Christian Religions Role in Society and State

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Christian Religion, Society and the State in the modern World
Article in Innovation The European Journal of Social Science Research · June 2007

DOI: 10.1080/13511610701502248
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Author(s): FRANZ HÖLLINGER ET AL. CIEJ 250094
Article title:
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AQ1 Finke & Stark, 1996 changed to 1998 to match Reference list, OK?
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AQ2 Weber 1968 not in Reference list?
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AQ3 Stark & Iannaccone, 1996 changed to 1994 to match Reference list,
OK?
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AQ4 The notorious lack of clergy exacerbated the deepening of Christian
creeds and morality’-please check the sense of this sentence?
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AQ5 Goldstein et al. 1998 not mentioned in text?
AQ6 Gustafsson publisher?
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C:/3B2WIN/temp files/CIEJ250094_S100.3d[x] Monday, 2nd July 2007 18:30:36
CHRISTIAN RELIGION, SOCIETY AND THE

STATE IN THE MODERN WORLD
Franz Höllinger, Max Haller and Adriana Valle-Höllinger
This paper is an attempt to explain why religious beliefs and practice have strongly declined in
5 some parts of the world, in particular in Europe, while in other parts religion continues to play a
central role in the public sphere and in private life. It is argued that the following factors
determine the patterns of religiosity in contemporary Christian societies: substantive differences
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between religious doctrines and denominations with respect to theological teachings but also the
use of rituals and symbols; the level of welfare state services; and the historical connections
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10 between church and state. These theses are empirically investigated in two ways: first, through a
quantitative, multilevel analysis of the effects of individual and context variables on individual
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religiosity in 28 Christian countries around the world; and, second, through short case studies of
four countries Norway, Ireland, the United States and Chile each exemplary of a specific type
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of state church relations over time.
15 The role of religion in the modern world continues to attract attention both in the
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social sciences and within the general public. In Europe religious institutions have lost
much of their former influence and religious practice and belief have both declined in the
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course of the twentieth century. In contrast, in other parts of the world and both in
developing and in advanced industrial societies religion continues to play a central role
20 in the public sphere and in private life. Religious revivals, the emergence of religious
fundamentalism as well as the expansion of new religious cults and churches are occurring
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in parallel with secularization (Martin, 1990; Marty & Appleby, 1992; Beyer, 1994; Riis, 1998;
Berger, 1999). The purpose of this paper is to present some hypotheses about these
seemingly contradictory tendencies, and to put these to the test using the ISSP cross-
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25 national comparative data set. In order to reduce the complexity of the subject,
I concentrate on Christian churches and denominations. Accordingly, the term ‘religious-
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ness’ in this article refers only to the characteristic forms of Christian religious behaviour
and religious beliefs.
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I combine two levels of analysis which are frequently disconnected in the analysis of
30 religion, namely, the micro-level of the individual religious belief and practice, and the
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macro-level of social structures and institutions. I consider four general functions which are
fulfilled by religions and churches: (1) the function of providing life with a transcendental
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meaning by means of religious beliefs, symbols and rituals; (2) the function of providing
social meaning and normative guidance; (3) the function of providing mutual social
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35 support and solidarity among the members of the community; and (4) the function of
Innovation, Vol. 20, No. 2, 2007

ISSN 1351-1610 print/ISSN 1469-8412 online/07/020133-23
– 2007 Interdisciplinary Centre for Comparative Research in the Social Sciences and
ICCR Foundation
DOI: 10.1080/13511610701502248
134 FRANZ HÖLLINGER ET AL.
supporting and legitimizing the social and political interests of particular social groups and
of the society as a whole.
According to the older sociological tradition of thinking about religion, religion is a
traditional way of providing sense to personal and social life that will become less
40 important as societies develop in terms of education and knowledge, wealth and
prosperity (Weber, 1949; Schluchter, 1991; Berger, 1999). This classical thesis of
secularization emerged in the context of late nineteenth century Europe and seemed
very plausible against the background of the decline of church-oriented religion in most
European countries in the course of the twentieth century. However, taking into
45 consideration the development of religion in other parts of the world, sociologists of
religion were led to question this thesis: from a worldwide perspective, the European
secularization trend might represent the exception and not the rule or model which other
societies follow in the course of their socio-economic development (Martin, 1994; Berger,
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1999; Davie, 1999). New theories were proposed for explaining the development of
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50 religion in different countries and areas of the world. Most of these do not deny that
processes of secularization are taking place, but postulate a different concept of
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secularization.
One line of argumentation holds that secularization does not imply the end of
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religion, but a shift from universal religious institutions to religious pluralism and to more
55 individualist, private forms of religion (Parsons, 1960; Berger, 1999; Luckmann, 1991;
Jagodzinski & Dobbelaere, 1993; Gorski, 2000; Inglehart & Baker, 2000). While this view
refers to the general, universal tendencies of religious development in modern societies,
the British sociologist David Martin insists that the evolution of religious institutions may
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also vary significantly within Europe. According to Martin, the way in which religion
60 changes in the course of modernization is linked to the role of religion during crucial
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periods in the history of a given society. In societies where religion occupied a dominant
political position and was involved in strong (and violent) social conflicts, as was the case
in France during the French revolution, the relationship of would-be believers to the
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church will be disturbed. The negative attitudes towards religion will be transmitted from
65 one generation to the next, taking the form of a ‘vicious circle’, and the people in this
country will be likely to distance themselves from religion in the course of modernization.
In the opposite case, i.e. in those countries where religious institutions played a positive
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role in the historical process of national identity building, as was the case in Ireland, a
‘virtuous circle’ in the relationships between church and people will emerge, and the
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70 people will be more likely to maintain closer ties to their church up to present times
(Martin, 1978: 16ff.).
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Another model for the explanation of religious change in modern societies is based
on rational choice theory. Applying models of market-economy to the operation of
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‘religious economies’, Stark, Bainbridge, Finke and other American sociologists have
75 argued that in modern, pluralist religious societies the level of religious activities will be
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even higher than in traditional societies with a universal or dominant religion, because
consumers can chose among a variety of religious goods, and because competition
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between the suppliers of religious goods forces them to make their products more
attractive for specific segments of the population (Stark & Bainbridge, 1985; Finke & Stark,
80 AQ1 1998). Consequently, these scholars predict that, under the emerging conditions of a free
religious market, religion will recover even in Europe and in a similar way to the United
States (Stark & Iannaccone, 1994).
CHRISTIAN RELIGION, SOCIETY AND THE STATE 135
The starting point for the present argumentation in this article is similar to the basic
propositions of Stark and Bainbridge (1985): the need for religion and the functions
85 religion fulfils vary both at the individual and societal levels. Religious groups and
organizations which set out to meet these needs and fulfil these functions will thus adapt
to the changing demands of their clientele. In the course of time, the structures of
religious institutions tend to become more rigid, and this makes it more difficult to meet
new social and religious needs emerging during the process of social change. Hence,
90 under ‘market conditions’ of modern, pluralistic societies and unless processes of
adaptation set in with regard to traditional institutions, new religious cults and groups
will emerge. However, I do not take it for granted that the demand for religious
communities and the disposition of people to practice religion (by means of attending
religious services or performing regular private religious rituals) will be the same in all
modern societies. I assume instead that, because of culture specific life-conditions and
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95
because of the long-term patters of interaction between religious institutions and the
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population, the level of religiousness and the importance of religious institutions will
continue to vary across societies.
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Therefore, in this article, I try to interpret attitudes towards religion and the churches
100 in different countries as a consequence of the specific interaction between, on the one
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hand, religious-supply, i.e. the performance of the religious institutions in a given country,
and, on the other hand, the specific forms of religious-demand (cf. Kern, 2001). In doing
this, I am not looking for universal laws of human behaviour and societal development
(e.g. how religiosity declines with increasing levels of development), but for ideal-typical
105 patterns of relations between social values and institutions, on the one hand, and
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technological, economic and political interests and changes on the other (Weber, 1968;
AQ2 Haller, 1999, 2002).
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The general thesis is:
The level of religious participation and the strength of religious belief in a given society is
110 a function of the ability of national religious institutions to meet the spiritual and
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emotional needs of citizens. Assuming a change in the levels and scope of religious
needs, specific historical forms of religion or religious institutions will lose in importance
to be supplemented or replaced by substantially new forms of non-institutional, private,
and ‘invisible’ forms of religion or religion-equivalents.
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115 From this general thesis, specific hypotheses can be deduced about the specific way(s) in
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which modern-day individual and societal needs are met by present-day Christian
churches and denominations.
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Religion as a Means for Providing Meaning to Life and Ethical Principles

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In both regards, we can see significant differences between the four main types of
120 Christian denominations relevant for our study, namely the Catholic Church, the Orthodox
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Churches, the large Protestant Churches (such as the Lutheran and Anglican Churches),
which in former times have had the status of a state church, and thus are closer to the
ideal-type of a church, and other denominations (such as Baptists, Methodists,
Presbyterians, etc.), which are closer to the ideal-type of a sect in the sense of Weber
125 and Troeltsch.
The presence of ritual-symbolic and mystical elements is definitely strongest in

Orthodox Christianity. Any account of the peculiarities of the Orthodox churches points
to the high importance of ritual, expressive and symbolic elements in their liturgy (with
a wide use of music and art, paintings, architectural splendour of church buildings and
130 the like); they arouse mystical feelings of a union with God and with the many Saints
whose commemoration is most widespread in Orthodoxy (Larentzakis, 2000; Schnider,
1999). In former times, Catholicism too laid strong emphasis on the ritualistic dimension
of religion, but since the onset of modernization initiated with the Second Vatican
Council (1962 65), these elements have became significantly restrained. So, for instance,
135 the worldwide use of Latin as the liturgical language has been mostly replaced by the
use of local languages (Douglas, 1970; Lorenzer, 1981). Protestantism definitely has gone
furthest with regard to the eradication of ritualistic, symbolic and magical elements of
religion, transforming it more and more into a system of rational speculation, compatible
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with the modern natural-scientific understanding of the world (Berger, 1967). The
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140 adaptation of religion to the standards of modern thinking is intended to secure the
plausibility of religion in modern society. However, the more religion becomes
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indistinguishable from modern secular thinking, and the more it eradicates rituals and
symbols, the more it ceases to be a religion at all, and people will turn away from it to
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purely secular ideologies and strategies of coping with emotional and socio-economic
145 problems. Previous cross-national studies indicate that such a development has taken
place in the Lutheran Countries of North-western Europe (Zulehner & Denz, 1993;
Höllinger, 1996).
Similar arguments can be brought forward with respect to the function of
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religion of providing ethical and moral standards. Very rigid norms concerning
150 behaviour which seem outdated today and which are in evident contradiction to the
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common-sense morality of the population such as the prohibition of contraceptives
in Catholicism may be neglected by the believers altogether, and may damage the
credibility of the church in the eyes of the majority of the population. On the other
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hand, if the moral principles of a church become indistinguishable from secular

155 morality, the relevance of religion may decrease as well. It is not so clear, however, in
which way the ethical principals of the four types of Christian religions are related to
the degree of religiousness, i.e. the religious beliefs and the religious participation, of
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their members. Catholicism has definite and strict moral principles in matters of sexual
behaviour and family life. (Divorce, for instance, is prohibited in Catholicism, but
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160 possible in Orthodox Churches and in Protestantism.) In practice, however, Catholicism

as a universal church accepts that the majority of the population is not able and not
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willing to follow rigid moral standards, and does not impose a strong pressure on the
believers to do so (Troeltsch, 1992; Höllinger, 1996). The large Protestant churches and
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many Protestant denominations have approximated their ethical principles to the

165 respective secular standards, in some regards. On the other hand, Protestant churches
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put higher emphasis on individual morality than Catholicism, requiring that their
believers not only follow particular moral commands, but also conduct their entire life
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according to a specific religious moral conviction (Gesinnungsethik in the sense of Max

Weber). Such a high standard of religious morality is easier to establish in small
170 religious communities based on voluntary membership and a high level of mutual
social control, as it is the case for many Protestant denominations, than in universalistic
state churches (Troeltsch, 1992; Weber, 1979; Stark & Bainbridge, 1985).
Based on these considerations, we can formulate the first two hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1a : the greater emphasis on religious rituals and symbols of the Catholic and
175 Orthodox Churches makes these religions more attractive for the masses, and thus leads
to higher levels of religious participation and of religious beliefs as compared with the
rationalist theology and the moralist discourse of Protestant Churches.
Hypothesis 1b : religiousness will be higher within religious denominations and groups
which are closer to the sect-type of religion, because these groups attract people who
180 are willing to practice religion more intensively and to accept higher standards of
religious morality, and because the size of religious communities is usually smaller in
these churches as compared with state churches, which allows for a stronger mutual
social control among the members of the community.
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Religion as a Means for Supporting National and Political Interests
185 An important aspect for understanding the development of religion in contempor-
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ary society is the historical embedding of religion into society and, in particular, the
relation between the church and the state as well as political elites. In many European
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countries, there existed a state church over long periods of their history. In these countries,
religious and moral norms were imposed on the population ‘from above’, and the religious
190 elite tended to support the social interests of the leading political elite rather than those of
the common people. As a reaction to this situation, there always existed a certain
retention against the church among the population, which broke out as an open revolt in
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specific periods of history (Martin, 1978; Höllinger, 1996). The central social and political
movements of the last few centuries enlightenment, political liberalism and the socialist
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195 movement took an overtly anti-religious position in these societies, denouncing religion
as a reactionary social force. An additional argument for explaining the religious behaviour
in state church systems is the correspondence between types of religious institutions and
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specific forms of religiousness, as described by Ernst Troeltsch (1992) and Max Weber
(1979) in their ideal-typical dichotomy of ‘universal churches’ and ‘sects’. According to this
200 typology, the church type of religiousness is characterized by religious conformity in
conjunction with relatively low standards of religious commitment.
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Hypothesis 2a: in countries where one particular church has had the position of a state
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church over long periods, modern-day religiosity will be significantly lower than in those
countries where this was not the case.
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205 A corresponding relationship can be postulated between denominational countries and

the sect-type of religiousness in the sense of Troeltsch and Weber:
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Hypothesis 2b: in denominational countries, where the freedom of religion was

introduced already in earlier historic periods, and where the citizens could choose
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among a large number of smaller religious communities, high religious commitment will
be more frequent today.
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210
Another kind of situation existed when a church and its representatives helped a
population to preserve their cultural identity against a foreign power which subjected this
country to its rule. The consequence was that national and religious identity fused to a
large degree, and the church became strongly and positively anchored in the minds of the
215 AQ3 people (Martin, 1978; Stark & Iannaccone, 1994; Höllinger, 1996; Finke & Stark, 1998). From
this follows the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 2c : in countries where the dominant church helped a people to preserve its
cultural identity against foreign powers or against a rule imposed by foreign powers, the
level of religiosity will remain high.
220 Religion as a Means of Providing Support in the Context of Crisis or

Impoverishment
During the course of history, one of the central functions of religious institutions in
general, and of Christian churches in particular, was to provide spiritual and instrumental
support to handicapped, poor, sick and old people. During the last century, however, the
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225 function of providing social support and social security has been taken over more and
more by the modern welfare state. Accordingly, the third hypothesis states:
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Hypothesis 3a : the more the people in a given society suffer from risks such as poverty,
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sickness and the danger of physical aggression, the more they will turn to religious
institutions in search of spiritual and material support. On the other hand, the more such
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230 kinds of existential risks are diminished by a system of social security and public welfare,
the less important religion and churches will be.
As a complement to this hypothesis I argue that in societies which are characterized by
pervasive social inequalities, poverty and discrimination of minorities, religion and
religious associations still fulfil important functions of social and moral support for the
235
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population. On the one hand, religion serves to justify social inequality and at the same
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time it promises compensations for the negatively privileged strata (Wichers, 1986). On the
other hand, Christian churches also react to the needs of the poor by developing specific
social doctrines; an example is the liberation theology of South American Catholicism
(Boff, 1992). Thus, the relevance of religion and churches varies significantly by social strata
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240 in these societies. This is expressed in the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 3b : since the function of social support provided by religion and church is
particularly important for the lower and poorer strata, these strata will be more actively
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engaged in religion than the higher social strata.

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Methodological Approach
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245 The empirical analysis consists of a systematic quantitative cross-national compar-

ison and is complemented by short qualitative case studies. The quantitative part is based
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on the data of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) 1998 on ‘Religion’. ISSP is
an international cooperation of social scientists, carrying out annual representative
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population surveys on specific areas of social behaviour and social attitudes in all
250 participating countries (for a recent description see Uher, 2000). The thematic modules are
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replicated in intervals from five to 10 years. The issue of religious behaviour and religious
attitudes was investigated for the first time in 1991. The 1998-module was carried out in
more than 30 countries worldwide. The questionnaire included questions on religious
beliefs and practice, attitudes towards the role of the churches in society, and social and
255 moral attitudes related to religion.
A central issue of this article is the classification of countries according to their

religious culture. By ‘religious culture’ we mean the interaction between religion, state and
society as described in the previous section. In what follows, the three types of religious
culture described in hypotheses 2a 2c are referred to as ‘state church systems’,
260 ‘denominational systems’ and ‘nationalist popular church systems’ respectively. A
considerable number of the countries included in the ISSP analysis correspond to one
of these three ideal types of religious culture. In some countries we can find aspects of
more than one type of religious culture. In order to make our statistical analysis more
comprehensive, we included most of these countries into our statistical analysis, classifying
265 them in the category they come closest to.1
State Church Systems
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Representatives of this type are the Protestant countries Sweden, Norway and
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Denmark, the Catholic countries France, Spain, Portugal, Austria and Slovenia, and the
Orthodox countries Russia and Bulgaria. Great Britain, Hungary, the Czech Republic and
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270 Slovakia were also classified into this category, even if there has existed considerable
religious dissent in these countries since the times of the Reformation. Germany and
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Switzerland have been divided into Protestant and Catholic territories since the
Reformation. In most German principalities and Swiss cantons one particular church had
the privileged position of a ‘Landeskirche’ or ‘cantonal church’ until the beginning of the
275 twentieth century. These two countries were thus counted as state church systems.
Denominational Systems
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The only country which corresponds fully to this type is the United States. The other
Anglo-Saxon countries of the New World, namely, Australia, New Zealand and Canada,
but also the Netherlands, come close to this type, but in these countries one particular
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280 religion the Church of England in Australia and in New Zealand, the Reformed Calvinist
Church in the Netherlands had a more dominant position, and thus considerable ‘state
church’ tendencies can be found in the history of these countries.
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Nationalist Popular Church Systems

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The republic of Ireland, Poland and Cyprus are representatives of this type. The
285 Catholic Church in Italy was an important political power throughout the history, and thus
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has traits of a state church. In many instances, however, the Catholic Church was a
countervailing power against the political elite, in particular against foreign dynasties
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governing parts of the Italian territory. Therefore, we will classify Italy as having a
nationalist popular church system.
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Syncretistic Popular Religion

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290
ISSP-1998 also included two ex-colonial catholic countries, the Philippines and Chile.
As in most other states which were colonized by Catholic European powers, Catholicism
was established as a state church. However, there exist significant differences between
these countries and the European state church systems. In the latter, the clergy was a
295 powerful social and political elite, capable of effectively controlling the religious behaviour
of the population. Contrary to that, in colonial countries the influence of the official church
remained much more superficial due to the lack of clergy and the difficulties of the
political regime in controlling the vast territories. The indigenous population accepted
Christianity more or less voluntarily, but it remained strongly attached to indigenous
300 religious beliefs and practice. Thus, Chile and the Philippines constitute a separate type,
which we will call syncretistic popular religion .2
The measurement of ‘religiousness’ in ISSP is based on standard indicators of
religious practice and belief in Christian societies: practice was measured by church
attendance and prayer; beliefs were measured by a list of central Christian creeds belief
305 in God, afterlife, heaven, hell and religious miracles. Using these indicators for cross-
cultural comparisons, we have to keep in mind that religions differ with regard to the
importance given to specific religious practices and beliefs. For instance, Catholicism puts
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a higher emphasis on the participation in religious community rituals, in particular on
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weekly church attendance, while most Protestant churches and denominations give more
310 importance to the personal contact with God by means of individual prayer. Despite its
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highly ritualistic character, the Orthodox Church puts less stress on regular observance of
religious rituals than on the individual mystical union with the divine. Nevertheless, we
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found a high correlation between all indicators of religious practice and religious beliefs
both in the overall dataset and in the individual countries. Thus, I will use one single scale
315 of religiousness for most analyses of this article. This scale includes two indicators for
religious practice, church attendance and prayer, and two indicators for religious belief,
belief in God and belief in hell. The reliability coefficient Cronbach’s a of this scale is 0.81.
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In the following, I will investigate the impact of both individual and macro-social
context factors on the individual religious behaviour and beliefs of the respondents. As the
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320 principal statistical instrument for our analysis we chose multilevel regression analysis
(MLA), a procedure which different from ordinary (OLS) regression allows
differentiation between levels of independent variables. The regression coefficients and
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the b -values of MLA are similar to those of OLS-Regression. However, MLA gives more
adequate estimates of the standard error and the significance of the regression
325 coefficients of second- and third-level variables (context variables), and it calculates the
percentage of variance explained by individual-level variables and that explained by
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context-level variables separately (Engel, 1998; Goldstein, 1995).

The complexity of the phenomena which are involved in the research questions in
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conjunction with the limitations of the investigated data render a stringent empirical test
330 of the causal relationships postulated by the hypotheses impossible. Nevertheless,
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I believe that the theoretical framework of the study, and the systematic investigation
of the questions by means of a large cross-national comparative study brings some new
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insights for the analysis and the understanding of the level of (Christian) religiousness in
the modern world.
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Quantitative Empirical Results

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335
Table 1 provides a descriptive overview of the cross-national differences using the

typology of religious culture. The lowest level of religiousness can be found in countries
which are or were formerly dominated by a Protestant or Orthodox state church. Only a
minority of 3 6% of the population of these countries participates regularly in religious
TABLE 1
Indicators of religiousness, by type of religious culture
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C:/3B2WIN/temp files/CIEJ250094_S100.3d[x]
Mean score of
N Church attendance (once a Prayer (several times a Belief in god, Belief in hell, religiousness
Type of religious culture N week), % week), % % % scale
(1) State Church
C
(1a) Protestant 5.645 5 16 33 15 23.25
Denmark, East Germany, Great Britain,
Norway, Sweden O
(1b) Orthodox 2.805 31 16 37 23 27.93
Bulgaria, Russia R
(1c) Catholic 10.338 19 30 53 33 39.69
Austria, Czech Republic, France,
Hungary, Portugal, Slovak R
CHRISTIAN RELIGION, SOCIETY AND THE STATE

Republic, Slovenia, Spain
(1d) Catholic and Protestant EC 2.204 9 30 43 32 35.05
West Germany, Switzerland
(2) Denominational system 6.586 17 34 53 29 41.39
Australia, Canada, Netherlands,
Monday, 2nd July 2007 18:30:37

New Zealand, United States
(3) Nationalist popular church 4.165 TE 33 44 79 56 61.83
Cyprus, Ireland, Italy, Poland
(4) Syncretistic popular religon 2.703 31 66 92 70 71.39
Chile, Philippines
Note: data for Bulgaria not available.

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Source: ISSP 1998; detailed results for the single countries can be found in Appendix 3.
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O
141
O
F
340 service; around 15 20% practice religion in a more informal, private way. The rest of
the population is not religious or only very weakly religious in the traditional meaning
of the word. Countries with (formerly) Catholic state churches, and countries with a
denominational religious structure are found in an intermediate position. Both the
indicators of religious belief and religious practice have here significantly higher values.
345 Nevertheless, in these countries too we find that at least half of the population no longer
practices the traditional forms of religious rituals and does not believe in the central
Christian creeds (God, heaven, etc.) Religiousness is by far highest in countries where
religion is embedded in the form of a nationalist popular church, and in the two countries
which we have characterized as syncretistic popular religious cultures.
350 The fact that some of the economically highly developed countries, such as the
Scandinavian countries, are among the most secularized, while the economically lower
developed countries Chile and Philippines are the most religious societies in the sample,
F
might lead to the conclusion of a negative correlation between level of economic
O
development and degree of religiousness. However, the statistical correlation between the
355 national level of religiousness and the level of socio-economic development, measured by
O
GDP per capita and by the Human Development Index (HDI),3 is rather low (see Figure 1).
However, the data also show a significant connection between the level of social
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security and welfare state expenditures and the level of religiousness: the higher the
proportion of welfare state expenditures in a particular country, the lower its level of
360 religiousness. Even when welfare state expenditures tend to increase with higher levels of
economic development, these two dimensions do not always go together. Several
countries of our sample, the United States, Ireland, Italy and Cyprus, have a rather high D
level of socio-economic development, but at the same time they spend a relatively low
portion of their Government budget on social security and welfare. In all these four
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365 countries we can find a high level of religiousness. On the other hand, religiousness is
rather low in all societies which spend a high portion of their budget for social security.
These results confirm our hypothesis 3a, that the reduction of personal insecurity by
EC
Philippines
80,00
R
Poland Ireland
Religiousness Scale
Chile Portugal USA

Cyprus
60,00
R
Italy
Slovakia
Spain
O
Canada
Austria
40,00 Hungary
Switzerland
New Zealand GB Australia
Bulgaria Slovenia
Netherlands
C
W-Germany
France
Czech Rep. Norway
Russia
Denmark
20,00 Sweden
N
E-Germany
U
0,75 0,80 0,85 0,90 0,95

Human Development Index
FIGURE 1
Religiousness by Human Development Index. R2 (religiousness by HDI)0.07; Source: ISSP-
1998 (see Appendix 1); Human Development Report 2000
means of a highly developed welfare state contributes to a decline of (institutional)

religion, while in societies where the fundamental material and social necessities are not
370 secured by the state, religion remains an important source both for providing spiritual
comfort in situations of personal despair, and with regard to the solidarity provided by
religious communities.
The relationship between the individual social status and religiousness was
investigated empirically for the three principal indicators of social status: education,
375 occupation and personal income. In preliminary country-by-country investigations (by
means of OLS-regression, controlling for sex and age), we found that in all countries
farmers are more religious than other professional groups (manual workers, lower-
qualified employees, higher-qualified employees, self-employed, farmers); however, there
are no consistent patterns of differences with regard to other professional groups, and in
many countries differences between these professional groups are very small and
F
380
statistically insignificant. In most countries, the level of religiousness of lower-income
O
persons is slightly higher than that of persons with higher income; however, in more than
half of the countries the regression coefficient b has insignificant values of less than 0.05.
O
Only in a quarter of the countries is religiousness significantly higher among persons with
385 lower income. This group of countries includes the Catholic countries Austria, Slovenia,
PR
Poland and Slovakia, Orthodox Cyprus and Protestant Norway. Also the effect of education
on religiousness is rather low in the majority of the countries in the investigation.
Nevertheless, here we found interesting patterns of results: in several Catholic countries,
namely, Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Portugal, Slovakia and Slovenia, and in the
390 Orthodox countries Russia and Bulgaria, we find a higher level of religiousness among
D
lower educated respondents. In the Protestant countries Great Britain, East Germany, the
Netherlands and Norway, religiousness is somewhat higher among higher educated
TE
respondents. In our opinion, these results support our assumption that the intellectualized
religion of Lutheranism (and of the Anglican Church) is more attractive to higher educated
395 people, while Catholicism and the Orthodox churches, which give more weight to rituals
EC
and symbolic elements, are more popular among the lower educated strata. Summing up
these results we have to conclude that hypothesis 3c is not supported by the empirical
data: except for the finding that farmers are more religious than other professional groups,
there exist no general patterns of relationship between social status and religiousness.
R
400 Only in some of the investigated countries are persons with lower income, lower
professional status and lower education more religious than persons with higher social
R
status. Presumably, this association is due to the affinity between specific religions and
specific social strata, and not to a general tendency of lower-status-groups to turn to
O
(organized) religion in search for emotional and instrumental support.

405 The combined effect of individual determinants and macro-level determinants of
C
religiosity was examined by means of multilevel regression analysis. On the individual

level, the variables age, sex and denomination were included. The religious denomination
N
of respondents was reduced to five categories: (1) Catholic; (2) member of Protestant state
church;4 (3) Orthodox; (4) other Christian denomination; (5) no denomination.5 As the
U
410 country by country analyses had shown that the effects of individual occupation, income
and education on religiousness are rather weak and that there exist no consistent patterns
for specific contexts, these variables were not included in the regression. On the macro
level, three variables were taken into consideration: the Human Development Index (HDI);
the portion of social security and welfare state expenditures of the total government
415 spending;6 and the four categories of religious culture. The variables HDI and welfare state
expenditures are highly correlated (r0.65), which leads to the problem of multi-
collinearity, when these two variables are included in the same model. Therefore we
calculated two models, each of them including one of these two variables. Table 2
presents the results of the analysis.
420 Owing to the high number of cases, all individual level variables are significant.
However, the standardized b values show that the variables have a very different
explanatory power. The religious denomination of respondents has by far the strongest
effect on religiousness. Unsurprisingly, respondents who do not belong to a church are
least religious in the sense of the present operationalization, but there are also striking
425 differences between the four categories of denominations: The unstandardized regression
coefficients (b -values) confirm our hypothesis that members of Protestant state churches
(or former state churches) have lower levels of religiousness than members of the other
F
Christian churches. Members of Christian denominations are the most religious, followed
O
by Catholics and Orthodox Christians.
430 ISSP-1998 included questions which prove that in the Lutheran countries the level of
O
religiousness was already much lower than in other European countries during the first
half of the twentieth century. Respondents were asked how often they and their parents
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attended church, when the respondent was a child. Analysing the answers of older
persons (over 50 years) we get a relatively good estimate of the frequency of church
435 attendance in the middle of the twentieth century (see Appendix 1): only around 10% of
the adult population of the Scandinavian Countries and of Lutherans in Germany attended
mass regularly; in all other Western European countries this rate was higher than 30%,
D
often higher than 50%. Also, in the Orthodox countries Russia and Bulgaria, church
attendance was already rather low in the middle of the century. The very low proportion in
TE
440 Russia can be explained by the communist prohibition of religion. However, the reasons
for the low level of religiousness among Orthodox Christians in Eastern Europe have to be
explored more in detail in further analyses. Among the other individual level variables in
EC
the model, both sex and age have a considerable influence on the level of religiousness.
Consistent with the findings of many other studies, women and older people are more
445 religious.
Consistently with the results from Figures 1 and 2, the context effect of the socio-
R
economic development, measured by the Human Development Index 1998, has no effect
on religiousness. The level of welfare state expenditure, however, has a significant effect in
R
the multivariate analysis. The same is true for the context variable of religious cultures:
450 respondents living in countries with (former) state churches are clearly less religious today
O
than respondents in the other three types of religious culture. It has to be mentioned,
however, that there is a considerable variation within the categories of religious culture.
C
This is particularly the case for those countries which we have categorized as
denominational systems. As can be seen in Appendix 3, the population of the United
N
455 States has a level of religiousness similar to that of the most religious countries of our
sample, the Philippines, Chile, Ireland, Poland and Cyprus. Contrary to that, the degree of
U
religiousness in the other denominational countries is rather low, comparable with that of
the average Catholic countries in Europe.
This observation leads us to the last part of our paper, the discussion of individual
460 countries. The factors included in our statistical models can only explain some general
trends. The explanation of the specific forms of religiosity and of the attitudes towards the
TABLE 2
Multilevel analysis: religiousnessa by sex, age, education, denomination, type of religious culture, human development index and welfare state
expenditures
U
Model 1 Model 2
b b Significance b b Significance
N
Individual variables
Sex (male/female) 7.93 0.12 ** 7.95 0.12 **
C
Age (young/old) 3.23 0.10 ** 3.25 0.10 **
Education (low/high)
O 0.73 0.01 ** 0.64 0.01 **
Denomination: Catholic 36.96 0.53 ** 37.16 0.54 **
Base: none Lutheran, Anglican 17.62 0.19 ** 17.77 0.19 **
Orthodox 29.31 0.23 ** 29.06 0.23 **
R Christian Denomination 41.45 0.34 ** 41.61 0.34 **
Context variables R

Human Develompent Indexb (low/high) 3.85 0.02 n.s.
Welfare State Expendituresc (low/high) EC 0.038 0.10 **
Type of religious culture: Nationalist popular church 19.70 0.20 ** 17.18 0.17 **
Base: state church Syncretistic popular religion 26.24 0.21 ** 18.52 0.15 **
Denominational system 10.63 0.12 ** 9.91 0.11 **

Explained variance (%) TE
Individual variables 20.7 21.0
Context variables 20.0 20.7
Total explained (R2) 40.7 41.7
Not-explained variance (%) D
Individual variables 56.1 55.8
Context variables 3.2 2.5
Total not explained 59.3 58.3
N PR 32.045 33.329
Significance: **p B0.01; n.s. not significant.

a
Religiousness scale: frequency of church attendance, prayer, belief in God, belief in hell. Source: ISSP-1998.
b
Source: Human Development Report 2000.
c
O
Social security and welfare expenditure as percentage of GDP. Source: World Development Survey 1997.
145
O
F
church(es) of one’s country requires a more comprehensive analysis of single cases, taking
into consideration the historical development of the churches, the denominational, the
ethnic and the socio-economic structure, the relationship between the churches and other
465 institutions of society, and many other factors. We are not interested in the single cases as
such (as a social historian of religion would be), but in showing that also in these cases
some general mechanisms are at work. It is not necessary, therefore, to go into the details
of a full historical and descriptive analysis, but we can concentrate on selected, significant
aspects which can be considered as being of central importance. We will chose one
470 representative of each of our four types of religious culture for this short analysis.
State Church Type of Religious Culture the Example of Norway
F
Christianity was introduced around 1000, rather late compared with the rest of
Europe. The whole country was converted within a few decades by royal decree. The
O
population accepted the new religion on the surface, but displayed a strong opposition
475 against Christian norms, such as celibacy and norms of sexual conduct, which contradicted
O
local traditions. For the same reason, monastic forms of religion developed very weakly.
After the Lutheran reformation, the country converted to Protestantism by a royal decree,
PR
without enthusiasm and without much resistance, as had been the case in the times of
Christianization (de Boor & Frenzel, 1964; Amdahl, 1960). Except for some historic episodes
480 of religious movements, such as the Haugian reforms, Norway and Sweden seem to
already have had a weak religious community life in pre-industrial times (Gustafsson, 1962;
Pettersson, 1988). Nevertheless, the state church is a well-organized public institution, D
financed both by the government and by private donations (Vogt, 1972).
Compared with other European societies, Norway and the other Scandinavian
TE
485 countries already had had more egalitarian and democratic elements than most other
European countries in pre-industrial times. The relatively small population size and the
ethnic homogeneity may be explanations for this fact. In former times, the church was an
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Philippines
80,00
R
Ireland
USA
Religiousness Scale
Chile
R
60,00 Portugal
Cyprus
Italy
Slovakia
Spain
O
Canada Austria
40,00 Hungary New Zealand
Australia
Netherlands Switzerland
C
Bulgaria GB W-Germany
Czech Rep. Norway France
Denmark Sweden
Russia
20,00
N
E-Germany
U
0,00 10,00 20,00 30,00 40,00 50,00 60,00

Welfare Expenditures (in % of GDP)
FIGURE 2
Religiousness by welfare state expenditure (%GDP). R2 (religiousness by welfare ex-
penditure) 0.40. Source: ISSP 1998 (see Appendix 1); World Development Report 1997
important agency for social solidarity at the level of local communities. In the twentieth
century, a very dense network of social security and public welfare was established. The
490 state church is still involved in the public welfare system, and it continues to play an
important role as a cultural institution (Amdahl, 1960; Vogt, 1972). For the majority of the
population, however, the religious function of the church is reduced to the celebration of
rites de passages ; the people do not feel any longer a need for spiritual support by religion
in everyday life.
495 Denominational Societies the Example of the United States of America

The importance of religion in the United States can be traced back to the very
beginnings of the formation of the modern state. The first waves of immigrants were
strongly convicted members of religious denominations that were persecuted in their
F
county of origin by the state churches. Freedom of religion was established in the first
O
500 constitution of the new state. Religion was strictly separated from government and state
authorities, but at the same time it continued to play an important role in public and
O
private life (Bellah, 1975, 1992; Münch, 1986; Riesebrodt, 1990). The formation of ethnically
based religious communities helped to maintain cultural traditions. At the same time,
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religious communities became an important source for second- and third-generation
505 immigrants to build up and sustain a new group identity (Herberg, 1956). Much more than
in Europe, religious communities in the United States are also places for social and cultural
activities. According to data from ISSP-1991, one-third of Americans participate in non-
religions activities of their religious community. D
Two further factors contribute to the high importance of religious communities in
510 private life. Firstly, kinship ties are more dissolved in the United States than elsewhere
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(Lenski, 1961), and secondly, the system of public social security and welfare support by
the government has a relatively low level. In both regards, the churches fulfil an important
function in closing this gap (Moberg, 1972; Höllinger, 1996). Religion, however, does not
EC
only have social functions in the United States, it also has maintained its religious, moral
515 and ideological functions: the theology of the Protestant denominations legitimizes the
meritocratic system, and at the same time gives spiritual comfort to those who suffer from
the negative consequences of this system.
R
Of course, also the denominational structure, i.e. the existence of a large number of
religious communities competing with each other and thereby adapting themselves more
R
520 easily to the changing individual and societal needs, contributes to the popularity of
religion in the United States (Berger, 1967; Stark & Iannaccone, 1994). The comparison with
O
other countries, such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, however, shows, that the
‘competition’ or ‘market effect’ of denominational systems does not occur automatically.
C
The high level of religiousness in the United States can be explained only by the interplay
525 of all factors mentioned.
N
Ireland Nationalist Popular Catholicism

U
Owing to the peculiarities of Celtic culture and religion, Christianity was introduced
in Ireland earlier and in a much more positive way than in most other regions of Central
and Northern Europe. Not the political authorities, but the druids, the Celtic religious elite,
530 who adopted the Christian monastic way of life in an exemplary way, were the principal
medium for Christianization. From the fifth century, Christianity diffused gradually, by
means of an intense process of religious instruction. Religious and political authority
remained separate. Contrary to most parts of Europe, where the church was governed by
bishops leading the life of feudal lords, the highest ranks of the Irish Church were occupied
535 by abbots. As a consequence of this, Catholicism was already very deeply and positively
rooted in the Irish population in the Middle Ages (Hughes, 1987; McNally, 1978).
Knowing this background facilitates the understanding of the fervent resistance of
Catholic Ireland against English foreign rule and its attempt to introduce Anglicanism. The
union of clergy and population in the century-long fight against English rule of course
540 reinforced the popularity of the church and explains the outstandingly high level of
religiousness in Ireland up to present times (Fennell, 1969; Carey, 1983).
While Ireland was a relatively poor country until a few decades ago, it has
undergone a rapid economic development in recent years, in particular since it became
F
member of the European Union. The level of public welfare and social security provisions,
O
545 however, has remained relatively low. Maybe this is due to the fact that kin and local
community ties are still rather strong in Ireland; and probably also because the local parish
O
churches have maintained their function of providing material support more than
elsewhere (Fulton, 1987).
PR
Syncretistic Popular Religion the Case of Chile
550 Catholicism was imposed on the indigenous population during the colonial
expansion of the Spanish Empire, and remained the official state church until 1925. The
D
diffusion of Christianity was effected by religious orders. The Indian tribes, whose
descendants still constitute the majority of the population, formally accepted Christianity,
TE
but at the same time maintained their indigenous creeds and rituals, often disguised
555 under the surface of Christian rituals (Drexler, 2000). The notorious lack of clergy
AQ4 exacerbated the deepening of Christian creeds and morality (Gutierrez, 1957). The
EC
syncretism of indigenous and Christian religious elements has been maintained to

modern times (Parker, 1997, 1998).
As in the other South American Countries, the Catholic church is split into two parts:
560 a conservative faction, loyal to the Roman Vatican, and supporting the social and political
R
interests of the ruling political elite, and a left-wing faction, supporting the social interests
of the poor by means of organizing base communities, which provide mutual social
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support and strengthen the political consciousness of the masses (Boff, 1992).
The political, social and economic development of Chile in the twentieth century
O
565 was characterized by extreme forms of social inequality, which led to the socialist
revolution under Salvador Allende, and in turn to the right wing counter-revolution and
C
military dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet. The violent outbreak of social class conflicts
in the period of Allende, as well as the high level of political violence and oppression
N
during the two decades of the military dictatorship, and the continuing poverty of a
570 considerable part of the population, are definitely important factors for explaining the
U
high susceptibility to religion in Chile.

During recent decades, newly emerging Pentecostal churches propagating highly
emotional and ecstatic forms of religion have attracted a considerable part of the poor
indigenous population (Martin, 1990; Parker, 1997; Oro and Semán, 2000). This remarkable
575 shift from Catholicism to Pentecostalism, which can be observed in many South American
countries, indicates that a considerable part of the population does not have strong bonds
with Catholicism. However, this also shows that South Americans are susceptible to
religion in general, and in particular to forms of religion that facilitate the integration of
indigenous creeds and rituals (belief in spirits, religious ecstasy), as is the case in the
580 Pentecostal churches.
Summary and Discussion

Recent research on religion and the role of churches points to the fact that there is
no unique trend towards a decline in religiosity in the different countries and regions of
the world. Rather, organized religion as well as personal religious beliefs and participation
F
585 continue to play a significant role in advanced and wealthy, as well as in less developed,
poor countries. In the latter, in many cases religious revivals can even be observed, such as
O
in Latin America or in the Arabic-Islamic world. It is evident, however, that the meaning
and the role of religion and churches differ considerably in these different regions of the
O
world.
590 In this paper, I have developed a general framework for the comparative analysis of
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religious decline, persistence and revival, combining a qualitative typological with a
quantitative statistical approach. I started from the general thesis that religion fulfils three
functions for individuals, social groups and societies: (1) the provision of human existence
with a transcendental meaning, given such inevitable basic facts as human suffering and
595 death; (2) the provision for practical life within the world with social meaning and support;
D
(3) and the legitimation and justification of national and political institutions and public
life. These three functions are relevant in any society to varying degrees, depending on the
TE
social, economic and political context and situation.
The first hypothesis postulated that the level of religiousness depends on the
600 organizational structure and the characteristics of the theology and the rituals of a religion.
EC
The empirical results clearly show that people belonging to smaller religious denomina-
tions are more religious than members of comprehensive mass churches. Secondly, our
results show that the level of religiousness is higher among members of churches which
put more emphasis on the communal, emotional and ritualistic elements of religion, as is
R
605 the case in Catholicism and in the Orthodox churches, than in the Lutheran and Anglican
churches, which have undergone a strong shift towards an individualistic, anti-ritualistic
R
and rationalistic forms of religion since the Reformation.

Following classical and recent writings on the sociology of religion (Troeltsch, 1992;
O
Berger, 1967; Weber, 1979; Martin, 1978), the second hypothesis builds on a classification
610 of religious culture and state society church relations, distinguishing four types: state
C
church systems , where one particular church has historically had the position of a
dominant church, backed by the governing political elite; denominational systems , where
N
many churches have existed and have competed with each other for a long time;
nationalist popular church systems , where a dominant church helped to preserve the
U
615 cultural and national identity of a people during long periods of foreign domination; and
syncretistic popular churches of ex-colonial countries with a predominantly non-Western
population. The results of our study confirm that religiousness is significantly lower in
countries which formerly had a state church system than in the other three types of
religious culture.
620 The third hypothesis is concerned with the significance of the welfare state: the
more comprehensive the welfare state is in a country, the less important organized
religion will be due to the fact that a comprehensive welfare state takes over most of the
educational and cultural functions that churches carried out in earlier times or still carry
out today. The multilevel regression analysis clearly showed that at the aggregate level
625 there exists practically no correlation between religiosity and the level of socio-economic
development. However, the level of welfare expenditures is significantly associated with
religiosity in the 28 countries under consideration. No consistent empirical support was
found for the second part of this hypothesis, stating that religiosity should be higher
among the poorer strata, especially in less developed countries (while the reverse could be
630 true in highly developed countries). Rather, it seems that the specific life-experiences,
values and patterns of thinking of different social groups are superimposed on the overall
socio-economic situation and the predominant (religious) culture of a country.
F
The quantitative analyses were then supplemented by qualitative sketches of the
O
historical-institutional characteristics of state church society relations in four cases which
635 can be considered as paradigmatic for the types mentioned before: Norway as a country
O
with a highly developed welfare state and a very low level of religiosity of its population;
Ireland as an exemplary case of a nationalist popular church system in this country,
PR
Catholicism helped to preserve national and cultural identity during centuries of British
rule; the United States as a country with a denominational structure which, in spite of its
640 high level of socio-economic development, still today exhibits a high level of popular
religiosity; and Chile as a case of a syncretistic religious system where the native
population accepted Christianity only at a superficial level but maintained many earlier,
D
indigenous creeds and rituals; today, a religious revival, especially among the lower
classes, can be seen, a revival which is evidently due also to large internal splits in levels of
TE
645 income and living, and widespread unemployment and poverty.
What is the relevance of these findings from a more general point of view? First, this
study clearly confirms findings of other researchers who showed that religiosity does not
EC
decline and disappear even in some of the most advanced countries of the world (Greeley
& Hout, 1999; Casanova, 1994; Martin, 1978, 1990; Inglehart & Baker, 2000; Zulehner &
650 Denz, 1993). The very low level of religiosity in North-western Europe (Scandinavia, Great
Britain, the Netherlands) might rather be a consequence of the social and political
R
developments pointed to in our hypotheses (level of welfare state expansion, imposition

of religion from above) than of secular, worldwide trends associated with modernization.
R
Second, the religious revivals that we can observe today in many less developed
655 countries and regions of the world should not be considered only as retrograde, anti-
O
modernist or even reactionary movements. Rather, we must understand them as reactions

to, and strategies of coping with, the high level of social insecurity, the anomic life-
C
conditions of societies in rapid transition from pre-industrial-rural to industrial-urban ways

of life, and the emergence of extreme forms of poverty, social inequality and ethnic and
N
660 racial discrimination. Religious revival in these countries and regions of the world may also
be linked to the widespread popular and elite disappointment with economic and political
U
ideologies influential in earlier periods, such as socialism and communism in the 1960s and
1070s, or economic liberalism in the 1980s and 1990s.
Third, there are several additional and new research questions which can and should
665 be raised following our analysis. Examples include: (1) why is Catholicism so much more
resistant to secularization as compared with other Christian denominations? Is it because
ritual elements are still more important or is it because of the substantive Catholic ethics,
doctrines and teachings on social reform and transcendental issues? (2) What is the
specific connection between Orthodox Christianity and social and political life in Eastern
670 Europe, particularly in Russia today? It has been argued that there existed a close
relationship between the Orthodox Russian spiritual traditions and the attempt by the
Bolsheviks to establish a just and fraternal society (Noetzel, 1923). Since Soviet
communism in many regards had quasi-religious characteristics (Topitsch, 1973), this
could help to understand the strong decline of Orthodox religiosity during its rule. (3)
675 What is the role of religion in a country like Japan, which does not have formal,
institutionalized churches like Europe and America? Evidently, the absence of such
churches does not lead to a weaker adherence of the population to ethical principles and
social norms, as the rather low levels of social problems like divorce or criminality in Japan
F
seem to show. (4) We could ask what the ‘ethos’ behind the modern European welfare
680 state might be. If the welfare state in fact substitutes for organized religion and religiosity,
O
it must also have some transcendental elements, providing meaning to everyday life of
men and women. (5) Finally, what is the role played by world religions, such as Islam or
O
Buddhism, not analysed in our paper? Some of the main differences in patterns of socio-
economic development, societal integration and political process between the European-
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685 American world, investigated in this paper, and regions such as the Arab-Islamic world, the
Indian Subcontinent, South-Eastern Asia and China, might well have to do a lot with their
religious heritage.
D
NOTES
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1. The classification is based on information about the historic development of religion in
690 the individual countries, taken from Mol (1972), Höllinger (1996) and other sources, as
well as on the empirical data on the denominational structure of the countries presented
EC
in Appendices 1 and 2.
2. Latvia and Northern Ireland were excluded from the analysis, because these two
countries do not fit into any of the four categories. Japan and Israel are the only two
R
695 participants of ISSP-1998 with a non-Christian majority. The religious culture of these
countries is very different from that of any Christian country. In addition, in the case of
R
Japan the comparability of the indicators of religiousness is problematic. Therefore we

excluded these two countries from our analysis.
O
3. The Human Development Index includes the three indicators of GDP, life expectancy and
700 rate of alphabetization.
C
4. This category refers to: members of the Lutheran Church in the Scandinavian Countries
and in Germany; and members of the Church of England in Great Britain, Australia and
N
New Zealand.
5. Respondents with non-Christian religions were excluded, because their number is
U
705 relatively small and they are split into many different religions, so that it is difficult to give
a meaningful interpretation of the results.
6. We also tested a regression model including the Gini-index instead of the level of welfare
state expenditures. In this model, the Gini-index has only a very weak effect on
religiousness.
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View publication stats
Appendix 1: Indicators of Religiousness, by Country
Church attendance Prayer

Country
U N (once a week), % (several times a week), % Belief in God, % Belief in hell, % Religiousness scale (means)
Australia 1.310 18 30 52 30 3585
Austria N 1.002 19 31 51 31 4033
Bulgaria 1.102 n.a. 16 35 25 3167
Canada 974 16 29 60 46 4279
Chile 1.503 19 55 91 59 6224
Cyprus
C 1.000 3 28 85 75 5980
Czech Republic O 1.224 7 18 30 22 2571
Denmark 1.114 2 16 34 16 2215
France 1.133 12 20 39 20 2710
Germany, East 1.106 2 8 16 11 1188
Germany, West
R
1.000 7 25 41 35 3399
Great Britain 804 R 13 21 46 32 3388

Hungary 1.000 15 36 52 28 3825
Ireland 1.010 61 45 77 53 6613
Italy 1.008 29 45 73 59 5680
Netherlands 2.020 14
EC 28 44 26 3241
New Zealand 998 13 28 53 37 3729

Norway 1.532 6 19 43 19 2594
Philippines 1.200 46 TE 80 92 88 8054
Poland 1.147 39 56 81 67 6460
Portugal 1.201 27 47 78 64 6200
Russia 1.703 3 16 40 31 2419
Slovak Republic 1.284 30 36 57 49 4813
Slovenia 1.006 13 20 40 31 3119
Spain 2.488 22
D
29 65 37 4484
Sweden 1.189 5 14 26 14 2239
Switzerland 1.204 11 34 PR 44 30 3716
United States 1.284 31 58 77 74 6282
Total 34.446 17 32 53 35 44.25
AQ9 Source: ISSP-1998.

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Christian Religion, Society and the State in the modern World

Article in Innovation The European Journal of Social Science Research · June 2007

Franz Höllinger Max Haller

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AQ8 Stark & McCann not mentioned in text?

CHRISTIAN RELIGION, SOCIETY AND THE

Franz Höllinger, Max Haller and Adriana Valle-Höllinger

Innovation, Vol. 20, No. 2, 2007

134 FRANZ HÖLLINGER ET AL.

CHRISTIAN RELIGION, SOCIETY AND THE STATE 135

Religion as a Means for Providing Meaning to Life and Ethical Principles

136 FRANZ HÖLLINGER ET AL.

The presence of ritual-symbolic and mystical elements is definitely strongest in

hand, if the moral principles of a church become indistinguishable from secular

160 possible in Orthodox Churches and in Protestantism.) In practice, however, Catholicism

many Protestant denominations have approximated their ethical principles to the

according to a specific religious moral conviction (Gesinnungsethik in the sense of Max

CHRISTIAN RELIGION, SOCIETY AND THE STATE 137

Based on these considerations, we can formulate the first two hypotheses:

205 A corresponding relationship can be postulated between denominational countries and

Hypothesis 2b: in denominational countries, where the freedom of religion was

138 FRANZ HÖLLINGER ET AL.

220 Religion as a Means of Providing Support in the Context of Crisis or

240 in these societies. This is expressed in the following hypothesis:

engaged in religion than the higher social strata.

245 The empirical analysis consists of a systematic quantitative cross-national compar-

CHRISTIAN RELIGION, SOCIETY AND THE STATE 139

A central issue of this article is the classification of countries according to their

State Church Systems

Nationalist Popular Church Systems

Syncretistic Popular Religion

140 FRANZ HÖLLINGER ET AL.

context-level variables separately (Engel, 1998; Goldstein, 1995).

Quantitative Empirical Results

Table 1 provides a descriptive overview of the cross-national differences using the

CHRISTIAN RELIGION, SOCIETY AND THE STATE

Monday, 2nd July 2007 18:30:37

Note: data for Bulgaria not available.

142 FRANZ HÖLLINGER ET AL.

Chile Portugal USA

0,75 0,80 0,85 0,90 0,95

CHRISTIAN RELIGION, SOCIETY AND THE STATE 143

means of a highly developed welfare state contributes to a decline of (institutional)

(organized) religion in search for emotional and instrumental support.

religiosity was examined by means of multilevel regression analysis. On the individual

144 FRANZ HÖLLINGER ET AL.

CHRISTIAN RELIGION, SOCIETY AND THE STATE

Monday, 2nd July 2007 18:30:37

Significance: **p B0.01; n.s. not significant.

146 FRANZ HÖLLINGER ET AL.

State Church Type of Religious Culture the Example of Norway

0,00 10,00 20,00 30,00 40,00 50,00 60,00

CHRISTIAN RELIGION, SOCIETY AND THE STATE 147

495 Denominational Societies the Example of the United States of America

Ireland Nationalist Popular Catholicism

148 FRANZ HÖLLINGER ET AL.

syncretism of indigenous and Christian religious elements has been maintained to

high susceptibility to religion in Chile.

CHRISTIAN RELIGION, SOCIETY AND THE STATE 149

Significance: **p B0.01; n.s. not significant.