Religion in Europe at the End of the Second Millenium

A Sociological Profile

Andrew M. Greeley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780765808219
• eBook ISBN: 9781351493710
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Sociology

Most sociologists of religion describe a general decline in religious faith and practice in Europe over the last two centuries. The secularizing forces of the Enlightenment, science, industrialization, the influence of Freud and Marx, and urbanization are all felt to have diminished the power of the churches and demystified the human condition. In Andrew Greeley's view, such overarching theories and frameworks do not begin to accommodate a wide variety of contrasting and contrary social phenomena. Religion at the End of the Second Millennium engages the complexities of contemporary Europe to present a nuanced picture of religious faith rising, declining, or remaining stable.

1
The Persistence of God

Introduction

Despite some theologians, God is not simple. Should there be a God, He has a great deal of explaining to do about the complexities of the world that he has created, even if he has demonstrated, as Einstein once observed, a considerable understanding of higher mathematics. On the other hand, a Creator whom creatures could easily grasp intellectually would probably be no God at all. So when one is asked whether one believes in God, one might answer with a number of counter-questions such as when and what kind of God and with what kind of confidence and with what sort of relationship, if any. One could easily (and honestly) say, “Well, I believed with absolute confidence yesterday, for most of the day, and I think by this afternoon I will again, but this morning I have very strong doubts.”

Against the background of a very strange God (to say the least) and the mutability of human responses to the God question, a simple survey item about the respondent’s belief in God, can provide only a rough cut of the nature of the respondent’s faith. As we shall see later, when the researcher asks the question of what God is like the nuances of faith become even more complicated. Thus, those who don’t believe in God, or are not sure they believe, are likely to have a more gracious (and arguably more orthodox) image of God then those who do believe.

In this chapter, we will consider six different ways of manifesting belief in God—an answer to a simple question about belief, scores on scales measuring the quality of belief, the conviction that God is concerned personally with each of us, interaction with God in prayer, belief that God works miracles, and religious experiences in which one may encounter God. In some countries, we will see, more people believe in miracles than believe firmly in God or in God’s concern for us as persons. The reader will have to draw his own conclusions about which measure is the most satisfactory or whether one must resign oneself to thinking that all are useful in describing the vagaries of human convictions about God.

The Persistence of God

In the first column of table 1.1 we observe the answers of respondents in various countries to question 19 about which statement best describes their beliefs about God. Only in the Czech Republic and East Germany is there less than majority belief in God. More than nine out of ten believe in the deity in Cyprus, the two Irelands, Poland, and Portugal. More than eight out of ten believe in Italy, Spain, and Austria. Six of the top eight countries are predominantly Catholic, one is Orthodox, and one (Northern Ireland) is more Protestant than Catholic but heavily Catholic. It might be argued that in these Catholic countries religion has long enjoyed a monopoly, though not one that has been free of conflict or oppression or anti-clericalism. Certainly there is not, however, the kind of religious competition which those who support theories of religious pluralism would think necessary for the health of religion. Moreover the Lutheran monopoly in the Scandinavian countries has not produced such high levels of belief in God.

In the next three countries—Switzerland, Slovakia, and Latvia – the level of belief in God declines into the 70 percent range. Each of the countries is partially Catholic and partially Protestant. In none of them, however, has the religious pluralism produced results similar to those in Northern Ireland. However, it may be that decades of socialist rule have had some effect on religion in Slovakia and Latvia and, indeed, all the other countries except Poland.

In the next two countries on the list, West Germany and Britain, approximately two-thirds of the respondents believe in God. These two countries—often studied by sociologists—represent perhaps the weakly believing populations who still cling to God but without all that much fervor. They also are the mean for belief in God in the International Social Survey Program sample. The remaining eleven countries, with the exception of France and the Netherlands, are either Scandinavian or former socialist countries. In the Netherlands religion diminished when the tri-polar social structure of society collapsed and the Vatican, utterly unsympathetic to the problems of Dutch Catholicism virtually drove many Dutch Catholics out of the church and away from religion. The constant struggles in France between clericals and anti-clericals over the past two centuries may have taken its toll on religion. Since the failure of the pietistic revivals in the Scandinavian countries in the middle of the last century, devotion in these countries has not been fervent. Only in East Germany and the Czech Republic do a majority of the respondents say that they don’t believe in God. In East Germany the intense and efficient pressure of an anti-religious socialism seems to have succeeded in crushing religious belief. In the Czech Republic, a long tradition of anti-religious sentiment, represented by the “Free Thinkers, “ is more likely t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1 The Persistence of God
• 2 A Rebirth of Hope?
• 3 Magic, Science, and the Mystical
• 4 The Churches
• 5 Trust, Tolerance, and Sex
• 6 Russia: The Biggest Revival Ever?
• 7 Religion in the Former “Evil Empire”
• 8 The Religions of Ireland
• 9 A “Secularized” Ireland?
• 10 Religious Markets in Norway
• 11 Orange Exceptionalism
• 12 Conclusion
• References
• Appendix General Social Survey
• Index