Conferences

Religious change has profoundly modified the ‘religious opportunity structure’ for individuals living in Western European countries. In this regard, the decline of church-religiosity in Europe brought to evidence by proponents of secularization theory is most noteworthy. According to secularization theory, in the long run, modernization is expected to bring about atheism and religious indifference.

But is church religiosity really declining in Europe? Are alternative religious beliefs stepping into the breach left by church-religiosity?

In a first step, my paper aims to map trends of church religiosity for six Western European Countries (Belgium Denmark, France, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands). The four waves of the European Values Study (1981, 1990, 1999, and 2008) provide data over four decades that allow mapping trends in church-religiosity and unbelief or atheism.

Proponents of religious individualization, however, challenge the view that declining church religiosity necessarily results in unbelief. In contrast, they point to the growing importance of ‘alternative spiritualities’ in Europe.

‘Alternative spiritualities’ are characterized by (1) an emphasis on personal experiences of transcendence, (2) strong religious individualism, and (3) great distance to traditional (Christian) churches and other religious organizations. With respect to the conception of the sacred, holistic and impersonal beliefs are dominant.

Evidence supporting the growth of alternative spiritualities, however, is mostly based on qualitative studies. In order to quantify the importance of alternative spiritualities, some items were included in the fourth wave of the European Values Studies (2008) that are designed to measure core aspects of alternative spiritualities: (1) an item on religious individualism and (2) a scale of spiritual self-assessment.

Thus, in a second step, I will combine these new indicators with established measures of church-religiosity in order to draw a comprehensive picture church religiosity, alternative spiritualities and unbelief in the selected countries. I will use Multiple-Group Latent-Class-Analysis to test whether a single measurement model fits for all the selected countries or whether substantial heterogeneity with respect to the indicators can be observed for religious orientations across countries. This is a necessary precondition to establish conceptual equivalence in order to compare belief patterns across countries.

My hypothesis is that alternative spiritualities are particularly strong in those countries where the decline in church religiosity (1981-2008) has been particularly strong. If this turns out to be the case, this challenges the assumptions of secularization theory.