OCIALIST SYSTEM: NEW CHALLENGES It is hardly surprising that, after the defeat of communism, the Catholic Church should have appeared in the Polish public domain with a particular self-confidence, and should have attempted to influence the shaping of postcommunist society with its moral teachings, interpretation of the world, and political recommendations. After years of oppression and the constriction of its opportunities to act, the church now felt that the time had come to act as guardian of public morality, to push forward the imparting of values that demanded commitment with regard to society as a whole, and to enforce the alignment of legal regulations with its own principles. In as early as the spring of 1990, the bishops called for the return of religious teaching in state schools, and, in August, the Ministry of Education approved its return without previous public discussion in a decree that strongly bore the episcopate’s handwriting (Bingen 1996: 19). Premier Mazowiecki clearly wanted to avoid conflict with the bishops and to maintain his chances in the upcoming presidential election in November 1990 (Bingen 1996: 4). The Bishops’ Conference also took a clear position regarding the law on abortion. The bishops rejected a referendum that many had advocated on the grounds that the right to life is one of those rights ‘not laid down by the human being and therefore not alterable by the human being’; approving such a referendum, they said, could lead ultimately to euthanasia (quoted in Stawrowski 1995: 202). When the Sejm passed the anti-abortion law in January 1993, it approved a law that criminalized abortion and rejected a cut-off period and extenuating circumstances for an abortion. Finally, the Catholic Church also tried to influence how the population would vote. In the presidential election campaign of 1990, the Catholic bishops recommended in an official statement that people should vote for Lech Wałęsa. They saw him as the ‘real’, good Catholic Pole, while they viewed Mazowiecki, as representative of a modern, liberal Catholicism, with suspicion. In the parliamentary elections of 1991, the bishops initially refrained from taking a position and appealed to every Christian to make a free decision based on their own conscience. But then, fearing an impending loss of influence, they gave their believers a recommendation on how to vote shortly before the elections after all (Bingen 1996: 13). Although the episcopate held back more in the

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parliamentary elections of 1993 and the presidential elections of 1995, its pronouncements made clear its political preferences—for example, for Wałęsa and against Kwaśniewski. The reaction of the population to the paternalistic attempts of the clergy was devastating. Despite the church’s recommendation, only about a quarter of voters in the parliamentary election of 1991 voted for candidates recommended by the church. It was not the good Pole and Catholic Wałęsa who won the presidential elections of 1995, but the left-liberal and former minister of a communist government, Kwaśniewski. When the anti-abortion law was being passed, almost 60 per cent of the population spoke in favour of holding a referendum (Bingen 1996: 24). The proportion of those in favour of allowing abortions up to a certain number of weeks and under certain conditions reached two thirds in the early 1990s and also did not sink after Pope John Paul II’s statement on the unborn life (Bingen 1996: 13). The high confidence that the church had enjoyed in 1989 collapsed dramatically. The proportion of those who stated that they had confidence in the church fell from 88 per cent in 1989 to almost half that number two years later (Borowik 1993: 12). Attending church classes in religious education also decreased significantly (Glaube in der Zweiten Welt 18, 1990/6: 6f.). The attitude to church officials also showed visible cracks in the early 1990s. Asked whether there is any profession that earns more than it deserves, the respondents cited pastors most often among all groups, more often even than parliamentarians, who were universally despised at the time (Aleksandrowicz 2003: 42). To the question of whether the churches have too much power, about 60 per cent in Poland in both 1991 and 1998 replied, ‘Yes’—more than anywhere else in Eastern and Western Europe, and more even than in atheist East Germany (ISSP 1991: Variable 30 and ISSP 1998: Variable 36). What concerned the majority of the Polish population was the separation of politics and religion. About 85 per cent of Poles believed in the 1990s that religious leaders should influence neither elections nor government (ISSP 1991: Variables 27, 29 and ISSP 1998: Variables 26 and 27). After the Polish population had virtually demanded for decades that the church fulfil political functions, it was, now that society was becoming politically plural, no longer willing to see the church as the political voice of society. As long as the whole of society was politically oppressed, people supported the church when it acted politically as advocate of society and thereby expressed political opinions that deviated from those of the Communist Party. When, however, the political landscape was no longer ruled by one party, but was able to organize itself, people also no longer wanted to accept the Catholic Church as the dominant political party. The term functional differentiation is used in sociology to understand this process of autonomization of the individual sectors of society. People in Poland also insisted on defending other areas against all religious claims to dominance and control, such as the economy, law, science, and

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morality. At the beginning of the 1990s, for example, three quarters of all Poles did not consider the cohabitation of an unmarried man and woman to be reprehensible, and therefore contradicted the church’s current moral norm (Borowik 1998: 266). In a survey conducted in 1994, only 7 per cent of pupils of school-leaving age spoke against the use of contraception, and only 14 per cent against a man and a woman living together in intimacy before marriage. At the same time, more than half expressed the view that the morals of society would not worsen if people did not comply with the requirements of the church; only a third said that they would deteriorate (quoted in Borowik 1998: 267). Wolfgang Jagodzinski (1998: 172) has demonstrated in a multiple regression analysis that the assessment of the church’s influence on non-religious areas varies according to area. Those among the Poles ascribing a strong political influence to the church who were questioned in an omnibus survey conducted in 1994 tended to classify the church as too powerful and to place little confidence in it. The effect of the norm of non-interference was weaker, but still significant in how people evaluated the influence of the church on the education system. For variables used to capture the influence of the church on areas of the individual’s life, such as family life and morality, the case was the exact opposite, however. Those attributing to the church an above-average influence on morality and family life tended to consider the social influence of the church to be too small and had more confidence in the church than the average person. While people saw the influence of the church on politics as rather negative where they regarded this influence as being strong, and the same tends to apply also to the education system, people saw the influence of the church on morality and family life as rather positive where they estimated this influence as being high. But many did not want to confer too much importance to the church in this area, either. Jagodzinski concludes from his analyses that confidence in major organizations such as the church in Poland in 1994 depended not only on whether they were considered compatible with the individual’s quest for autonomy and self-development, but also on whether such institutions were accused by significant sections of the population of exceeding the borders of their competence and involving themselves inadmissibly in politics, education, and other functional areas (Jagodzinski 1998: 174f.). He therefore attributes people’s declining confidence in the church not only to processes of individualization, but also to a growing acceptance of functional differentiation. The declining confidence in the Catholic Church in the years immediately after the change of system also certainly had something to do with the fact that church representatives used a polarizing rhetoric during these years and thereby turned considerable parts of the population against them. In a kind of fortress mentality, they condemned again and again all liberalizing tendencies in society and saw in them the beginning of a disintegration of the sacred traditions of Polish Catholicism. They even expressed reservations

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regarding the opening-up to Western Europe, belonging to which had been an impossible dream at the time of the Iron Curtain. They criticized the consumerism of Western modernity, the principle of competition, and cultural pluralism. They saw the West as being not only secular, but also individualistic, hedonistic, and morally decadent. Again and again they saw Christian and national values as under threat, with the West, democracy, the constitutional state, pluralism, and relativism having to serve as the enemy as much as communism and its remaining followers. The Manichean worldview that knows only light and darkness held by so many church representatives is likely to have contributed to the decline in people’s confidence in the church as well. Opposing incursions by the church onto non-church areas does not preclude conceding authority and responsibility to the church in the religious field. In fact, in 1990 and 2008, about three quarters of all Poles assigned responsibility to the church in spiritual matters, whereas this figure was only about one third when it came to social problems (see Table 7.10). It is therefore probably no coincidence that the insistence of the majority of the population on a separation of church and politics was not accompanied by a distancing from the church’s practice of ritual and religiousness, but that the level of religiosity and churchliness has remained approximately the same in Poland since the change of system. People’s ties to the church have barely loosened in the last two decades. Even twenty years after the change of system, the proportion of those who see themselves as Catholic is still about 95 per cent (Hall 2012: 126). Just as many describe themselves more or less constantly in all the surveys conducted in the last twenty years as believing in God, including one in ten who describe themselves as deeply religious (CBOS 2009b: 2f.). Even among 18- to 24-year-olds, the proportion of those who believe in God is more than 90 per cent, although the percentage of those who are deeply religious has almost halved in recent years, from 9 per cent to 5 per cent (CBOS 2009b: 3). Church attendance has indeed declined since the change of system, but we should bear in mind that the decisive drops occurred immediately after 1990, when participation in church rituals was still politically charged. Since 1993, church attendance has remained more or less constant, as has been shown by surveys conducted by the Church Statistical Institute of the Catholic Church and therefore by data collected from censuses (Table 9.1). The proportion of those receiving communion even rose (Table 9.1).6 However, church attendance amongst Poles aged between 18 and 24 is clearly less stable. In the last two decades, the proportion of young people participating in church service at least

6 We should not over-interpret this increase, since it is probably primarily an expression of the liberalization of the practice of confession, which is no longer seen by everyone as the condition for receiving communion (Hall 2012: 128).

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once a week has fallen by about 20 percentage points (CBOS 2009b: 3). While today 52 per cent of the whole population go to church at least once a week, the proportion among 18- to 24-year-olds is only 37 per cent (EVS 2008: Variable 109). At the same time, however, confidence in the church has increased again from 40 per cent in 1994 (Pollack 1998: 38) to more than 60 per cent in 2008 (see Table III.2), although of course it remains beneath the old level of 1989. An increased tendency of dechurchification has perhaps emerged since the second half of the first decade of the new century. It is striking in any case that church attendance has been significantly lower since 2008 than it was in the years beforehand (Table 9.1), and that the age differences regarding some indicators of churchliness have grown since about 2005.

9. 3 . THE E XCE P TIO NAL CAS E OF P OL AND—AN ATTEMPT AT E XPLANATION Finally, we shall address the question of why church ties have, by and large, remained remarkably stable despite the comprehensive transformation of social, cultural, political, and economic conditions. We should first point to changes in the church’s own behaviour. The arguments used by the Polish bishops have, with a few exceptions, become much more moderate over the last twenty years. They have increasingly refrained from making a claim to lead the whole of society. They no longer make electoral recommendations, even if they still feed ethical viewpoints into the political debate and thereby make known their political preferences. They no longer treat different opinions as fundamentally hostile, but deal with them constructively. The church is learning ever more effectively how to find its way out of the attitude of a besieged fortress and to have dialogue with critical voices. After the exhortations of Pope John Paul II, the bishops have also opened up to European politics and are no longer predominantly negative towards the European West. They did push for recognition of the Christian roots of Europe in the European Constitution and even brought into play here the preamble of the Polish Constitution with its Invocatio Dei. But, after their visit to the European Parliament in 1997, the attitude of many members of the episcopate to the West has become much more open-minded. The church no longer draws from its role in the defunct system the claim to moral superiority over all social forces, but now increasingly sees itself as a partner in the dialogue of civil society, and is increasingly willing to accept social and cultural pluralism (Lenschen 2003: 448f.). The Catholic Church has also modernized itself in terms of its infrastructure. It has increased the effectiveness of the diocesan administrations by

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Table 9.1. Changes in the proportion of Sunday worshippers and those receiving communion in Poland, 1980–2010 (in % of church members)

1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995

Sunday worshippers

Those receiving communion

51.0 52.7 57.0 51.2 52.2 49.9 52.9 53.3 48.7 46.7 50.3 47.6 47.0 43.1 45.6 46.8

7.8 8.1 9.6 8.6 8.9 9.1 10.4 11.1 10.7 9.9 10.7 10.8 14.0 13.0 13.1 15.4

1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Sunday worshippers

Those receiving communion

46.6 46.6 47.5 46.9 47.5 46.8 45.2 46.0 43.2 45.0 45.8 44.2 40.4 41.5 41.0

14.5 15.2 17.6 16.3 19.4 16.5 17.3 16.9 15.6 16.5 16.3 17.6 15.3 16.7 16.4

Source: Zdaniewicz 2014: 114.

increasing their number and downsizing their territorial areas of responsibility, set up diocesan publishing houses and radio stations, expanded the presence of church institutions and parishes on the Internet, established seminaries, theological colleges, and theological faculties at universities, and thereby improved training for priests, founded new schools and new religious communities, increased the number of church staff, increased the number of priests and thus reduced the number of believers per priest, and so on (Firlit 2014). All this has helped to make the church’s work more professional and to broaden its impact on society. From a traditional power with a claim to validity regarding society as a whole is increasingly emerging as a selforganizing, supply-oriented, communicatively open institution which still sees itself as important and indispensable, but no longer as a fundamentally superior player in civil society. It is therefore not surprising that confidence in the church has risen again after the slump in the first half of the 1990s. Although the overwhelming majority of the Polish population do not want the church to interfere in politics and are unhappy with statements by the church on political issues, half say today that public life should be based on religious values, and a little more than half that the Ten Commandments should be the basis not only of human morality, but also of mandatory law (Szawiel 2007: 6; see also Tracichleb 2008: 88). While in 1991, shortly after the introduction of religious teaching at school (decreed from above without discussion in society), 57 per cent favoured the teaching of the subject in

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state schools, that proportion is now 72 per cent (Szawiel 2007: 8).7 And, as far as the stance on abortion is concerned, the population has also come closer to the church’s position in the last two decades. In 1992, 38 per cent of Poles were in favour of allowing abortion at the request of the woman, while, in 2008, that proportion was only 22 per cent (Szawiel 2007: 8). There are many indications that the changed face of the church in public promotes the convergence of church and society, and therefore also contributes to the continued closeness of the population’s ties to the church. Also likely to be of particular importance are the influences that Poland has experienced in its 1,000 years of history and the myths entwined in this history. These myths—of God’s particular love for Poland, of its external enemies who want to destroy it, of its profound historical destiny, and of its messianic mission in the world—are maintained and embellished not only on political occasions and in public life, but also among circles of friends and within families. The feeling among people that their country is threatened by foreign nations or cultures has fallen sharply, and it is less pronounced in Poland today than in Germany, Croatia, Hungary, or even in Russia. While the proportion of people who say that their country is threatened by foreign cultures or nations is 46 per cent in East Germany, 42 per cent in Croatia, 40 per cent in Hungary, and even 56 per cent in Russia, the proportion in Poland is only 29 per cent (C&R 2006: Question 10I). Nevertheless, the discourse of the sorely afflicted Poland destined to perform special acts still plays a significant role in both private and public communication, with people in Poland believing that they are more patriotic and religious than the average European (CBOS 2011: 3), and some also deriving from this a special religious mission of Poland in Europe (see Mariański 2006: 81). The internal pluralization of Catholicism probably also has a positive effect on the continued high level of churchliness. In the last few years, church life has been enriched by a number of religious movements, associations, and groupings organized under the umbrella of the church and appealing to young people above all, such as ‘Prowadzę jestem trzeźwy’ (Apostles of Sobriety), ‘Oases’, and ‘Life and Family Apostles’. The fastest growing groupings among these are the more traditionally oriented liturgical-biblical movement and the Charismatic movement. Tadeusz Doktór (2006: 10) considers the emergence of these Catholic movements within the church to be ‘one of the most significant factors in the change of the Polish religious scenery in recent years’. Some estimate that more than half of all vocations to the priesthood come from these movements. There are of course often tensions between these movements and the bishops. Some leave the church as a result, but many 7 We would like to thank Tadeusz Szawiel, Warsaw, who, at the first joint conference of Polish and German sociologists of religion from 15 to 17 September 2011 in Krakow, provided us with empirical material of CBOS, and gave important suggestions for their interpretation.

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contribute precisely because of their deviance to the inner vibrancy of the church. A conservative radio station like ‘Radio Maryja’, for example, may be criticized by many liberal-minded Catholics; but others see themselves obliged to protect the station from the charge made by liberal critics of xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and moralizing patriotism; and still others perhaps feel even emotionally addressed by the polemic against liberal groupings, postcommunists, and Western Europe. When, for example, journalists from the ‘Gazeta Wyborcza’ criticize the conspiracy theory spread by ‘Radio Maryja’ of a Poland surrounded by anti-Catholic enemies, when older listeners of the station complain in the programmes about the contempt shown by the decadent West for the deep religiousness of Poland, and when finally bishops call to overcome the differences between a reflective faith and a traditional Catholicism, between a tolerant and a militant church, then this dispute undoubtedly gives Catholic life a new impetus. The internal polarization of Catholicism arouses public interest and helps to keep church issues the subject of public discussion. The resulting impression of the social relevance for the whole of society of disputes within the church is also likely to have a positive effect on people’s ties to the church. The internal polarization probably also has a particular effect because, and as long as, it is embedded in a relatively homogeneous religious culture. The social power of the Catholic majority culture can hardly be overestimated. When 95 per cent of the population belong to the Catholic Church, almost everyone reports that they believe in God, and more than half go to church once a week, then it is difficult to step out of this omnipresent consensus. Those doing so face not only disadvantages in terms of reputation, status, and social opportunities. Not following the crowd also requires a high level of mental and emotional independence. The religious opinion and behaviour regarding the church of the majority appear as evidence of God’s existence. In Poland, almost two thirds say that they have the same views on religion as most of their closest friends. In Ireland, the proportion is only two fifths; in Estonia, Hungary, and Portugal, only one third; in West Germany, about half (C&R 2006: Question 5). The fact that the proportion of those with the same views on religion as most of their closest friends is about the same in East Germany as in Poland is because people there are just as unanimous in their distance to religion as people in Poland in their closeness to religion. At the same time, more than two thirds of the Polish population say that there is only one true religion (C&R 2006: Question 10A). Comparison with highly Catholic Ireland is instructive here, too, where just 30 per cent think that there is only one true religion. In West Germany, the figure is about half that (16 per cent). Clearly, common beliefs are reinforced by a more or less closed social context and this in a way that largely makes people lose sight of alternatives. In contrast to representatives of the economic market model, Peter L. Berger (1969; 1979) and Steve Bruce (2002) have consistently taken

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the position that when ideological ideas are all the more stable, the more likely it is that their supporters are surrounded by closed structures of plausibility. Polish sociologists of religion repeatedly identify strong tendencies of religious individualization for Poland. Irena Borowik, for example, emphasizes individual selectivity in the acceptance of church dogmas and moral norms, as well as the high value that individuals place on determining their own faith (Borowik 1998: 266–8; 2003: 55f.). Polish sociologists of religion also emphasize the increased market for New Age religiosity and forms of alternative religiosity. Doktór (2003: 107), for example, has discovered that the number of new sects in Poland increased threefold between 1988 and 2001. Although some indices suggest an increasing religious individualization, overall we have to establish that the tendencies in this direction are comparatively weak in Poland. There is not just a majority who state that they believe in a God as He is depicted in the church, in a personal God (C&R 2006: Question 3), but also a majority who say that they believe in the Final Judgment, in the immortality of the soul, in heaven, in life after death, in original sin, in hell, and in the resurrection (CBOS 2009a: 3). In fact, more than half of the Polish population identify themselves as ‘religious according to the teachings of the church’ (56 per cent), which is more than anywhere else in the countries of Europe (C&R 2006: Question 4). Nonetheless, almost 40 per cent also say that they are religious in their own way. According to all available sources, membership of new religious movements and belief in alternative ideas of religiosity are lower in Poland than in all other Central European countries (Müller, Pollack, and Pickel 2003: 116; Döbler 2006: 33; Müller 2013a: 142–62). After a brief upswing in the 1990s, the membership numbers for Far Eastern religious groupings have since fallen again (Doktór 2004: 307). In addition, there is a high level of indifference towards non-Catholic, and especially non-Christian, communities of faith, as well as considerable ignorance. A third say that they know neither Lutheranism nor Hare Krishna (OBOP, quoted in Döbler 2006: 34). Half of Poles have heard nothing about New Age (Müller, Pollack, and Pickel 2003: 116), which plays virtually no role in Poland (Wargacki 2014). Finally, 80 per cent of all Poles feel very or quite attached to their local parish, something that has remained constant since the beginning of the 1990s (CBOS 2005: 2). It is interesting that a very small segment is breaking out of the Catholic majority culture, and differs from this culture not only slightly but fundamentally. Of the few who in Poland do not belong to a denomination (fewer than 5 per cent), only about 20 per cent say that they believe in God (Table 9.2). In highly Catholic Portugal, that figure is double; in Ireland, three times as many. In contrast, more than 99 per cent (that is, virtually all) of those in Poland who belong to a denomination say that they believe in God. The denominational landscape in Poland is apparently characterized by a strong split. The Catholic majority culture is faced by anti-clerical, atheistic positions which, as is known, can intervene in a militant way in public debate. Even in France,

Table 9.2. Belief in God according to denominational affiliation (in %) Poland

Portugal

Ireland

France

Italy

West Germany

East Germany

Estonia

Russia

Proportion of those belonging to a denomination

95.8

82.4

87.3

50.8

84.1

84.6

22.3

32.7

64.9

Proportion of those who believe in God among those belonging to a denomination

99.6

95.1

94.9

82.4

98.4

81.5

75.6

90.6

97.1

Proportion of those who believe in God among those not belonging to a denomination

21.0

42.6

59.2

24.0

49.8

30.9

5.3

27.1

39.0

Source: EVS 2008.

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one of the classic countries of anti-clericalism, the denominational–atheist lines of conflict are not as sharp as they are in Poland. Unlike in Ireland or in Portugal, for example, the denominational majority culture does not have an influence on the realm of the non-denominational, but instead tends to provoke counter-tendencies. The religious majority culture is conveyed not only by public institutions and the media, but also by social institutions such as universities, schools, nursery schools, social institutions, hospitals, and associations, with religious instruction at school being particularly important (Szawiel 2007: 4); it is also conveyed, though, by friends and acquaintances, as well as by families. Studies by sociologists of religion emphasize in particular the family as the central mediator of religious attitudes and behaviour. Relationships between generations in families are considered particularly close, and are characterized by a distinct pressure of expectancy that the older generation places on the younger. Ninety-six per cent of all Poles have experienced a religious upbringing in the parental home (C&R 2006: Question 9A). According to investigations conducted by Olaf Müller, in no other country in Central Europe have familial ties to the church been preserved so strongly through the generations as in Poland, where ‘the tradition of going to church with the family unit apparently remained unchanged until into the 1990s’ (Müller 2013a: 217). But we should also not underestimate the importance of neighbourhood and local community. For the last twenty years, a constant proportion of about 38 per cent of the population has lived in a village, and mobility has not increased in the last two decades, but declined. While in 1992, 52 per cent of Polish citizens lived in the same locality as they had at the age of 14, in 2008 the proportion was 61 per cent (PGSS 1992–2008). It is clear that ties to the church are strengthened by a stable local environment, and that the maintenance of church routines, such as attending services, benefit from such an environment. In addition to the dynamic segments of the Catholic Church, which have their say in the media and shape the public face of Polish Catholicism, there are therefore also in Poland strong persisting forces that, because they are anchored in relatively immobile social structures, contribute to the country’s high level of religiosity and churchliness. The correlation between traditional churchliness and weak social dynamics is also shown in the fact that attendance at Sunday Mass is at its highest in economically underdeveloped regions with few urban centres (Szawiel 2007: 9). In the south-east, around Tarnów and Przemyśl, about 70 per cent of church members go regularly to Sunday Mass; in the border areas in the west, the figure is about 35 per cent. Given the radical changes undergone by Poland in the last two decades, the relative stability of church ties is simply surprising. From an autocratic political regime there emerged a functioning democracy; from an unjust nation, a constitutional state; from an ineffective planned economy, an efficient market economy with a convertible currency. Today, the Polish economy is the twenty-fourth

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largest in the world. Religious orientations and church practices have remained strangely unaffected by these changes. In a revealing study, Gert Pickel (2014) has investigated the influence that the level of modernization, the denominational majority culture, and the socialist past have on indices of religiosity such as church membership, church attendance, belief in God, and subjective religiosity in East Germany and Poland. According to Pickel, the particularly low religious vitality of East Germany in comparison to other European countries can be fully explained by reference to the three factors mentioned: the comparatively high level of modernization in East Germany, the Protestant influence on the country, and the repression of the churches during the period of socialism. In Poland, on the other hand, the particularly high religiosity does not dissipate when using the three control indicators, but even increases. If we take into account the expectable effects of modernization, Catholicism, and repression, then Poland’s status as a special case in terms of religion becomes all the more apparent. The emphatic claim of the exceptional situation of Poland finds its sober empirical confirmation in this analysis. Even a special case is of course not protected from levelling tendencies. Polish observers of the religious development such as Jakub Kloc-Konkołowicz (2014: 227) have also observed an ‘accelerated secularization of Poland’ over the last five to ten years. They refer here not only to the declining rates of church attendance since 2008, but also and above all to the increasing distancing since then of the younger generation from the lifestyle and hierarchy of values of older people. More and more young people are moving from the country to the city and also even abroad. Many go to university and adjust their lifestyle to the urban conditions of life. They need to be flexible in the competition for interesting and well-paid jobs, which does not encourage starting a family. According to many Polish sociologists of religion, it is primarily such factors that contribute to the detraditionalization of value orientations in the young generation and to the individualization of their lifestyle, with the consequence that their ties to the church are also loosening. In 2000, age differences in terms of church attendance were still so small that no significant age effects could be detected (Müller 2008: 74, 78); by 2007, Tadeusz Szawiel (2007: 5) was already able to establish significant age differences. And they are even stronger today. The changed situation is also reflected in the changed culture of public discussion. The involvement of the Catholic Church in the machinations of the state security system in the communist era has been as fiercely debated over the last few years as the cases of child abuse which have become known. In the course of polemical disputes between the national-conservative and the liberal-conservative camps, anti-church voices have gained in importance. In 2012, a party that built its election campaign almost exclusively on slogans critical of the church immediately became the third strongest power in the Polish Parliament.

Conclusion 1) The religious landscape of Eastern Europe is more diverse than that of Western Europe. East Germany, the Czech Republic, and Estonia are even more secularized than the Netherlands. In contrast, Russia, Romania, and Bulgaria—and we could add Ukraine and Belarus—are countries that show growth, sometimes even extraordinary growth, regarding most of the indices of religiosity, a phenomenon not apparent in the religious changes in Western Europe; these countries are now mostly above the Western European average in terms of their level of religiosity (Tables III.2 and III.3). Denominationally mixed countries are not characterized by a uniform trend. While secularization tendencies predominate in Hungary, we can observe in Latvia more a tendency towards churchification and sacralization. Similarly, we do not find uniform paths of development in predominantly Catholic countries. Slovenia tends more towards secularization; in contrast, Poland (and the same applies to Croatia) is characterized by a level of religiosity that has experienced declines in people’s ties to the church and in their religious practices, especially among the younger generation, but that has nonetheless remained remarkably high overall, and that despite the collapse of the communist system and the Catholic Church’s subsequent loss of function. We can observe religious revitalization in several countries after decades of repression of religious and church life. In the case of Russia, which is sometimes referred to as experiencing the most spectacular religious revival of all time (Greeley 2003: 89), the religious renaissance has not been so much a religious awakening, however, as an expression of political and national expectations projected onto Orthodoxy (see pp. 227ff., 235f.). Apart from a vague avowal of allegiance to Orthodoxy and an equally diffuse avowal of belief in an indefinite higher power, there are hardly any signs of a deeper religiosity. Such avowals are not supported by private or public religious practices, and nor by bases of knowledge; they are not mediated through familial or church socialization; and they are not borne collectively (see pp. 223ff.). And religion has also failed to claim a high value in the individual hierarchy of importance among Russians (see p. 226). The much-touted

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religious upswing in Russia has less to do with an appropriation of religious practices and ideas than with a politically and nationalistically charged hypostatization of the religious caused by functional deficits in other areas of society. This reveals once again that an essential basis for gains in the importance of the religious resides in the mixing of religious functions with others (political, national, moral), whatever individual anchoring the religious manages to achieve. 2) To explain the religious changes outlined in Part III we again refer to the theoretical approaches listed above, under questions and hypotheses (3.). 2.1) The insight that there is a link between diffusion of functions and growth in the importance of religion is confirmed by Poland and the GDR. The politicization of the Catholic Church in Poland associated with the loss of statehood, so that it became the guardian of a vulnerable national identity, contributed significantly to the anchoring of church rites and ideas in the population.1 The Protestant Church in the GDR also gained direct political relevance at the time before and during the political upheavals due to its role as a protective power for the small opposition groupings, as a public platform for nonconformist events and actions, and as a moderator in the conflict between state power and the population. In the time immediately after the peaceful revolution, there were still high expectations of the church in East Germany, and confidence in its ability to make a difference was extremely positive (see pp. 247f.). With the emergence of a democratic party system and political processes of forming opinion in public, as well as the introduction of free elections and parliamentary procedures, however, people’s politically tinged expectations of the church declined in East Germany and in most other postcommunist states, too. People now spoke in favour of a stronger separation of religion and politics. In the communist era, when all areas of society, including the public domain, were politically occupied, the church acted in a directly political way by focusing on performing its religious functions. Since the whole of society was ideologically occupied, every religious act was deviant and had the latent potential to destroy the system. Whether people went on Marian pilgrimages, as believers in Poland did, or stood in front of the church with a candle, as peace groups did in the GDR, whether the pastor called to people not to do anything that was against their conscience, or the Pope called on people to open the doors wide for Christ, the religious had a direct political relevance and had significance for the whole of society. But when the churches took on political functions after the collapse of the dictatorial society, by making electoral recommendations, intervening in state affairs, or even establishing themselves as guardians of political and moral order, this was interpreted as an assault on non-religious areas and rejected by the majority (see pp. 261ff.). In the politically over-organized and overcharged 1 The church fulfilled an important function for the strengthening of national identity not only in Poland, but also in Croatia, Slovakia, Serbia, and Lithuania.

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society, everything religious was necessarily political and therefore attractive; in the functionally differentiated society, though, people see the church’s performance of political responsibilities as exceeding its jurisdiction, and reject it. This demonstrates once more that the ability of religion and church to integrate is not only strengthened by their mixing with non-religious functions, but also requires a certain distance from them. In the politically occupied one-dimensional society, this distance was automatically created by the difference between socialist ideology and religion. In the functionally differentiated society, though, the distance has to be created consciously by the church, even when it takes on political functions. Only when it observes this distance can it become involved politically without being suspected of wanting to monopolize the political religiously or of allowing itself to be exploited politically. 2.2) In the course of political liberalization, the development of constitutional institutions, and the building of structures of a market economy, there occurred in the post-communist states strong processes of biographical individualization. People’s lives were less dictated by economic scarcity, less politically regulated, and less controlled by the pressure of living together communally—rather, they were increasingly forced to rely on their own powers of choice as individuals. The claim that this has intensified individual religiosity will be very difficult to prove. The religious renaissance in Russia seems in any case more a collective than an individual phenomenon. The signs of a strengthening of individual religiousness, from reading the Bible, private prayer, participation in communion, and the veneration of icons, to the religious upbringing of children, continue to be weak (see pp. 225f.). Older rather than younger people tend to show values of individualized and internalized religiosity (see pp. 223). This observation corresponds to the finding mentioned elsewhere that the level of religiosity and churchliness is especially high in post-Soviet countries with authoritarian structures, religious repression, and an authoritarian understanding of the church, such as in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Uzbekistan, and lower in more liberalized countries (Froese 2002: 27f.). In East Germany and Poland, and in most other more developed Central European countries, there are only weak tendencies towards the formation of an individualistic alternative religiosity (Müller 2013a: 147, 162f., 169f.). In Poland, as one of the most religiously vital countries of the postcommunist bloc, forms of an alternative religiosity are less widespread than in any other post-communist country. There, the majority of the population see themselves as religious according to the teachings of the church, and only a minority, albeit a significant one, as religious in the individual sense (see p. 269). It seems that a thriving religiosity does not benefit from processes of individualization, but is strengthened above all if it has a close connection with religious institutions and communities. The coupling of individual churchliness to the life and doctrine of the Catholic Church, as is the case in

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Poland, benefits its vitality. But even in Poland, this exceptional case among the Central European countries, people turn away from the church if it tries to gain dominance over all areas of life, to prescribe how people should vote, to claim for itself a monopoly on interpreting the world, or to regulate how people conduct their private and sexual lives. In the years immediately after the change of system, when the Catholic Church had an unmistakable tendency towards such paternalism, confidence in the church collapsed dramatically and people’s distancing from the ritual of Mass began (see pp. 262ff.). Strength of religiosity clearly depends on whether the church is perceived as an institution of rule or as an institution that is on the side of the population and close to the people. As an institution of power that demands obedience and that might even use the state to enforce its own interests, it is mistrusted; as an opponent of, and corrective to, power and authority, it gains support. The attachment to the Catholic Church in the time of communism was also so high because it was clear then where the church stood. It was regarded as the advocate of society against the repressive politics of the communist system. Here, too, we come back to the insight already gained in the chapter on Western Europe (see pp. 201f.): the religiosity that is most vital is not that which is institutionally and socially free-floating, and nor is it that which is institutionally exploited and monopolized by the church. Rather, individual religiosity is at its most vital when it is embedded in the institutional and communal religious life. We tried to approach this connection when we forwarded the coupling thesis. 2.3) The economic market model, which argues that religious ties are at their strongest when different religious suppliers are in a pluralistic competition, can also not be confirmed for Eastern Europe. The religious upswing in Russia has a strong anti-pluralistic character. It is accompanied by strong reservations towards all non-Orthodox faiths (see p. 235). It is an expression of past dreams of being a world power and of the expectation of recovering national greatness and strength, but cannot be attributed to the mobilizing activity of the Russian Orthodox Church, less alone to the notion that it can compete on the market with other religious suppliers. On the contrary; with the help of state regulations, potential competitors are driven to the periphery and disadvantaged. Religious communities other than the Orthodox Church have nothing to gain on the sacred territory of Kievan Rus’. A good Russian is Orthodox and believes in God, and neither belongs to a different religious community nor is an atheist. There was already in 1988 due to the change in religious policy in the Soviet Union an increase in people’s interest in religion and their identification with Orthodoxy. The climate of a society as a whole exerts a considerable influence on the religious landscape. In Poland, the monopoly status of the Catholic Church goes hand in hand with the vitality of religious life. And we can still locate the empowering force of the majority

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denomination even for East Germany—only that the majority denomination comprises those without religious affiliation. This pressure is shown not only in the likelihood of transmitting religious identities from one generation to the next in East Germany, a figure which is lower than in West Germany, but also in the lower ability of Protestants on the edge of the church to distinguish themselves from the dominant attitudes and influences of those without religious affiliation (see pp. 130f. and Pollack 2009: 218). The pressure that comes in East Germany from the ‘culture of non-denominationalism’ (Pickel 2011a: 341) corresponds, we might say, to the moral authority of the Catholic Church in Poland. Just as those without religious affiliation find confirmation through like-minded people in East Germany, so Catholics find confirmation through other Catholics in Poland. These intrinsic reinforcing effects are connected with these forms of majority confirmation. The majority culture, however, does not seem to be more effective, the more homogeneous it is, but instead appears to gain in potency through internal pluralization. The disputes within Catholicism in Poland between divergent positions when it comes to the moral problems of life, opening up to Europe, or the visibility of the Catholic Church in the Polish public domain, strengthen people’s ties to the church (see pp. 267f.). They do so, though, only because they are ultimately embedded in a widespread cultural acceptance of the Catholic faith and the Catholic Church. This basic consensus apparently tolerates it even when individual groups argue in a polarizing way and, for example, see Polishness as being threatened by Western secularism or the decadence of the Western European way of life. Over the last two centuries, Polish discourse has been repeatedly located in the dualism of ‘us’ and ‘them’, thus contributing to the strengthening of the Catholic identity of the Polish people. Such dual patterns of argumentation can still be drawn on today, and they continue to fulfil mobilizing functions. Unlike in the past, though, the reasons for national self-assertion are largely unnecessary today. Fewer than 30 per cent of Poland’s population still feel threatened by foreign cultures or nations (C&R 2006: Question 10). Nevertheless, there is a statistically significant correlation between the sense of threat and religious ties. Those who feel threatened are more likely to go to church and believe in God; or, vice versa, those more religious are more apt to perceive the religious culture to which they belong as being under threat (C&R 2006: Questions 10, 2 and 3). There is certainly in Poland now a significant anti-clerical movement that wants to restrict the power of the Catholic Church and its influence on the public domain, on the media, on schools, and on the state, as well as on all forms of family planning. However, this anti-clericalism itself, which is currently perhaps stronger in Poland than in any other European country, contributes ultimately to the strengthening of the Catholic majority opinion, whose conservative sections may see their feelings of being under threat confirmed.

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Completely wrong is the argument of Rodney Stark (Stark and Finke 2000: 74), who claims that secular states are not able to uproot religion, and that their anti-church measures only make people’s faith more valuable and robust. With its persecution of believers and priests, the Soviet regime had almost brought the life of the Russian Orthodox Church on the eve of the Second World War to a standstill (see pp. 220f.). And we can also see the disastrous consequences of the anti-church policies of the SED state in the GDR. In the 1950s, when state repression reached its zenith, the rate of exits from the church also reached its peak (see pp. 237f.). By the time of the fall of the SED regime, the proportion of the population of East Germany who belonged to a religious community had fallen from over 90 per cent to just 30 per cent; in the western part of Germany, the proportion in 1989 was still about 85 per cent. In Poland, however, the Catholic Church actually emerged stronger from its struggles with the Communist Party. That was not only because of the deeper rootedness of the church within the population in comparison to the Soviet Union and the GDR. It was also due to the economic problems of the country, the shortages in supply, and the resultant discontent among the population, as well as the inconsistency of the state’s political line towards the church, and the oscillation between policies of liberalization and hardening with regard to the church, the result of which was that the church appeared one day as a mediator and the next as a victim, and received ever greater appreciation in society (see pp. 257f.). In Poland, the conflict with a weakened and tactically unwise state power played into the hands of the church; in the Soviet Union and the GDR, the conflict with those in power led to a devastating bloodletting of the church. Conflict mechanisms can therefore strengthen or weaken the integration capacity of churches. Crucial to the direction that the conflict mechanisms take are the power balances and the situation regarding the majority religious culture within the cultural context of the parties in conflict. In the GDR, the Protestant Church failed ultimately due to people’s lack of will to resist, and to its weak anchoring in the population going back to the nineteenth century. When, in 1952, young people at secondary schools reacted to the first attack on the church by rejecting the system and choosing to be expelled from school rather than renouncing their membership of the Youth Community, the church leadership could still defy the regime (see p. 238). As the regime gained a socio-structural foothold in the population, exchanged old elites for new, offered career opportunities, prevented emigration, increased people’s standard of living, and thereby helped the population to make its peace with the unpopular regime, the churches not only had to bend largely to the expectations of the system, but also increasingly lost support among the population. They could be more offensive again only when the population itself turned away from the regime, when more and more people openly criticized conditions, applied to travel abroad, and a small oppositional

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scene emerged (see p. 243). Here, too, the respective majority relations therefore prove again to be a crucial factor in the attractiveness of the church, in its resistance and potential for growth, while we can only ascribe secondary importance to church activity itself, which, as we have seen, was not fundamentally different in strategy and tactics in the GDR and Poland (see p. 257). 2.4) This is not to say that church activity is of no significance. In the GDR, the Protestant Church managed to cast off its image as an old-fashioned, moralizing, and fusty institution; to open itself up to society; and thereby to become both the forum for social conflicts suppressed by the state, and the shelter for opposition (see pp. 242f., 247). In Poland, the attractiveness of the church after the change of system is based to a not inconsiderable extent on a modernization of its infrastructure, the reforming of its diocesan administration, the professionalization of the training of priests, the recruitment of new church personnel, and an increase in the number of clergy (see pp. 265ff.). The resources and staffing available to churches, the form of church preaching and pastoral care, how the church presents itself in public—these undoubtedly have a considerable influence on the acceptance of churches in society. Especially the fate of churches in the period of communist rule with their dramatic losses in terms of members, infrastructural facilities, and property, not to mention the loss of human life, makes very clear, however, that there were forces at work in Eastern and Central Europe that were more powerful than the activities of the church. The considerable effects that contextual factors have can also be seen in the influence of economic modernization on the social relevance of religion and church. The secularizing effects emanating from economic modernization and the accompanying expansion of the entertainment and leisure industry were something that we already noticed when we dealt with the dramatic dechurchification processes in the former GDR. They become particularly evident if we compare religious developments in the various countries of Eastern and Central Europe after 1989. As we can see in Tables III.4 and III.5, people’s ties to religion and church have tended to loosen more in the more economically developed countries. Table III.4 compares the proportion of those who used to go to church regularly as a child but no longer do so now, with the proportion of those who did not use to go to church regularly as a child but who do so now. In countries such as Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and East Germany, the difference between gains and losses is more than nine percentage points. A positive balance of at least 5 per cent is shown only by economically weaker nations: Belarus, Georgia, Russia, Ukraine, Macedonia, and Kosovo. The situation regarding the development of belief in God is quite similar (Table III.5). Compared here is the proportion of those who now believe in God but did not use to, with the proportion of those who do not now believe

Table III.4. Proportion of those whose frequency of church attendance has changed significantly since childhood (in %) Country

People who now go regularly to church, but who did not use to do so as a child. Church attendance: now at least once a month, but as a child . . .

Albania Armenia Azerbaijan Belarus Bosnia Bulgaria Croatia Czech Rep. East Germany Estonia Georgia Hungary Kosovo Latvia Lithuania Macedonia Moldova Montenegro Poland Romania Russia Serbia Slovakia Slovenia Ukraine Source: EVS 2008.

less often, or

never

4.3 16.5 9.5 7.8 5.0 6.0 2.9 1.2 1.8 3.2 20.3 1.0 12.8 5.4 5.4 11.8 10.6 5.5 0.4 9.3 4.7 6.6 1.4 0.7 8.4

3.6 3.2 4.1 3.8 0.5 3.4 0.8 0.6 0.5 2.8 8.7 0.7 0.2 4.4 0.7 1.0 3.4 1.2 0.2 1.2 5.7 2.6 0.4 0.7 5.9

Total 1

7.9 19.7 13.6 11.6 5.5 9.4 3.7 1.8 2.3 6.0 29.0 1.7 13.0 9.8 6.1 12.8 14.0 6.7 0.6 10.5 10.4 9.2 1.8 1.4 14.3

People who used to go regularly to church as a child, but who no longer do so now. Church attendance: as a child at least once a month, but now . . . less often, or

never

2.0 9.3 12.6 2.9 9.3 4.1 30.1 7.1 7.7 3.1 2.9 21.8 4.1 7.3 16.4 5.1 17.7 4.1 18.9 23.1 2.3 8.2 18.6 31.9 3.6

1.0 1.0 1.6 0.3 1.0 1.4 6.0 3.8 5.0 0.9 0.5 11.0 0.0 1.5 1.5 0.5 1.5 0.3 3.1 1.8 0.4 1.6 4.5 14.3 0.9

Difference (Total 1−Total 2)

Total 2

3.0 10.3 14.2 3.2 10.3 5.5 36.1 10.9 12.7 4.0 3.4 32.8 4.1 8.8 17.9 5.6 19.2 4.4 22.0 24.9 2.7 9.8 23.1 46.2 4.5

4.9 9.4 −0.6 8.4 −4.8 3.9 −32.4 −9.1 −10.4 2.0 25.6 −31.1 8.9 1.0 −11.8 7.2 −5.2 2.3 −21.4 −14.4 7.7 −0.6 −21.3 −44.8 9.8

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Table III.5. Proportion of those whose belief in God has changed significantly, selected countries of Central and Eastern Europe (in %) Country Croatia Czech Rep. East Germany Hungary Poland Russia Slovakia Slovenia Ukraine

I believe in God now, but I didn’t use to 3.4 4.9 6.3 14.3 4.6 26.5 16.1 3.5 24.4

I don’t believe in God now, but I used to 3.4 11.4 13.9 13.2 6.5 3.1 9.8 13.9 1.6

Difference (Column 1−Column 2) 0.0 −6.5 −7.6 1.1 −1.9 23.4 6.3 −10.4 22.8

Source: ISSP 2008.

but used to. Again we find increases especially among the economically weaker nations (except Slovakia), and losses especially among those that are economically stronger. The correlation between changes in church attendance from childhood to adulthood, and changes in people’s claim to believe in God on the one hand, and the level of gross domestic product per capita and the change of this value in the period of ten years on the other, confirms the link assumed. The higher the level of prosperity, the higher the likelihood is that church attendance and belief in God decline; and the stronger the economic growth, the clearer the declines are in belief in God (correlation with changes in church attendance is not significant here, but points in the same direction) (Table III.6). There is therefore in Eastern and Central Europe a demonstrable link between economic prosperity, or increase in prosperity, and weakening of religious and church ties. We have yet to explain this link. We suspect that there are similar mechanisms to those that we encountered also in Italy and West Germany: economic efficiency means that existential security grows, the system of social welfare and medical care improve, the school and university system expand and the level of education increases, incomes and the amount of leisure time available increase, entertainment and leisure-time opportunities multiply, regional mobility grows, and the cultural horizon expands with the familiar distraction effects that this has on church involvement and religious orientation. 2.5) What can also act as a bulwark against the eroding effects of modernization are the everyday proximity, visibility, and concreteness of religious practices and rituals, symbols, images, and objects. The anchoring of Catholicism in Poland, as we have pointed out (p. 260), has much to do with the tangible forms of its practice, for instance, in pilgrimages, processions, festivals, sacramental acts, forms of iconolatry and the veneration of relics, and the

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Table III.6. Correlation between economic development and difference in the proportion of those who report an increase or decrease in their religiosity, in Central and Eastern Europe (selected countries)

GDP per capita Change in GDP per capita (2000/1992) Difference in frequency of church attendance— childhood and now

Change in GDP per capita (2000/ 1992)

Difference in frequency of church attendance— childhood and now

Difference in belief in God—previously and now

0.413

−0.563**

−0.754*

−0.474

−0.885** 0.737*

** The correlation is significant at the level of 0.01 (2-sided); * the correlation is significant at the level of 0.05 (2-sided). Sources: EVS 2008; ISSP 2008.

reading of legends of saints. The superficiality of the religious renaissance in Russia, in turn, was shown in the mere declamatory commitment to belief and Orthodoxy, the vagueness of the image of God, and the generalness of the concept of church—that is, in a generally indefinite relationship to the church and religion, a relationship filled neither by interactive links with church life or strong participation in communion, nor by a high frequency of prayer or iconolatry (see pp. 223ff., esp. 225). There, where it is possible to make transcendence communicatively available, to visualize and concretize it, is where it is present as an interruption of immanence—and is thereby of social relevance.

Part IV Religious Change Outside Europe Three Case Studies

Introduction Debates in the sociology of religion about religious change in modern societies have strangely run aground, with opponents fixed either on refuting the theory of secularization or on rescuing it. They see Europe, and here Western Europe is meant, either as an exemplary case of the fate of religion in the modern world—or simply as an exception. They see the link between modernization and secularization as being empirically well established (Pickel 2010)—or as empirically falsified (Graf 2004: 55). It is not surprising that, in this deadlocked debate, repeated reference should be made to the US, which can be characterized as both modern and highly religious. Japan and South Korea, and the Pentecostal movement in Latin America, are also popular examples to help researchers resolve the dispute between supporters and opponents of secularization theory. The insolubility of the debate is always attributed to its Eurocentric limitations, with researchers arguing that an escape from the impasse lies only in taking a global perspective. Thus, Grace Davie often emphasizes in her publications that what we can say about religion in Europe cannot be applied to other regions of the world: ‘European religion is not a model for export’ (Davie 2002: 17). In Europe, Davie argues, people’s ties to the church are loosening, while that is not the case in the non-Western world. Similarly, Rodney Stark questions the universal applicability of secularization theory. If discussion about secularization, defined as ‘decline in the social power of religious institutions, enabling other institutions [ . . . ] to escape from prior religious domination’, were limited to Europe, Stark argues, then there would be nothing to criticize about it (Stark and Finke 2000: 59). However, as he points out, religion is in full bloom outside the Western world. Stark is referring here not only to the revival of religion in Eastern Europe after the collapse of communism (Stark and Finke 2000: 73f.), but also to the religious awakenings in the Islamic world, such as in Turkey, ‘the most modernized of Islamic countries’ (Stark and Finke 2000: 75), and to the growing interest in popular religions in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Malaysia (Stark and Finke 2000: 76). José Casanova (1994: 26) also explains: ‘From a global perspective, since World War II most religious traditions in most parts of the world have either

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experienced some growth or maintained their vitality.’ He sees the main exceptions, besides the decline of indigenous religions and the abrupt severance of religious ties under the rule of communism, only in the ‘continuous decline of religion throughout much of Western Europe’. And Friedrich Wilhelm Graf also solves the problem that arises from the close interlocking of modernization and secularization caused by social theory by broadening his view beyond Europe. He first refers to the US, which he defines as a modern capitalist society, and whose population he also characterizes ‘in a decidedly denominational sense as deeply religious’ (Graf 2004: 55f.). But processes of modernization and religious revitalization went hand in hand in other nonEuropean countries, too. ‘Japan is a modern capitalist society with a lot of sometimes traditional and sometimes avant-garde new religion. In South Korea, the capitalist processes of transformation are associated with sometimes dramatically quick conversions to charismatic forms of Christianity, under whose surface a lot of ancestral religion remains. Some Latin American societies have just been led by highly religious elites to paths of modernization’ (Graf 2004: 56). If we want to determine the role of religion in the modern world and the reasons for its changes, we therefore cannot avoid exceeding the European domain and dealing with non-European societies. We have selected for our purposes the US, South Korea, and the Pentecostal movement. We have selected the US because it represents perhaps the most significant contrast to Europe; South Korea, because the processes of rapid modernization go together here with an upturn in the religion that has suffered the heaviest losses in Europe: Protestant Christianity; and the Pentecostal movement, because it is usually seen as the fastest growing religious movement. After dealing with the three selected cases, we want, in a multi-level analysis located on both the micro- and the macrosociological level, to consider more cases so as to arrive at some generalizable statements.

10 Religion and Religiosity in the US A Contrasting Case to Europe?

It is not unusual for analyses of the social significance of religion and the church in the US to start by highlighting the major differences to Europe (see, for example, Lehmann 2006: 134f.; Joas 2009: 317f.). Although the countries of Western Europe are very similar to the US in terms of their social, political, and economic conditions, so it is argued, they differ greatly when it comes to religion. In the US, the churches are full, whereas Western and Central Europe have seen pews emptying in recent decades. In the US, religion has a visible role to play in political life, whether it be in the inauguration of the American president, in the sessions of Congress, or in public debates. In the decades after the Second World War, the political significance of churches and religious communities in a country such as Germany has weakened steadily and has more or less paled into insignificance, quite possibly also on account of the bitter experience of political religions such as National Socialism and Communism. Anyone spending even a small amount of time in the US can immediately sense its vibrant religious diversity. A German village is built around just one church, whereas in the US a number of churches of different persuasions frequently line a single street. Switching on the television, the viewer is confronted at all times of the day and night by a huge number of religious programmes, with charismatic preachers representing a vast number of religious groups and holding their hell-fire sermons or promulgating in sonorous tones their advice on how to cope with life; in Europe, on the other hand, religious communities are allotted very few broadcasting slots. Clearly, the numerous references to the great differences in the vitality of religion and church between the US and Europe shed doubt on the validity of secularization theory (Warner 1993: 1048). The level of modernization in the US is no lower than it is in comparable Western European countries, but its lively religiosity cannot be found in similar countries of Western Europe. The claim that modernization leads to a weakening of the social significance of religion and church is palpably wrong, as the example of the US shows.

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The differences in the level of religiosity between the US and Europe are indeed considerable, a fact scarcely contested in the literature. What is at issue here is not whether these differences exist, but how they are explained. Peter L. Berger, Pippa Norris, Ronald Inglehart, and others speak of a puzzle for researchers concerning the different significance of religion in the US and Europe. Berger (1999: 10), for example, writes: ‘One of the most interesting puzzles in the sociology of religion is why Americans are so much more religious as well as more churchly than Europeans.’ And Norris and Inglehart, who also speak of a ‘puzzle of secularization in the United States and Western Europe’ (Norris and Inglehart 2004: 83), write: ‘It is clear that the United States is exceptionally religious for its level of development, but it remains unclear why’ (Norris and Inglehart 2004: 240). It is secularization theory, with its claim that modernization and secularization are causally linked, that creates the need for explanation. To solve the puzzle, some have developed a new variant of secularization theory. Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, for example, do not consider the decisive factors influencing the level of religiosity to be industrialization, urbanization, increased prosperity, and greater education, but rather the degree of existential insecurity. In their eyes, the need for religious affirmation is increased by a lack of material security, by social inequality, and by personal and social experiences to risk. ‘Feelings of vulnerability to physical, societal, and personal risks are a key factor driving religiosity’ (Norris and Inglehart 2004: 4). They argue that the high level of religious vitality in the US is due to the high level of existential insecurity there. In no other highly developed society is social inequality as great as it is in the US. Social inequality, shortcomings in the welfare system, the risk of poverty, ethnic segregation, job insecurity, deficiencies in pension and health care schemes—these have all contributed, so they claim, to the high level of religiosity in the US. Norris and Inglehart are by no means representatives of classic secularization theory, then, which makes the level of economic prosperity, scientific progress, and university and school education chiefly responsible for the decline in the significance of religion in modern societies. What they probably do represent, however, is a neoclassical version of secularization theory, which sees the decisive explanatory factor as being the lack of existential security, which of course is determined by (among others) the level of economic development (insecurity hypothesis). To explain the high level of religiosity in the US, other social scientists (Stark and Finke 2000) point not to the level of existential security, but rather to the form of the church–state relationship. They argue that the sharp separation of church and state, the state’s restraint in all religious matters, and the refusal to privilege one religious community above others, as is typical of the US, means that a free religious market can develop in which all religious organizations can compete with one another on equal terms. Competition

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between religious communities, so they claim, encourages providers of religion to improve their religious offerings and adapt to the wishes of their clientele; at the same time, it allows religious consumers to choose the services that most meet their needs from among the alternatives on offer. In contrast, the situation of a religious monopoly such as can be found in many countries in Europe prevents a market-induced improvement in the religious offerings and hampers the choices available to religious consumers. According to this approach, therefore, the crucial reason for the high level of vitality in the US lies in the formation of a plural religious market enabled by the strict separation of state and church (market hypothesis). The approach adopted by the economic market theory has not gone unchallenged, however. Drawing on the early works of Gaustad (1962: 159), Steve Bruce (2002: 221) points out that large areas of the US are astonishingly homogeneous in religious terms. We need only think of the distribution of the Southern Baptist Convention in the south of the US, the dominance of the Mormons in Utah, or even the significance of the Lutherans in the Midwest. In the 1950s, according to Gaustad’s calculations, in approximately 50 per cent of all counties in the US, at least half of the population were of a single denomination. Even if religious plurality has increased in recent decades, we may assume that, in many areas of America, one single religious community still dominates. What we also need to bear in mind is that the link between the degree of religious plurality and the level of religiosity is a matter of contention. Finke and Stark (1988) find evidence to support the argument that competition among religious communities increases religious consumption. Others argue that this applies only if the proportion of Catholics is assessed, and then omitted from the calculation (Olson 1999). Still others even arrive at the opposite result, arguing that religious diversity correlates negatively with church ties (Land et al. 1991; Blau et al. 1992. Using a broad comparison of various studies, Chaves and Gorski come to the following conclusion: ‘The empirical evidence contradicts the claim that religious pluralism is positively associated with religious participation in any general sense’ (Chaves and Gorski 2001: 279). Many sociologists of religion consider a positive relationship between a situation of religious monopoly and a high level of religious commitment to be more likely (Berger 1969, 1979; Bruce 2002). To explain the high social and political significance of religion in the US, historians and sociologists also often draw on American history, with its allegedly deeply religious associations, referring, for example, to the Founding Fathers, who are partially stylized as religious role models (West 1997; see also Noll 2002; Engeman and Zuckert 2004). Even the origins of the US, so they claim, are due in no small measure to religious motives, the wish of many religious dissidents to escape the pious paternalism of the established churches in Europe and to live in a country of individual spiritual self-determination.

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Some historians claim that the revivalist movement of the eighteenth century— we are talking here of the first Great Awakening in the years between 1730 and 1760—helped to prepare for the Revolution and to shape some of its leading ideas, such as the egalitarian rhetoric. The Great Awakenings of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it is claimed, strengthened even further the religious character of social, political, and economic life in the US. If Americans still express their national identity in religious terms, and see America in terms of the ancient Israelite ideas of the Covenant or of being God’s chosen nation as handed down in the days of the Founding Fathers, this is a manifestation of the vitality of their Puritan and Evangelical heritage. No other modern country is as strongly inclined as the US to ascribe to itself a divine mission in the world and to interpret its efforts to secure peace, justice, democracy, and freedom in terms of religious concepts (Banchoff 2013). The optimistic belief that the world can be improved and that America has been chosen to set about improving it and to fulfill God’s mission shows the extent to which America’s self-image is shaped by its history (genealogical hypothesis). This historical approach has also been contradicted. According to Hans Joas (2009: 323), the special case of the US cannot be attributed to the idea that its national identity was impregnated with religion from the very outset, as the number of members of religious communities in the US did not diminish in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but rose constantly and considerably. Here, Joas is adopting a thesis formulated by Finke and Stark (1992), who argue that, if the churchification of America has actually increased in the course of its history, then the explanation for the high level of religious vitality in the US cannot lie in its Puritan heritage, but must be sought elsewhere. Finally, literature in the social and historical sciences also repeatedly argues the thesis that the high level of religiosity in the US is due to the constant influx of immigrants from countries that were highly religious and who brought their religion with them (most recently, Höllinger 2009: 464). Processes of secularization and dechurchification, it is claimed, could never become dominant in the US because America is constantly receiving new religious impulses from outside (immigration hypothesis). The immigration hypothesis has also of course drawn criticism. The objection here is that migrants frequently had a lower level of religiosity before immigration to the US than they did afterwards; and that the level of religiosity often did not increase among those emigrating to countries other than the US. It is therefore not immigrants who contribute to the high level of religiosity; rather, the specific situation in America exerts a positive influence on the religiosity of immigrants (Herberg 1955). As we can see, the question of which factors can be used to explain the high level of religiosity in the US is highly contentious in the literature.

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However, before attempting to provide our own answers to this question, we first need to clarify how great the claimed differences in the level of religiosity between the US and Europe really are, and whether they have tended to increase or decrease in recent times. Therefore, before embarking on the explanatory part, we will provide a detailed descriptive section that attempts to capture the religious differences between Europe and the US, as well as their development. Once again, we shall have recourse to the multidimensional concept of religiosity (see Chapter 2) that we have already made use of in previous chapters.

1 0 . 1 . D E S C R I P T I ON In our descriptive section, we argue that the differences in religiosity between the US and Europe are in fact considerable, and are not only of a quantitative but also of a qualitative nature; in other words, they concern not only the level of religiosity in question, but also the form and content of belief. We also claim, however, that the religious differences are less than is commonly assumed, and that, not only in the modern countries of Western Europe but also in the ultra-modern US, there are tendencies towards dechurchification and secularization that are in many respects not so vastly different from those in Western Europe; after a phase of religious divergence, these tendencies may perhaps herald a stage of religious convergence between the two continents. If, however, as we show in Table 10.1, a variety of indicators are used, then what becomes apparent to begin with is the great difference in religiosity and churchliness between the US and Europe. With the exception of denominational affiliation, the US has a significantly higher level than the European countries in all religious dimensions. The fact that there are major differences between the US and Europe, not in terms of denominational affiliation, but regarding individual participation in church life, as well as in all questions of belief—this simple fact can be read as a pointer to the specific character of American religiousness. This religiousness is apparently less institutionally communicated and more strongly answered for individually than in Europe, where many people still remain church members even if they scarcely take part in religious life and faith no longer means a great deal to them. Let us now consider the characteristics of religious affiliation in the US in more depth before then examining the other religious dimensions in more detail.

Table 10.1. Belief * and church membership in Europe and the US, 2006–8 (in %) Country

Church membership

US European average (48 countries) Ireland Italy Denmark West Germany East Germany Estonia Poland Czech Republic Russia

75.3 75.6 85.5 80.2 87.6 83.6 23.0 31.0 94.3 28.2 60.9

Weekly church attendance

Belief in God

Significance of God (8–10)

Belief in hell

Belief in heaven

Belief in reincarnation

Belief in Nirvana

26.3 17.2 39.7 32.9 2.6 9.9 3.6 3.7 51.7 8.0 5.2

92.0 74.3 85.0 84.3 58.5 66.8 19.6 43.4 94.5 29.1 69.3

69.2 45.2 46.2 55.3 14.1 30.9 10.6 19.0 65.1 17.4 40.5

70.8 34.3 48.9 51.4 10.4 25.1 8.6 34.4 59.7 16.9 34.6

82.5 44.1 77.4 57.8 26.0 37.1 16.1 36.1 67.0 21.4 35.1

30.8 23.8 25.7 26.0 16.8 23.4 9.4 33.6 19.1 14.2 23.0

20.2 15.3 16.9 18.0 4.8 8.2 3.5 11.8 9.4 8.9 13.4

*certain or probable belief. Sources: WVS 2005–8; Religious Landscape Survey 2007; EVS 2008; ISSP 2008.

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10.1.1. Dimension of Affiliation Both in Europe and the US, approximately three quarters of the population count themselves as belonging to a church or congregation. If we differentiate church membership according to age, then differences between Europe and the US are also not serious. In both cases, older people are much more frequently members of a church than younger people. In the US, only approximately 60 per cent of 18- to 29-year-olds are members of a church, while that figure is between 80 and 90 per cent among those over 50 (Fig. 10.1). This means, however, that what applies to European countries applies also to the US: that the proportion of church members in the overall population is very likely to fall in the future. Even today, approximately 17 per cent of Americans say that they have no preference for any religion (see Fig. 10.3). The question of religious preference is related to the question of church membership, but is not identical to it, since it is concerned with people’s identification with a religion, and not with their membership of a church. In 1957, the proportion of those who claimed to have no religious preference was 3 per cent. At the beginning of the 1990s, the proportion answering the question about their religious preference with ‘no religion’ was only about 6 per cent. Therefore, the proportion of so-called ‘Nones’ has risen mainly since the 1990s. This is also made clear by Fig. 10.2, which is based on Michael Terwey’s chart. It compares the increase in the numbers of those in the US who say that they have no religious preference with the growth in the number of those without religious affiliation in Western Germany since the 1970s/1980s. What is striking is the completely parallel course taken by the development in the proportion of those without religious ties in both societies, even if these are scarcely comparable with one another in terms of their overall religious character. In both countries, the increase in this proportion occurred mainly in the 1990s. According to Claude Fischer and Michael Hout (2006: 193f.), the explanation for this rapid growth in the number of those without religious affiliation in the US is mainly attributable to the increased public visibility of the religious right wing since the 1980s. They argue that the growing identification of churches with conservative positions has led politically moderate people with only very loose ties to the church to give up their religious affiliation completely for political reasons. Ever since the religious right began to gain prominence in the public domain and the media with their campaigns against feminism, homosexuality, abortion, and the theory of evolution, many have felt the need to loosen their religious ties. When responding to the question about their religious preferences by saying that they have none, this is a way for them to say ‘I’m not like them.’ According to Fischer and Hout’s interpretation, then, it is mainly the merging of closeness to the church and

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100 90 Czech Republic

80

Denmark 70

Estonia

60

Ireland Italy

50

Poland

40

Russia West Germany

30

East Germany

20

US

10 0 18–29

30–39

40–49

50–59

60–69

70–

Fig. 10.1. Church membership according to age in selected countries of Europe and the US, 2008 (in %) Sources: WVS 2005–8; EVS 2008.

25 20 15 10 5

19 7 19 2 7 19 4 76 19 7 19 8 8 19 0 8 19 2 8 19 4 8 19 6 8 19 8 9 19 0 9 19 2 9 19 4 9 19 6 9 20 8 0 20 0 0 20 2 0 20 4 0 20 6 08 20 1 20 0 12

0

West Germany

US

Fig. 10.2. Those without religious affiliation in the US and Western Germany (in %) Sources: Following Terwey 2013: IV (on the basis of GSS 1972–2012 and Allbus 1980–2012, own calculations).

Religion and Religiosity in the US: A Contrasting Case?

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political conservatism that has contributed to the growth of the areligious option. In fact, it can be shown that affirmation of conservative positions among Christians close to the church has increased in recent years, while those distanced from the church tend to have moderate political positions (Chaves 2011: 99ff.). The rejection of every religious option is also encouraged of course by the fact that those with different political views tend to exaggerate the close link between Evangelical religious practice and politically conservative attitudes. Denying all religious ties, as the so-called ‘Nones’ do, does not mean not going to church at all or denying the existence of God. Yet, when it comes to religious practice and belief in God, there is also a clear difference from those who identify with a religious option. Of the ‘Nones’, 5 per cent attend church service at least once a month, and 22 per cent say that they have no doubt that God exists (Chaves 2011: 19). Monthly church attendance in the population at large is around 37 per cent, however, and the existence of God is affirmed without any doubt by 64 per cent of Americans. As Fig. 10.3 shows, the proportion of Protestants in relation to the overall population has dropped over the last forty years. In the 1970s, the proportion was still at over 60 per cent, but has since fallen to a little more than 50 per cent (GSS), and, according to other sources, to less than 50 per cent (American Religious Identification Survey 2008). Protestantism is still the most important religious tradition in the US, however, although it has forfeited its superior, 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10

19 7 19 2 7 19 4 7 19 6 7 19 8 8 19 0 8 19 2 8 19 4 8 19 6 8 19 8 9 19 0 9 19 2 9 19 4 9 19 6 9 20 8 0 20 0 0 20 2 0 20 4 0 20 6 0 20 8 1 20 0 12

0

Protestant

Catholic

Jewish

Other

None

Fig. 10.3. Religious affiliation among Americans (in %) Source: GSS 1972–2012.

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culturally dominant position. It was without doubt the main religious culture in the US in the nineteenth century, the religion to which all other ideological and religious groupings had to accommodate themselves. In 1960, the proportion of Protestants in relation to the overall population was still at around 70 per cent (Greeley 1989: 25). American Protestantism has since lost this dominant position. The decline in the social significance of Protestantism can be attributed mainly to the losses sustained by the so-called mainline churches, which include the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, moderate Lutherans, and Methodists. Fig. 10.4 shows the decline of the mainline churches, which still accounted for just about 30 per cent of the overall population in the 1970s, but whose proportion has since halved. On the other hand, the Evangelicals—the Southern Baptists, the Mennonites, the Pentecostals, the Non-denominationals— have been able to maintain their numbers in relation to the overall population (Fig. 10.4; see also Noll 1992: 464). They have not gained in significance since the mid-1980s, as is often assumed, but they have also not shrunk. The growth in their significance occurred primarily in the 1970s (Fig. 10.4). Since then, the number of members has remained more or less constant. In recent years, the number of those converting from the mainline churches to the Evangelical churches has by no means increased, although today there are fewer Evangelicals converting to the mainline churches than used to be the case (Chaves 2011: 88). More and more Evangelicals are remaining in their churches and, 35 30 25 20 15 10 5

19 7 19 2 7 19 4 7 19 6 78 19 8 19 0 8 19 2 84 19 8 19 6 88 19 9 19 0 9 19 2 9 19 4 9 19 6 9 20 8 0 20 0 0 20 2 0 20 4 0 20 6 0 20 8 1 20 0 12

0

Mainline Protestants

Evangelicals

Fig. 10.4. Proportion of mainline Protestants and Evangelicals within the overall population (in %, floating average over 3 years) Sources: Based on Chaves 2011: 86 (GSS 1972–2012, categorization of denominations according to Steensland et al. 2000, own calculations).

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even if they rise socially, are no longer joining liberal churches as frequently as before. The Evangelical churches have clearly improved their reputation in society, and upward mobility is therefore accompanied less by a change to the liberal churches than was previously the case. The Catholic Church has been remarkably stable over the last few decades (see Fig. 10.3). Approximately one American in four is Catholic, a proportion that has scarcely changed since the 1970s. Special attention should be paid to the proportion of those who do not belong to any Christian denomination, but who belong to another religion. Their numbers have increased slightly in recent decades, but, leaving aside Judaism for a moment, to which 1.7 per cent of Americans say that they belong, they still do not even exceed 2.5 per cent to 3 per cent (see Fig. 10.3). Today, approximately 0.4 per cent of Americans belong to the Islamic faith; 0.7 per cent to the Buddhist faith; and 0.4 per cent to the Hindu faith (Pew Forum 2008: 26). This low proportion of members of non-Christian religions is surprising, since the image associated with the US is of a highly pluralistic religious landscape full of competition and dynamism (Stark and Finke 2000; Eck 2001). If we bear in mind that, in most of the highly developed Western European countries, the proportion of Muslims alone is 5 per cent and more (Pew Forum 2011: 161f.: Belgium 6 per cent, Germany 5 per cent, France 7.5 per cent, Great Britain 4.6 per cent, Netherlands 5.5 per cent, Sweden 4.9 per cent), the current image of a religious monopoly marked by lethargy and conventionality in Europe, and the very varied and vibrant religious situation in the US, begins to reveal its first cracks. Religious pluralism is mainly a phenomenon witnessed within American Protestantism. In actual fact, the distribution of denominations in the US shows a similar structure, for example, to that of West Germany and other Western European countries: somewhat more than three quarters are Christian, about a fifth are non-denominational, and only about 5 per cent belong to non-Christian religious communities. If Protestants are seen as one religious group, then the pluralism index, which is an index for measuring levels of diversity, is in fact lower in the US than it is in the denominationally mixed countries of Europe. In Switzerland, it is 0.71; in West Germany 0.70; in Great Britain 0.71; and in the US 0.67 (ISSP 2008). If Protestants are divided into different groups, then, according to the same data set (ISSP 2008), the index has a higher value in the US than in the European countries (US = 0.85, Switzerland = 0.73, West Germany = 0.68, Great Britain = 0.73), but not one that carries substantial weight. How are changes in religious affiliations taking place in the US? After all, a religious group that is growing not only acquires members, but also loses some, just as a shrinking community has to accept losses in its membership, but can also record growth in membership. In the case of the first group, the number of acquired members is only just above that of the members leaving,

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whereas it is the reverse with the second group. According to the findings of a survey conducted by the Pew Forum in 2008, 11 per cent of the overall population in the US have in the course of their lives abandoned their Protestant faith, while 8.4 per cent of the American population have joined Protestant denominations (Table 10.2). The net loss of Protestants therefore amounts to −2.6 percentage points. Particularly affected are the Baptists (−3.7 percentage points) and the Methodists (−2.1), whereas the Non-denominationals have performed particularly well (+3). Net losses among Catholics are substantially higher, however. When asked, 31.4 per cent of Americans say that they were brought up as Catholics. Currently, however, only 23.9 per cent of the American population belongs to the Catholic Church. About one tenth of all Americans have left the Catholic Church (Table 10.2), which is approximately 32 per cent of all Catholics. The number of US citizens that have turned to the Catholic Church is 2.6 per cent, representing a net loss of 7.5 percentage points.1 No other religious community in the US has had such heavy losses as the Catholic Church. Why, then, has membership of the Catholic Church remained largely constant over a period of almost four decades? Apart from fertility and Table 10.2. Childhood versus current affiliation of US adults (in %)

Protestant Catholic Mormon Jehovah’s Witness Orthodox Other Christian Jewish Muslim Buddhist Hindu Other world religions Other faiths Unaffiliated Don’t Know/ Refused Total

Childhood Religion

Entering Group

Leaving Group

Current Religion

Net change

53.9 31.4 1.8 0.6

+8.4 +2.6 +0.4 +0.5

−11.0 −10.1 −0.5 −0.4

=51.3 =23.9 =1.7 =0.7

−2.6 −7.5 −0.1 0.1

0.6