Religiosity and Marriage. Family Attitudes in Croatia

Veröffentlichungen der Sektion Religions-soziologie der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie

Herausgegeben vonCh. Gärtner, MünsterM. König, GöttingenG. Pickel, LeipzigH. Winkel, PotsdamK. Sammet, Leipzig

Herausgegeben vonDr. habil. Christel Gärtner, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität MünsterProf. Dr. Matthias König, Universität GöttingenProf. Dr. Gert Pickel, Universität LeipzigPD Dr. Heidemarie Winkel, Universität PotsdamDr. Kornelia Sammet, Universität Leipzig

Gert Pickel • Kornelia Sammet (Eds.)

Transformations of Religiosity

Religion and Religiosity in Eastern Europe 1989 – 2010

ISBN 978-3-531-17540-9 ISBN 978-3-531-93326-9 (eBook)DOI 10.1007/978-3-531-93326-9

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EditorsProf. Dr. Gert PickelUniversität Leipzig, Germany

Dr. Kornelia Sammet Universität Leipzig, Germanyalpine

Content Gert Pickel and Kornelia Sammet Introduction: Transformations of Religiosity in Central and Eastern Europe Twenty Years after the Breakdown of Communism .............................................................7 Friedrich Fürstenberg The Religious Factor in Eastern Europe. Theoretical Considerations on Emergent Forms of Secularized Religion. .......................... 21 Willfried Spohn Europeanization, Multiple Modernities and Religion – The Reconstruction of Collective Identities in Postcommunist Central and Eastern Europe .................................. 29 Kornelia Sammet and Daniel Bergelt The Modernization of Gender Relations and Religion: Comparative Analyses of Secularization Processes ............................................................ 51 Gert Pickel and Anja Gladkich Religious Social Capital in Europe Connections between Religiosity and Civil Society............................................................ 69 Gergely Rosta Religiosity and Political Values in Central and Eastern Europe ........................................ 95 Susanne Pickel Do Religious People also in Modernity Elect Religious Parties? The Impact of the Religious Cleavage in Eastern Europe and Western Europe in Comparison .................... 111 Gert Pickel Religiosity and Bonding to the Church in East Germany in Eastern European Comparison – is Germany Still following a Special Path? .............................................. 135 Malina Voicu and Andreea Constantin Religious Revival in Romania: Between Cohort Replacement and Contextual Changes 155 Krunoslav Nikodem Religion and Marriage. Family Attitudes in Croatia ........................................................ 175 Marit Cremer The Instrumentalization of Religious Beliefs and Adat Customery Law in Chechnya .... 197 Authors .............................................................................................................................. 213

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Introduction – Transformations of Religiosity in Central and Eastern Europe Twenty Years after the Breakdown of Communism Gert Pickel and Kornelia Sammet 1. The Transformation of Religion and Religiosity in Central and Eastern Europe Twenty years after the breakdown of communism, the status of religiosity and religion in Central and Eastern Europe remains indeterminate. A large body of empirical work indicates a revitalization of religion (Tomka et. al. 1999, 2008, 2010). However, a comparable number of empirical publications points out that secularization similar to that in the Western world is now taking place or will take place in the near future (Halman/Draulans 2006; Pickel 2009, 2010, 2011; Pollack 2001, 2009). It appears to be common sense that religiosity is undergoing a period of transformation in Central and Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, it is uncertain what the transformation entails. Will previous religions recur with renewed strength, will others – alternative religions or religious movements – take their place (as per the market theory of religiosity), will a kind of spirituality that exceeds organized religion spread (as per the individualization theory of religiosity, see Luckmann 1967) or do many of the processes of ousting the religious in times of socialism merely represent early processes of secularization? Are the Eastern European states turning into the Western course of secularization or are they following a special path of their own?

These contradictory prognosis alone show that there is still need for further empirical research on the topic of religion and religiosity in Central and Eastern Europe. Especially comparative research that provides sound indications of possible trends is still rudimentary (see Pickel/Müller 2009). Of course, available time series data partly cover too short a time period to be able to discern trends in their entirety. In addition, we need to keep in mind that Central and Eastern Europe is by no means a homogeneous region even though the countries share a common Communist background. Nevertheless, these facts do not release research in the field of sociology of religion from transcending assumptions and searching for empirical evidence for the various theoretical propositions.

However, this is not the only challenge. More differentiated case studies (particularly those that consider special cases, speaking in the terms of comparative analysis) that refer to the main approaches in the sociology of religion are lacking as well. Why is there an increase in church membership in Russia, Romania and Bulgaria, while at the same time, the number of members in the Czech Republic and East Germany is stable (or declining)? Why is there such an increase in membership numbers but no increase in religious activities, like church attendance in many of the “revival countries” (such as Russia or the Ukraine)? Does the incredibly high level of religious vitality in Poland generally forbid us to speak of secularization in this instance?

G. Pickel, K. Sammet (Eds.), Transformations of Religiosity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-531-93326-9_1, © VS Verlag für Sozialwisenschaften | Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2012

Gert Pickel and Kornelia Sammet 8

Consequently, it is sensible to distinguish between secularity (see Wohlrab-Sahr/Karstein/Schmidt-Lux 2009), i.e. a state of low religiosity, and secularization, i.e. a process of decreasing religiosity. Processes of secularization may occur both in countries with high (Poland) as well as in countries with low religiosity (East Germany). Secularity is the state of a country, where religiosity has nearby no social relevance or significance (Wilson 1982). Here the distinction between different levels of secularity have to be considered. Dobbelaere (2002) distinguishes secularization at the level of the organisations, the society and the individuals. Casanova point out secularization as process of the separation of church and state, privatization and the erosion of religious beliefs in the population. Therefore a state can be seen as secular, if a strong church-state-separation is established, or, if all three levels of secularity is reached.

Beyond the analysis of the development of religiosity in Central and Eastern Europe, questions concerning the causes as well as the consequences of these processes for the religious realm arise. This pertains to the organizational, societal as well as to the individual sphere. Does nationalism go hand in hand with religion and does it lead to an increase in religious vitality, as in the case of Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina? Can we trace processes of cultural defense (Bruce 2002)? Does the relationship between politics and religion have an impact on the return of the religious – and what kind of consequences do we find in the different countries? Do religious developments have effects on politics and democracy? In how far do family values and religion correspond in Central and Eastern Europe? All in all, there are many questions which should be analyzed empirically.

In this book, we present a number of results that address the processes of transformation of religiosity in Central and Eastern Europe from different viewpoints.1 We aimed to include not only articles that draw on different theoretical approaches from the field of sociology of religion but also articles that cover different aspects of the correspondence between the development of religion and other developments in society. Some articles address the correspondence between nationality and religion, others analyze the interrelation of politics and religion. A third group of papers concentrates on special issues concerning the development of religiosity. We hope that the results presented in this book provide a more concrete picture of the state of religion and religiosity in Central and Eastern Europe today and will enable researchers who are interested in this field to develop ideas to enhance the theoretical and empirical progress in this sector.

1 For comparative purposes, some articles also include Western European countries.

Introduction: Transformations of Religiosity 9

2. Secularization, Revitalization and the Market Approach – Different Approaches in Explaining Religious Vitality in Central and Eastern Europe

In order to prevent the book from turning into a mere conglomerate of individual results and isolated case studies, it is essential to take into account the main current approaches of sociology of religion in detail. Only in doing so we are able to draw inferences that can be generalized to a greater extent than singular analyses. In addition, only the results of this approach satisfy the requirements of comparative analysis and can be related to previous international results. Therefore, the following summary serves to briefly illustrate the most prominent approaches at present that serve to describe and explain religious change.

The first theoretical approach that should be addressed is the thesis of secularization (Berger 1967, Wilson 1982). Proponents of this approach assume that modernization and its adjunct processes (such as urbanization, rationalization, functional differentiation, democratization, etc.) have a negative impact on religion and religiosity. Rationalization in particular is assumed to undermine the belief in God and higher beings. In addition, growing prosperity or an increasing functional differentiation is thought to reduce the vitality of religion in societies. Current empirical research shows that, as pointed out by Marx long ago, feelings of vulnerability in the face of existential threats remain a key factor in driving religiosity in modern times. However, modernization tends to advance socio-eeconomic welfare – which consequently reduces the demand for religion (Norris/Inglehart 2004: 4f.). In conclusion: Based on Karl Marx’ idea that socially deprived citizens seek compensation in the hereafter, it is assumed that socio-economic modernization and the extension of social security by welfare state regimes cause secularization. Furthermore, the social significance and plausibility of religion is undermined by processes of functional differentiation and the growing importance of science as a mode of world explanation (Wilson 1982; Berger 1967). The number of areas where religious explanations are of relevance is reduced to an increasing extent in modern societies and those fields, where religious prescriptions are effective have diminished (Luhmann 2000). Increasingly relegated to the private sector, “religion removes much of the social support that is vital to reinforcing beliefs (…) and encourages a de facto relativism that is fatal to shared beliefs” (Bruce 2002: 20). In this regard, Karel Dobbelaere (2002) speaks of compartmentalization. At the same time, the fact that the social entrenchment of religion is eroding as a consequence of increasing mobility in modernized societies is not to be underestimated. The traditional way of passing on religious culture is undermined due to the dissolution and pluralization of social structures. As a result of these processes, not only do church membership and attendance rates decrease but more and more people no longer regard religion to be important in their lives (Bruce 2002: 41). Overall, this is assumed to be the result of modernization.

A second position, the individualization thesis of religiosity, was developed in contrast to the above-mentioned approach. This attempt acknowledges the impact of modernization on religion but distinguishes between its effects on institutionalized religiosity with its church-oriented view on the one hand and “private” religiosity on the other hand (Luckmann 1967). Whereas the secularization theory asserts the decline of both forms, the individualization thesis expects – for the same reasons outlined in the secularization thesis –


a decline of institutional forms and a privatization of religion but denies a decrease in personal religiosity (Pickel/Müller 2009: 8). The best characterization of modern societies in this sense is “believing without belonging” (Davie 1994). Modernization fosters a pluralization of religion, religious lifestyles and syncretism. Not only do people pick up ideas from different religious traditions and combine them to make up their own “patchwork” religiosity, other parts of their lives (such as football, workouts etc.) may take on religious significance for the individual person.2 At the same time, new types of popular and popularized religion arise (Knoblauch 2009). Thus, religion may lose its significance at the societal level and may become more and more “invisible”; nevertheless, it remains a steady part of people’s lives (Luckmann 1967). This position, which was initially promoted as the thesis of privatization, particularly found resonance in the debates among researchers in the European realm in the course of the emergence of thoughts on the sociological theory of individualization (Beck 1986). Its arguments stress the citizens’ aim for individual growth - which also applies to the religious sector (Beck 2008).

The third position of interest in current sociology of religion is the market approach. This approach, which is referred to as the new paradigm in the sociology of religion in some instances (Warner 1993) emphasizes the power of the market and competition between religious producers. The approach is based on rational choice theoretical assumptions but mainly focuses on the supply side. The demand side, i.e. the individual’s demand for religious goods, is held constant. Proponents of the market approach claim that the conditions of the modern age do not necessarily cause religion to diminish but may even foster it, namely because it always falls short of its own (Finke/Stark 1988, 2006; Iannaccone 1991; Stark/Iannaccone 1994; Iannaccone/Finke/Stark 1997). Therefore, religious vitality is a result of the competition of religious producers. This reflects an economic principle which is deduced from a straight-forward market approach. The vitality of the religious field is particularly affected by the degree of the separation of church and state, the degree of religious freedom and the degree of pluralism of religious providers: The more pluralistic the religious field and the more market-oriented its organizational forms, the more religious vitality is encouraged. Under competitive conditions, the providers of religious services are forced to face the particular challenge of retaining their members and of attracting new members, while responding to the needs of their clientele and offering efficient services. Thus, a religious monopoly of a particular church has a negative effect on religious vitality. This is due to the fact that officials become indifferent and “lazy” in their work and lose their ability to be socially responsive. To them, exerting themselves is no longer necessary.

As competition is thought to be good for religion, a religious monopoly causes a society’s religious vitality to decrease. Customers who are dissatisfied with a religious product in a pluralistic religious market can look for another religious product that better suits their needs, while their only alternative in a monopolistic religious structure is to turn away from religion altogether (Pickel/Müller 2009: 9). The prerequisite for the creation of a pluralistic religious market is, according to the supporters of the economic market model,

2 Already several decades ago, Georg Simmel (2002) spoke of religion-like types (“religioid”) in this regard, in

order to differentiate it from religiosity.


the strict separation of church and state (Chaves/Cann 1992; Iannaccone/Finke/Stark 1997; Fox 2008). Free and fair religious competition, they claim, can only develop under conditions where the state allows the religious market free reign and refrains from favouring any particular religious group. Only under conditions of fair competition, are new religious groups not faced with excessive start-up costs, allowing them to access the market and to compete with more traditional groups. Once a variety of religious products is available in the religious field, the level of religious commitment will increase. Then, religion will develop a vitality that it would not have achieved under monopolistic structures. In some instances, conflict may occur instead of competition. Chart 1: Basic theories of the Development of Religion

Secularization Theory

Individualization Theory

Market Model of Religion

Authors Brian Wilson, Steve Bruce, Ronald Inglehart

Thomas Luckmann, Grace Davie, Danièle Hervieu-Léger

Rodney Stark, Roger Finke, Laurence Iannaccone

Axiom A fundamental contrast between religion and modernity leads to a decline in the social importance of religion

The religious orientations of the individuals are constant, only the bonding to church varies – and mostly decreases.

There is a constant societal demand for religion, but religious vitality depends on the supply provided by the religious market (the churches and sects)

Relevant theory Classical modernization theory

Theory of individualization and privatization (of religion)

Supply-oriented market theory and the thesis of religious pluralization

Main hypothesis Religions lose their social significance and position as regards the interpretation of the world

Loss of relevance of the institutionalized religion; continuing relevance of personal religiosity

Supply on the religious market determines religious vitality

Expectations for Eastern Europe

Further decrease of all forms of religious orientations and social bindings (depending on the countries’ state of modernization)

Vitalization of private religiosity combined with low rates of church involvement

Revitalization of religiosity after the breakdown of communist repressions due to the establishment of a free religious market

Source: Authors’ compilation. The predictions regarding the development of religiosity in Eastern Europe highly differ depending on the approach upon which they are based. The supporters of the religious market model consider the end of socialism to be an excellent opportunity for the Eastern European countries to establish a religious market which is no longer regulated by the traditionally locally well-established churches. Consequently, the process of religious revitalization observable in some Eastern European countries today, may be the result of


this new religious market. Thus, the predominance of traditional religions and the favours they enjoyed were abolished in socialist times and the Eastern Europeans, many of which are seeking religious supplies nowadays, are actually waiting for religious supplies.

The individualization thesis of religiosity takes on a position that is similar to a certain extent. It also takes note of the liberalization of the religious market. However, unlike the supporters of the religious market model, the proponents of the individualization thesis do not discern a return to any kind of religious institution and few returns to religious social movements. Rather, they consider the situation in Eastern Europe to be the perfect starting point for the development of private patchwork religiosity and syncretism.

Finally, adherents to the secularization theory primarily consider the developments in Eastern Europe as an early development of a global process of secularization. In the end, the Eastern European states will also follow the Western European secularization trend. More recent approaches in the tradition of secularization theory (Norris/Inglehart 2004; Pickel 2009; Stolz 2009) relate these developments to the surrounding context and point out that it is necessary to take into account several – partly contradictory – processes in the analysis of the development of Eastern European religiosity. The interdependence of nation and religion or religion and politics is of particular importance in this respect. Religion may play a particularly relevant role in the formation of national identities – and does so in the Eastern European states that are currently encouraging or reencouraging their identities. Steve Bruce (2002) has elaborated the idea of a “cultural defense“, which refers to identity-building boundary-defining processes at the national level.

However, only empirical analysis can provide sound assertions regarding the validity of these interpretations, Therein lies the contribution of this book. Consequently, the large majority of the articles in this book present analyses of current issues of religious development in Central and Eastern Europe by referring to a certain theoretical approach as well as empirical data and, for the most part, by employing empirical methods of socio-scientific analysis. 3. Central and Eastern Europe – and the Development of Religion Over the last years, researchers in the field of sociology of religion have split into two fractions concerning their predictions of the development of religion in Eastern Europe. On the one hand, there are those who consider the development in Eastern Europe to reflect a more or less early secularization (Bruce 2000; Pollack 2001, 2008, 2009; Müller 2009). Consequently, they predict that the development of religion in Eastern Europe will resemble the Western European secularization trend. On the other hand, there are those who support the thesis of the revitalization of religion (Tomka 1995, 2006, 2010; Zulehner/Tomka/Naletova 2008). They point to a significant growth of various aspects of religiosity in Eastern Europe as well as to the abolition of socialist political repressions. In addition, there are those – few – who adhere to the religious market model. They interpret the apparent religious impetus as a reaction to the new opportunities after the annulment of the “hyperregulation“ of the religious market during socialist times (Froese/Pfaff 2001, 2009; Stark 2000). However, this approach has not been widely received due to the fact that


its considerations match the various kinds of developments in the Eastern European countries to a very different extent (Pickel 2009: 109-110). For example, neither did the growing number of additional assumptions (historical context, competition) maintain the validity of the basic assumptions nor did they succeed in convincingly explaining the puzzling phenomenon of the return to the traditionally established religions in Eastern Europe. This does not necessarily imply that the market model is generally and entirely incapable of explaining religious vitality in Eastern Europe. However, apparently, the necessary prerequisites for its application do not yet exist. Compared to others, it is very likely that the market model is actually inadequate as a general explanatory model. According to the results of the studies presented in this book (G. Pickel, Voicu), this appears to be the case with respect to Eastern Europe.

So far, ideas proposed by the individualization thesis of religiosity have only been applied complementarily and have never been discussed as an explanatory model in its own right for Eastern Europe. Researchers have mainly focused on the remarkable success of the main churches which was accompanied by an increase in subjective religiosity. However, as several analyses have shown, it is more likely that the current situation is to be described as Müller (2009: 81) puts it: ”So far, there is not much evidence that the de-institutionalization of religion will be completely compensated for by an increase in individualized, syncretistic religiousness“.

However, in-depth analyses have yet to be published. The results presented in this book seem to only partially suggest the emergence of non-institutionalized, entirely privatized forms of religion in Eastern Europe after the political changes. On the contrary, in many instances, institutionalization has been reinforced (see Nikodem, Voicu).

What remains are the contradictory positions of the secularization thesis and the revitalization thesis. Also in this instance, the basic assumptions are not entirely persuasive. Religiosity is increasing across the board. Doesn’t this contradict secularization? Maybe it does not when taking the context into account. The supporters of the secularization thesis do not deny the fact that the end of socialism and the prevalent repressions of the churches and religion has established a basis for the revival of religion in Eastern Europe. The fact that the revival did not occur instantly but rather over time is to be attributed to the repercussions of anticlerical socialization (Müller 2009: 81).

On the other hand, it seems plausible to assume that there are a number of different processes that run in parallel. In part, the Eastern European countries are subject to massive modernization spurts. As suggested by secularization theory, these may cause religious vitality to cease if they outdo the concurrent “recovery” of religion (Pickel 2009: 115-118). De facto, the Eastern European states may have to reestablish a ‘normal’ level of religion beforehand (during this time, religion is revitalized). They may then follow the Western European secularization trend (Pickel 2009: 116). The interrelation of religion and national identity (see Spohn, Cremer), religion and politics or the cultural religious paths (Norris/Inglehart 2004) are particularly relevant in this respect. Due to the processes discernable in Croatia (see Nikodem) and Romania (Voicu) as well as Slovenia or Poland today, it seems reasonable to assume that the direction of the development of religion will reverse once it has reached its zenith.


Due to these contradictory developments, it is not possible to pronounce a final verdict in favour of the “contextualized secularization theory“ (Pickel 2009: 118). For example, it is difficult to causally relate the data at hand to these explanatory approaches. Other developments and explanations are also probable. However, the revitalization thesis’ mere reference to the observable increases in religious indicators do not suffice to refute the secularization theory’s concept which is, nota bene, related to socio-economic contextual factors. This discloses one of the problems of the undiluted ideas on the revitalization of religion: They are only loosely related to fundamental theoretical concepts of the sociology of religion. Most of their explanatory power is derived from individual case studies as well as the fact that religiosity has returned since the breakdown of socialism. Many of the studies indicate that the countries are similar in this respect, which plausibly suggests more universal trends. The interdependence of nation and religion (Cremer, Nikodem, Rosta, Spohn, Voicu) is of particular relevance in this respect.

The spread of secularization is especially apparent when taking into account the relationship between religion and politics or political behaviour at the individual level. Religion’s impact on politics rather seems to decrease despite continuing processes of religious revitalization. The religious cleavage (S. Pickel) as well as its relation with political trust (Rosta) are on the decline. On the other hand, religious networks seems to be “on the rise” (Pickel/Gladkich). Perhaps, they represent the new form of religious organization in modern civil societies. Also the relationship between family values or gender norms and religion remains distinctly perceivable. Apparently, in this regard, modernization serves as an equalizer, even though it does not entirely level all differences, such as the differences between men and women (Sammet/Bergelt). 4. About this Book The idea to publish this book evolved at a conference in Leipzig in the fall of 2009.3 At the conference, the results concerning the developments in Central and Eastern Europe were ambivalent and anything else but clear. On the one hand, there were indications of a religious revival, on the other hand there were signs that secularization was also taking place, especially after a temporary moratorium of the increase in religiosity. Not only did this reveal that the development of religion was uncertain. At the same time, these ambivalences raised the question in how far religion and politics are interdependent. Will religion return as an important factor in politics after the termination of a “quasi-religious” socialism or are we faced with early secularization which will largely and permanently prevents the comeback of religion’s influence?

The relationship between religion and the nation as observed in several countries gives reason to assume that the assumption of a general loss of religion’s impact on politics is questionable. Particularly in young nations, religion may make a major contribution to the process of identity formation, especially if the neighbouring countries have a different religious cultural heritage as in the case of South Eastern Europe. Therefore, it is well

3 Papers focusing on the situation in Eastern Germany have allready been published in Pickel/Sammet 2011.


worthwhile to scrutinize these countries, as explicitly done in the case studies on Croatia and Romania in this book.

The outline of the book is straightforward. The introductory articles serve to provide the basics for the discussion of the transformation of religion in Central and Eastern Europe. They address general thoughts on Eastern European religiosity such as the idea that it may actually reflect a largely individualized phenomenon as well as the question of the historical embeddedness of religion in processes of national identity formation in Eastern European states. These thoughts are then elaborated in a systematically comparative perspective. The empirical analyses focus on the fundamentals of the relationship between religion and sex as well as religion’s impact on the democratization process. Depending on the specific research question (such as the relationship between religion and gender equality, religion and democracy, religious and political values), the analyses present comparisons of European or Eastern European countries. These broad-scale analyses are complemented by case studies on East Germany, Croatia, Romania and Chechnya.

Friedrich Fürstenberg’s introductory article addresses theoretical questions concerning the “religious factor“ in Eastern Europe. According to the author, it ought to be considered whether religiosity in Central and Eastern Europe appears as individualized religiosity, traditional lay piety or certain collective social manifestations of religion that may deviate in part from today’s Western European understanding. Fürstenberg argues that religious sociological analyses should be related to the social context. In his opinion, the specific circumstances in a country prove to be important predictors of the traceable levels of religious vitality. He points out that religion and religiosity should not be reduced to conscious and statistically observable aspects. Instead, diffuse and subconscious aspects of religion and religiosity may also occupy a part in people’s everyday lives.

Willfried Spohn expounds one of the main questions of comparative sociology of religion: In how far can current characteristics and trends of religious vitality in each of the Central and Eastern European societies be derived from historical trajectories? He refers to the concept of multiple modernities by Eisenstadt and identifies religion’s multi-dimensional role in the post-communist societies. On the one hand, there are several ways in which secularization has taken place, on the other hand, there are trends toward a revitalization of religion. In this respect, the interaction of nation and religion is of particular importance as it frequently leads to the establishment of collective identities – especially in newly established or re-established states. Due to these various trends, classifications such as post-secular or post-Christian appear to be unsuitable labels for the diverse developments in Europe.

Kornelia Sammet and Daniel Bergelt analyze the interaction of religion and gender. Surprisingly clearly and invariably, the macro perspective indicates that women are usually more religious than men independent of the cultural context. The results attest that these notions are related to gender norms: The more traditional they are, attributing different spheres to the sexes – work to men and family to women – the greater is the difference in religiosity between the sexes. In addition to the macro perspective, the authors also go into detail and strive to refine the results by taking into account qualitative research material using the example of East Germany With regard to the research question East Germany


appears as an extreme case: it is characterized by a high acceptance of egalitarian gender norms and a low level of religiosity and church affiliation.

Anja Gladkich and Gert Pickel ask whether something resembling religious social capital exists in Europe. And indeed, as Robert Putnam finds in the U.S., structural religious social capital (networks) as well as cultural social capital (interpersonal and interreligious trust) exist in almost all European countries. Cultural religious social capital should be divided into bonding and bridging social capital. The former is problematic when it comes to social integration, whereas the latter eases social integration. Structural religious social capital is higher in Western Europe than in Eastern Europe. The level of modernization is a crucial explanatory factor in this respect. In addition, it explains differences in religious social capital in general. It seems that secularization supports the growth of religious social capital and social integration, but undermines traditional forms of religiosity and church bonding.

Gergely Rosta considers the case of Hungary in comparative perspective. He pays particular attention to the relationship between religion and politics. Despite the heterogeneous development trends of religion, the influence of religion on politics seems to have decreased in most Eastern European countries, even though it has not ceased entirely. This may be mainly due to the recurring institutionalization of religion in Eastern Europe. Contradictory processes of religious revitalization and decreasing trust might indicate that those who are disappointed in politics pin their hopes on religion.

Susanne Pickel outlines that social cleavages – and particularly religious cleavages – continue to have an impact on voting behaviour in Europe, although the impact has decreased over the decades. She shows that in Eastern Europe, religion has consistently influenced voting behaviour, albeit to a very different extent. Neither did “political cleavages“ generally disappear during the era of socialism, nor does their existence generally embody a “frozen“ aspect of the foundation of political parties. However, the impact of religion on politics is on the decline.

Gert Pickel’s article also covers East Germany and relates it to the other Central and Eastern European countries. He concludes that the low levels of religiosity in East Germany are not so exceptional after all when taking into consideration systematic explanatory factors. East Germany only appears to be exceptional when considering the frequencies and when stating that the particularly disadvantageous mélange of political repressions protestantism and modernization is unique. In addition, East Germany actually has not followed a truly special path as it features a continuous trend toward increasing levels of secularization.

In their empirical analysis, Malina Voicu and Andree Constantin focus on Romania. Romania in particular has experienced a remarkable revitalization of religion since the major political changes. This evolved in two different stages: While the first stage was characterized by a major increase in religiosity as a reaction to the economic crisis and social insecurity, the second stage resulted from an increasing association of religion and national feelings in the course of a slowing but continuing increase in religiosity. It is interesting to note that the existing differences in the levels of religiosity of those people who were socialized during socialist times and those who were socialized during pre- or postcommunist times are slowly disappearing, apparently. However, there is no saying


whether the process of revitalization will continue or whether the trend will resemble the European secularization trend once it has reached a certain “normal level“.

Studying the case of Croatia, Krunoslav Nikodem analyzes the relationship between religion and family values. Generally, levels of religiosity are dropping slightly in Croatia – however, the level of religious vitality is very high overall. After an extended period of religious revitalization, the impact of secularization appears to have become more prominent with respect to functional differentiation and everyday rules of conduct. For example, people have begun to turn away form traditional family values. Religious revitalization in Croatia appears to have reached its zenith and seems to be subjected to the effects of modernization.

Marit Cremer extends the book’s perspective to include the Caucasus and thus presents the case of a country which is frequently presented in the media but is seldom studied in the field of sociology of religion. She provides an historical overview of the religious and political developments in this region and describes the – frequently very tense - relationship between the Chechen customary law (the Adat), Islam and the secular Russian constitution. Her account illustrates that the customary law, which is essential in establishing the national identity, has repeatedly checked Islamization attempts. Today, the competing claims of the Adat and the Sharia entail that there is no generally accepted basis for decisions on matters pertaining to family law. Therefore, disputes are almost always decided to the detriment of women.

Introductions usually conclude with acknowledgements and dedications. In line with this tradition, we would like to thank Wiebke Breustedt, who revised and translated most of the articles in this book and Claudia Götze, who formatted them. We would also like to thank the German Science Foundation (DFG) for their financial support.

5. Conclusion As mentioned in the description of the various theoretical approaches in the sociology of religion in section 2, the consequences resulting from the developments in Eastern Europe differ. The proponents of the market model considered the end of socialism as an opportunity for religious revitalization in Eastern European countries. This is indeed the case in several Eastern European countries. Unfortunately, the validity of the approach immediately seems disputable. For example, in Poland, East Germany, the Czech Republic and, in the meantime, in Slovenia, religious membership, religious behaviour and religious convictions are decreasing. It is controversial, to say the least, in how far the additional assumptions of the market model resolve the issue (Froese/Pfaff 2009). The articles in this book present a rather sceptical point of view. The country studies also show that the religious market appears to be rather irrelevant in explaining religious trends. In addition, apparently, people usually seem to return to the culturally established religions and denominations in the respective countries rather than turn to new religious movements.

Furthermore, there is no real wide-ranging emergence of religious spirituality beyond organized religion, despite what the individualization theory of religiosity suggests. While there are some people who turn to these new types of religiosity, the numbers are few. At


the same time, even though personal religiosity exceeds religious practices and religious institutionalization, the trends’ courses are seldom diachronic but rather synchronic. When speaking of individualization, it may be said that it influences the kinds of conclusions people draw from their religiosity and less so the type of religiosity itself. Neither do Eastern European religious trends simply follow the secularization processes in Western Europe. Not only do these countries exhibit possibly temporary processes of religious revitalization. In several countries, institutionalized religion and politics seems to have established permanent coalitions. In this sense, religion may assume a vital role in politics.

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The Religious Factor in Eastern Europe – Theoretical Considerations on Emergent Forms of Secularized Religion Friedrich Fürstenberg 1. Introduction Sociological investigations into the presence of the “religious factor” in post-communist societies are prone to numerous misconceptions and confusions. This becomes obvious particularly when data and their interpretation are compared both explicitly and implicitly against the background of experiences in Western Europe. The social transformations after the collapse of the Soviet orbit and in the course of German re-unification present striking examples. Depending on the point of view, attempts at argumentative data interpretation are linked with home-based patterns of thinking which are only partially suitable to compre-hend structural changes. Searching for their object, sociologists of religion may fail to con-sider the prerequisites of its manifestations. Thus, comparisons of the intensity of church adherence and religious orientation are made even though they actually need an abstract, trans-culturally valid measure. Instead, we find either dogmatic definitions or strictly for-mal data modeling. Though they may be adequately evaluated quantitatively, when related to Eastern Europe, they often do not meet the standards of data collection and “qualitative embeddedness”. 2. Orientation Frames for Perceiving Religious Phenomena Religious phenomena related to Eastern Europe are perceived and interpreted according to specific guidelines. These may in fact suffer from a socio-cultural bias. In Western Germa-ny, a commonly accepted distinction between religion, based upon an institutionalized community of faith, and religiosity as a private search for affirmation of existential mean-ing has emerged. Observed tendencies in the development of this pattern also served to make assumptions about societal change. Empirical reference data reflect the extent of church adherence as well as the intensity of articulated components of faith and relevant practices. Noticeably, diminished societal relevance of institutionalized religion, conceived as “secularization”, and the alienation from traditional convictions as a consequence of increasing “individualization”, often combined with increased indifference towards church affiliation, mark the general trend. These components may be mutually inforcing (Pollack 2003).

Such a view has a long tradition in German sociology of religion. One may recollect the thesis maintained by Georg Simmel and later by Hans Paul Bahrdt, that modern life is seg-mented into a public (institutionally regulated by secular authorities) and private (increa-singly emancipated) sphere. According to José Casanova (2004), secularization and indivi-


Friedrich Fürstenberg 22

dualization (increased subjectivity) coincide with the remainders of Christian cultural iden-tity, thus providing the background for an emerging “civic religion”.

The adoption of such a hypothetical pattern as a guideline for research and the interpre-tation of its results need to be critically reflected when applied to Eastern Europe. David Martin has posed the fundamental question whether there is an Eastern European pattern of secularization (2009). He refers to the historical divide between the three dominant deno-minations: Protestantism, Catholicism and Orthodoxy, which in his opinion are characte-rized by a graded proneness to secularization. Protestantism followed the path of modernity towards personal commitment and individual life-styles, while Catholicism, though more strongly characterized by communal devotion, is susceptible to individualization due to its rational exposition of dogma and its rationalized organization. At the opposite end, Ortho-doxy is characterized by strong communal links, active popular devotion and ritual acts. “The world itself is not a neutral theatre or stage for purely human action, but impregnated with divine manifestations and malign infestations” (Martin 2009: 134). Martin hence in-fers that Orthodoxy is the least exposed to modernization and secularization.

As a second decisive factor affecting the trend towards secularization, Martin refers to the relative strength of the relation between religion and the national myth. The preserva-tion of national identity, especially as part of a resistance against alien domination and tyranny, has played an important but varying role in the relationship between Church and State: “There is a scale of resistance to secularisation dependent on the role of the Church in relation to national identity and alien rule, negative in Czech Lands, in Estonia, and (for very complex reasons) in East Germany, ambiguous in Hungary, positive in Croatia, Slo-vakia, Serbia and maybe in Bulgaria, and very positive in Poland-Lithuania and Romania-Moldova”(Martin 2009: 141/142).

Under the influence of ratified or prospective membership in the EU and intensified cul-tural contacts with the “West”, converging assimilation processes are likely but they remain probably path-dependent (culture-bound) in view of underlying different historical expe-riences. An elaborated analysis has been given by Detlef Pollack (2001).

The perception of religious phenomena is also conditioned by the application of re-search tools in different social milieus, or, as in the case of Eastern Europe, to different socio-cultural structures. Methodological problems arise in any case where subjective reli-giosity is measured along cognitive dimensions. But knowledge and faith are not the same. Knowledge procures cognition and faith provides emotional assurance. Emotional bonds and experiences often cannot be properly expressed orally. In such cases rational access is limited. This holds especially true for approaches which preconceive faith as a matter of personal decision, as is common in Protestantism. Only few behavioral patterns (religious feelings included) can be classified as decisions on the basis of alternatives.

Another haziness is immanent in some conceptions which differentiate between a secu-lar “world” and the church as an essentially transcendental phenomenon. Taken absolutely, such a point of view would exclude any meaningful sociological analysis which is always based on evident interactions and their structural stabilization. But obviously sociological findings are relevant in order to comprehend social aspects of religious practices. This de-monstrates that secularization as a process affecting institutionalized religion does not nec-essarily coincide with a loss of religiosity only because its manifestations no longer match patterns of thought maintained by church politicians.

The Religious Factor in Eastern Europe 23

In the field of religion, we encounter essential phenomena which are beyond any final conceptual definition. This, however, does not mean that they do not exist. Instead, it indi-cates their variety and changeability. The basic lack of a final spatial and temporal determi-nation of concepts in the Humanities and Social Sciences certainly annoys such constructiv-ists who define progress as knowledge by classifying their perceptions according to pre-modeled systemic contexts. In view of the contingencies inherent in religion, such attempts resemble the erection of a tower of Babel. For modern hypercomplex societies, religion is identified as ambiguous depending on the perspective of the observer as well as upon the structural location of the phenomenon under study.

A new horizon of perception is opened with a proposal by Joachim Matthes (1992), to comprehend Christian religion according to its societal presence as potential orientation of one´s conduct of life. On the other hand, its processual realization in personal and social conduct depends upon perspectives predetermined by biography and social structure. This approach also can be helpful in assessing differences in perceiving religion in both Western and Eastern Europe. 3. The Religious Factor in the Conduct of Life The impact of different modes of religion and religiosity upon the conduct of life in Eastern European countries can be analyzed with available empirical data. Three major propositions commonly serve as a frame of reference: the interpretation of religion as a means for com-pensating frustration (“hypothesis of compensation”), the function of religion as a medium of social coherence and integration (“hypothesis of integration”) and Max Weber’s assump-tion of a “disenchantment of the world” (“hypothesis of secularization”), meaning that religion gradually gives place to secular perceptions of the world (Fürstenberg 1961, 1964). These theoretical guidelines have been expanded by the comprehension of religion as a means for reflexively mastering the principal uncertainty in life situations (“hypothesis of contingency”, Fürstenberg/Moerth 1979). An enlarged catalogue of socio-psychic functions of religion has been presented by Franz Xaver Kaufmann (1989: 87).

First, I will consider the countries that display a dramatic decline in church allegiance, which particularly manifests itself in decreasing public worship as well as participation in parish activities. The trend to repel practiced faith, traditionally linked with church activi-ties, needs to be studied at social micro-, meso- and macro levels.

At the individual micro-level, a point of departure could be the contingency thesis, which is related to uncertainty in the conduct of life which has to be mastered. Proof can be found in the empirical study “Jugend 2008” by Andreas Feige an Carsten Gennerich. The majority of more than 8000 teens and twens interviewed about their evaluation of concrete life situations gave priority to the satisfaction of a need for security through group and partnership links at the basis of trust. But only a minority associated such emotional assur-ance with membership in a community of believers, organized by the church. This makes clear why in Eastern Germany the overwhelming majority of teens (73% against 31% in the West) declares themselves as rather not “religious” (Pollack 2005). However, the term “religious” in common understanding refers to a canonical preconception of Christian reli-giosity, which may pose semantic problems in empirical research. Instructive and at the same time provoking was a television interview with a young woman in a Berlin S-Bahn,


communicated by Joachim Matthes (1992: 140). When asked whether she considered her-self as a “religious person”, she answered, slightly hesitating: “No I don´t think so, in a sense I feel quite normal”.

Do such observations justify the conclusion that the experience of contingency in life is mostly coped with relatively independent of “religion”? When considering the life situation of many young persons, we observe that crises related to social relations do occur and are mastered. This course may well be directed by value-based orientations and experiences. They may also strengthen latent Christian convictions. However, there is often an aversion to tradition-based assistance, which can be perceived as interfering with a process of devel-oping personal autonomy. Thus, people may refuse to be classified as being “religious” while the real life conduct may be hardly affected by the manifest religious indifference. This view is supported by findings in the European Value Study of 2009, reported by Wolfgang Jagodzinski. Within the New Eastern German provinces, he finds a code of be-havior that is independent from practiced belief which hardly differs from that of active believers (www.welt./politik/Deutschland/article43198302 from August 14, 2009). In order to properly assess such findings, it would be necessary to conduct a more detailed content analysis of what is meant by “belief”. Alienation from institutionalized Western types of religion by no means automatically corresponds with irreligiosity, dominating the course of life.

At the social meso level, the effects of organizational affiliation with religious commun-ities are considered, as they can be observed within a local parish. Relevant behavior (such as the practice of rites) transcends individualized attitudes but is manifest in personal rela-tions. Within this area there is evidence of breaks in membership ties. Even teens, educated in milieus closely connected with a parish, are alienated from religious practice after com-munion or confirmation. This is particularly true for Eastern Germany. With reference to the integration thesis, the mutual relationship between religious affiliation and social inte-gration has to be tested. As far as concerns traditional-bound Christians and Muslims, strong ties at the communal level can be observed. However, they can promote the emer-gence of fundamentalist conventicles and even so-called parallel societies. Thus, religious affiliation may foster a very special type of social integration that is adverse to modern secular societies. These go hand in hand with segmented strategies of social participation according to differentiated fields of social action. Particularly devout Christians or Muslims and especially those of a sectarian religion may also encourage non-conformism and acts of resistance to societal integration. This of course should not imply a principal prejudice against such attitudes, which, as is well known, helped to overcome totalitarian repression.

The social macro-level comprises strictly speaking such phenomena which are institu-tionally regulated. This is the area for actions by officials who influence and shape the perceivable image of religion as an established church. Their influence ultimately depends upon the amount of trust offered by the adherents. The intensity of church adherence reach-es from “faithful Church members” to “emancipated nominal Christians” and “religiously Indifferent”. Overlapping such differences are indicators, which hint at the persistence of Christianity as a major source of socio-cultural identity. However, when considering East-ern Europe, these mutual influences vary to a large extent (Pickel 2004).1

1 See also G. Pickel in this volume.


Background of a fading perception and social presence of institutionalized religion is the change in social functions of the church: from a church, closely connected with government (Staatskirche) to a church, having lost this link, but not the monopoly of institutional pres-ence and still comprising and integrating the overwhelming majority of the population (Volkskirche), and finally a church as a competing voluntary association among others (Verbandskirche) (Fuerstenberg 1961). In view of this fundamental change, established churches still face a serious identity crisis. In post-war Western Germany institutional inte-gration into an emerging democratic society offered the chance for an emerging confession-based social religion (Sozialreligion) privileged by government. This term means a type of manifest institutionalized religion, characterized

- by churches that have adjusted to a pluralist horizon of values by stressing di-aconal activities relatively independent of faith-related decisions,

- by the mobilization of church members through socio-religious initiatives and so-cial services.

All this is happening in the light of a wide oecumenical horizon of meaning and is oriented towards common culture-based values (Fürstenberg 1982, 1999). Within the German Dem-ocratic Republic as well as in other Eastern People´s Democracies, such representative public performance was significantly hampered by adverse governmental interference. The state only made use of the possibly integrative function of the church in a severely re-stricted and controlled manner. The consequences of these different developments are still reflected in the influence of church guidance on individual behavior. For the period after the re-unification, Detlef Pollack (2000) has stated drastic losses in the influence of estab-lished churches, manifest in diminishing trust and social attraction as well as in the loss of their status as alternative institutions with a potential for society-directed criticism. Accord-ing to the prevailing utility estimate, church exits in large quantities were motivated with saving the church tax.

Divergent from the high level of religious indifference in Eastern Germany, in some Eastern European countries symptoms of a religious revival are noticed, especially in Pol-and, Romania, Slovakia, Croatia and Serbia. (Martin 2009: 141-142). As already men-tioned, an explanation is given by the close nexus between religious practice and the need for an affirmation of national identity. This enabled the churches to re-establish their func-tion as “Volkskirchen”. Contrasting to this trend, in Eastern Germany contingency expe-riences, such as a blockage of vital aspirations in the course of a difficult transformation period were not compensated by an increased turn towards religion. Instead indications of anomy, especially retreatism and aggressiveness in marginal groups are obvious. A distance towards all forms of religion is widespread (Pollack 2000).

Therefore, when analyzing the relation between religious attitudes and social transfor-mation in Eastern Europe, it is necessary to consider the different societal presence and intensity of Christian orientations. In comparison with Western Europe, the process of modernization in the Soviet orbit was structured differently. Some features still persist within the context of families, reference groups and information networks. There are strik-ing differences between East and West Germany, which became recently manifest in the grossly adverse results of the Berlin referendum “pro Reli”. More than 60% of the voters in former West Berlin voted in favor of compulsory religious instruction in schools as op-


posed to more than 70 % of the voters in former East Berlin who voted for a freedom of choice between an instruction in ethics or in religion.

In view of findings from a history of church adherence and religiosity, it is necessary to exercise some caution. Historical sources and investigations (v. Oettingen, Kruijt, Boulard and Le Bras – bibliography in Fürstenberg/Moerth 1979) document that belief in a denomi-national sense was by no means equally prominent in Europe. Relative alienation from church activities and even “de-christianized” zones were rather common. For long periods of time, this fact was hidden by the officially sanctioned role of confessions and churches as administrators of means of grace and trainers of repentance and also by a firm establish-ment of church discipline in customs and manners. The trend towards individualization has disclosed such questionable results of institutionalized religion, leading to a “religion with-out personal decision” and even atheist attitudes. But there is also a potential for innovative forms of religiosity (Knoblauch 2009). 4. Modernization and Secularization in Eastern Europe From a prospective point of view the problem of future developments in institutionalized religion and individualized religiosity arises. Will the West serve as a model for ultimately converging trends? Secularization is generally considered as a main thesis to explain the areas of tension that occur in the course of societal modernization. The scientific use of this term implies that it is disentangled from ideological and dogmatic contents. Secularization may then imply a continuing emancipation of attitudes and convictions from religious, mostly theology-based frames of conscience. Main features include the profanation of pre-viously sacred manifestations, alienation from the church as an institution and the emer-gence of subject-oriented religiosity (Fürstenberg 1999).

Secularization is commonly discussed and analyzed in conjunction with the highly complex notion of societal modernization. Its main characteristics can be defined as a con-tinuous differentiation of fields of action combined with a growing rationalization of frames of orientation and relevant actions. The integration of such differentiated fields of action result less from a reference to a fixed hierarchy of values and transcendentally sanctioned norms. Instead, social integration takes place as a goal-directed instrumental, merely func-tional inclusion, mainly by media such as markets, money and mass communication, by statute law and by contract. The results are not perceived as heavenly providence but as coincidence of partly intended, partly autonomous actions.

Helmut Schelsky (1959) has hinted at the resulting moderation of traditional religious institutions in an environment of individualized convictions and secularized normative frames. Individualization also implies an enormous fading of community-based (parish-bound) life practice. Communal life is increasingly replaced by trans-locally organized events. The drastic changes in communication patterns due to new information technologies have intensified this trend.

Under the influence of mass media and emerging markets in their function as virtual places for the exchange of life orientations, the prospects for a transfer of such patterns to Eastern Europe are favorable. In addition, the EU membership of most Eastern European states has substantially diminished threats to national integrity. However, rapid social


change in these regions, also call forth anxieties and anomic feelings, as can be observed in Eastern Germany.

Historic bonds and remnants of traditional styles of life are likely to survive as cultural heritage. But such patterns of orientation are increasingly open for competition. A pluralism of religious convictions and secular philosophies of life is emerging (Luckmann 1991). Individual needs, insofar they are articulated, are less fulfilled through emerging permanent bonds but become subject to changing and sometimes even parallel and ambiguous orienta-tions. The collapse of the Soviet orbit has not only initiated an enforced political and eco-nomical modernization but also has emancipated the individuals for a personal search for meaning in life. Like in Western Europe, the emerging styles of life enable, at least at short sight, to compensate this search by secular activism (“event culture”).

In the course of this process, religion and religiosity in their public appearance as active communities of believers incline to be characterized as phenomena of retreat, unless they succeed in establishing a new societal bond. A “social religion”, already shortly discussed, or its secular equivalent: a “civic religion” may be options, especially as such trends would be supported by a still continuing search for national identity in a world which definitely is not totally “secularized”. The emergence of a civic religion, however, would imply a highly fragmented religious scene, like in the USA, because otherwise in countries with still estab-lished dominant churches, their influence could possibly impede dominant secularity. 5. Some Implications for Social Research In the author´s opinion “modernization” and “secularization” are key concepts for the guid-ance of empirical social research related to religion. Their operationality, however, requires a close connection with their meaning in observable social structures. This leads to the following considerations: Modernization proceeds in phases according to existing cultural patterns. Therefore, a

detailed knowledge about the actual constellation is necessary. Phenomena that are relevant for the sociology of religion occur differently depending

on the circumstances. Examples are geographic and social mobility. Within this con-text, the fact that religion is evaluated negatively as a possible source of social conflict is striking in countries with a high percentage of migrants with deviant religious affilia-tion.

The theoretical interpretation of data should be closely related to life situations and life styles of the respective population as well as to background knowledge of institutions that influence religion and its manifestation in actions of their representatives. This in-cludes pontifical encyclica and synodal resolutions as well as social legislation and pol-itics.

Above all, one has to take into account that religion is not merely a cognitive pheno-menon that is part of the set of knowledge in a given society. It is a fallacy to assume that patterns of attitudes and actions can be discerned merely by asking questions. Re-ligious phenomena also exist in an unreflecting manner as components of life practice and often appear in perhaps unpredicted and unforeseeable situations. This suggests the application of multiple research methods including those of cultural anthropology.


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tenvergleich – Basis einer europäischen Sozialkultur oder nicht? (unpublished manuscript) Pollack, Detlef (2000): Der Wandel der religiös-kirchlichen Lage in Ostdeutschland nach 1989.

(www.fowid.de: Detlef Pollack/“Ostdeutschland“/Textarchiv:TA-2000.de). Pollack, Detlef (2001): Modifications in the Religious Field of Central and Eastern Europe. European

Bulletin 3/2001: 135-165. Pollack, Detlef (2003): Säkularisierung – ein moderner Mythos. Studien zum religiösen Wandel in

Deutschland. Tübingen. Pollack, Detlef/Pickel, Gert (1999): Individualisierung und religiöser Wandel in der Bundesrepublik

Deutschland. Zeitschrift für Soziologie 28/6: 465-483. Schelsky, Helmut (1959): Ist die Dauerreflexion institutionalisierbar? Zeitschrift für evangelische

Ethik 1: 153-174. Wunder, Edgar (2005): Religion in der postkonfessionellen Welt. Wiesbaden.

Europeanisation, Multiple Modernities and Religion – The Reconstruction of Collective Identities in Post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe1

Willfried Spohn

0. Introduction A conspicuous characteristic of the post-communist transformations in Central and Eastern Europe since 1989 has been the concurrent – though considerably differing – revival of nationalism and religion (Spohn 1998, 2002a, 2002b, 2008, 2009). There are several general reasons for this. The breakdown of communism was not only triggered by the pursuit of democracy and market capitalism but also by the quest for national sovereignty from communist imperial rule. The concomitant nationalism was often shaped by organic ethno-national rather than democratic-pluralist identities. The organic ethno-nationalism was frequently combined with a revitalisation of religion as a counter-move against the previous state-imposed secularism and repression of religion. Consequently, ethno-national and inter-religious tensions and conflicts often intensified.

In the framework of modernist and neo-modernist approaches that informed post-communist transitology and transformation research, the simultaneous revival of nationalism and religion was seldom foreseen (v. Beyme 1994; Bönker 2002; Müller/Pickel 2002; Dawisha/Parrot 1999; Linz/Stepan 1996; Outhwaite/Ray 2005). Rather, most scholars expected that secular-civic forms of nationalism would gradually emerge along with the political transition to democratic regimes, the socio-economic transformation to market capitalism and further secularisation. Even when the rise of ethno-nationalism was analysed, the religious sources and components were seldom addressed. Yet, in many instances, the emerging organic forms of ethno-nationalism were shaped by revitalising traditional forms of religiosity as well as new forms of religious fundamentalism and thus represented a key factor in the widespread ethno-religious mobilization, conflict and war.

In order to solve this theoretical dilemma between an evolutionist modernisation-cum- secularisation framework and the actual post-communist transformation processes, globalization approaches are appealing, as they criticize the methodological nationalism of modernisation theory and explain the revival of nationalism, religion and fundamentalism as a defence mechanism against intensifying global forces in the contemporary era (Beyer 1994, 2006; Juergensmeyer 2003). From this perspective, the impact of global capitalism on post-communist societies has led to sharp social disparities and inequalities that create favourable conditions for ethnic and religious defence reactions. However, conversely,

1 This article was written as part of the research project ”Europeanization, multiple modernities and collective

identities – religion, nation and ethnicity in an enlarging Europe“ (EUROMM), directed by Wolfgang Knöbl, Matthias Koenig and myself and thankfully funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, 2008-11.


Willfried Spohn 30

internal factors within the society of the nation-state have been neglected. Hence, the reasons for the considerable variations in the ethnic and democratic as well as religious and secular components in the post-communist Central and Eastern Europe revival of nationalism remain unclear.

From my own multiple modernities perspective, both paradigms share a common bias as they reify or over-generalize either internal modernisation processes or external globalization pressures in a one-sided manner. Instead, I propose a historical-sociological perspective and suggest to consider the varying long-term processes: communist and pre-communist trajectories of state formation, nation-building and nationalism as well as religious development and secularisation patterns in the context of inter-civilisational constellations and global forces. Such a comparative historical-sociological perspective also helps, as I hope to demonstrate, to explain the considerable variations in the contemporary relations between nationalism and religion in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe.

In the following, I will first outline my multiple modernities perspective on Europe and Europeanization; second, I will analyse the relationships between state formation, nation-building, nationalism and religion in Central and Eastern Europe; third, I will concentrate on the relationships between religious development and secularisation as cultural bases of collective identities; and fourth and finally, I will consider the differing impacts of Europeanization on the post-communist societies in Central and Eastern Europe – independent of their membership in the European Union.

1. European Multiple Modernity, Religion and Collective Identities The multiple modernities approach as developed by Shmuel Eisenstadt and his worldwide collaborators represents a specific revision of classical modernisation theory (Eisenstadt 2000, 2003, 2006). Like modernisation theory, the multiple modernities approach conceives of modernisation and modernity as a cluster of socio-cultural processes such as social differentiation and individualization, capitalist development, industrialization and social mobilization, state formation, nation-building and democratisation as well as rationalization and secularisation. However, in contrast to functionalist-evolutionary versions, the multiple modernities approach considers modernisation to be a contingent, conflictual and fragile developmental process dependent on individual and collective actions. Here, both structural processes of socio-economic change and tradition, culture and religion play a determining role; but, despite secularisation processes, religion in traditional, modernised or secular-religious forms remains a core dimension of modernity. Thus, there is a shift of emphasis from the structural, socio-economic and political-legal dimensions of modernisation to their interrelation with the cultural dimensions of modernisation and programs of modernity that are based on differing civilisational, axial and non-axial foundations.

And as a corollary, the worldly processes of modernisation do not simply reproduce the original model of European modernity but rather develop in multiple patterns in the context of differing civilisational dynamics and inter-civilisational constellations. As a consequence, the multiple modernities approach assumes that global modernity will not

Europeanisation, Multiple Modernities and Religion 31

simply converge in one Western modernity, but will rather develop in a multiplicity of modernities and multiple interacting modernisation processes.

In such a comparative-civilisational perspective, European modernity does not represent the general, global model of modernisation and modernity – however influential it was and still is for other civilisational complexes. Instead, it is shaped by several historical-sociological particularities. Somewhat similar to Stein Rokkan (Flora 1999), Shmuel Eisenstadt has summarized them with the keywords ‘structural and cultural pluralism’ (Eisenstadt 1987; Spohn 2006, 2010).2 Structural pluralism pertains to the manifold political and socio-economic establishment of centres and peripheries which are so characteristic of European history. Cultural pluralism refers to the manifold religious and cultural components – the Greek-Roman, the differing Christian, Jewish and Islamic as well as secularised-enlightened influences that have shaped European civilisation. Therefore, the geopolitical structural and cultural changes of the European civilisation as they have developed for more than a thousand years should be emphasized more clearly compared to Eisenstadt and Rokkan – the changes from the Carolingian Empire in Western and Central Europe to its expansion to East Central and Eastern Europe; from the Renaissance to the Protestant Reformation, Catholic Reform and Enlightenment; and from the rise to a hegemonic world power, its demise and its contemporary transformation through European integration and enlargement (Delanty 1995; Davies 1996; Spohn 2010).

In addition, the political structural change and the geopolitical power shifts due to state formation, nation-building and democratisation in conjunction with socio-economic processes of social change should be considered more strongly. In addition to the changing geo-political and geo-economic power hierarchies, the inter- and intra-civilisational shifts in the geo-cultural and cognitive power hierarchies should be included more in detail (Osterhammel 2008). Nevertheless, the multiple modernities approach allows us to analyse the European civilisation not simply as a general model of modernity but rather takes into account its diversity as a historically changing, internally and externally determined inter-relational constellation of multiple patterns of modernisation and programmes of modernity.

The implications of such a historical-sociological multiple modernities approach for the conceptualisation of the European civilisation is also reflected in the recent revisions of the theoretical premises in the sociology of nationalism and religion based on the modernisation paradigm. On the one hand, the sociology of nationalism is still largely dominated by the premise that the development of modern nationalism is a corollary of the formation of modern nation-states and is particularly strong where it is constituted by national movements; its core is considered to be a secular political ideology that evolves with the emergence of the modern nation-state and changes along with its democratisation in a pluralising form of civil religion. The developed modern nation-state is thus characterised by secular-civic forms of nationalism and national identity, whereas the developing nation-states that are catching up feature ethnic-demotic forms of nationalism and national identity (Delanty/Kumar 2004; Smith 1998).

2 Here see also the article of Susanne Pickel in this volume.

Willfried Spohn 32

Unlike these modernist assumptions, recent cultural and ethno-symbolic approaches to nationalism have demonstrated that modern nationalism is based on pre-modern linguistic, ethnic and religious foundations and that these foundations do not disappear with the formation of modern nation-states. Modern nationalism and national identity thus comprise not only secular, political and civic but also primordial and ethnic, sacred and religious components (Hastings 1997; Smith 1998, 2001, 2005). Similarly, the multiple modernities approach emphasizes that nationalism as a movement and a programme is based on collective identities that are composed of primordial-ethnic and civic-political as well as religious and cultural components or codes (Eisenstadt/Giesen 1995). Accordingly, the development of modern nationalism cannot be simply conceived of as a process from primordial-ethnic to civic-political forms but should be perceived as changing and varying configurational flows of primordial, political, religious and secular components.

On the other hand, such a historical-sociological multiple modernities approach also finds its parallel in recent revisions in the sociology of religion. For a long time, the modernisation-theoretical thesis of secularisation predominated. According to this thesis, religion loses its traditional impact as organised religion and belief system during socio-economic modernisation processes, even if it does not disappear altogether (Pollack 2003). Against the background of contemporary worldwide processes of de-secularisation, considerable doubts regarding this one-dimensional evolutionary thesis have evolved and have provided reasons for modifications and revisions in several respects.

Firstly, several dimensions of secularisation are distinguished in terms of shifts from the religious to the secular sphere, the differentiation of religion, politics and society and public versus individualized religion (Casanova 1994; Dobbelaere 2002).

Secondly, on the basis of the US-American case, rational-choice approaches assume an inverse relationship between modernisation, religious competition and religious growth (Bruce 1991; Iannaccone 1992).

Thirdly, institutional approaches have shown varying secularisation patterns as a result of differing processes of differentiation, religious development and secularisation (Martin 1978, 2005).

Fourthly, cultural approaches emphasize the tendency of religion to develop from organised to individual forms. And theories of globalization view the worldwide growth of religion as a defensive counter-move against global forces (Berger 1999; Beyer 1994, 2006; Beyer/Beaman 2007; Joas/Wiegandt 2007; Juergensmeyer 2005).

Even though the relation of the multiple modernities perspective to the dominant approaches in the sociology of religion still needs to be elaborated, it is clear that it starts out from multiple constellations between religious, secular and secular-religious dimensions in the context of multiple modernisation processes and modernities rather than assuming a one-sided evolutionary relationship between modernisation and secularisation.

Within the framework of such a historical sociological multiple modernities approach that also integrates the revisions in the sociology of nationalism and religion, it is possible to outline several strategic research postulates in order to analyse the widespread, though strongly varying revitalisation of nationalism and religion in the post-communist societies in Central and Eastern Europe. To begin with, the post-communist societies do not simply follow a catching-up modernisation process in their transformation and developmental


paths. Rather, they are also influenced by their own path-dependent trajectories (Linz/Stepan 1996). Thereby, the historical foundations in their pre-communist as well as communist phases play a crucial role. In addition, the geopolitical position of these societies within the European civilisation and the influence of the adjacent civilisations are of importance. Over long stretches of time particularly the processes of state formation and nation-building have been developing in the context of empires and peripheries resulting in forms of peripheral and empire-contracting processes. These geopolitical constellations also shape the long-term processes of religious development and secularisation. Stronger secularisation processes primarily take place in the few imperial centres and sub-centres, whereas in the many cases of peripheral state formation nation-building, ethnic homogenisation and vitalisation of religion have rather gone hand in hand.

Only in the present constellation – after the reconstruction of nationally sovereign states that democratise politically, albeit in different ways, in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe - is a general tendency to increasing religious pluralisation and secularisation to be expected. However, as this article will show, there are important differences and variations between Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox societies. The Eastern enlargement of the European Union and with it the increasing impact of European integration on the various post-communist societies in East-Central Europe also plays a particularly important role. Again, a transnational secular regime like the European Union can be expected to support pluralising and secularising tendencies in the new East-central European member states. However, since the European Union is based on a combination of secular-enlightened and Western Christian, primarily Catholic, values and is simultaneously limited in its interventions regarding national identity, ethnic minorities and religious issues, the secularising effects are by no means pre-given. This is particularly true for most of the Orthodox countries either inside or outside the European Union.

2. State Formation, Nation-Building, Nationalism and Religion in Central and Eastern Europe

As stated above, three factors were of particular importance in the Central and Eastern European revolutions against the established communist regimes: nationalism and democracy which went hand in hand with religious freedom. Only sovereign nation-states were able to materialise democratic structures against the autocratic-atheistic Soviet social-political order: the materialisation of democracy basically implied the guarantee of religious rights. This triad of nationalism, democracy and religion came to the fore in the late 1980s in all protest movements against the communist regimes and shaped the processes of transition and transformation in the post-communist societies in Central and Eastern Europe in various ways. Organised religion, churches and religious communities were crucial collective actors in these transformation processes; social protest movements and national identities were often influenced by religion; and in some cases, fundamentalist value orientations also played an important role. However, there were also marked differences in the impact of the participating religious organisations and cultures on the various post-communist developmental paths.

Willfried Spohn 34

The most conspicuous case is Poland, where the Catholic Church and the social-Catholic Solidarno movement formed crucial counter-forces against the communist state and both had an important influence on the newly emerging Polish democratic regime. Less conspicuous, though nevertheless important, was the influence of the Catholic Church in Lithuania, Czechoslovakia – though more in predominantly Catholic Slovakia than in the strongly atheist Czech part – and in Hungary. The Protestant church and Protestant-inspired protest movements also played an important role in predominantly Protestant, though strongly secularised East Germany as well as in the Baltic countries of Estonia and Latvia. In the predominantly Christian Orthodox countries of Romania, Bulgaria and the Ukraine, the Orthodox Church represented the core of national re-awakening, however with marked tensions with the Greek-Catholic and Protestant minority religions in the case of Romania, the Muslim Pomiaks in the case of Bulgaria and between the Greek-Orthodox Western and Christian Orthodox Eastern Ukraine.

The Yugoslav war between the Slovene, Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian ethno-national groups was not only based on a power conflict between the different national-communist party leaders, it was also related to the religiously motivated nationalisms of Catholic Croats, Islamic Bosnians and Orthodox Serbs. A similar ethno-national conflict occurred in the Caucasus between Christian-Orthodox Armenia and Georgia with its various ethnic groups, Muslim Azerbaijan and the predominantly Islamic New States in Central Asia. In the Russian Federation, there was also a conspicuous power increase of the Christian Orthodox Church as a kind of new state church which was closely connected to the Russian state and was based on a strong revitalisation of Orthodox religiosity (Spohn 1998, 2002a, 2000b with country-specific references).

In order to explain these varying relationships between nationalism, democracy and religion, methodologically, it does not suffice to refer only to the short-term relations between communist regimes and organised religion. Rather, it is necessary to consider the historical long-term foundations of nation-state formation and particularly the relations between nationalism and religion in East-Central and Eastern Europe. Following Ernest Gellner (1983), it is sensible to distinguish between four time zones of European state formation, nation-building and nationalism: (i) the Atlantic zone with early state formation and national homogenisation; (ii) the Central European zone with late state centralisation and national unification; (iii) the Central Eastern European zone with even later separatist nation-state formation; and (iv) the East European zone with late-late empire-contractive nation-building. It is crucial for the post-communist societies in Europe that almost all of them (with the exception of East Germany as part of the German Empire and Russia as the centre of the Tsarist and Soviet Empires) belong to the Central Eastern and South Eastern zone of peripheral state formation and nation-building and thereby have been shaped in specific ways (Berend 1997; Bibo 1986; Lemberg 1968).

To begin with, over long stretches of the modern era, this peripheral zone was dominated by four empires: the Roman Empire of the German nation in its dual German and Habsburg parts, the Tsarist Empire and the Ottoman Empire. In each peripheral case of state formation and nation-building, historical foundations in terms of political centre-formation and ethno-genesis certainly existed, but it is precisely in the early modern era that sovereign nation-states in Western Europe developed whereas the East-Central and South


Eastern European regions were subjected to imperial centres and were therefore deprived of the possibility to develop internal stateness and accompanying national homogenization (Chirot 1989). This constellation also had an impact on the position of organised religion. Instead of becoming one component of state formation amongst others through processes of differentiation, organised religion was related to nation-building and continued to be one of the core components in peripheral nation-building.

With respect to this religiously shaped peripheral nationalism, the dominant type of religion played a crucial role. While Protestantism in Western and Northern Europe constituted one of the decisive forces of the emerging nation-states against the Catholic universal church and monarchy, it was limited to religious and frequently ethnic minorities in Central Eastern and South Eastern Europe – for instance in Poland, Bohemia and Moravia and Hungary as well as on the Balkans and in Russia. At the same time, Protestantism was particularly supportive of imperial states and less forceful in peripheral nation-building due to its acceptance of state authority and its emphasis on privatised religiosity – as for instance in the case of the Baltic states of Estonia and Latvia as well as Finland. This contrasts with the development in Catholic countries. On the one hand, Catholicism as a universal church and monarchy was organised transnationally and as such it did not support ethno-national autonomy. On the other hand, Catholicism became one of the major forces of peripheral nation-building and national movements in Central Eastern and Eastern Europe on the basis of its specific position of Catholic clerics in the emerging social structure (Hroch 2005). As a consequence, the religious components were rather strong in the emerging nationalism in Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia and Slovenia. Early on, Christian Orthodoxy also became a nationally oriented force that was related to religious nationalism – though this was less a consequence of the structure of Christian Orthodoxy itself.

Rather, it was due to the historical circumstance that the traditionally Orthodox regions were incorporated into the Ottoman Empire as ‘millet groups’ during the expansion of Islam (Barkey 2008). Only in the Third Rome of Moscow as the centre of Tsarist Russia did it preserve its imperial-universal structure (Hosking 1991; Stölting 1990). Against this historical background, Christian Orthodoxy played a crucial role for the separating nationalisms in South-Eastern Europe during the long 19th century and shaped the strongly ethnic-religious character of the Greek, Bulgarian, Romanian and Serbian national movements. In contrast to this close intertwinement between religion, nation-building and nationalism in Central Eastern and South Eastern Europe, a stronger differentiation between nationalism and religion developed in the imperial centres of Tsarist Russia and the Ottoman Empire themselves. Here, the secular and secular-religious currents were decisively stronger and had a strong impact on the empire-contracting forms of nationalism in these multi-ethnic empires.

The impact of religious and ethnic-cultural nationalism also manifested itself due to the establishment of sovereign nation-states in Central Eastern and South Eastern Europe after World War I (Maner/Schulze Wessel 2002). With the exception of Czechoslovakia, to a certain extent, the churches and political-religious parties had a strong effect due to religious nationalism and influenced the conservative-authoritarian reversals in the nascent democratic regimes. The inter-War period, however, was too short to change the legacy of

Willfried Spohn 36

the ethnic-religious forms of peripheral nationalism. On the contrary, as a consequence of the establishment of the Nazi Third Reich with the resulting World War II as well as the expansion of the Soviet power sphere to Central Europe which was thereby enabled, the peripheral constellation of the small states in this region was renewed. Accordingly, the predominantly ethnic-organic and religious forms of nationalism also continued during the communist period – though in varying ways depending on the form of religion and the influence of the imposed forms of atheistic secularism by the communist regime (Knox 2007).

In the Protestant cases of the Baltic states of Estonia and Latvia as well as the GDR and the proto-Protestant Czech land, socialist secularism had a decisive impact and further diminished the already weak bond between religion and nationalism. In contrast, in the Catholic countries the connection between religion and nationalism was considerably reinforced – particularly in Poland and Lithuania as well as - though less pronounced - in the Slovak part of the CSSR and Hungary. In the predominantly Orthodox countries of Romania and Bulgaria, the Orthodox churches accommodated to the national communist regimes after the initial repression. At the same time, they preserved the bonds between Orthodoxy and the nation. Also in Yugoslavia, particularly in the larger cities, socialist secularism gained some influence, but the close connections between the different ethno-national groups and religion was not dissolved.

It is these long-term path-dependent constellations of nation-state formation, nationalism and religion that determined the basic conditions of the post-communist transition and transformation processes. In all post-communist societies, the revitalised forms of nationalism played an important role in the social and political protest movements in the late communist phase as well as in the political parties and social movements that carried out the anti-communist revolution and determined the course of the transformation processes (Brubaker 1996; Spohn 1998 with comparative references). The varying forms and strengths of this religious-national factor in the post-communist transition phase thereby depended on the long-term historical processes of state formation, nation-building as well as religious development and secularisation.

To summarise, most cases in the Central Eastern and South Eastern European regions represented peripheral forms of nation-state formation that differed with respect to the degree of their peripheral position, the dominant type of religion and the related impact of secularisation (Spohn 2010). In the two Protestant Baltic cases, Estonia and Latvia, nationalism was shaped by Protestantism – even though it was markedly privatised and secularised; the Catholic countries in Central Eastern Europe were characterised by a strong Catholic nationalism – though varying in their degree of peripherality: it was very strong in Lithuania and Poland as the common centre of the former multi-ethnic Commonwealth; rather weak in the proto-Protestant and rather privileged region in the framework of the Habsburg Empire; in between in Slovakia and Hungary – both with considerable Protestant minorities. But whereas Slovakia was a rather backward region, Hungary was a co-center in the late Habsburg Empire. The two Orthodox countries, Romania and Bulgaria, both with ethnic-religious minorities of a considerable size, displayed a very strong connection between nationalism and religion. And multi-ethnic Yugoslavia dissolved along the ethno-nationally and religiously mobilized fault-lines of the South-Slavic peoples.


Two special cases of imperial-contractive nation-building have to be kept in mind: on the one hand, the GDR and the emerging new Bundesländer of United Germany, where Protestant nationalism played an important role which was nevertheless rather marginal against the background of the long history of secularisation and privatisation. On the other hand, the post-Soviet Russian Federation experienced a massive revitalisation of Orthodoxy in state and society on the background of the state-imposed communist secularism.

3. Religions, Secularisation Patterns and Collective Identities Along with the consolidation of different forms of post-communist democratic regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, different configurations of state, nation, organised religion and democracy have also been established. Within these new configurations, the relationship between nationalism and religion also changed, culminating in the transition phase as the outcome of long-term historical trajectories. For the new post-communist constellations and their developmental dynamics, three factors are of particular importance as they transformed the relations between nationalism and religion in a structural sense: the development of religion and secularisation, the changed relation between state, democracy and religion as well as their impact on collective identities. In order to grasp the developmental dynamics of the new constellations in the post-communist societies, it is first necessary to more precisely consider the varying developments of religion and secularisation in light of the long-term historical path-dependent trajectories. I particularly follow the secularisation theories developed by David Martin (1978, 2005) and its extension by José Casanova (1994, 2007) and Grace Davie (2000, 2002) and use them in order to explain the varying religious paths and secularisation patterns in the Central Eastern European and Eastern European regions. Tab. 1: Religious Vitality/Secularisation in Post-Communist Europe 1998

EG Est Lat Lit Cz Pol Slk Hun Cro Slv Rom Bul Rus Religious membership

36 25 59 81 34 96 77 57 89 70 85 87 65

Church visit: at least 1x/week

4 11 15 32 12 68 50 18 53 31 15 (12) 5

Belief in God

25 51 80 87 39 97 83 68 93 65 75 60 52

Confessional structure

p25 c5 a51

p54 o41

c33 p36 o28

k93 p3 o4

c84 p13 a20

c98 c83 p15

c70 p29

c98 c95 p13

o87 c5 p4

o86 m13 a19

a19

Sources: Casanova 2007: 352-357; Halman 2001:74-96; Greeley 2003; Kilp 2007: 235-236; Pickel/Müller 2009: Pollack 2002; Fischer Almanach 2002; c=Catholic, p=Protestant, o=Orthodox, m=Muslim, a=atheist.

Willfried Spohn 38

In order to provide an impression of the religious landscape in the European post-communist countries, I take three indicators of religious vitality or secularity which have been used by various authors for their respective explanatory approaches (Casanova 2007, Halmen 2001, Kilp 2007, Norris/Inglehart 2004, Pickel/Müller 2009, Pollack, et al. 1998, Pollack 2003). They are published by the European Values Survey 1998 and the International SSP for all Central and Eastern European Countries. The following table presents the results from the indicators “belief in God”, “church membership”, and “religious participation” and takes into account the major denominations in the respective country:

Apparently, in the Protestant countries, the degree of secularisation as indicated by church membership, service attendance and belief in God is rather high: it is highest in East Germany, followed by Estonia and is more mixed in Latvia and again very high in the proto-Protestant Czech Republic. The Catholic cases of Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia with considerable Protestant minorities are located in the middle. In contrast, the homogenous Catholic societies of Poland and Croatia are characterised by very high levels of religious vitality or low levels of secularisation.

The Orthodox cases of Romania and Bulgaria are again in the middle, whereas Russia is more secularised. An important factor is the impact of atheist secularism which should be interpreted as a secular religion and not simply as an indicator of secularisation. East Germany has a very high level of secularisation, Estonia and Latvia (Kaplan 2000) are also characterised by a rather large secular part, followed by the Czech Republic and Russia. This factor is primarily important in the Protestant cases and in the Russian Orthodox centre, but not in Catholic countries or other Orthodox countries. The numbers from 1998 should be considered in a time perspective over the whole transformation period from 1990 to 2010. Summarizing the sources, it is apparent that a further secularisation trend is slowly emerging in all Protestant countries, in mixed Catholic-Protestant countries and in homogenous Catholic countries in post-communist Europe – though on very different levels of religious vitality. In contrast, in all of the Orthodox countries there is an opposite trend of a strong revitalisation of religion: in Romania and Bulgaria as well as in Russia (Greeley 1994, 2003: 89-132).

In order to explain the development of religious vitality or secularisation, particularly two approaches have been proposed in the sociology of religion. On the one hand, there are modernisation-theoretical approaches in the broadest sense modernise that consider the post-communist development in Central Eastern and Eastern Europe in line with that of Western Europe and emphasise the general correlation between the level of economic development and a continuing secularisation process. This position has been stated by Pollack (2002) with regard to post-communist economic growth and related social welfare gains as well as Norris and Inglehart (2004) in view of the decreasing religious vitality levels between the older and younger generations.

On the other hand, particularly with respect to the Orthodox countries, rational choice religious market approaches have tried to describe the growth of religious vitality levels as a result of the increasing religious pluralisation in post-communist countries (Greeley 2003). Both approaches refer to a sound empirical database but are unable to provide a general theory for the observable differences in religious vitality and inverse secularisation


movements. The modernisation camp lacks an explanation for the opposite development in the Eastern Christian post-communist societies, whereas the rational choice camp lacks a convincing explanation for the renewal of the secularisation trend in Western Christian post-communist societies. In other words: both approaches do not provide a more general explanation for the varying levels of religious vitality or secularity and the varying trends of religious vitalisation or secularisation.

A third approach that is, in my view, better able to provide an adequate explanation of the varying developments of religion and secularisation in post-communist Europe was developed by David Martin in his general theory of secularisation – though it needs further specification with respect to the variations in these countries (see the recent corresponding theoretical modifications by Pollack/Pickel 2009). According to his theory, secularisation or religious vitalisation are not only determined by economic and technological-scientific processes but also by institutional and cultural dimensions and dynamics. Such a multi-dimensional approach can be combined with modernisation-theoretical as well as rational-choice market positions while always remaining related to institutional and cultural processes. Therefore, it not only emphasizes economic growth and social welfare gains or oligopolistic versus plural religious market conditions but also institutional or cultural processes and the degrees of homogenisation or heterogenization.

Accordingly, analytically, it focuses on the religious composition of society, state-church relations, the relationship between nation and religion, the institutional structure of organised religion as well as the peculiarity of religion in its mental, cultural and theological specificities. Following these premises, in his general theory of secularisation, David Martin has developed the major secularisation patterns in Protestant, Catholic, mixed Protestant/Catholic as well as Orthodox countries. Initially, he did so from a more historical-institutionalist perspective (Martin 1978). Recently, he has also included the cultural dimensions (Martin 2005) and has applied it particularly to post-communist Romania (Martin 2008). In a nutshell, Martin claims that a strong religious-institutional monopoly goes hand in hand with strong cultural secularisation processes and inversely, religious-institutional pluralism is accompanied by weak cultural secularisation. Based on these theoretical foundations, he can explain the Western, Southern and Central European patterns combined with a comparative perspective on North and South America, whereas the Orthodox-European cases – not to speak of other world religions – need further elaboration.

Regarding post-communist Central and Eastern Europe, particularly the studies by José Casanova and Alar Kilp follow David Martin’s theory and contribute to a more elaborate explanatory strategy for the varying forms of religious vitality or secularisation. In his studies on Poland and Ukraine, Casanova (1994, 1998) shows that the revitalisation of Catholicism and Orthodoxy has resulted from long-term processes of religious development in close connection to nation-building and ethno-nationalism in reaction against the Soviet-communist secularist state monopoly.

In a more comprehensive historical-sociological orientation, Kilp (2007) has proposed a more systematic comparative explanation. On the one hand, he distinguishes between general and church-oriented religion and thus provides a plausible explanation for the difference between religious vitality that is high on average and low church participation in

Willfried Spohn 40

the post-communist Eastern European societies in contrast to the Western European ones. On the other hand, Kilp focuses on the core question of how organised religion is related to both totalitarian, fascist and communist regimes and thus derives the differing levels of religious vitality or secularity in the post-communist societies: “…the churches that collaborated with the regimes that have failed politically – anti-national fascist and communist – ought to have shared the negative fate of these regimes. Concomitantly, if the church has entered into confrontation with the respective regimes and governments, it should have strengthened its image and legitimacy for the subsequent periods.” (Kilp 2007: 237).

As important as this historical-sociological approach is, I also believe that it leaves several gaps. Thus, Kilp does not consider the Orthodox cases. In addition, he reduces the comparative analysis to the state-church relation and does not include the relationship between nation and religion. Moreover, the analysis is limited to the historically recent attitudes of organised religion to the totalitarian regimes. In other words, it is lacking a long-term historical-sociological analysis on religious development and secularisation in the context of changing constellations of state formation and nation-building.

In order to fill these gaps, one way is to compare the main historical-sociological patterns of nation-state formation, religious development and secularisation as follows. Firstly, the few Protestant countries of Estonia and Latvia are characterised by long-term processes of peripheral nation-building that include first the imposition of a German-Protestant aristocracy and then that of the expanding Orthodox Tsarist Empire. In this context, the Estonian and Latvian popular religiosity was shaped by Lutheran-pietist Protestantism that supported Baltic nation-building but also showed a certain inclination to secular-socialist orientations.

The communist period was thus characterised by a combination of a conversion to socialist-secular identifications and more privatized-individualistic protest attitudes vis-à-vis the communist regime. Under these circumstances, the post-communist development was shaped only by a rather limited religious revitalisation. In East Germany, the Protestant secularisation pattern was even more pronounced. As an overwhelmingly Protestant part within the predominantly Protestant German Empire, this region had already experienced an initial secularisation trend already in the second half of the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th centurysecularis. It was then strongly enhanced due to the strong affinity of German Protestantism with Nazi-dictatorship and continued with the inverse accommodation to GDR socialism. Lutheran state orientation as well as inward-oriented individualization promoted a strong decrease in Protestant vitality (Nowak 1995; Sander 2007).

Secondly, in the predominantly Catholic (and in the communist phase also more homogenous) countries of Lithuania, Poland and Croatia, processes of peripheral nation-building occurred simultaneously with an intensifying Catholic vitality due to the public-national mobilization of the population by Catholic priests against the imperial powers. Based on this foundation, in the inter-War period, a certain affinity between the often clerical-fascist forms of integral nationalism developed as did a rising counter-movement against the imposed communist regimes in the communist period – a precondition for the high levels of religious vitality in the beginning of the post-communist period (Michel


1992; Swatos 1994; for Poland: Kriedte 1997; Luks 1997). This rather weak pattern of Catholic secularisation was modified in the predominantly Catholic, but more religiously differentiated and less peripheral cases. The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia comprise larger Protestant minorities who participated in national mobilization (particularly in the case of the Hussite-Czechoslovakian Church) and therefore contested the Catholic monopoly in nation-building. Against this historical background, the integral Catholic resistance against the communist state was weaker in the communist phase. This then resulted in a medium (and in the Czech case rather low) level of religious vitality in the post-communist phase.

Thirdly, the predominantly Orthodox countries such as Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, the Ukraine and Russia have been historically characterised both by a close caesaro-papist connection between state and church and a low organisational density, a low degree of confessionalisation and a strong religious spirituality. Due to the historical origins of wide-spread peripheral-late forms of nation-building (except for the imperial Russian case) and the respective close relationship between nation and religion, the forces of secularisation were still weak until World War II. A strong secularisation pressure from above set in with the establishment of communist regimes, but it only partially weakened the level of religious vitality (particularly in the cities). In Romania and Bulgaria, this resulted in an accommodation process between the national-communist regime and the Orthodox church; in Serbia the close relationship between Serbian nationalism and Serbian Orthodoxy continued within the framework of multi-national communist Yugoslavia; and in the Ukraine, Ukrainian nationalism and the Catholic Orthodox church defended the Ukrainian nation against the repressions of the Soviet-imperial regime (Vulpius 1992). Against this background, the post-communist period provided new space for the revitalisation of religion but again in close connection between the state, the nation and the church (Makrides 2007; Roudometof 2005).

A special case here is Russia as the centre of the Tsarist Empire, the Soviet Union and now the Russian Federation. In line with its central position, in Tsarist times, Christian Orthodoxy was confronted with a strong, though more elite-intellectual than popular, secularisation movement. As it was established as an atheist ideocracy in Soviet times, the secularisation process deepened in shape of a widespread secular-religious transformation of Orthodox popular religion. However, despite the duration of the Communist period, a core of Orthodox religion remained intact and has experienced a dramatic revival in the contemporary post-communist period (Greeley 2003). But instead of emphasizing the newly liberalised religious market situation in a one-sided manner (Greeley 2003), it is crucial to consider the cultural and institutional particularities of Christian Orthodoxy. As David Martin (2008) proposes, Christian Orthodoxy is primarily characterised by spiritual and ritual and less so by moral-institutional orientations and is closely embedded in the nation and nationalism. In addition, in the post-communist period, it has supported a religious and national revitalisation and has diminished the secularising counter-forces.

Willfried Spohn 42

4. Europeanisation, Religion and the Transformation of Collective Identities In sum, it is characteristic of the contemporary trends of religious vitality or secularisation and their impact on the religious and secular composition of collective identities in the post-communist societies in Central Eastern, South Eastern and Eastern Europe that the configurations of state, nation and religion have changed considerably and have an impact on the levels of religiosity and patterns of secularisation as well as the religious and secular components of collective identities. These new configurations are characterized by self-determined nation states, the accomplishment of a sovereign state and autonomous nation, new state-church relations as well as the new religious freedom and power position of the predominant churches and religions (Madeley 2008). At the same time, along with the established democratic regimes, a growing political pluralisation in state and society is taking place and with it a differentiation of the nation, the weakening of an organic-religious or secular-religious nationalism, a stronger articulation of claims by minority religions and an increasing criticism of a powerful and in many cases monopoly-like position of the dominant church.

Accordingly, in all Protestant, Catholic and mixed post-communist societies where Catholics or Protestants predominate, there is developing a renewed erosion of religiosity due to continuing forces of secularisation after the incipient revitalisation of religion – though, as indicated, on very different levels of religious vitality or secularisation. Orthodox dominated post-communist societies are exceptional as they exhibit a growing religious vitalisation in the context of more authoritarian political institutions and a close link to an organic-religious nationalism. The major reason for the continuing revitalisation of Orthodox Christianity in post-communist Europe is the primarily spiritual and ritual and less moral-institutional orientation of Orthodox Christianity that is diminishing its secularising counter-forces.

However, these changes in the constellations of nation-state, religion and secularity and their consequences for the reconstruction of collective identities in the post-communist societies in Central Eastern, South Eastern and East European societies are not only the result of internal path-dependent developmental dynamics but also arise from the increasing external expansion of European integration in the gestalt of the accomplished Eastern enlargement of the European Union, the upcoming South Eastern expansion and the intended East European association network (Beichelt 2004, Sedelmaier/Schimmelfennig 2005, Vobruba 2002). In a nutshell, the European Union is a political-legal inter-governmental/super-national multi-level system that is transferring a limited though growing part of national sovereignty to the European level with the approval of the many member states (Holzinger, et al. 2008, Jachtenfuchs/Kohler-Koch 2003). The transnational transfer of state sovereignty by vertical, sectoral and horizontal integration primarily concerns legal, political and economic sectors but it also increasingly includes cultural and religious dimensions.

The few authors who have studied these cultural and religious dimensions of European integration conceive of the European Union as a secular transnational regime by arguing that it concentrates on purely secular spheres of the law, politics and the economy, while dealing with religions and churches in a secular-neutral way and avoiding any religious


normative definition of European identity – as manifested in the formulation of the preamble of the European constitutional treaty (Shore 2000, Byrnes/Katzenstein 2006, Seeger 2008). At the same time, it cannot be overlooked that the European Community has been envisioned and created primarily by Catholic intellectuals and politicians and therefore the Western European relations of state and church or politics and religion have been a crucial though mostly latent foundation of European cultural integration. Along with the opening of the Eastern European space and the Eastern enlargement of the European Union, the Western European cultural and secular integration mode has been transferred to the new East-Central European member states. At the same time, it is challenged by the fact that the constellations between nation-state, nationalism and religion which differ in East-Central Europe have begun to influence the secular-transnational cultural integration framework of the European Union (Spohn 2008, 2009).

The European Union is influencing the constellations of nation-state, religion and collective identities in the post-communist new member states in three domains in particular: the international balance between nation-states, the relations between national majorities and ethnic minorities as well as national majority and ethnic minority religions. One of the central imperatives of the Eastern enlargement has been the extension of the European peace order to the East, the recognition of the existing nation-states and their national identities as well as the de-escalation of historically evolved ethno-national tensions and conflicts. Consequently, nation-states and national identities are both respected and transformed by Europeanisation. This also concerns the relations of national majorities and ethnic minorities within nation-states. Although the European Union defines ethno-national relations primarily as a matter of each member state, one of the crucial Copenhagen criteria for EU accession demands that the states guarantee the protection of ethnic minorities which is part and parcel of the human rights regime institutionalised at the European level and safe-guarded by the European Court of Justice in order to prevent ethnic discrimination in the new member states. This domain of European interventions is closely interlinked with the relationship between national majority and minority religions that concern both historically evolved national minorities as well as ethnic minorities as a result of international migration and immigration (Koenig 2006, 2009, Kymlicka/Opalski 2001). The European Union primarily leaves this domain to the sovereign nation-states. However, EU agencies enforce legal interventions within the new member states as a consequence of the transnationally institutionalised norms of religious freedom and tolerance, union neutrality vis-à-vis religions as well as equality between religions and world views. It is particularly these three domains where Europeanisation has an influence on the new member states and their path-dependent constellations between nation-state, national identity and religion with some external repercussions on the adjacent non- or not-yet members.

With respect to the predominantly Protestant post-communist countries, it is important to keep in mind that ethnic and religious minorities are confronted with both the Protestant majority milieu that in a sense has become a minority culture itself as well as the atheist secular-religious milieu originating from but opposed to the Protestant majority culture as well as minority religions due to the pluralising Protestant secularisation process. In this context, there is a tendency to recognize multi-ethnicity and religious pluralism as in the

Willfried Spohn 44

Protestant North-Western European states. Here, national identities have differentiated, have increasingly detached themselves from the original Protestant monopoly and have therefore progressively pluralised. Against this background, EU agencies have had little reason to intervene in matters of ethnic and religious discrimination (Danchin/Cole 2002, Knox 2007).

In the Baltic states of Estonia and Latvia, the conflictive issue of the rather strong Russian ethnic minority and its exclusion from the newly founded nation-states which were defined as Baltic language communities initially played an important role but the conflict was considerably diminished due to the intervention and mediation of the European Union. In East Germany, the problematic relation between the revitalised Protestant milieu and the secular-religious majority was of importance. An interesting case was the conflictive issue of the LER (life, ethics and religion) instruction in public schools. It was solved with a constitutional compromise at the national level, whereas the issue of the outspoken xenophobia of parts of the East German majority society against the growing immigrant, ethnic and religious minorities was of broader European concern. In this instance, the European agencies were cautious in their criticism, but they supported German groups who wanted to deepen democratisation, religious pluralisation and ethnic inclusion.

In the predominantly Catholic post-communist societies, the perceived hierarchy between the majority nation and minority ethnic groups and the related majority religion and historical religious minorities is still relevant and becomes apparent vis-à-vis the growing immigrant minorities due to the combination of a low to medium degree of secularisation with a high public influence of Catholic nationalism (Danchin/Cole 2002). In Poland, these ethnic-national hierarchies manifested themselves in the difficulty to acknowledge the partial collaboration with the German occupant forces during World War II and the discrimination against the Ukrainian minority (Han 2002). In Lithuania, there were constant tensions with the Polish and Russian minorities. In the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, the continuing exclusion and discrimination of the Roma and Sinti played a role. In the Yugoslav War, Croatia also contributed to the violence against and expulsion of Orthodox Serbians and Muslim Bosnians. However, in all these predominantly Catholic but denominationally mixed societies, the Habsburg multi-national and multi-religious legacy is also still present, forming a counter-weight against ethnic and religious discrimination. It will have to be seen to which extent this legacy – as in the Austrian case of the multi-religious citizenship laws (Perlmutter/Rosenberg 2009) – will have a positive influence on the integration of the growing number of Muslim immigrants.

On this backdrop, the European agencies had good reasons to react to the continuing virulent ethnic-national tensions and ethno-religious discriminations. To the extent that these countries became members of the European Union, however, these interventions were limited due to the institutionalised respect for the predominant national identity in the multi-level EU regime. It was also important as the European Union did not want to contribute further to the widespread Euro-scepticism which was related to the fear of the members of the majority nation and religion that they would be weakened due to EU support for ethnic and religious minorities. Nevertheless, as in similar Western European cases, it is to be expected that the increasingly influential process of Europeanisation will


lead to stronger constitutional democratization, religious pluralisation and ethnic-religious tolerance in the long run.

The effect of the Europeanisation process is much more ambivalent with respect to the few Orthodox post-communist cases (Ramet 2006, Petrica 2006). The revitalisation of the Orthodox majority religion resulted in a strengthening of the religious-organic majority nationalism as well as the discrimination against the historical and immigrant ethnic minorities. In Romania, the tensions with the Transylvanian Hungarian and German historical minorities are still virulent (Brubaker 2007). In addition to these tensions, there is a growing discrimination against the Sinti and Roma. In Bulgaria, the ethnic tensions with the Muslim Pomiaks still play a major role – even if it initially deescalated after the critical development in the first transformation phase (Karagiannis 2009). In both cases, the European agencies particularly voiced their criticism during the accession negotiations, though only with limited effects due to the widespread Euro-scepticism.

The nationalist Orthodox majority was equally ambivalent with respect to the expansion of the Europeanisation process in the Orthodox countries in South Eastern Europe which are not yet members of the EU. On the one hand, the accession to the EU is pursued in view of the expected positive impact of the European Union on economic development, democratic stabilisation, and its indirect effect on military security. On the other hand, there is also the fear of the destructive consequences of Western European secularism combined with Catholic and Protestant missionary activities. Despite the fact that it considers itself to belong to Europe, this ambivalence is particularly obvious in the case of Serbia as a consequence of the EU intervention in the Kosovo conflict. It is less important in the cases of the Ukraine and the Caucasian countries that will remain outside the European Union in the foreseeable future and will only become members of the new East European association community. The post-Soviet Russian Federation still is an influential counter-centre. On the one hand, it is interested in a stronger economic cooperation with the EU, but on the other hand, it fears a cultural erosion of its Orthodox national identity and a geopolitical power loss with respect to its re-claimed imperial-hegemonic sphere of influence.

We should bear in mind that the extension of the European Union to Central Eastern, South Eastern and Eastern Europe also goes along with a stronger emphasis of the common Christian foundations of the European civilisations in reaction to the adjacent Islamic civilisation which is imported due to immigration (Spohn 2009). Thus, the ecumenical rapprochement between Catholicism and Protestantism in its primary focus on Western Europe also has an impact on the reinforcement of multi-religious bridges in North Eastern, Central Eastern and South Eastern Europe.

In addition, though with considerably more difficulties, the cooperation between Western and Eastern Christianity is developing. At the same time, however, the growing Christian Oecumene is not replicated by a Christian-Islamic cooperation. On the contrary, since 9/11/2001, there is a tendency to conceive of the European Union not only as a secular transnational regime but also as a common Christian value community. This tendency is supported by the inclusion of new Central Eastern and South Eastern member states, particularly strongly Catholic-nationalist and Orthodox-nationalist countries where the revitalisation of religious nationalism has also mobilized anti-Islamic trends. The increasing accentuation not only of a humanist-secular but also of a Christian Europe

Willfried Spohn 46

manifests itself in both the continuing cultural hierarchies vis-à-vis the mainly Muslim immigrants in Europe as well as the growing resistance to incorporate Turkey into the European Union as a member-state. Though Turkey defines itself as a European secular state, the growing influence of religious-national forces is not primarily seen as a form of religious and political pluralisation but is rather perceived as an Islamisation of Turkish politics that has no place in Europe (Tibi 2006, Yavuz 2006, Zürcher 2004).

5. Conclusion In sum, the above analysis has demonstrated that the religious factor plays a multi-dimensional role in the many post-communist societies in Europe. On the one hand, it represents a cultural force in state and society in varying levels of religious vitality that depend on the types of religion. After the initial religious revitalisation, it also played a major role in the context of the post-communist transformation and its renewed tendency towards secularisation in the Catholic, Protestant and Catholic or Protest dominant mixed societies in contrast to the Orthodox cases.

On the other hand, the religious factor also plays a role as a component of the post-communist national identities that tend to increase pluralisation depending on the secular and atheistic currents and the religious ethnic composition of the nation. Moreover, the religious factor is involved in the ethno-national relations with respect to their historical foundations as well as the increasing impact of immigrant ethnic minorities.

Finally, it manifests itself in the relationship between the Islamic civilisation and the increasingly Christian overtones of Europe. In light of these multi-dimensional impacts of religion and secularisation on the contemporary reconstruction of collective identities in post-communist societies, it is problematic to conceptualise the current landscape simply in terms of a post-Christian or post-secular Europe.

Rather, it is precisely the multi-dimensional causality of the religious factor in the inter-civilisational constellation of European multiple modernity, that determines the reconstructions and developmental tendencies in the collective: ethnic, national and European identities within the post-communist societies of Central Eastern, South Eastern and Eastern Europe. 6. References

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The Modernisation of Gender Relations and Religion: Comparative Analysis of Secularization Processes Kornelia Sammet and Daniel Bergelt 1. Introduction In the course of social modernisation processes, religiosity and church attendance as well as denominational affiliation have – in Europe, at least – declined in many countries (see Müller 2009; Pickel 2009; Berger/Davie/Fokas 2008). This applies to a lesser extent for women: in empirical studies, they demonstrate almost universally higher values than men in terms of church affiliation and attendance, but also of subjective religiosity. These find-ings are often considered to be due to the fact that women are affected to a supposedly lesser degree by social modernisation. This would imply that integrating them more into modernisation processes would cause religiosity to decrease among women as well. Ingle-hart and Norris argue, for example, that “the transformation in women’s lives in modern societies during the twentieth century, generated by widening opportunities in education, the workforce, and public affairs and changes in families, the home, and modern lifestyles, has contributed to this dramatic decline in religiosity” (Inglehart/Norris 2005: 57).

Woodhead proposes directing attention to the significance of gender in processes of modernisation and secularization (2008: 192), because classical secularization theories are limited “by their lack of attention to gender difference” (Woodhead 2007: 578). They ex-plore male experiences of industrial modernisation and the latter’s “sharp division of pro-ductive and reproductive labour between a feminised domestic sphere and a masculinised public sphere” (Woodhead 2007: 578; also Woodhead 2008). This division of spheres also has effects on religion: “Religion is therefore relocated. Although still under the ultimate control of a male father God and male ‘religious professionals’ (as they increasingly be-come), religion becomes women’s work, closely associated with the domestic sphere” (Woodhead 2007: 579). The often described “feminisation of Christianity” in the 19th century, with women successively entering public spaces in the churches and developing their own, female spirituality and piety, was a result of the division of spheres, with the relocation of religion and a complementary process to the male-dominated secularization (see Götz von Olenhusen 2000; McLeod 1988). A gender-attentive secularization theory has to be further differentiated. Woodhead suggests that the analysis of the relationship between gender and religion should be complemented by way of other categorisations, “advocating an approach to secularization which is attentive to power relations of all kinds – whether in relation to gender, or class, or ethnicity, or sexuality” (Woodhead 2008: 192).

In the following we aim to perform a differentiated analysis of the relationship between religion and modernisation, in which we will not use the aforementioned categorisations but instead expand upon other distinctions. On the one hand, in terms of the sociology of religion we will differentiate between believing and belonging (Davie 1994) as well as


Kornelia Sammet and Daniel Bergelt

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atheism and religious indifference, as a position “beyond ambivalence and ambiguity to-wards religious subjects and church organisation” (Höhmann/Krech 2006: 184, authors’ translation; see also Gärtner/Pollack/Wohlrab-Sahr 2003). On the other, various cultural contexts shall be included. We will do this in two steps: first, we will perform analyses comparing countries on the basis of quantitative data, in order to examine links between secularization processes and the modernisation of gender relations. The second step will consider the specific case of Eastern Germany, which is characterised by both highly ad-vanced secularization and largely modernised gender relations. For this we will use mate-rial from a current qualitative study.

2. Cross-National Analyses: Religion and Gender in Modernisation Processes When carrying out comparative analyses between countries to examine how the modernisa-tion of gender relations is related to secularization, we are not looking so much at men’s and women’s religiosity and church affiliation per se. We are rather more interested in the degree of difference between the sexes as an indicator of the extent to which religion and the churches are social areas shaped by gender, and its relation to the level of attachment to traditional or modern gender norms in the respective countries. 2.1 Comparing Gender Differences in Denominational Affiliation and Belief in God

between European Countries Numerous quantitative studies have shown that virtually everywhere in the world women demonstrate higher levels of church affiliation and attendance to services as well as of religiosity (see for example Ingelhart/Norris 2005: 58; for Norway Furseth 2005; for United States of America Kosmin et al. 2009: 1). For Europe, transnational analyses have shown that women are more religious than men almost everywhere (apart from in the Neth-erlands) (Kecskes 2000: 99), and that this is true almost regardless of factors such as age, education and employment. These findings are often attributed to gender-specific religious socialisation (see for example Kecskes 2000). We suspect, however, that it is socially ap-portioned gender norms that are decisive here. We shall examine this proposition on the basis of data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), from the year 2008.1 We will be restricting the analysis to 19 European countries defined by various denomina-tional traditions, namely Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Protestantism. Given the enormous differences in religiosity and church affiliation found in Europe (see Pickel 2008, 2010; Pickel/Müller 2009), we will refrain from performing an additional, interreligious compari-son.2

1 We would like to thank Anja Gladkich for helping with the calculations. We also owe her and Gert Pickel our

thanks for their remarks. 2 As an exception, for contrast we include Turkey, as a country shaped by Sunni Islam and state-imposed laic-

ism.

Modernization of Gender Relations and Religion 53

Table 1: Gender-Differences in Religiosity Country/Region Denominational

Affiliation Denom. Diff Belief in God God. Diff

Eastern Germany 24.43 4.7 16.50 2.7 Czech Republic 39.43 18.4 23.95 13.5 France 55.22 10.4 37.33 7.1 Netherlands 58.01 3.6 36.74 2.4 Latvia 60.65 20.4 36.86 20.8 Sweden 70.23 5.9 24.94 6.0 Spain 78.50 11.1 59.53 12.9 Slovenia 80.27 4.7 40.66 8.3 Finland 82.09 5.3 46.33 15.0 Slovakia 83.24 8.6 59.71 15.5 Russia 83.89 15.3 58.12 25.1 Norway 83.96 0.1 37.02 11.6 Western Germany 83.96 5.5 48.15 7.9 Denmark 85.68 4.6 33.59 8.3 Ukraine 91.59 11.3 66.97 19.0 Portugal 92.06 6.6 72.91 11.2 Ireland 92.79 4.3 67.50 6.5 Croatia 93.52 3.7 74.58 13.8 Turkey 99.65 0.5 94.89 0.2

Source: International Social Survey Programme (ISSP 2008) and own Calculations on ISSP (2008); Denomina-tional Affiliation and Belief in God in Percent. Denom. Diff means gender differences in Denominational Affilia-tion and God. Diff means gender differences in Belief in God. In the ISSP data from 2008, the female respondents in all participating European countries – as was the case in the studies mentioned previously – scored more highly than males in terms of religiosity and church affiliation (see Table 1). This is even true in more highly secularized societies, and it is notable that the difference between the sexes in countries with low levels of religiosity and church affiliation is sometimes more pronounced than in those countries with higher overall levels of religiosity and church affiliation. If one first considers denominational affiliation with regard to differences between the sexes, it be-comes apparent that in some countries the difference between men and women is only very slight, and in others this difference is very large (see Table 1). In Norway, only 0.1% fewer men than women belong to a religious denomination; in Turkey this difference is only 0.5% and in Eastern Germany 4.7%. Quite a contrast to this are countries where the propor-tion of church members varies highly between men and women, such as in Russia, with a difference of 15.3%, the Czech Republic, with 18.4%, and Latvia, where the difference is as high as 20.4%. It is notable that the level of difference between the sexes in denomina-tional affiliation is not related to the general rate of affiliation; indeed among those coun-tries with a small difference between the sexes, there are both societies with a low level of denominational affiliation (e.g. Eastern Germany and the Netherlands) and countries where almost the entire population is a member of a church (Norway, Croatia, Ireland). A similar picture is seen in those countries which demonstrate large differences between the denomi-national affiliation of men and women: among these, too, there are both countries with a


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low overall level of denominational affiliation (the Czech Republic, Latvia) as well as countries with a high degree of denominational affiliation (Russia, Ukraine, Spain).

Considering belief in God – which we use here as an indicator of religiosity – it is no-ticeable that there are some countries where the gender difference is close to zero, while in other countries the difference between men and women is substantial. Furthermore, in terms of belief in God this difference between the sexes is clearly not connected with the proportion of religious people in the respective countries. Among those countries with a small gender difference in terms of belief in God, there are on the one hand highly secular-ized societies, such as the Netherlands or Eastern Germany, and on the other countries with a high overall degree of religiosity, such as Turkey or Ireland. Those countries with large differences between men and women in terms of belief in God include those with low overall religiosity, such as Finland or the Czech Republic, but also those which scored highly for belief in God, such as Russia or Croatia. Here, it is striking that the gender dif-ference in denominational affiliation does not always correspond with that for belief in God. In Croatia, the difference between the sexes in church affiliation is comparatively low at 3.7%, although for belief in God it is rather high, at 13.8%. In further analyses we will refer to the belief in God as an indicator of religiosity. This is because denominational affiliation, as an indicator of people’s belonging to the Church, is founded much more on convention and is less of an expression of individual attitudes. 2.2 Social Gender Norms as an Explanation of the Gender Difference in Religiosity In order to explain the previously compiled findings, we propose that the varying gender difference in church affiliation and belief in God can be accounted for by the prevailing gender norms in the respective countries, which may be egalitarian or alternatively may emphasise differences. To examine this assumption, we aim to make use of an approach which is based on country-specific, path-dependent developments. Such an approach was developed by Pickel, for example, in his deliberations on Eastern Germany as a religious ‘special case’ with unique circumstances (see Pickel 2003)3. Pickel assumes that “existing differences in religiosity of populations […] can strictly speaking be justified by three historical-cultural patterns” (Pickel 2003: 251; authors’ translation). First, he names the denominational dividing line, i.e. whether a region is characterised primarily by Catholi-cism, Orthodoxy or Protestantism. This characterisation impacts upon the respective bond-ing force of churches and religion, which is stronger in the Catholic Church than in the Protestant Church. Second, he argues that attention should be paid to the degree of indus-trialisation in the various states. Religiosity and church affiliation are weakened, it is claimed, by a high degree of industrialisation (see Inglehart 1990 and 1998). Third, Pickel draws a distinction between societies according to whether or not they have a socialist past. Here he assumes that a repressive socialist system inhibited the spread of religious attitudes

3 Pickel himself bases his approach on the observations of Martin (1978 and 1979) and Iannaccone (1991).


and forms of behaviour, discrediting religion in these societies in the long term. Following Pickel, the countries and regions studied can be divided into six groups:

(1) Primarily Catholic countries in western and southern Europe, with a moderate degree of industrialisation and with no socialist past: France, Ireland, Spain and Portugal.

(2) Mixed-denomination countries in Central Europe, with a high degree of industrialisation and with no socialist past: the Netherlands and Western Germany.

(3) Protestant, Scandinavian countries with a high degree of industrialisation and with no socialist past: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark.

(4) Mixed-denomination countries and regions in north-eastern Europe, with a high Protestant population, a moderate degree of industrialisation and a socialist past: Eastern Germany and Latvia.

(5) Eastern and south-eastern European Catholic states, with a moderate degree of industrialisation and a socialist past: Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Croatia.

(6) And finally, eastern European countries with a predominantly Orthodox population, a low degree of industrialisation and a socialist past: Russia and Ukraine.

With regard to the countries included in our calculations, a further group needs to be dis-tinguished, represented by Turkey: predominantly Muslim countries with a low degree of industrialisation (7). While this division into groups of countries is indeed very helpful in explaining the varying extent of religiosity church affiliation, it clearly fails to provide an explanation of the difference between the sexes. This is because the difference varies con-siderably within the individual country groups. The group of mixed-denomination coun-tries in north-eastern Europe includes, for example, Eastern Germany, namely a region where the gender difference is relatively small in terms of both denominational affiliation and belief in God. However this group also includes Latvia, where considerable gender differences in each factor can be observed. In order to explain the varying gender differ-ence in religiosity and church affiliation from country to country, it is thus necessary to expand the analysis model of path dependence by adding further dimensions. In our opin-ion, explaining the issue of varying gender differences in church affiliation and religiosity requires that the degree of modernisation in gender relations also be considered, which can be measured using numerous indicators. Conceivable factors here would include the labour force participation rate among women and their level of education and income in compari-son to men, but also overall political and social conditions, such as laws on abortion and the equal status of same-sex partnerships, the existing childcare infrastructure, the amount of births out of wedlock, and many others. At this point, we would however like to use a normative aspect to measure the degree of modernisation in gender relations, namely the various societies’ acceptance of egalitarian or traditional gender norms.4 We will refer to an ISSP variable as an indicator of this, which is used to determine people’s agreement with a traditional, gender-specific division of labour: “Husband earns money, wife’s job is fam-

4 Day describes gender norms attributing the responsibility for the family to women in the motif of “women

producing a fallen world” (2008: 271).


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ily”5 (variable v12 in the ISSP 2008). We have related this variable, v12, to gender differ-ences in belief in God, our indicator of religiosity. It can be seen in the scatter plot (Figure 1) that the degree of modernisation in gender relations has an influence on gender differ-ences in religiosity. Figure 1: Gender Differences and Division of Labour

Source: Own composition; Authors‘ calculations based on ISSP (1998) It first becomes evident that the states and regions assigned to specific country groups clus-ter relatively closely together in terms of gender norms. The Scandinavian countries, char-acterised by state Protestantism, can be found to the left of the diagram. There is little sup-port in these countries for the traditional, gender-specific division of labour and so they are normatively marked by equality of the sexes. Positioned closely to these countries are France, a nation characterised by laicism, as well as the most highly secularized societies, the Netherlands6 and Eastern Germany. In contrast, on the right-hand side of the plot are the eastern European countries with a predominantly Orthodox population, a low degree of modernisation and a socialist past, namely Russia and Ukraine, as well as predominantly

5 It should be taken into account that this variable comprises various assertions upon which attitudes may be

based: firstly, the expectation that (married) men earn money; secondly, the allocation of responsibility for the family to the (married) woman; and thirdly, the requirement that there be a gender-specific division of labour in a marriage and, related to this, the connection of marriage and family. Affirmative or negative responses may well emphasise just one component of the statement.

6 On the situation in the Netherlands, see also Vellenga 2003.


Muslim Turkey. In these countries, traditional gender norms meet with a high level of ap-proval.7 Between these extremes lie the remaining countries. It is striking that in the pre-dominantly Catholic countries of western and southern Europe with a moderate degree of modernisation and no socialist past, i.e. Ireland, Spain and Portugal, as well in the Catholic Balkan countries (Croatia and Slovenia), the traditional, gender-specific division of labour meets with less approval than in highly modernised Western Germany as well as the east-ern European states with a socialist past (the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Latvia).

The plot shows that there is a relationship between gender norms and sex differences in religiosity: the more people agree with the statement “Husband earns money, wife’s job is family”, the greater gender sex difference in religiosity as well. Here, extremes are found in the case of the Netherlands, on the one hand, where low agreement with v12 (9.84%) and a relatively small gender difference in belief in God (2.4%) can be seen, and on the other hand for Russia, which demonstrates a high level of agreement with v12 (54.48%) and a large difference between the sexes in terms of belief in God (25.1%). This confirms the assumption that in societies, which tend to assign women a more domestic role, women are more highly religious in comparison to men than in more egalitarian societies, i.e. the “gender gap” in religiosity is greater. To put it the other way around, this means that in those countries where egalitarian gender norms are accepted, religiosity among men and women tends to be similar.

In almost all of the countries studied, more men than women agree with a gender-specific division of labour.8 Here, it is notable that in some Catholic countries, men’s and women’s assessments differ considerably. This is particularly true of Spain: there, 19.3% of women agree with a gender-specific division of labour, but among the men the figure is more than twice that, at 38.9%. A different degree of acceptance can be observed, although to a lesser extent, in Portugal (with a difference of 9.9%), Croatia (7.8%) and Slovakia (8.6%), as well as in predominantly Orthodox Ukraine.9 Thus in these countries varying patterns can be seen for men and women: women are at the same time more religious and more egalitarian, while men are more secularized and more traditional with regard to gen-der norms. This would suggest that believing in God can be linked with emancipation and modernisation, and that secularization on the other hand can be linked with traditionality. In these countries, which in recent years have seen modernisation processes being pushed, modernisation and detraditionalisation apparently occur in different spheres for each sex.

A predominantly Muslim country and shaped by laicism, Turkey represents an excep-tion in our country comparison. A high level of acceptance of traditional gender norms can

7 Zick/Küpper/Hövermann (2011: 72) find particularly high acceptance rates in southern and eastern European

Catholic countries for traditional gender norms, measured in this case with the statement “Women should take their role as a wife and mother more seriously”. Accordingly, agreement with this statement in Hungary is par-ticularly high (88.4%) as well as in Poland. Even in Portugal (67.9%) and Italy (63.2%), agreement lies at around two thirds of those questioned, while in the Netherlands (36.4%) only a good third agreed with this statement.

8 Exceptions here are the Czech Republic, where 4.2% more women assign themselves responsibility for the family, and Latvia, where at 0.6% the difference is somewhat marginal.

9 For this variable, predominantly Muslim Turkey shows a different degree of acceptance, with 10.53%, al-though there are hardly any gender differences when it comes to denominational affiliation and belief in God.


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be seen here, which is no doubt due to the low degree of modernisation; at the same time, the gender difference in religiosity and denominational affiliation is very small. Turkish men even demonstrate higher values than Turkish women for one variable related to relig-ion, namely for frequency of church attendance, which in this case means mosque atten-dance. The mosque appears – unlike in Christian churches – to be a male-dominated do-main, not only in terms of the sex of mosque officials, but also the attendees: while Turkish men exhibit an annual “church attendance frequency” of 40.90, for women it is only 29.12. This may be due to the fact that, despite prevailing laicism, which aims to drive back relig-ion from the public sphere, religion in Turkey does above all have a public character and public life is a sphere dominated by men, while in Christian countries the trend is towards a more pronounced privatisation of religion or towards a “vicarious religion” (Davie 2007).

After tendencies were shown in the country comparison which indicate that modernisa-tion of gender relations leads to men’s and women’s religiosity becoming similar, as a special case we now intend to examine in more detail Eastern Germany. The region is char-acterised on the one hand by egalitarian gender norms and on the other by generally very advanced secularization with low levels of religiosity and church affiliation, as well as a small difference between the sexes in these dimensions. We will begin by describing the overall social and political context and briefly outlining the secularization processes which have taken place there.

3. Eastern Germany as a Special Case: Secularization and Modernisation of Gender Relations

The eastern part of Germany is the region where the Lutheran Reformation had its origins, but today religious traditions have lost their importance for the population. Eastern Ger-many – as well as Estonia, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands – is one of the most secularized regions in the world (see Inglehart/Norris 2005, 54f; Pickel 2009; Pollack 2008; Wohlrab-Sahr/Schmidt-Lux 2003). Comparing selected European countries, Pollack and Müller observe that Eastern Germany has the lowest rates in church affiliation (22.7%), church attendance (3.5 per annum, only in Finland is it lower with 2.9), belief in God (20.7%) and significance of religion (14.3%). Rates of alternative religiosity are also quite low among Eastern Germans: 16.3% believe in astrology and 8.1% in spiritualism (Pol-lack/Müller 2011: 123; see also Pickel 2010). To a great extent, the Eastern German popu-lation is not at all religious. In the ‘Religion Monitor’, the group of “non-religious” people is 28% for the whole of Germany, but there are considerable differences between East and West: in Eastern Germany 63% are identified as non-religious, while in the western part this figure is only 19% (Wohlrab-Sahr 2009: 149).

The churches lost a substantial amount of their members in Eastern Germany during the time of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). In 1950, only 8% of the East German population were of no religious denomination and more than 80% were still members of the Protestant Church. During the 1950s, the first ten years of the GDR, tough conflicts took place between state and Church, and a large number of members left their own church.


After the political transformations of 1989, a few new church memberships were seen, although these were far outnumbered by people leaving the Church (Pollack 2002, 378f.). Since 1989, the level of non-church affiliation in Eastern Germany has risen from 65% in 1991 to 74% in 2008 (Pickel 2011: 42).

Today, church members are therefore a minority in Eastern Germany. This religious de-cline was enforced by political repression on the part of the socialist government of the former GDR. Atheism and secularism were essential elements of governmental ideology. Religion was considered to be irrational, old-fashioned, dangerous, and as such opposed to a modern, progressive, and scientific worldview. However, state repression was not the only reason for the religious decline seen in East Germany. The secularization process had already begun in the region of Eastern Germany – and particularly in highly industrialised areas – in the 19th century (see for example McLeod 2000), with the Church undergoing considerable erosion processes. Religious beliefs had already lost their plausibility and their capacity to give orientation in everyday life and they were not able to regain impor-tance after 1989. Wohlrab-Sahr, Schmidt-Lux and Karstein conclude their findings on the Eastern German secularization process as such: “The gods may be returning to other parts of the world, but they are still having a hard time in East Germany” (Wohlrab-Sahr/Schmidt-Lux/Karstein 2008: 136).

Gender relations in Eastern Germany – advanced in turn by political decisions made by the government of the GDR – have undergone processes of detraditionalisation and mod-ernisation. The GDR was characterised by high female participation in working life, which also included mothers. At the end of the 1980s, 78.1% of all women of working age were in work; taking into account students and trainees, that figure was as high as 91.2% (Nickel 1993: 237). This was the highest labour force participation rate in the world (see also Schroeder 1998: 528). This high level of labour participation among women was the aim and result of GDR family policy, a policy tailored to women and mothers which was aimed primarily at young women and was supposed to make motherhood and working more com-patible (see Gysi/Meyer 1993: 139). This took the form of infrastructural measures, above all state childcare facilities, as well as shortened working hours and the introduction of a “baby year”, a year-long period of maternity leave. This state support and requirement that a working life and motherhood should be compatible with one another, granted women a broader scope of freedom and more opportunities to participate: working throughout one’s life was, to begin with, a politically imposed obligation which often led to double the re-sponsibility and hence a dual burden, but it was also an entitlement which accompanied a right to work, and for women and girls growing up in the GDR it ultimately became a per-sonal need and a matter of course (Gysi/Meyer 1993: 141; Geißler 1992: 242).

In the GDR, the decision to have a child and the responsibility for parenting lay primar-ily with women. According to Gysi and Meyer, this is shown by the fact that in 1988 around one third of children were born out of wedlock and there were a lot of single, un-married (not married and divorced) mothers (Gysi/Meyer 1993: 140). Since the end of the 1960s there had been a strong increase in the proportion of children born out of wedlock, and this rise continued even after the change in political systems. Since 2000, the propor-tion of children born out of wedlock in Eastern Germany has been higher than those born to married couples (Statistisches Bundesamt 2007: 10). Furthermore, a large proportion of


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children in Eastern Germany are looked after by state institutions, such as crèches, day nurseries and kindergartens; 41.3% of children under the age of three attend such an estab-lishment (Statistische Ämter des Bundes und der Länder, 2010: 8f.), and most of these do so on an all-day basis (31.7%).

We would also like to refer to another aspect, namely the number of abortions, which is higher in Eastern Germany than the national average. In 2008, for example, proportionally more women in Eastern Germany terminated a pregnancy than the German national aver-age.10 The number of terminated pregnancies can be interpreted as a result and an expres-sion of attitudes towards abortion which were transformed by GDR family policy, but also of an increasingly secularized lifestyle and the change in values this involves. 4. Qualitative Case Studies: Religion and Worldviews of Secularized Women in

Eastern Germany As a region, Eastern Germany was characterised in the long term by the government of the GDR, although this had already been prepared by earlier developments. An enduring leg-acy can be seen, as far as religion is concerned, in the form of a “forced secularity” (Wohl-rab-Sahr/Karstein/Schmidt-Lux, 2009). On the other hand, in terms of gender relations there is – as shown – a high tendency among women to work and independence. Based on case analyses, we now intend to demonstrate what access to religion Eastern German women of no religious denomination have. Here we are dealing with a group to whom religious worldviews and religious practices are particularly foreign: women from Eastern Germany, of no denomination, with a low level of education, and who are dependent on welfare benefits. What position do they take concerning religious beliefs and institutional forms of religion? What religious semantics do they take on and how do they do this (for more on this, see Sammet 2011)?

As these research questions refer to interpretations of the world and of life, they are to be explored by means of qualitative-hermeneutic procedures rather than standardising ones. The data presented here are taken from a current research project at the University of Leip-zig entitled “Worldviews in Precarious Conditions of Life”, funded by the Deutsche For-schungsgemeinschaft (DFG). In this project, we conduct biographical interviews (see for example Schütze 1983; Przyborski/Wohlrab-Sahr 2008, 9-101, 217-240; Rosenthal 2007) and group discussions (see for example Bohnsack 2000) with recipients of welfare benefits all over Germany. Based on these interviews with unemployed persons and the working poor, we analyse how worldviews develop biographically, what experiences and values these refer to and in what communicative contexts they are situated. Below we shall present some cases of women who grew up in Eastern Germany in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s in a secularized, non-religious context and who do not belong to any church. They all have in

10 In that year, 72 pregnancies per 10,000 women aged between 15 and 45 were terminated; in all of the Eastern

German states the proportion is higher, while in almost all non-city states in Western Germany it is lower. Higher rates were still observed, however, in the city states (Statistisches Bundesamt 2009).


common that each has a moderate or low level of education; each has one or more children, is not married and gets by on welfare benefits. We selected these cases because in their worldviews they refer to religious semantics in completely different ways.

4.1 Religious Indifference and Atheism For most of our East German interviewees, religion does not mean a thing. Being asked for the role of religion in their life, they mainly react by saying that it is of no consequence to them. Yvonne, a 23-yearold unemployed interviewee described herself as being „completely unreligious“ and when the question was pursued, she criticised the „Arab religion“ and „foreigners“ who spoke to her and harassed her on the street. She therefore equates religion with foreign cultures and strangers. Friederike, an unemployed woman of around 40 years showed sober pragmatism during the entire interview, revealing that she does not expect much from life. She agreed with the statement proposed by the interviewer that “Things occur in life the way they have to” and added: “I think that you can’t change any of that at all. Life is just like that”. Responding to the question as to whether religion gives her comfort, she refers to her Catholic background, which however no longer fulfils any function in her everyday life:

Friederike: Well.. I was christened Catholic, (2) and my mother’s mother was a very strict Catholic. She really did go to church every Sunday. Then my brother and sister went to communion too. (2) But I refused. I didn’t want to go. And well .. I went to religious instruction but I didn’t get what .. what they expected me to do there. .. Somehow or other, it was too deep for me. (2) Err (2) no, .. I then left the church but that was for another reason, when I was self-employed and had to pay church tax and so I somehow did not accept that there. (3) Yes. (7) (sighs) Yes, I celebrate the religious festivals too. Christmas. Easter. Yes, of course. But .. well (2), I don’t go to church any more, ever […], well I don’t have to any more.11

In this quotation, it becomes obvious that the Christian religion has lost its plausibility within the course of one generation. Christmas and Easter are celebrated in the family and the interviewee allows that her daughter accompanies her grandmother to church, but for herself religion has no significance, and even more: the question of meaning is irrelevant to her. Wohlrab-Sahr/Schmidt-Lux/Karstein (2008: 128) state that a secular habitus can be observerd among the East German population. In many cases – like in Friederike’s – it can appear as pragmatism and religious indifference, in many others it is based on atheism which combines anticlericalism and a scientific worldview as a substitute for religion and

11 The interviews were transcribed word for word and in the corresponding characteristic dialect, then polished

up slightly for the presentation. What the speakers emphasised is put in italics, short pauses are marked with “..”, in the case of longer pauses, the length is stated in seconds in brackets. Incomprehensible words or series of words are bracketed with question marks. The transcriptions were made anonymous and were analyzed with reconstructive-hermeneutic procedures (see Przyborski/Wohlrab-Sahr 2008, 240-271; Wernet 2000).


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“superstition“ with the conviction of a superior socialist moral. In our sample we observe references to natural scientific interpretations in the talks of long term unemployed people with higher education, for example engineers or teachers. But also people of little education refer to a scientific world view and rational pragmatism, as the interview with Fanny, a young hairdresser shows.

During the whole interview, she is emphasizing her independence and maturity. Her most important values are her alleged self-reliance and her decision, never to submit to the wishes of others again, as she had done when she was forced by her mother and her former boyfriend to have an abortion at the age of 16. When she was asked about the role of relig-ion in her life, she answered:

Fanny: None at all. .. Well .. for me it’s just.. uhm .. as a child maybe I thought it was great .. there is a Santa Claus .. etcetera (3) then it is okay. But as an adult uhm what I don’t see doesn’t exist for me. (2) God .. doesn’t exist, someone created him once upon a time, here at this (2) cross some man with a big beard. .. Where does he come from? And then this, comes from heaven .. in the sky there are no men. .. Well, birds are flying in the sky, I’m just, I’m too realistic there.

In her answer, Fanny vehemently denies any influence of religion. In her explanation, she refers to the German word “Himmel“. In German, there is only one term for the two Eng-lish words “heaven“ and “sky“, and the interviewee talks here about both meanings. For her, “Himmel“ is a word which does not (as heaven) describe the big transcendence (Luckmann 1985) but (as sky) the habitat only of birds. This worldview corresponds to the self-portrayal of a mature person who is down-to-earth, taking her life in her own hands, and not subordinating herself to others. She distinguishes between a childish and an adult worldview. Believing in God seems identical with believing in Santa Claus. She also men-tions fairy tales and TV films such as “Star Trek“ which she does not believe in either. As a child she was able to talk to her dead grandmother to overcome her loss. But now, as an adult she is characterized by a pragmatic view of the world. The rejection of religion she adopted in the course of her socialisation supports her self-presentation as self-determined, mature, and down-to-earth. 4.2 Religion as an Option for World Interpretation References to a scientific worldview could also be observed in our data as a reaction of non religious East Germans to the question as to what in their opinion would come after death. The interviewee we call Sabine, for example, a single mother born in the beginning of the seventies, declares that she believes in what “science tells“. Her opinion to the question of afterlife is closely related to scientific explanations: As atoms remained, there would be an “eternal transformation“: “Well, that we .. enter a circle again, whatever. .. We are not totally gone.” Asked for the relevance of religion in her life, she mainly refers to her atheis-tic upbringing by her parents and grandparents, which she evaluates positively. Religion or


atheism is for Sabine above all a question of ethical orientation and concerns the conduct of life. She criticizes, for example, her sister-in-law, who is a Catholic Church member but does not abide by the rules of her confession. Her critical perspective on the morals of the churches and the questioning of their credibility are supported by “stories” about the church related by older people. Her grandfather once told a story reported by of one of his friends, who had worked as a young girl in a convent of nuns where she found a graveyard for babies hidden in a cellar.

Sabine’s view of her life and of the world is characterized by the consciousness that one’s own efforts are important for success. However, she is also aware of the factors that cannot be influenced, so that one does not have everything in one’s own hands. In addition to her scientifically influenced world interpretation, Sabine is open for religious topics and ideas. In spite of her belief in science, she thinks that there can be a “supernatural power”. Participating in a group for relatives of the Alcoholics Anonymous, she adopted interpreta-tions for an experience determining her life:

Sabine: There it is always said that something – everybody believes in something. We call it by the name supernatural power, .. fate, something else, it can be one’s own intuition, directing you. When you say, it was not yourself, that .. someone has looked after you or (sighing), where you can hand something over, what you can not change or handle. Then it is good if there (1) is something.

These concepts can describe what is not under her control and not in her power; they give names to something that can’t be attributed personally. Sabine is aware of those influences and factors, though their description remains indecisive and arbitrary. In another case of our sample, the references to religious semantics are more explicit and decided. The inter-viewee Stefanie experienced already in her childhood and youth the hardships of life: She grew up in a broken home, hardly knowing her natural father; her mother and her stepfa-ther were alcohol addicts and indifferent to the needs of their children. When she was 13 years old and after the death of a close friend, she began to live on the street. At the age of 17, she got pregnant through rape and decided to have the child. When she was 18 years old, she lived with her baby in an apartment and her life gained stability. In the following years, she got two more children from different fathers and now lives apart together with the father of her third child.

Stefanie is very interested in religious topics: in the Middle Ages and in Indians, in ritu-als and in spiritual experiences with ghosts. Various elements are combined in her belief and her religious practice, which are characterized by an unsystematic eclecticism. She calls herself a “goth from the heart” and demonstrates her adherence by black clothing. She got in contact with the goth scene during her street life. To be a goth helps her to cope with life. When she claims that “Goth is somehow something special in my life”, then it helps her both to transcend her normal marginalized everyday life and to experience herself as a special person who is distinguished from her environment. Being goth, the big transcen-dence is relevant for her life. Ghosts influence her existence; she speaks with God and calls herself a believer:


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Stefanie: I’m very religious. Yes, I - one believes in the good in man, I believe in God, but I also believe in the contrary. Well, I don’t pray to anybody, only in God, of course, sometimes. I sometimes talk to him, even if it is stupid or so. But it helps I think. Even being a goth it is not forbidden.

The God she is talking and praying to is explicitly not the Christian God, but the “good God”, who takes care of her and her children To the Christian religion she keeps a distance, and she does not want at all to enter a church building because she thinks in her black clothes she would not be welcome there and a “pope” would immediately ask her to pay church taxes. So churches are something very strange and alien for her. 4.3 The Social Function of Religiosity As regards religion, the case examples of our qualitative study show, for one thing, that there is a certain religious indifference in Eastern Germany. Religious topics and the posing of religious questions mean nothing to some people, and contemplating meaning is of absolutely no relevance in their daily lives (like with Yvonne and Friederike). When interpreting the world and their own experiences, other Eastern German interviewees from our sample refer primarily to scientific explanations – this applies to both men and women alike. The scientific view of the world is also central for the question of the ‘big transcendence’, usually leaving little room for any non-worldly explanations.

Nevertheless, some of the cases presented here refer to religious interpretations or semantics. Sabine uses religious terms to attribute for the not disposable, although she also names secular equivalents which can fulfil this function, too. For Stefanie, belonging to the goth scene and the ritualistic practices she carries out function in such a way as to give her a sense of social belonging and social recognition, but above all they serve to help her to cope with life. There are broad areas in her life which she cannot control. Religion serves to help her broach the issue of contingency experiences, by attributing events to the actions of spirits and interpreting dangers and fears as a part of life. Yet religion does also contribute to cope with experiences of contingency, when she prays to the “good God”. One might call these practices “subjective-life spirituality or self-spirituality” (Woodhead 2007: 575).

Even if the persons questioned make positive references to religious semantics, all cases have in common that they are highly distanced from the Church. This shows that, even if Eastern German women bear a certain openness towards religion, the Church neither represents a specifically female domain for them nor does it offer them a specifically female path into the public sphere (as a replacement for waged work). 4.4 The Division of Spheres and Religiosity The cases of Eastern German women presented here have in common that their children are the most important thing in their lives: they want to be a good mother for them. They opted to have their children, deciding against an abortion despite very difficult life situations, and


this gives their lives meaning and results in a responsibility towards their children. As sin-gle mothers they bear this responsibility alone; they don’t have confidence in the children’s fathers, because they experienced violence themselves in their parental home or because they first want to teach their partners how to be good and responsible fathers. In their esti-mation they cannot trust in their partners, neither as fathers nor as breadwinners (most of them are unemployed or have an insecure job). Looking after the children does not hinder the women’s orientation towards employment; on the contrary, the women deduce from their responsibility for their children a strong orientation towards waged work. Although access to the labour market is very restricted for them, they want to demonstrate the impor-tance of work to them throughout their own lives.

This indicates that in Eastern Germany, even in the case of women with poor perspec-tives on the labour market, egalitarian gender norms and a pronounced orientation towards employment are combined with a specific division of spheres, in which women are in charge of looking after the children and are supported more by public childcare infrastruc-ture than by their partners. Work and employment – even if they are unemployed – has become an internalised norm and central to the women’s identity (see Weißmann/Bergelt/Krüger 2011). So the phrase summing up family duties for them would have to be: “Mother’s job is earning money and caring for the family”. 5. Conclusion As has been made clear by the analyses, Eastern Germany represents a case of particularly extensive secularization in the sense of exodus from the churches as well as particularly low religiosity. Instead of other-worldly references, it is an inherent pragmatism, religious indifference or firm atheism which can be observed in Germany’s secularized East. At the same time, the past few decades have brought with them highly advanced modernisation in gender relations and a high tendency among women to work, something which was sup-ported by GDR family policy and existing childcare infrastructure. In GDR times, a spe-cific separation of gender-exclusive spheres developed in such a way that for women, a desire to work was combined with usually being the person responsible for the children. This orientation was passed on, along with the secularized habitus, to younger generations after the end of the GDR. Waged work and raising one’s children provide an inner-worldly sense of purpose; by contrast, religion and the Church hardly matter anymore.

The country comparison identified a relationship between gender norms, i.e. the gen-der-specific ascription of tasks, and differences between the sexes in religiosity. The mod-ernisation of gender relations, which we measured here by way of the degree to which people rejected traditional gender norms, tends to lead to less differences between men’s and women’s levels of religiosity and church affiliation. One ought however to consider – and this should be noted as a desideratum for further analyses – that norms and reality do not necessarily correspond with one another. Take for instance a society in which a gender-specific division of labour where women are assigned responsibility for reproductive la-bour, meets with high approval; here, it is perfectly conceivable that this same society


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might nevertheless demonstrate a high labour force participation rate among women, be-cause the women need to be in gainful employment for economic reasons.

The country comparison also yielded information pointing to asynchronies in moderni-sation processes, in terms of both the countries examined and sexes. Indeed, the initial proposition assumes an asynchrony: men thus lose their church affiliation and their religi-osity, because during the course of industrialisation they are introduced earlier and more strongly into the sphere of production, which itself is ever more separate from that of re-production; with an increased labour force participation rate, women would go through this same development. Our analyses also show that Turkey is a country still in the early stages of this development; it is lowly industrialised, a high level of acceptance of traditional gender norms is present there, and among men and women there is almost equally high believing and belonging. By contrast, the Netherlands and Eastern Germany, as well as the Scandinavian countries, denote the end of this process, although the extent of gender dif-ferences in religiosity and church affiliation does vary. Asynchronies can also be observed between sexes when one takes into consideration the areas in which modernisation proc-esses occur: while a greater number of women (apart from in the Czech Republic and Lat-via) are replacing traditional gender norms with modern, egalitarian ones, men tend instead to be leaving religion and the Church behind.12 6. References Ammerman, Nancy T. (ed.)(2007): Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives. Oxford. Beckford, James A./Demerath, Nicholas J. (eds): The Sage Handbook of the Sociology of Religion.

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12 Translation: Matthew Rockey


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Religious Social Capital in Europe Connections between Religiosity and Civil Society Gert Pickel and Anja Gladkich 1. Religious Social Capital as a New Form of Organized Religiosity? With Robert Putnam’s “Making Democracy Work”, first published in 1993, a lasting dis-cussion concerning the effects of social capital on democracies’ operational performance was set in motion.1 Putnam defines social capital as associations formed on a voluntary bases, so-called social networks, as well as interpersonal or social trust and his central ar-gument is that with citizens organizing into associations and social networks on a voluntary basis a form of (generalized) trust among people is generated. Putman concludes that gen-eral confidence in democratic institutions and politics benefit from this trust generated. Over time, this social trust, in turn, cultivates trust in democratic institutions and political decisions. Additionally, it can be argued that social capital not only contributes significant-ly to the creation of social integration or eases the implementation of political goals in so-ciety, but is also one of the main foundations for the development of civil societies. Conse-quently, the cultivation of social capital, on either level (networks or social trust), consti-tutes an important resource for successful democratization.2

In 2000, Putnam elaborated on his analysis of the concept of social capital in his book with the intentionally provocative title “Bowling Alone“ (2000), using the example of the United States. Putnam concluded on a rather pessimistic note that in regard to the develop-ment of social capital in modern (Western) societies a high degree of pluralization, indivi-dualization and medialization is present. While a progressing individualization in modern societies causes citizens to increasingly withdraw from the public as well as the above-mentioned networks, it is the augmented societal pluralization that destroys social struc-tures. Last but not least, increasing medialization, especially the argumented role of TV and internet for the leisure and recreation industry renders many associations redundant. Increa-singly, people are required to depend on themselves, resulting in social networks eroding, as are the opportunities to develop social trust.

Recently, with some delay, the social sciences have begun to study the relation between religion and social capital (Campbell/Putnam 2010; Smidt 2003; Roßteutscher 2009; Traunmüller 2009; Traunmüller/Freitag 2011). A comprehensible and obvious trend, for church networks and membership in religious associations create social trust and therefore ultimately social capital for society in general. After all, it was religion’s integrative power

1 The importance of social capital for society has also been discussed elsewhere, perhaps most prominently by

James Coleman (1990) and Pierre Bourdieu (1982). For this article, they will not be taken into account since both propose a different definition of social capital as compared to Putman and also approach the subject from a different perspective.

2 For this very reason, social networks are also sometimes referred to as “schools of democracy“. The people are able to learn civic virtues, which on the long run help the democracy to survive.


Gert Pickel and Anja Gladkich 70

that formed quite frequently the center of sociolinguistic discussions ever since sociology emerged as a discipline (Durkheim 2005 [Orig. 1922]; Parsons 1937; Bellah 1967). Since de Tocqueville (1976 [Orig. 1840]), potential relevance of religion in terms of solidarity within a political society has firmly established itself in political scientific debates. Thus, Putnam’s take on religion and its effects on communalization processes as one of the main sources of “social putty“ in society is neither novel nor unrelated to traditional sociological theories (Putnam 2000: 65-79).

What actually is remarkable, however, is the fact that it was not until recently that con-temporary debates explicitly emphasized religious or faith-based social capital at all, espe-cially when this emphasis was mostly only sporadic. Most likely, due to the fact that de-bates on the processes of secularization in modern societies have predominated since the beginning of the 20th century, religion and religious networks have played a marginal role in the analyses of social capital (which emerged in the 1990s) outside the United States. Researchers in the field of the European sociology of religion considered the decline in citizens’ commitment to (Christian) religions as a given in the Western World (Berger 1967; Wilson 1982). Due to this loss of social relevance of religion and its concomitant processes of functional differentiation, privatization and detraditionalization, or so the as-sumption goes, it is no longer necessary to inquire about the effects of religious communa-lization on social integration in modern civil societies.

Recently, authors have increasingly proclaimed a return of religions (Huntington 1996; Riesebrodt 2001), of the Gods (Graf 2004) or the religious in general. Apparently, religion remains important in modern societies. Even if the empirical evidence supporting the asser-tion of the return of religion is not very extensive, it has been acknowledged that seculari-zation (the process) is not to be equated with secularity (the state). It may be worthwhile to focus once again on processes of religious communalization and religious socialization as well as the relationship between the church and the state and its effects on social occur-rences of the religious.

These contradictory religious sociological interpretations of the present situation pro-vide a good reason to study the correlations between social capital and religiosity empiri-cally, as this may also stimulate the discussion on the relationship between religion and politics. At the same time, the analysis will lead the sociology of religion, with its strong emphasis on individualized religiosity (Luckmann 1967; see also Roy 2010), back to consi-dering the relevance of religious social groups. It should be contemplated whether religious social capital in modern societies is actually empirically relevant for the development of civil society (1). Its effects may be social in the sense of integrating the members of socie-ty3, but it may also be political in the sense of serving as “schools of democracy“ as Putnam calls it. Therefore, it is necessary to study the kinds of effects of religious social capital on civil society (2). It may serve as a mediator between social groups – i.e. it builds bridges (bridging) – or it may reinforce and integrate exclusive social groups (bonding) – which may, however, cause them to systematically distinguish between themselves and other social groups. It should also be of interest which impact the current religious trends have on the social capital in European civil societies (3). Will (additional) waves of secularization demolish civil societies or are they negligible as secular networks replace social networks? 3 This aspect refers to the classic sociological debate on the cohesion of the social order in individualizing

societies (Durkheim 2005; Parsons 1937).

Religious social capital in Europe 71

Or could voluntary religious networks benefit from the retreat of the major religions and thus be able to develop to the full? (4) What kinds of effects does the social capital debate have on the development of institutionalized religion? Could it be that the churches, sub-jected to the pressures of secularization, may actually benefit from changes in their net-works or are these networks inevitably exposed to processes of erosion? 2. Religious Social Capital and its Relevance 2.1 Religious Social Capital – what it is Considerations of religious social capital start out with one of Putnam’s assumptions (2000), which he elaborated based on his observations of the American society: religious networks play a major role in developing a country’s civil society. In addition to “secular“ social capital, religious social capital serves as one of the driving forces for social cohesion. Due to cultural religious traditions, in most societies, it constitutes a large part of the gener-al amount of social capital. As in the case of social capital in general, religious social capi-tal contributes to the creation of interpersonal trust and fulfills a function, which Emile Durkheim (2005 [Orig. 1922]) already attributed to religion, namely the integration of the members of an increasingly individualizing society.4 Thereby, religion assumes an impor-tant position in the societies’ political culture. It stabilizes the political order and, thanks to the religious social capital, it encourages political trust and political support of democracy.

Putnam (1993) understands social capital as social networks as well as interpersonal trust. The former is called structural social capital, whereas the latter is referred to as cul-tural social capital (Gabriel/Westle 2008) or generalized trust (Freitag/Franzen 2007; Frei-tag/Traunmüller 2009). While structural social capital initiates trust-building processes, cultural social capital emerges from the contacts established within the networks. It reflects in how far people trust one another even though they have not necessarily had many pre-vious encounters. This feeling results from people’s positive experiences within the social groups which result from and reinforce the norm of reciprocity. The norm is based on the premise that reciprocal actions create trust, which in turn causes people to cooperate and reinforces people’s assumption that they can expect others to cooperate in the future as well. The action oriented assumption of reciprocity distinguishes trust from norm-based legitimacy or faith: Trust needs to be reaffirmed, which happens in social groups. Trust acquired within the immediate social environment is then extended to other people (crea-tion of generalized, social trust in all others). It thus serves as a foundation for social inte-gration, and may even indicate integration itself. The most important aspects here are that social networks are voluntary and that trust can be extended from the group level to the societal level. In the long run, this even serves the democratic political system as it, too, benefits from an increase in generalized trust.

Social capital can be divided into “bonding“ and “bridging“ social capital. Bonding so-cial capital refers to social capital that serves to integrate the members of a single group; bridging social capital refers to social capital that assists in building bridges across social groups. According to Putnam, both types of social capital are basically useful for integrat- 4 For similar thoughts, see Robert Bellahs’ (1967) concept of civil religion.


ing democratic societies (Putnam/Campbell 2010). However, there is reason to doubt the integrative potential of bonding social capital. Even though it creates a group identity and cohesion within a certain social group, it is not extended to other members of society. Con-sequently, it is exclusive and thus involves considerable potential for social conflict. There-fore bridging social capital would actually be the only kind of social capital that has inte-grative potential for the entire society, as it connects members of different groups.5 Wuth-now (2002) differentiates between identity-bridging and status-bridging social capital. While a social group may be identity-bonding, it may also be status-bridging. Apparently, this frequently applies to faith based networks.

What do these differentiations imply for the analysis of religious organizations and groups? According to Sigrid Roßteutscher (2009), mainly the comparatively large religious groups rather than new religious movements, small religious associations or ’sects’ display bridging social capital since they exhibit a greater degree of socio-structural openness and address a wider range of subjects. The smaller religious groups by contrast address a rather homogenous group of members who, due to of processes of identity maintenance, distin-guish between themselves and other groups – or even society in general.6 However, it is this exclusivity that frequently appeals to religiously active persons.7 Besides the fact that ex-clusivity imposes a limit on the increase in membership numbers, this course of action does not create bridging but rather bonding social capital. The spread of these new religious movements does not substitute the integrative power of the large religious organizations – and does not contribute to integration and the stabilization of the political order. 8

These links are presented in the model in Chart 1. Structural social capital encourages trust between the members of the respective social group (ingroup cultural religious social capital) and in turn promotes trust in the respective religion and church. In order to contri-bute to the general social integration, this trust needs to be extended to adherents to other religions (interreligious trust), as well as the other members of society (social trust) (via bridging cultural religious social capital). If the cultural religious social capital is limited to the groups’ members (ingroup and bonding), it is unlikely to have a positive effect: nei-ther on integration or trust in other members of society nor, ultimately, on political sup-port.9

5 Putnam qualified his statements in 2007, while maintaining his fundamental assumption that social capital

furthers civil society in principle (also Putnam/Goss 2002 or Putnam/Campbell 2010). 6 For a definition of sects and other types of religious organizations see Robertson (1972). 7 This line of argument is derived from the religious market model. According to Iannaccone (1994), particular-

ly highly exclusive religious groups – which actually involve high social costs – have the greatest potential for increasing social capital, which also results in an increase in religious vitality in society in general. Unlike the main churches, they are relatively free of bothersome free riders who, without actually investing themselves, reap similar benefits (e.g. the promise of the salvation of their souls) as very dedicated members (e.g. frequent church visits, active engagement in the congregation). Religious goods are provided more exclusively which in turn generates greater benefits (Traunmüller/Freitag 2011: 254).

8 Even though the main churches are less active compared to smaller religious movements, they contribute more societal social capital. Roßteutscher (2009) ascribes this to assumptions derived from organizational so-ciology. She does not find any sound proof of the validity of the religious market model in her cross-national study.

9 Bellah (1967) already related characteristics of political culture and religion to one another. He applied these links to the civil religion concept.


Chart 1: Religious Social Capital, Trust and Civil Society Frame:

Church-State-Relationship

Structural religious social capital (active membership in faith based networks)

Interreligious trust

Ingroup cultural religious

social Capital

Bridging cultural religious

social capital

Social trust

Support of democracy

Individual Religiosity (subjective religiosity, Importance of religion)

Social integration

Bonding cultural religious

social capital

Frame: Cultural heritage + modernization

Source: own compilation. In addition to the above-mentioned religious communities, the individuals’ religious bonds have to be taken into account. Subjective religiosity does not necessarily have to be embed-ded in social groups (Luckmann 1967; Davie 1994). At the same time, however, subjective religiosity might also evoke a higher degree of interpersonal trust, especially, if that is in accordance with the norms of the individuals’ religion. In general, it is assumed that reli-gions provide security and contribute to people’s identity-building. Also, religion frequent-ly productively interrelates with the participation in social networks – or at least the oppor-tunities to participate provided by the churches. 2.2 The Decline of Associations and the Sociology of Religion How can these ideas be related to the theoretical approaches that are currently being de-bated in the sociology of religion? What kinds of consequences arise for the development of religion? In the United States, Putnam (2000) finds a decline in structural social capital. The decline in religious and church-affiliated networks would support the views held by the proponents of secularization theory (Bruce 2002a, 2011; Wilson 1985), who assume a close relationship between commitment to the church, religious communalization and subjective religiosity (Pollack/Pickel 2007). According to the main assumption of the secularization theory, religion is losing its social relevance in the course of modernization. If this is indeed the case, then commitment to the church, engagement in religious voluntary networks as well as subjective religiosity should be in decline, too, with an ultimately negative impact on interpersonal (and political) trust.

However, the assumptions supported by secularization theory regarding the develop-ment of individual religiosity (Berger 1967; Wilson 1982; Bruce 2002a; Pollack 2003,


2009) had been the subject of a heated debate among religious sociologists. The religious individualization theory, for example, holds that citizens may turn away from the official model of the church while remaining subjectively religious – rendering religion invisible on the societal level (Luckmann 1967; Davie 2000, 2002a; for a critical view see Pol-lack/Pickel 2007).10 In light of this general debate, it is hardly surprising that the (short) discussion between sociologists of religion on the “decline of associations thesis“ (Bruce 2002b; Davie 2002b) mainly focused on the relationship between membership in religious social networks and subjective religiosity. The main point of dispute was in how far subjec-tive religiosity has been affected by the evident decline in the social forms of religion. With regard to the question of the “decline of associations“, Bruce (2002b: 323-326) concludes that religious social networks are also eroding. Other than Putnam though, Bruce explains this development not necessarily with the general decline in social participation and organi-zation but rather as a result of the process of secularization. If the communal basis of reli-gion, i.e. membership and engagement, eroded, individual types of religious vitality would also be affected, or so, Bruce states. This does not imply that the social networks will en-tirely disappear. Instead, they will change their form and will change from religious to secular networks in the course of the process of functional differentiation.11

In line with the religious individualization theory, Grace Davie (2002b: 332) draws a different conclusion: The decline in voluntary networks in the religious sector is the epito-mized result of the disintegration of civil society in modern societies – just as Putnam de-scribes in his work. This particularly affects the religious networks associated with the main Christian churches in Europe.12 However, small voluntary networks supersede church at-tendance, which used to predominate, as well as church-related and organized forms of communalization. This, in addition to the greater detachment from organized groups and associations, indicates both the separation of individualized religiosity and organized reli-gion as well as a change in the types of religious organizations into more liberal and smaller movements.

Both approaches assume the de-institutionalization of Christian religiosity and the de-cline of commitment to the church in Europe. Most of the available empirical evidence on Western Europe seems to support this thesis (for further information see Bruce 2002a; Norris/Inglehart 2004; Pickel 2009; Pollack 2009). The Eastern European situation, howev-er, seems to be more complex due to the temporal overlap of mutually interacting develop-ment trends. The abolition of political repressions and the concomitant ideological conse-quences bring about religious revitalization processes that are countered by secularization tendencies which result from catch-up modernization. All the while both trends are mod-erated by cultural identity-building processes which often arise from the close relationship between religion and the nation. Even so, de-institutionalization is evident in Eastern Eu-rope, too. In addition, data on the development of subjective religiosity in Europe indicate secularization rather than a revitalization or return of religion or a change to individualized invisible religion.13 10 The religious individualization thesis is based on the premise that religiosity is an anthropological constant of

human existence. 11 The latter will then function as societal integrators, i.e. a functional equivalent, so to speak. Society will only

disintegrate when these networks break up as well, which is what Putnam (2000) hypothesizes. 12 Bruce’s and Davie’s debate focuses on empirical evidence from Great Britain. 13 See also the article by G. Pickel in this book.


Chart 2: Theories of Sociology of Religion and the ”Decline of Associations“ Debate

Secularization thesis

Individualization thesis Market model of religion

Authors B. Wilson, S. Bruce, P. Norris, D. Pollack

Th. Luckmann, G. Davie

R. Stark, L. Iannaccone, R. Finke

Axiom A fundamental contrast between religion and modernity leads to a decline in the social

importance of religion

The religious orientations of the individuals are

constant, only the commitment to specific churches varies – and

mostly decreases.

There is a constant societal demand for

religion, but religious vitality depends on the supply provided by the

religious market Relevant theory Modernization

theory Individualization theory + privatization (of religion)

Supply-oriented rational choice (market theory)

Main hypothesis Religions lose their social significance and position

as regards the interpretation of the world

Loss of relevance of the institutionalized religion; continuing relevance of

personal religiosity

Supply on the religious market determines religious vitality

(pluralisation as best) Consequences for the ”decline of associations“

thesis

Decline of faith based networks with a general

decline of social networks or a transformation in

secular social networks

Decline of religious and secular social networks as result of individualization

Rise of religious networks under the

conditions of a declining state-regulation

Forecast for the religious

development

Further decrease of all forms of religious

bindings and orientations (depending on countries’ state of modernization)

Constant private religiosity and rise of new

forms movements, combined with a further decline of commitment

to churches

Development of religious vitality depending from the state of regulation

(and pluralization) of the religious market

Source: own compilation. The third current approach in the sociology of religion, the so-called religious market mod-el (Finke/Stark 2006; Iannaccone 1994; Stark/Finke 2000), stands in clear opposition to the other two theories. Concerning social capital it assumes a relationship between religious vitality14 as well as people’s engagement in religious social networks on the one hand and the interaction between church and state on the other hand. Basically, it supposes: The closer the relationship between church and state, and the greater the regulations of the reli-gious market, the lower the willingness of the believers to become involved in religious networks (see Traunmüller/Freitag 2011: 258). When church and state closely interact, it is to be assumed that the state and the churches already fulfill a number of tasks in society. Consequently, voluntary networks are not extensively needed. Especially the state’s finan-cial support discourages people from becoming active themselves.

This assumption ties in with the main premise of the religious market model: Religious competition in a free and non-state-regulated market encourages religious vitality. Under

14 Religious vitality includes all observable types of expression of individual religiosity in society. Due to the

action oriented approach, it is hardly surprising that it mainly focuses on people’s religious practices and be-havioral patterns.


the condition of a maximum amount of competition on the religious market, religious con-sumers (who seek differentiated products in individualizing societies) are more likely to find religious products that suit them. These products are in constant demand according to the market model (Stark/Bainbridge 1987). If this is the case, then religious vitality increas-es in society, as the heterogeneous community of individuals is met with heterogeneous products tailored to their needs by highly motivated providers. Therefore, religious vitality and religious networks should be extensive in free non-state-regulated markets, whereas a close relationship between church and state should lead to a lower degree of religious hete-rogeneity and thus result in lower levels of religious vitality.

This line of argument bids farewell to the idea that only a negative relationship between church and state (as in the case of the repression of the churches in Socialist times) has a disadvantageous effect on the social relevance of religion in society. Following this point of view, harmonious church state relationships actually impede religious vitality. Especially the state’s provision of financial subsidies and organizational resources to the churches, which is frequently considered as unfairly beneficial, is thought to hinder the voluntary engagement of its members. This idea is diametrically opposed to the assumptions put for-ward by secularization theory which considers government support as crucial in establish-ing the conditions for associated voluntary networks.

3. Data and Methods Due to the fact that social capital as a concept is located both on the individual as well as on the macro level, it seems appropriate to carry out both comparative, cross-country analyses as well as individual-level analyses. The following sections strive to provide answers to the research questions raised above. The analyses are based on data from the European Values Studies (1999, 2008) as well as the World Values Surveys (2005-2008) as they allow us to conduct the combined analyses the best. Basic statistical data and international comparative data sets were added to these data sets for the macro-level analyses. This includes socio-economic indicators (Human development Report) and information about the relationship between state and religion (see state and religion-dataset, Fox 2008). The scope of analysis is limited to Europe – otherwise, the study might suffer from selection bias due to a non-systematic case selection.15

Social capital is measured on two levels. Firstly, Membership in religious networks (structural religious social capital) is recorded based on the respondents’ self-ascription. It thus differs from church membership. Active engagement in these networks is considered separately. Secondly, social or interpersonal trust serves to measure cultural social capital. This indicator was already developed in political culture research (Almond/Verba 1963: 267). According to Putnam, it indicates generalized trust. Due to the fact that it is not possi-ble to distinguish between bonding and bridging social capital when considering the en-gagement in voluntary networks, it will be considered as an indicator of bridging social

15 This problem arises due to the uneven availability of information on the distribution of social capital in a

global comparative perspective. The available macro-level analyses frequently suffer from selection bias due to the results in the North American countries (Iannaccone 1991). Conclusions drawn with respect to a cultu-rally homogeneous region (“most similar systems design“) are less susceptible to selection bias.


capital. The World Values Surveys 2005-2008 provides new items which allow the distinc-tion of social trust depending on the respective radius of trust. The main idea is to distin-guish social trust in terms of ingroup and outgroup trust (Delhey/Newton/Welzel 2011). This differentiation is also useful in order to discriminate between bridging and bonding social capital, as a small radius describes the bonding element of trust whereas the outgroup radius refers to the bridging element. It is not until a considerable amount of trust in out-groups has evolved that we can speak of bridging social capital. Conveniently, the survey also includes specific items that pertain to the trust in the members of other religious groups. This interreligious trust allows a better assessment of bridging religious cultural social capital16 as well as conclusions regarding the socio-cultural integration on the interre-ligious level.

4. Religious or Faith Based Social Capital in Europe First, it is useful to gain an overview of the extent of religious social capital. Since the re-levance of religious social capital’s can only be assessed correctly when contrasting it with the available secular social capital, we will present both types of social capital in the fol-lowing charts. Concerning structural social capital, we distinguish between membership in networks and active membership in these voluntary structures. This is important, as Putnam (2000) attributes particular relevance to the active engagement when evaluating the effects of social capital and discerns it as the true driving force behind the subsequent socio-political effectiveness of social capital.

The distribution of both indicators is similar across the countries (Chart 3 and Chart 4), even though, in general, active engagement is, of course, lower than formal membership. On the one hand, religious voluntary networks exist all across Europe. They are not as important compared to the secular networks as in the United States (according to Putnam, over 50 percent of all networks are religious in the U.S.). However, the extent to which they contribute to network-like social capital is far from irrelevant, as they usually represent well over one fifth of all social networks.

On the other hand, there are obvious regional differences. There is a distinct difference between Western and Eastern Europe: so far, the young democracies in Eastern Europe could build up only a limited amount of social capital – seculars as well as religious. These finding support the assumptions of social capital theory (Putnam/Campbell 2010; Lam 2006), value change and modernization theory (Inglehart 1990, 2000; Inglehart/Welzel 2005). Societies, which are better off socio-economically, are expected to display higher social capital than less affluent societies. The difference results from the fact that those citizens relieved of material hardships simply have more time and space to engage them-selves (Inglehart 1990: 34-38.). Unlike in the affluent societies, they no longer need to ensure their mere survival and their own material needs to such a great extent.

16 Unfortunately, items measuring the opposite of interreligious social capital, i.e. trust in the members of one’s

own religious community, are not available. However, we can assume that it lines up with personal trust rather than outgroup trust.


Chart 3: Distribution of Structural Social Capital in Europe – Memberships

Source: EVS 2008, own calculations in percent.17 It could also be shown with individual-level data, that citizens with higher incomes are much more likely do engage in voluntary networks than people, who need to secure their daily livelihood (Pollack 2009: 159). After the major political changes in Eastern Europe, the people were faced with manifest problems in their daily lives, particularly with respect to their socio-economic security. Some of these problems have remained until today. De-spite the fact that parts of the region have caught up remarkably in terms of economic per-formance, the gap between Western and Eastern Europe remains considerable. This under- 17 Results with the EVS 1999 show in general a similar distribution between the countries compared with 2008

(Pickel/Gladkich 2011).

0 20 40 60 80 100

Western EuropeAustria

BelgiumCyprus

DenmarkFinlandFrance

Germany WestGreeceIreland

LuxembourgMalta

NetherlandsPortugal

SpainSwitzerland

Northern IrelandEastern Europe

AlbaniaBosnia Herzegovina

BulgariaBelarus

Czech RepublicEstoniaGeorgia

Germany EastHungary

LatviaLithuaniaMoldavia

PolandRomania

Russian FederationSerbia

Slovak RepublicSloveniaUkraine

Member in anynetwork

Member inreligious network


mines the willingness to engage voluntarily (and without remuneration) which results in a low development of civil society and structural social capital. In short, it is likely that it is primarily the effects of socio-economic modernization that cause the observable differences between the West and the East. Chart 4: Distribution of Structural Social Capital in Europe – Active Engagement

Source: EVS 2008, own calculations in percent. We also find that voluntary networks develop particularly well in Protestant societies. It remains yet to be seen how far this is indeed initiated by better measures by the protestant church that enhance network structures (Roßteutscher 2009; 2011) or whether it results from the fact that socio-economic modernization is usually more advanced in Protestant countries. However, it would not be surprisingly, if culturally and religiously produced

0 10 20 30 40 50


BelgiumCyprus



LuxembourgMalta

NetherlandsPortugal

SpainSwitzerland



BulgariaBelarus


Germany EastHungary


PolandRomania



Work in any network

Work in religiousnetwork


belief-based and behavioral patterns establish certain paths which are then superimposed by certain aspects of modernization (Norris/Inglehart 2004; Pickel 2009).

Cultural religious capital (Chart 5) in the sense of social trust as well as trust in the churches is more evenly distributed across the countries. At first sight, it seems as if the distributions of the two indicators do not follow a clear pattern. However, this would imply that Putnam’s assumption regarding the relationship between structural and cultural social capital may not hold true. This may imply issues regarding the operationalization of cultur-al social capital, especially the religious cultural social capital. The trust in churches does not reflect the identification with the belief system or the religious groups on a lower level of organization at all. Considering the trust in the members of other religious groups might be a better indicator. Chart. 5: Cultural Social Capital in Europe

Source: EVS 2008, own calculations in percent.

0 20 40 60 80 100


BelgiumCyprus



LuxembourgMalta

NetherlandsPortugal

SpainSwitzerland



BulgariaBelarus


Germany EastHungary


PolandRomania



Social trust

Trust inChurch


According to Delhey/Newton/Welzel (2011), the other religious groups are outgroups.18 The fact that this concerns the field of social diversity which is related to differences in ethnic social groups (Putnam/Campbell 2010) is reflected by the largely similar distribution of trust in members of other nationalities (Chart 6). Both cases pertain to well-defined out-groups. What is even more interesting to note are the differences in interreligious trust between these countries. In part, these differences are considerable. Among the available cases, Turkey, Slovenia, and Moldova exhibit the lowest levels of trust in members of other religious groups, whereas Sweden, Great Britain, France, and Finland display the highest levels of trust. Apparently, on average, the foundations of trust are slightly more pro-nounced in the Western industrialized countries than in Eastern Europe. However, even these countries differ. Therefore, the frequencies permit the conclusion that the develop-ment of interreligious trust most likely depends on a whole set of factors. Chart 6: Interreligious Trust and Trust in People with a Different Nationality

Trust in people with other Religiosity

Trust in people with other nationality

Trust in people with other Religiosity

Trust in people with other nationality

West Germany 46 45 Poland 50 46 Italy 41 44 East Germany 38 38 Spain 47 49 Slovenia 28 29

Finland 77 71 Bulgaria 44 44 Sweden 84 91 Romania 31 29

Switzerland 71 75 Ukraine 39 44 Cyprus 33 33 Moldova 26 36

United Kingdom 80 79 Serbia 46 49 The Netherlands 46 44 Russia 37 40

France 78 78 U.S. 81 77 Turkey 28 27 Australia 74 76

New Zeeland 46 44 Source: own calculations WVS 2005-2008 in percent. But it appears, that it is mainly modernization as well as the religious-cultural heritage of the respective country that seem to create situational conditions on the macro-level encour-age the production of structural and cultural religious social capital. Modernization (and also more social contacts) seems to reduce distrust against other social groups. However, further empirical clarifications are required. At first glance, we cannot rule out the validity of the “crowding out“ hypothesis (Traunmüller/Freitag 2011: 258-259), which states that social participation will occur once the state has largely ceased to regulate it. Apart from trust in the churches, Western and Eastern Europe are very different with respect to all of the examined indicators of social capital. There are numerous indications that the bemoaned lack of civil society in Eastern Europe is closely related to the local socio-economic condi-tions. Due to the measurement issues, it is not possible to draw any sound conclusions with respect to cultural religious social capital. It is thus necessary to put further thought into better means of measuring the concept. 18 Delhey, Newton and Welzel (2011: 15) verify this classification in dimensional analyses. It is not surprising to

see that people do not trust religious groups as much as they trust their neighbors, family or personal acquain-tances.


5. Religious Social Capital and Civil Society Let us start the chapter with the question if observable religious social capital is socially relevant. A pooled analysis of all European countries reveals a relationship between social trust and religious networks. However, this relationship mostly applies to Western Europe only. There is a just weak relationship in Eastern Europe. The faith based networks also seem to have a positive effect on their members’ attitude toward the members of other religions and thus contribute to interreligious integration. However, this also is the case in Western Europe only. This finding is remarkable, especially since religious convictions are negatively related to interreligious trust. In other words: the more religious a person, the higher their skepticism of members of other religions in Western Europe. Only an active engagement in religious networks seems to encourage tolerance of other religions. Put-nam’s assumption that trust acquired within the immediate social environment is extended to unfamiliar groups of persons seems to be accurate. There is a strong relationship both in Western and in Eastern Europe (Chart 7). When considering the relationship between reli-gious networks and social trust at the individual level within the single countries, we most-ly find positive relationships, with the exception of Greece. Chart 7: Correlation on the (pooled) Individual Level between Indicators of Social Trust

and Religious Social Capital

Western Europe Ingroup

trust Social trust

Faith based networks

Subjective religiosity

Interreligious trust .36 .36 .21 -.10 Ingroup trust .25 .13 .09 Social trust .26 .11 Faith based networks .12

Eastern Europe

Interreligious trust .32 .18 .n.s. -.02 Ingroup trust .17 .05 .10 Social trust .04 .04 Faith based networks .18

Source: own calculation, WVS 2005-2008 (individual level); interreligious trust = trust in members of other religions; ingroup trust = trust in persons you know personally; social trust = „Generally speaking, most people can be trusted“; faith based networks = membership in a faith based network, religiosity = self-ascription subjec-tive religiosity; p<.05; only significant correlations. In accordance with the theory, membership and/or engagement in religious networks in-creases trust in others, hence creating cultural social capital for society at large. This rela-tionship can be determined both in Western and Eastern European countries. However, there are countries where this relationship does not exist on the individual level. Therefore,


these findings need to be interpreted with caution. This may also explain the comparatively weak relationship we found in Eastern Europe as a whole (Chart 7).

Other calculations show, that there are no comparable correlations between trust in the churches and social trust (see Pickel/Gladkich 2011). This may be regarded as another indication of the limited representation of cultural religious social capital by the indicator “trust in the churches“ or point to the independence of the two types of cultural social capi-tal. Maybe the issue lies with the indicator “social trust“ as a measure of cultural social capital. There are several results that raise also reasonable doubts with respect to the rela-tionship between political trust and cultural social capital (Newton 1999; Westle/Gabriel 2008).

Chart 8: Religious Social Capital and Political Support at the Micro Level

Legitimacy democracy

Satisfaction democracy

Political networks

Political Trust

Political Participation

structural religious social capital

+ + ++ + +

cultural religious social capital

Trust in church n.s. ++ n.s. +++ --

Interreligious trust ++ ++ n.s. ++ ++

Subjective religiosity n.s. + n.s. ++ --

Source: EVS 1999/2000, 2008; WVS 2005-2008, pooled analysis, own calculations. Pearsons r: +, ++, +++ low, middle, strong positive correlation, - , --, --- low, middle, strong negative correlation, n.s. = not significant. In this respect, it is hardly surprising that in chart 8 we find a positive effect of structural religious social capital on all of the indicators of political support (see Pickel/Pickel 2006), while at the same time, there are only a few effects of cultural religious social capital meas-ured as trust in the churches.19 The indicator “interreligious trust” provides much stronger results: Those who trust more in members of other religions are usually more deeply in-volved in politics in democracies as well. Whether this reflects a carryover making social networks “schools of democracy” or whether it is just that people who are inclined to en-gage themselves at all will do so in many spheres anyway, cannot be determined at this point.

Generally, these results indicate that religious voluntary networks contribute to the sup-port of democratic systems – which by itself seems to sustain Putnam’s theses. However, the relationships are merely moderately strong, which orders to remail cautious. Referring to the sociology of religion, our introductory thoughts pointed out religion’s importance with regard to the integration of society. This is particularly crucial as Putnam attributes different effects to bridging and bonding social capital. The indicator of interreligious trust,

19 The exception is the correlation between trust in church and trust in other institutions. This might be an effect

of the measurement in the same scale in the questionnaire.


which capture(s) the social distance, already indicate(s) a possible relation. When testing in how far the availability of social capital affects the attitude toward different social groups as neighbors (i.e. a measure of living tolerance; Chart 9), structural and cultural religious social capital have different effects. Members of religious social networks are usually cha-racterized by greater tolerance toward other social groups. Apparently the manner of com-municating in these networks has a positive effect on the attitude toward others, even if they do not belong to one’s primary group.

Of course, it might not be the networks that cause these effects. Instead, it could be that the people who join networks have an innately higher willingness to integrate themselves in society.20 They decided to take the step of becoming a member or engaging in the networks which in itself points to a high degree of initial motivation. This is substantiated by the fact that persons with a higher formal education participate far above average in secular and religious networks. Nevertheless, it should not be underestimated that these groups contri-bute to their members’ tolerant attitude and that the members reciprocally reaffirm this common mindset. Chart 9: Religious Social Capital and Social Integration

Source: EVS 2008 (pooled), own calculations. Chart displays significant bivariate correlations (Pearson’s r); social integration = acceptance of different social groups as neighbors (different statements are transferred to an one-dimensional scale, tested with reliability-analyses and factor-analyses).

20 This problem, to identify what is the hen and what the egg, seems to be not possible to solve at the moment.

0,0590,074

0,027

0,139

0,10,114

0,15

0,1

0,05

0

0,05

0,1

religious networks member in religious network

active engagement in religious network trust in church

religion is important for my life religious person


However, this finding does not pertain to the comparatively large number of persons who, according to our definition, exhibit faith based cultural capital. They display a skeptical or even deprecating attitude toward the social reference groups (and probably particularly towards other religious groups) more frequently than the average person. The faith they share as well as the trust they place in their own church prove to be criteria for distancing themselves from (or sometimes even excluding) other groups. In Putnam’s terminology, this type of social capital is clearly “bonding“. Particularly those persons, who consider themselves to be religious, construct their (religious) identity by drawing a clear line be-tween themselves and other social and religious groups.

This is the case all across Europe. The type of religious identification played an impor-tant role with regard to the integration of the members of those societies – which existed in many European countries for centuries – that were frequently relatively homogeneous with respect to religion despite all of the socio-structural changes during the past century (at least if the denominational differences themselves did not give rise to conflicts).

However, within modern societies, that have increasingly pluralized over the past dec-ades (see Hero/Krech/Zander 2007; Lichterman et. al. 2005; Pickel 2011; Putnam/Campbell 2010; Wuthnow 2007), it is precisely this “bonding“ social capital which could evoke fu-ture social conflicts, as the various self-contained identities clash within the religiously plural societies.21 Debates about minarets, the introduction of religious education for deno-minations other than the traditional Christian as well as Turkey’s accession to the European Union indicate the problematic nature of this issue within the public realm. But not the networks if active religious people are the problem: As shown in Chart 9, structural reli-gious social capital seems to promote interreligious trust. Structural religious social capital is thus translated into cultural religious social capital in a positive sense. Religious volunta-ry networks promote bridging social capital, whereas passive membership in churches entails bonding social capital. 6. Religion, Religious Networks, and Modernization What does the outlook on the development of religion in European societies imply for the spread of religious social capital and which societal determinants are of relevance in this respect?

The results on the macro level speak for themselves although they are surprising when considering Putnam’s hypotheses. Not only is (structural) religious social capital22 related to social trust, it also increases with the countries’ level of modernization. Ergo, it changes contrary to the assumptions stated in the secularization theory. According to the theory, modernization is the main cause of processes of secularization and the loss of social relev-ance of religion. However, this only seems to be the case with respect to the commitment to the churches, and, to a lesser degree, with regard to subjective religiosity. The evident ero- 21 In Europe, corresponding assumptions about social homogeneity were already breached in several instances in

the last decade. Nevertheless, the problems associated with “bonding“ social capital have grown worse in the European welfare states which have been characterized by increasing immigration.

22 Due to the measurement issues associated with cultural religious social capital measured in terms of trust in the churches and the complete lack of significant relations on the macro level presented here, the results per-taining to the indicator are neither presented nor discussed (see also Pickel/Gladkich 2011).


sion of the bonding power of religion does not cause society to disintegrate, at least not with regard to civil society. The people more and more become active, build up a civil society – and integration in their community. But the community itself gets a new form, less vertical and more horizontal in decision making. And this processes, also strike the religious organizations.

On the contrary, modernization – ergo secularization – increases the levels of tolerance within society and has a beneficial effect on the development and spread of bridging social and religious networks (Chart 10 and Chart 11). First, social welfare, as a result of moder-nization, opens the possibilities for social engagement. It is not further necessary for larger groups of the society to concentrate on existential needs (Norris/Inglehart 2004). Second, rationalization and democratic ideas of freedom of religion advance a higher trust in people with other religious denomination or belief. Therefore it seems to be not so false, to think, that modernization reduces ethnocentrism and xenophobia.23 Chart 10: Social Capital and Societal Differences

Social trust

Religious networks

Social networks

Interreligious trust

Social Integration

Social trust +++ +++ + +++ Modernization a) +++ ++ ++++ ++++ +++ Secularization n.s. + + ++ + Church-state b) n.s. n.s. n.s. n.s. n.s. Protestantismc) ++++ + + ++ + Religious Pluralization

+ + (+) (+) +

Social Integration

+++ ++ +++ +

Source: own calculation at the macro level; modernization: HDI; church-state: state regulation (Fox: Religion and State Project); Religious pluralization = religious pluralization measured by the Herfindahl-index on CIA-world-factbook data; Church-state-relations are from Fox (2004, 2008); Social integration = index of the openness to neighbors out of different social groups. Pearsons r: +, ++, +++, ++++ weak, medium, stable or strong positive correlation, -, --, ---, ---- weak, medium, stable or strong negative correlation, n.s. not significant.

Remarks: a) Modernization’s effects are stable even when controlling for confounding variables. In the regression

analyses (which take into account the denominations, church attendance and the church-state relation-ship), it proves to be the strongest predictor.

b) In the regression analyses, the indicators measuring the church-state relationship (in a number of dif-ferent model variations) also did not have a significant effect.

c) With respect to the religious networks variable, the denomination had the strongest effect in the regres-sions.

23 Results with other studies support this thesis (Pickel 2011).


The church-state relationship, emphasized by the market model, plays only a subordinate role. Based on Jonathan Fox’s (2008) 24 general index of religious regulations, there are no significant correlations with any of the indicators of religious social capital in Europe. The situation appears a bit different with respect to the degree of religious pluralization. Here, there are some correlations on the macro level. Increasing contacts with members of other religious groups seem to have a rather positive effect on cultural social capital. This is any-thing but self-evident. The contrary assumption – i.e. the idea that the increase in the num-ber of members of other religions and cultures particularly increases the sense of threat in a country and thus undermines trust – is as plausible as the contact hypothesis, which hopes of a positive effect of the contacts (Allport 1954). Chart 11: Interreligious Trust and Socioeconomic Modernization

Source: own calculation at the macro level.

24 Jonathan Fox collects the indicators measuring religious regulation on an annual basis. Currently, the data are

available from ca. 1990 onwards. The dataset is published in SPSS format on the “Religion and State“ website (http://www.biu.ac.il/soc/po/ras/downloads.html). The composite variable “general regulation index“ com-bines Fox’s measure of prohibitions, discrimination, regulation of, state support of and legislation on religion (or specific religions).


Overall, those factors related to civil society and modernization theory rather than political and institutional conditions contribute to integration. Modern societies are becoming more tolerant and have well-developed civil societies, in the sense of voluntary organizations, – and this is fairly independent of the church-state relationship (provided that it is not charac-terized by major repressions of the churches by the state). Thus we are confronted with two paradoxes: On the one hand, there are indications of a secularization of the religious in Europe. On the other hand, social capital does not seem to generally erode in the course of modernization – at least not in Europe. There is actually a higher level of religious social capital in socio-economically modernized societies. This fundamentally contradicts one of Putnam’s main assumptions of the decline of social capital in (individualization-inducing) modern times, which he established with respect to the United States.25 Considering the major “bonding“ effect of cultural religious social capital, when judging its effects, one could go so far as to say that democratic civil societies are actually benefiting from the process of secularization. After all, the main socially integrative value patterns continue to exist even in secular societies, although they are stripped of their religious core. At the same time, (the) religious groups’ tendency to distinguish between themselves and others is moderated as secularization increases.

Secularization proves to be an integrative process in heterogeneous societies as it un-dermines the cultural groups’ tendency to exclude others. It does not affect bridging (reli-gious) structural social capital but rather disintegrates divisive “bonding“ social capital. This configuration is becoming increasingly common as modernization proceeds. The so-cial form of religion seems to be on the decline in Europe, but religious social networks stay. One question remains pertinent especially from the viewpoint of the churches: in how far do the daily activities of the networks justify the fact, that we continue to describe the networks as religious (or “faith based“)? Is it not rather the case that these social groups provide beneficial services for society even though they are no longer recognizable as spe-cifically religious?26

Thanks to these services, the members earn good reputation, however, the services are hardly related to the members’ religious background. Sometimes, they even disappear from the list of daily business of these social groups. According to Bruce (2002b), secular net-works supplant religious networks and the religious networks themselves become “quasi secular“. “Faith based social capital“ is therefore subject to change of its very content and the networks are gradually loosing their religious air. The churches are then faced with the question of whether these networks, which bridge the gap to secular society, abet the im-manent secularization or whether they are actually a necessary and (in the long run) a revi-talizing link to society?

This question needs to be addressed in detail elsewhere. What is obvious is that civil so-ciety benefits from modernization – and secularization.

25 Comparisons over time also show increasing participation in religious networks in most Western European

countries. However, due to problems with the data, these results should be taken with a grain of salt. 26 This includes the idea of „selfsecularization”.


7. Religious Social Capital as a New Type of Religious Organization? Based on these analyses, what can we conclude about the relevance of religious social capi-tal for modern European societies? The results of our analyses are ambivalent with regard to the associations between political trust and religious social capital. Religious social capi-tal has an effect on indicators of political support. There is a strong relationship between political trust and trust in the churches. However, this is due to the fact that, methodologi-cally, both indicators refer to “institutional trust“. In addition, the correlation indicates a rather uncritical attitude which hardly promotes civil society. There is a weaker relationship between political trust and structural religious social capital as well as interreligious trust. But at least there is a relationship between the indicators. Overall, these results exceed the results obtained in similar analyses of the effects of “secular“ social capital (Frei-tag/Traunmüller 2011; Newton 1999; Field 2008). At least they suggest a moderate trans-formation of social capital into political support.

Concerning the integration of society, the effects of religious social capital are very pro-found. Religious social capital in the sense of networks is clearly bridging and encourages tolerance towards other religious groups. This is also reflected by increasing levels of inter-religious trust, that reveal the networks’ bridging function. However, cultural religious social capital also occurs as bonding social capital. The individual believers’ adherence to both their (respective) religion in general as well as the church in particular integrates the members of the reference groups while excluding alternative social and religious groups. Consequently, this kind of cultural religious social capital, which is typical of the rather passive membership in the main Christian churches in Europe, exclusively serves to pro-mote the process of identifying with the members of the respective groups. Therefore, in Putnam’s terminology, it is bonding social capital. This effect applies to the large group of believers who do not actively participate in networks. Conversely, members who engage themselves more or less actively in religious networks in the churches’ environment have a far more open mindset towards other groups compared to the passive members of religious communities.

These findings have implications for political communities: it is very likely that cultural religious social capital, which is associated with traditional religious bonds, promotes con-flicts in pluralizing or even multi-cultural societies, while the individual religious networks manage to build bridges to members of other religious groups at the same time. According-ly, active religious networks provide access to the (meanwhile) secular environment and therefore take on a crucial mediating role between the churches and society. 27 These rela-tionships lead us to the development of the religious as well as social capital: modernization proves to be beneficial for the development of bridging social capital, as presented in ana-lyses both on the micro-level as well as the macro level. It clears the way for increasing levels of tolerance towards alternative social and religious groups. This finding permits an additional conclusion: secularization in Europe on the one hand weakens the social relev-ance of religion and thus enfeebles the integration of members within their groups in socie-ty. On the other hand, it undermines the groups’ tendency to exclude others on religious grounds. 27 Thus, they are the only opportunity the Christian churches have to reach potential members, as there are

hardly any other opportunities to engage them in a conversation.


As a further secularization is more likely to occur than a (re)vitalization of religion in Europe (which will decrease cultural religious capital) the structure of religious social capi-tal is likely to change as well. In the course of secularization, religious networks will not necessarily disintegrate, however, they will become more secular in certain respects: they will increasingly form identities based on their main social fields of activity instead of their religious orientation. This is due to the fact that they receive citizens’ positive evaluations mainly because of the kinds of social services they provide for society and thus earn good reputation in the secular sector, while citizens are more skeptical of their religious compo-nent. At the same time, the main Christian churches remain a vital component of an impor-tant part of civil society for they continue to provide organizational structures which facili-tate voluntary work in many instances (Lichterman et. al. 2005; Roßteutscher 2009). How-ever, if this is the case indeed, it should be called into question whether these networks should be rated as religious social capital at all. Maybe said networks are not merely for-mally associated with the churches – but as stripped of their religious core as other social service providers.28

Apart from the finding that the cultural mode of religion continues to have considerable integrative power on large parts of society, the results show the Christian churches’ oppor-tunities and limits of today. On the one hand, the majority of their members remain skeptic-al or even disapprove of a greater rapprochement with and tolerance of other religious or-ganizations, while on the other hand, the religious networks associated with the churches’ function as a bridge to secular society while facing the threat of immanent secularization (Berger 1967; Dobbelaere 2002). In order to sustain the churches in this kind of environ-ment, it is sensible to use the existing and developing networks to show that the Christian faith is interrelated with the well received deeds of these (more or less religious-secular) networks. Obviously, should the churches fail to make use of these religious-secular net-works as an opportunity to reach out for a broader audience, they will have to get used to the idea, that an increasingly isolated position will be established permanently and that their membership numbers will continue to dwindle. 8. References Alexander, Marcus (2007): Determinants of Social Capital: New evidence on religion, Diversity and

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Religiosity and Political Values in Central and Eastern Europe Gergely Rosta 1. Theoretical Background It has been more than twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the beginnings of the democratic transition in Eastern European post-socialist countries. These twenty years make a time span allowing for examining the changes in these societies through aspects that are less instable by their nature. In this essay we shall seek to answer the question of how the impact of religion-related positions on certain political attitudes has changed. It seems obvious that this question, in turn, cannot be separated from that of how the situation of religion and religiosity has changed in the countries examined. Central and Eastern Europe shows a rather heterogeneous picture in this aspect. There are a variety of reasons underly-ing to the different religious changes. Diverse religious and confessional traditions, the role of religion in terms of national identity, the stages of social modernisation, the success of the socialist oppression of religions and the behaviour of the churches towards the socialist regime all play some role in this, as well as the social processes which started after the democratic transition (Pollack/Borowik/Jagodzinski 1998; Tomka/Zulehner 1999; Zulehner/Naletova/Tomka 2008; Pickel/Müller 2009).

In the political role of religion, too, considerable historical differences may be observed. Here – as in the case of religious changes – confessional division is one of the most impor-tant factors. In the countries where Catholicism was traditionally dominant, the issues con-cerning the separation of church and state and the privileges of the Catholic Church have been sources of much more severe conflicts, which brought about permanent cleavages in these political systems. In the Orthodox religious tradition, which is as a rule strongly con-nected to national identity, the question of the separation of church and state was not raised with such intensity. In countries with a mixed confessional background, confessional iden-tities themselves have produced a cleavage. Contrary to universalist Catholicism, Protes-tantism generally strengthened national churches and through them the independent na-tional identities, while the conflicts between church and state are much less characteristic for the countries of this tradition. The situation is similar to this in Orthodox countries, but for the opposite reason: the separation of church and state was, until the communist take-over, not seriously proposed in these countries (Madeley 2003; Knippenberg 2006).

The impact of religion on politics can be examined on several levels. The related litera-ture has mostly concentrated on the macro-level, i.e. this relationship is primarily examined at the level of institutions, through the relation of church and state, the role of Christian democracy, or the concept of civil religion. A micro-level approach, also adopted by this present research, mainly concentrates on the motives underlying to party choices, and it mostly uses the cleavage theory of political science as a theoretical framework. According to this, through the conflict of church and state, which can be traced back to the Enlighten-ment, religion is one of the cleavages that determine the party systems of Western Europe,


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and through it the motives of party choices. According to Lipset and Rokkan, the social institutionalisation and embeddedness of these lines of conflict may explain the high stabil-ity of these party systems (Lipset/Rokkan 1967). Several empirical studies with a compara-tive emphasis have shown a persistent religious impact on left-right positions (Inglehart 1977, 1984; Dalton 1996).

As for Central and Eastern Europe, a number of analyses tried to make use of this the-ory, examining either how new cleavages emerged in these political systems or how far the roots of the political systems that emerged after 1990 and the underlying ideological lines of conflict can be traced back to pre-socialist times, and in this sense to the reproduction of earlier divides. (Evans/Whitefield 1995, 2000; Körösényi 1996; Plasser/Ulram/Waldrauch 1998; White/McAlister 2000; Whitefield 2002; Enyedi 2004; Pickel 2008).1 Although the views concerning the cleavage theory do not agree in every detail, it seems clear that in several countries of this region, religion has become one of the motives underlying to party choices after 1990.2

Yet it is not only in the case of party choices where we can examine the impact of re-ligiosity. This question is also justified in the case of such more general political attitudes as the views on the democratic establishment, ideological identity (which also determines party choices), or confidence in certain political institutions. In these cases, the general question is whether people who can be classified as 'religious' according to one or another indicator of religiosity show different characteristics in these cases than the other part of the society. This question is mainly justified by a twofold phenomenon. On the one hand, the churches that were traditionally dominant in certain societies appeared as the supporters of democracy within the new political establishment, and we may thus expect that religiosity strengthens positive attitudes towards democratic institutions. On the other hand, however, the positive connection between religiosity and authoritarianism may also lead to a contrary conclusion. Both arguments can find support in empirical evidence (White/McAlister 2000; Rosta 2009).

The main aim of the present essay is to examine the changes in the relations between re-ligiosity and certain political attitudes in the last almost twenty years, with particular atten-tion to the questions of (1) how far the processes in the countries examined follow common or different trends, and (2) to what extent the changes can be related to the tendencies of religiosity. In other words: we shall examine to what extent the region can be considered as a unit from the aspect of the changes in the relations examined, and whether these changes can be traced back to the tendencies of secularisation or religious renewal, which differ from country to country.

As for the homogeneity or heterogeneity of the changes, it is the latter that seems more probable to us. This assumption is based on the abovementioned changes in religiosity, as well as the diversity of political cultures (Miller/White/Heywood 1998), and the findings of previous similar investigations (Rosta 2004, 2009).

In terms of the impact of the changes in religiosity on political views, it is difficult to formulate similar expectations. In several of his publications, Knutsen has put forth two alternative hypotheses about the potential effects of the decrease in religiosity on party

1 See also the article of Susanne Pickel in this volume. 2 Evans and Whitefield could show the influence of religion and/or confession on party choices in the case of

seven of twelve Central and Eastern European Countries. (Evans/Whitefield, 2000)

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choices in the Western European context he examined. (Knutsen 1995, 2004, Knut-sen/Kumlin 2003) According to the first one, a nominal decrease on the macro-societal implicates the decrease of impact at the micro-level as well (declining correlation hypothe-sis), while according to the other the micro-level impact of religiosity remains constant, even if overall level of religiosity itself decreases (stable correlation hypothesis). The first hypothesis is based on the assumption that nominal decrease comes together with the fad-ing of differences between the views of religious and non-religious people, while the sec-ond one does not accept this possibility (a decrease in numbers may indeed lead to the so-lidification of different views).3

In his analysis of Western European time-series data, Knutsen found more evidence in favour of the hypothesis of stable correlation in terms of party choices (Knutsen 1995, 2004), but there are references to the decreasing impact, too (Jagodzinski/Dobbelaere 1995). If the intensity of the connection would change parallel to the quantitative changes in religiosity, we should speak of a „changing” correlation in the case of the post-socialist countries (rather than a „decreasing” one), and in some countries we could expect a closer relation parallel to the religious upsurge. On the basis of our previous surveys carried out on a shorter time span, a weakening correlation seems more probable in the case of Central and Eastern Europe, whereas in the earlier analyses this tendency could not be clearly re-lated to the tendency of religious change itself (Rosta 2009). 2. Methodology Empirical data from three surveys of the European Values Study (EVS) between 1990 and 2008 served as the basis of our analysis. We have analysed data from a total of eight post-socialist countries, which supplied data concerning most of the variables examined in each of the three surveys.

We have operationalised religiosity both at micro- (i.e. in the case of correlations de-termined with the help of political variables) and macro-level (i.e. in identifying the social level of and changes in religiosity) with one indicator for each of the dimensions of reli-gious practice and faith. For religious practice, we used the frequency of church-attendance as the indicator, while in the case of faith we used an index showing how many of the ques-tions concerning belief in five items (God, life after death, Hell, Heaven, sin) of the ques-tionnaire was answered positively by the interviewee.

In terms of political attitudes, we have chosen to use self-identification on a left–right scale as the indicator of the most general expression of political views. Party choice is the dominant factor behind left-right self-placement (Inglehart/KIingemann 1976; Knutsen 1997; van der Eijk/Schmitt/Binder 2005), thus the application of the cleavage-theory for this variable and the search for a religious cleavage behind the self-positioning on the left-right scale is justified.4 The questionnaires contained several explicit and implicit questions

3 Though not explicitly formulated by Knutsen, a nominal decrease of religiosity at the macro-level could lead

to decrease in the nominal level of political attitudes represented by religious people. 4 Also the way of raising questions about party choices changed in 2008, which sets a limit to diachronic

comparison. For a more detailed discussion of the general applicability of the left-right scale see for instance Inglehart-Klingemann 1976, Klingemann 1979, Mair 2007.

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concerning the views on democratic establishment. From these, we have opted for the con-fidence in particular institutions, as this allowed for examining attitudes with the help of a complex index and without the problems resulting from different interpretations of the word ‘democracy’. The choice of this indicator is also supported by the fact, that confi-dence is widely considered by the study of the political culture as one of the key elements of the evaluation of the political system (Pickel/Pickel 2006). Moreover, this indicator made possible to examine the trust in – following Bréchon’s categories – democratic and authoritarian institutions separately as well as in comparison to one another.5

The micro-level relation of religion and politics can be examined not only through the correlation of the two fields’ characteristics, but also through those views concerning the relations of the two fields. This is of particular interest in the light of the fact that in social-ist countries it used to be part of the state ideology that churches can deal with questions of faith only, while they were forbidden from any broader social – and consequently political – activity. One of our questions here is to what extent the idea of forced separation of church and society survived the political changes, and if with the consolidation of democ-racy they become accepted as participants on the field of politics. Only the EVS surveys of 1999 and 2008 had a question focusing on the direct influence of churches on politics,6 so the changes here can be examined within a shorter time span.

3. Religious Changes It is not an easy task to examine the impact religious changes at the level of the society has on the relation of religiosity and political attitudes, as the units of examination are the so-cieties themselves. To be able to give a reliable estimation with the help of data from sam-ple-based surveys, one would need countries with a relatively large population, which is not the case for the period examined. What remains is the heuristic examination of what charac-teristics are shown by countries representing different categories of religious change in terms of the changes in the impact of religiosity, and whether any connection between the two classifications can be suggested.

It is also important in what sense we speak of the changing religiosity and what indica-tors we use in order to examine it. Decrease in church-related religiosity does not necessar-ily mean aversion from religion as such. The approach according to which modernisation has resulted in attitudes towards religion being increasingly a matter of personal choice rather than inherited identification with a particular religious tradition is sometimes under-stood as an interpretation of secularisation (Casanova 1994), or as an individualisation thesis (Pollack 2009). Individual religiosity is based less on a certain religious tradition and

5 For each institution a four-item scale was used with item 1 = “a great deal of confidence” to 4 = “not at all”. In

the first step the scale was reversed in order to have the higher value signify a higher level of confidence. Then, the answers for the following seven institutions were summed up into one index: education system, the press, trade unions, parliament, the civil services, social security system, justice system. The lowest value of the index (7) shows the total lack of trust in democratic institutions while a score of 28 indicates the highest level of trust. The index of trust in authoritarian/hierarchical institutions consists of the aggregate of responses for two institutions: police and armed forces.

6 The question is: “How much do you agree or disagree with the following: Religious leaders should not influ-ence government decisions.”


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its institutional framework, which may lead to the increasing diversity of the forms of indi-vidual religiosity, but it does not necessarily bring a decrease in religiosity.7 Thus it is im-portant to see, when speaking of religious changes, how one approaches religiosity, to what extent one understands it as church-related practice or religiosity more independent of churches.

Therefore, when we examine the changes in the social level of religiosity in the case of the countries included in the present analysis, we do so in order to define the categories of heuristic explicatory variable. This explicatory variable has two dimensions at least: the nominal level of religiosity (static dimension)8 on the one hand, and its changes (dynamic dimension) on the other. The third dimension is, in this case, a substantive one reflecting the possible ways of conceptualising religiosity. For the aims of the present essay, we can only rely on the simple distinction focusing on the two most important of Glock and Stark’s dimensions of religiosity: religious practice and belief. (Glock 1954, Glock/Stark 1965) This also allows for distinguishing the more and the less church-bound interpretations of religiosity, and, accordingly, for taking the eventual differences of church bound vs. indi-vidualistic religiosity into consideration when analysing their changes.

The two dimensions are not independent of one another – there are a number of empiri-cal analyses published on this topic, which quite often draw the opposite conclusions –, yet due to their different relations to religion as an institution, one cannot expect them to show the same trends in the particular societies examined. Table 1: General levels of religious practice and faith (2008) and changes (1990–2008) Level of religious practice

high medium low

Changes in religious practice

increase Romania Latvia, Bulgaria

no change Slovakia Czech Republic, East Germany

decrease Poland Hungary

Average level of faith high medium low

Changes in faith increase Poland, Romania Slovakia, Hun-

gary, Bulgaria

no change Czech Republic decrease Latvia East Germany

Source: EVS 1990, 2008 We have examined the countries separately, on the basis of the two indicators of religiosity (Table 1). Although the classification is a rather arbitrary one,9 the table still gives a picture of the heterogeneity of the region on the one hand, and of the similarities and differences of the two indicators on the other. The region is heterogeneous indeed, eight countries being divided into six and five categories, respectively, according to the levels and changes of the two dimensions. In both parts of the table, we find countries on both ends of one of the 7 For a more detailed discussion on the thesis of religious individualisation see for instance Luckmann 1967,

Davie 1994, Hervieu-Léger 1999, Pollack/Pickel 2007, Pollack 2009. 8 In the case of the static dimension, it is a matter of decision which point of a time span serves as the basis of

classification. Here, we used the level of religiousness measured at the end of the period examined. 9 The scale of possible values was divided into three equal parts in both cases.

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diagonals (even though not of the same one), which may be therefore considered as oppo-sites in terms of the level as well as the change. The two indicators differ, as neither of the countries can be found in the same cell in the two parts of the table, except for one (Czech Republic). In spite of these differences, though, the two tables show similarity, which may be best described by saying that only three (Poland, Hungary, Latvia) of the eight countries are not in the same or neighbouring cells in the two parts of the table. It is the direction of the change that differs significantly in these three cases. In Poland and Hungary, the nomi-nal level of religious practices has decreased,10 but the number of those endorsing religious beliefs has increased. In Latvia, the contrary process can be observed.

If we try to make a ranking in terms of secularisation using the two dimensions together (similarly to Halman and Petterson 2003), then we may say that Poland and Romania are the two most religious countries, followed by Slovakia, then Hungary, Bulgaria and Latvia, and finally the Czech Republic and East Germany. Changes in religion show the signs of decrease – in addition to East Germany, a country already strongly secularised at the begin-ning of the period examined – in Poland, Hungary and Latvia (interestingly, however, it is these same countries where the two dimensions show different trends), while more increas-ing trends can be observed in Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia.11 With this in mind, later we shall also try to find an answer to the question of whether these trends of changes in religi-osity can be in any way linked to the relations between religiosity and political attitudes and their changes. 4. Religiosity and Left–Right Self-Identification

Although its intensity differs between countries of different religious traditions, religiosity traditionally correlates with right-wing self-identification. This assertion, to be sure, has to be understood in the light of the fact that religiosity itself is traditionally more frequent in groups (elderly persons, those living in the countryside), which are more likely to have a right-wing identity. Taking this into consideration, we shall try to eliminate such seeming effects – here as elsewhere – when examining the impact of religiosity.

One of the most important general features of Central and Eastern European religious changes is the decrease in the religious determination of right–left identities, i.e. of political and ideological positions (Table 2). With the exception of two countries, the connection between the variables representing the two fields has significantly weakened everywhere. This is equally true for the impacts of religious practice and those of belief, even though the tendency was somewhat weaker in the case of the former. One of the exceptions is Roma-nia, where – a unique phenomenon in the countries examined – no significant right-wing tendency could be observed in 1990. Consequently, there was no place for further weaken-

10 It has to be noted here that changes were measured with the difference between ratios or average values rather

than their respective ratios. This means that in the case of a higher starting level, a minor change of a certain degree was classified as a significant decrease, just as another country’s change of the same degree, which was however a major one in terms of ratio, due to the lower starting level.

11 For more detailed analysis on the diverse ways of religious development in Central and Eastern Europe see Pollack/Borowik/Jagodzinski 1998, Tomka/Zulehner 1999, 2000, Zulehner/Tomka/Naletova 2008, Pickel 2009a, 2009b and the article of Malina Voicu/Andreea Constantin in this volume.


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ing.12 The other one is Poland, which is a special case in this aspect. While the Catholic Church, being a stronghold of the resistance against the communist government, had a definitely integrative political role in Poland before 1990, the religious divide within Polish society has become stronger in the last twenty years, to which the political activity of the church has contributed significantly (Borowik 1999; Eberts/Török 2001). The general weakening of religious impacts is particularly evident in the case of the less church-bound dimension, whereas religious practice, and through it the participation in a church institu-tion has preserved some of its influence on political and ideological positions, albeit with a similarly decreasing impact. Table 2: The impact of Church Attendance and Faith on left–Right Self-Identification,

1990–2008 (standardized beta-coefficients)13

Source. EVS 1990, 1999, 2008; * p < 0,05, ** p < 0,01; (a) Question not raised. In the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, religion becomes less important as a politi-cal cleavage. Considering the data from the eight countries examined, this tendency shows a positive correlation with the 2008 level of religiosity–secularisation just below the level of significance,14 but none with the tendency of religious change. Thus, a higher level of religiosity makes it probable that the decrease in its impact on left-right self-identification

12 The slight increase in the case of church attendance cannot be considered as significant. 13 Control variables involved into the regression models were: gender, age, education, urbanization. Left-right

scale: left = 1, right = 10. When analyzing the data of church attendance, one has to bear in mind that here one is dealing with an variable measured at ordinal level of measurement, and therefore the hypothesis of equal distances between the items does not necessarily hold. In order to minimize the errors resulting from ordinality, we used a composite variable of four categories: once or more a week, once a month, a few times a year, less than once a year or never.

14 The value of the correlation coefficient between the level of religious practice and the change in the strength of connection between religious practice and left–right identity is r=0,68, which may be considered significant at a level of p=6%. As regards belief, r=0,64, p=8,4. With such a small number of items (8 countries), even a correlation which seems to be relatively strong turns out generally to be insignificant.

Country

Church attendance Faith

1990 1999 2008

change of the strength of the

correlation, 1990-2008

1990 1999 2008



Bulgaria 0,21** 0,13** 0,13** -0,08 0,17** 0,18** 0,01 -0,16 Czech Republic 0,21** 0,17** 0,04 -0,17 0,24** 0,15** 0,01 -0,23

East-Germany 0,24** 0,16** 0,13* -0,11 0,25* 0,14** 0,11* -0,14

Hungary 0,16* 0,14** 0,10** -0,06 0,22** 0,17** 0,08** -0,14 Latvia (a) 0,04 0,03 (a) 0,04 0,04 Poland 0,15** 0,18** 0,30** +0,15 0,10** 0,21** ,27** +0,17 Romania 0,05 0,04 0,08* +0,03 0,02 0,06 0,00 -0,02 Slovakia 0,28** 0,22** 0,05 -0,23 0,33** 0,24** 0,03 -0,30

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is below the average,15 while this cannot be said about the increase in the level of religios-ity.

Alongside the hardly perceivable effect of secularisation, one has to look for another common cause underlying to this general decrease of impact. For the time being, only a hypothesis can be formulated, the validity of which has to be verified by further research. According to this hypothesis, twenty years after the democratic transition the questions concerning the place of churches and religion in the new democracies have a lesser impact on politics. While after 1990 the questions of church restitution, religious education in schools or church finances determined public discourses as well as general political de-bates, such issues do not set the agenda for politics anymore – even if the solutions found are not generally accepted as definitive everywhere. Consequently, the less religious mat-ters appear in political debates, the less reason religious people have to have radically dif-ferent political views than non-religious persons. Poland is, again, an example for the con-trary, the strong political activity of the church still being here an issue in everyday poli-tics.16 In order to verify this hypothesis, one should first of all examine the changes in the extent to which religious matters appear in the political debates of individual countries. 5. Confidence in Institutions If on the micro-level of society the interpretation of the secularisation thesis, according to which the impact of religion on other fields of life decreases, is generally valid for Central and Eastern Europe, then one might expect that the level of religiosity and confidence in institutions also decreases, following the level and dynamics of secularisation. Our results concerning the left–right scale have not, however, confirmed this expectation, as they have shown a general decrease independent of the character of the religious change. While in the case of religiosity, the changes in the role of religion as an explicit political issue could be taken as explanation, this does not work for social confidence.

Considering the data (Table 3), we may regard this as a more or less general tendency, showing a slight strengthening of the link between religiosity and confidence in democratic institutions. Yet we may find an exception here, too: a minor – non significant – decrease can be observed in the Czech Republic. The direction of the correlation is positive every-where, thus religiosity makes a higher level of confidence probable. In 1990, only a very weak or even no existing connection could not be observed in the majority of the countries, which means that the strengthening effect of religiosity on confidence appeared together with the establishment and consolidation of democratic institutions.

This change is also difficult to link to religious changes. This is not only due to the dif-ficulty of finding a sound theoretical explanation for the confidence-strengthening effect of the decrease in religiosity, but also because neither the extent of change, nor the nominal level of the impact of religion show any correlation with the previous classification of reli-gious change at the end of the period examined. The greatest increase can be observed in

15 This picture is, however, somewhat elusive, given that in the case of Romania, one of the most religious

countries, we cannot speak of decreasing impact, as there was no impact that could have decreased. 16 An unhappy event from the near past provides a good example for this: the Catholic Church played an active

role in the dividing debate concerning the place of funeral of the tragically deceased Polish president.


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East Germany and Bulgaria, two countries differing in terms of both their religious tradi-tions and their religious changes after the democratic transition.

A much more diverse picture is shown by the tendency of religious impact on the confi-dence in authoritarian institutions. Here, minor changes in different directions are character-istic, with one case of considerable decrease (Latvia) and one of increase (Bulgaria). Also here, however, we can observe that if there is any correlation, it is a positive one, i.e. a slight confidence-strengthening effect of religiosity can be seen in the case of these institu-tions as well.

Table 3: Faith and Trust in Institutions, 1990-2008 (standardized beta-coefficients)17

Source: EVS 1990, 1999, 2008; *p < 0,05, ** p < 0,01; (a) Question not raised A closer examination of confidence in democratic institutions reveals that the level of trust shows a definitely decreasing tendency in the majority of the countries. This is particularly interesting, since social confidence right after the fall of communism was already lower in Central and Eastern Europe than in the western part of the continent. (Markowski 1994, Mishler/Rose 1997) It is only in Romania and Slovakia that a slight – of less than 1 point on a 22-degree scale – increase can be seen, while the decrease is over 1 degree everywhere else, with more than 3 degrees in Bulgaria. In the light of this, the strengthening impact of religion actually means that there was a lesser decrease in confidence among religious per-sons.

Figure 1 shows the relationship between faith and the confidence in democratic institu-tions. On the basis of the figure showing average values of seven countries18, we may say that the level of confidence of religious people was already higher by the time of the de-mocratic transition than that of non-religious persons, but also that this gap has been widen- 17 Control variables involved into the models were: gender, age, education, urbanization. The correlation with

church attendance shows a similar tendency, but the variable related to belief is more suitable for regression analysis.

18 In the case of Latvia, the index of confidence could not be calculated for 1990, and therefore the country was not included in the calculation of the average.

Country

Authoritarian institutions Democratic institutions

1990 1999 2008



1990 1999 2008



Bulgaria -0,03 0,13** 0,11** +0,08 0,02 0,24** 0,13** +0,11 Czech Republic 0,02 0,07** 0,05 +0,03 0,05* 0,10** 0,02 -0,03

East-Germany -0,10** 0,04 0,03 -0,07 0,03 0,10** 0,13* +0,12

Hungary 0,09* 0,16** 0,12** +0,03 0,09** 0,17** 0,12** +0,03

Latvia -0,26** 0,07 0,05 -0,21 (a) 0,06 0,07*

Poland 0,10** 0,02 0,11** +0,01 0,06* 0,08* 0,14** +0,08 Romania 0,15** 0,08** 0,10** -0,05 0,07* 0,02 0,13** +0,06 Slovakia 0,08* 0,09** 0,07* -0,01 0,04 0,08* 0,08** +0,04

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ing in the last nearly two decades It is apparent that the lowest loss of confidence could be observed among those consistently believing in all of the doctrines mentioned, while those believing in neither of these have lost their trust to the greatest extent. The table also shows why the regression analysis showed a positive link: all things considered, a higher degree of faith correlates with a higher degree of confidence. Figure 1: Changes in the Average Level of Confidence in Democratic Institutions accord-

ing to the Categories of the Number of Faiths, 1990–2008.

Source: EVS 1990, 1999, 2008. If we try to find a hypothetical explanation of the Central and Eastern European changes in the impact of religion on confidence, it may be partly due to a generally positive correlation of faith and trust.19 Another reason may be that faith can provide a fundament of trust for the believers, which may have been damaged by an eventual disappointment with the de-mocratic transition to a lesser extent. 6. Views on the Relation of Religion and Politics Changes in the views on the statement concerning the separation of church and state – simi-larly to the previous cases – shows a uniform tendency in the Central and Eastern European countries examined (Table 4). The direction of the change is in all cases a decreasing one, which means that the rejection of the churches’ influence on politics has weakened in every 19 The positions concerning the general connection between religiosity and trust are not unambiguous in the

related literature. For an overview see Berggren/Bjornskov 2009

14,0

14,5

15,0

15,5

16,0

16,5

17,0

17,5

1990 1999 2008

0 1 2 3 4 5


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country. This decrease notwithstanding, those rejecting the intervention of religious leaders into government decisions are still the majority in all the societies examined.

Of all variables and indexes examined in this essay, this is the one that can be influ-enced by actual political issues or cases of major publicity to the greatest extent. It would go beyond the limits of the present essay to give an overview of the historical chronology of the individual countries from this perspective, and we limit ourselves to formulating three general observations. First, the rate of decrease, i.e. the change in the rejection of religious influence shows a significant positive correlation with the 2008 level of rejection, but no connection with its 1999 level.20 This means that while a greater decrease in rejec-tion makes a lower degree of rejection in 2008 probable, we cannot say that the rate of decrease is tendentiously higher or lower in those countries where the rejection of the po-litical influence of religious leaders was lower at the beginning of the period examined. Second, the standard deviation concerning the level of rejection has increased between 1999 and 2008 among the individual countries. This means that the original, almost general high level of rejection (70 to 80 % of the interviewees) has decreased to a different extent in different countries, showing higher differences. Third, similarly to the findings described in the previous section, no significant correlation can be observed between the rate of decrease and the level of religiosity or its change. Therefore, the rate of change cannot be shown to differentiate according to the dynamics of secularisation. Table 4: “Religious Leaders Should Not Influence Government Decisions” – agree or

agree strongly (%), 1999-2008

Bulgaria Poland East-Germany

Romania Slovakia Hungary Czech Republic

Latvia

1999 68 78 70 70 67 64 71 67 2008 60 68 56 58 57 58 49 48 Diff. -8 -10 -14 -12 -10 -6 -22 -19

Source: ISSP 1991, EVS 1999, 2008. Unfortunately, we do not have enough reliable comparable data from the period of the democratic transition, which could confirm one of the two hypotheses that can be formu-lated on the basis of the analysis of 1999 and 2008 data.21 According to the first one, the original high level of rejection and the following decreasing tendency, independent of reli-gious change and showing an increasing heterogeneity, indicate the common socialist heri-tage and its ways of dissolution, respectively. The latter takes place in different ways in different countries, yet it follows a common trend. This trend, in turn, points to the direc-tion that nearly twenty years after the fall of communism, the active role of churches in the

20 The values of the correlation coefficient are -0,81 and -0,13, respectively. 21 The 1991, 1998 and 2008 waves of the ISSP Study have a similar question with a slightly different accent.

The statement to be evaluated by the respondent in the ISSP study refers rather to the behaviour of the church leaders (“should not try to influence”) than to the role played by church leaders in the process of political de-cision making (“should not influence”). Moreover, only three out of the eight countries were involved in the 1991 ISSP research. A comparison between the ISSP and the EVS data shows on the one hand an increasing tendency of rejecting church influence on politics during the 1990ies for these three countries, and on the other hand a slighter decrease than shown by the EVS-data – especially in the case of the Czech Republic – after 2000.

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process of political decision-making has become somewhat more accepted than before in Central and Eastern Europe.

The second one emphasises more the debates over the public position of the churches after the fall of the communism, and the acceptance or rejection of the means and ways that traditional churches utilised to represent their interest. A number of issues like the state support for the financing of the churches, the introduction of religious education in public schools or the restitution of the confiscated church assets were accompanied by a lot of tensions in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. However, one could expect that two decades after the beginning of the new era these church-related issues have found their socially more or less accepted solutions, and the tensions around the political presence of the churches became less intense. The few comparable data from the ISSP 1991 study as well as the general lack of generational differences concerning the views on this issue seems to suggest that the second hypothesis might have more explanatory power. 7. Conclusion In the present essay we have attempted to show the changes in the correlation of religiosity and certain political views as well as in the views on the political influence of religion from 1990 to 2008, on the basis of international survey data. Furthermore, in order to interpret the findings, we have also examined the contextual effects of religious changes, starting from the hypotheses of decreasing vs. constant correlations formulated by Knutsen. (1995, 2004, Knutsen/Kumlin 2003)

According to our results, the changes in the connection of the two fields hardly show any correlation with the presence of religiosity in the societies examined, or the changes in this presence since 1990. Religious change itself shows a much more heterogeneous picture of the region than those changes which characterise the relation of the two fields on the level of values and attitudes. In the case of the latter, contrary to our previous expectations, we witness surprisingly uniform changes, at least in terms of their directions.

From the perspective of positions within the ideological and political field, the role of religion – or at least religious practice and belief in Christian-based doctrines – has weak-ened in Central and Eastern Europe. Considering this, our findings support the hypothesis of decreasing correlation. Yet this decrease is characteristic not only of the countries where religiosity decreases, but also of those showing a religious upsurge since 1990, so it can be hardly interpreted as an obvious effect of secularisation. The impact of religious changes, too, is almost impossible to detect by statistical means.

As for the attitudes towards democratic institutions, a weak but increasing impact of re-ligion can be observed, as the general loss of confidence is less characteristic of religious persons than of other social groups. The increasing impact itself is difficult to reconcile with the secularisation hypothesis, and the impact of religious change cannot be shown on the basis of a statistical analysis either.

Finally, the normative interpretation of secularisation as the strict separation of church and state shows a general tendency contrary to what one would expect on the basis of the


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secularisation theory (Pickel 2009b).22 As the changes point towards a somewhat greater – though still nominally rather low – acceptance of the political influence of the churches.

As the findings were rather similar with all the correlations – with surprisingly small differences shown by the two indicators of religiosity, church attendance and faith –, and since they could be hardly linked to the dynamics of religious change, one has to seek for alternative explanations pointing out the shared past of the region. Our hypothesis could be that the similar directions of the changes may be explained with the change of the social situation of religion in the post-socialist countries. Religion has been reinstitutionalised, becoming, more or less everywhere, a clearly visible and generally accepted participant from a hardly tolerated and marginalised one, and it is mainly due to this process that reli-gious divides are beginning to fade and the political role of the churches becomes increas-ingly accepted.

The role of religion in the stabilisation of confidence in democratic institutions, and the strenghtening of this role is presumably also due to a common historical reason. This rea-son is the general decline of trust, resulting from the failed hopes and disappointment with the democratic transition and the subsequently established new democratic institutions. Religion, and belief in particular, sets the fundament of hope outside of the secular and social changes, and the much lesser extent to which confidence decreased among believers may be due to this fact.

Further research on this topic may follow diverse ways. One of these is the empirical testing of our hypotheses formulated in terms of tendencies. To achieve this, one first has to attempt to operationalise the causes mentioned in the hypotheses, in order to make empiri-cal examination of their impact possible. It has to be noted here that further countries should be included in order to improve the statistical reliability of the analyses. A limit to this, however, is set by the scarcity of available survey data. The other main current of research could focus on the pecularities and the idiographic examination of individual countries instead of the general tendencies. For this work, the aspects of social history and the investigation of particular events characterising the relation of religion and politics are of utmost importance. The findings could then serve as the basis of a future comparison, which would put the differences into a theoretical framework, alongside the common ten-dencies. 8. References Bach, Maurizio/Sterbling, Anton (eds.) (2008): Soziale Sicherheit in der erweiterten Europäischen

Union. Hamburg. Barnes, Samuel H./Kaase, Max (eds.) (1979): Political Action. Beverly Hills. Berggren, Niclas/Bjornskov, Christian (2009): Does Religiosity Promote or Discourage Social Trust?

Evidence from Cross-Country and Cross-State Comparisons. http://www.ratio.se/pdf/wp/ nb_cb_Religiosity.pdf (11. 4. 2011)

Borowik, Irena (1999): Religion and Politics in Central and Eastern Europe: paradoxes of transformation. In: Borowik (ed.): 7-20.

Borowik, Irena (ed.) (1999): Church-State Relations in Central and Eastern Europe. Kraków.

22 See also the article of Gert Pickel in this volume.

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Borowik, Irena/Tomka, Miklos (2001) (eds.): Religion and Social Change in Post-Communist Europe. Kraków.

Bozoki (ed.) (1994): Democratic Legitimacy in Post-Communist Societies. Budapest. Bréchon, Pierre (2003): Integration into Catholicism and Protestantism in Europe. The Impact on

Moral and Political Values. In: Halman/Ole (eds.): 114–161. Budge, Ian/Crewe, Ivor/Farlie, Dennis (eds.): Party Identification and Beyond. London. Casanova, José (1994): Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago. Dalton, Russell J. (1996): Citizen politics: public opinion and political parties in advanced industrial

democracies. 2nd edition. London Dalton, Russel/Beck, Paul/Flanagan, Scott (eds.) (1984): Electoral Change in Advanced Industrial

Democracies: Realignment or Dealignment? Princeton. Dalton, Russell J./ Klingemann Hans-Dieter (eds.) (2007): The Oxford Handbook of Political

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Secularization of Electoral Behavior? The State-Church Cleavage in Europe Susanne Pickel 1. Introduction In the course of modernization in Western and Eastern European societies, people have increasingly individualized themselves and have become segregated from their social mi-lieus. Individuals are less and less oriented toward social groups, be they of a religious or worldly ideological nature. Instead, they seek their own pluralistic social environments and group relations (Inglehart 1997). At times, this leads to combinations of remarkably differ-ent professional and personal social lifeworlds, which are re-combined (anew) depending on the individuals’ current needs.

At the societal level, lifeworlds are related to social situations upon which social group formation is based. Lipset and Rokkan (1967) have developed a (meanwhile classic) con-cept: it translates these social groups’ processes of developing interests into lines of social tension which are then transferred into the political sphere by political parties. They refer to these conflicts which occur both on the social as well as on the political level and which are permanently maintained by the political parties as cleavages. According to Lipset and Rok-kan, one can draw conclusions as to a person’s voting behavior depending on the individu-al’s membership in a social group reflecting a cleavage, such as the working class or the churches.

The church-state cleavage is one of the four fundamental lines of social tension in Eu-ropean societies. It is constituted by the debate about who is to play the leading role in society, mainly with respect to questions of guiding principles and education. It has contin-ued since the Reformation and has survived all stages of secularization and modernization. Some societies, such as France, have solved the conflict by strictly separating the church and the state. In some countries, such as Germany, there is a certain interaction of authori-ties, particularly with respect to tax, education and social policies. A third group of coun-tries (Scandinavia) have even established state churches. 1

In modern times, private and public life have become secularized due to the processes of modernization and secularization. These developments are not necessarily attended by a loss of meaning of religion (Luckmann 1967). However, most researchers in the field of sociology of religion (Bruce 2002; Wilson 1982; Berger 1967; Pollack 2009) speak of a loss of social relevance across all societies in Europe. The loss of relevance of religion mainly takes place in a threefold manner: a) individuals cease to consider religion to be relevant in their lives (decrease in church attendance rates), b) compared to secularized institutions, the influence of the churches as social institutions decreases with respect to political and social matters (social sovereignty of interpretation and apprehension of the

1 Germany and Sweden levy a church tax, Hungary and Spain levy a so-called mandate tax (Petersen 2005).


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world) and c) religion is restricted to the private life of the individual person (privatization thesis) (Bruce 2002). Based on these developments, bonding to the church in terms of insti-tutionally bonded religiosity is likely to lose influence on people’s voting decisions. Two developments may counteract this loss of relevance: 1) The smaller their group size, the fiercer the core members of the churches will defend their identity and values in the politi-cal sphere. 2) The secularization assumption is incorrect. For example, after the political changes, researchers at times spoke of a revitalization of religion but also of people’s sense of belonging to the church in Eastern European countries (Tomka/Zulehner 2008). This development contradicts current trends of secularization and alienation from the church in Western Europe (Pollack 2009; G. Pickel 2009).2

With respect to voting behavior, it is interesting to study those church members, believ-ers, whom we expect to have a certain sense of belonging to the church as an institution. Induced by the adherence to and propagation of values of the priests in church services, it is said that they have a particularly strong affiliation to parties which represent and seek to implement these values in the political world. According to this assumption, a decrease in the number of church-affiliated voters will be reflected in a decreasing number of votes for church-affiliated parties. This is called ecological dealignment – the group size of church-affiliated voters decreases alongside the number of votes for denominational or religious parties.

It is very likely that the churches’ persuasive power has decreased in the course of phe-nomena accompanying modernization such as educational expansion and people’s increas-ing ability to find their own explanations for surrounding phenomena independent of the church. This would imply that even church members’ voting decisions cease to depend on the churches’ remarks. Sectoral dealignment refers to the end of the churches’ core groups’ ability and willingness to commit to religious parties. The parties lose part of their clientele even if the clientele continues to belong to the social group which was represented by their respective political party in the political sphere over a long period of time.

Based on these observations, a number of questions arise with respect to the current state-church cleavage. These will be answered at least in part in the following chapters: How has church-related voting behavior developed in Europe? How do those people act who have a sense of belonging to the church – do they continue to vote for religious or denominational parties or has their voting behavior dealigned from their relation to the church? How do people receive the parties’ political standpoints which have developed from the “old“ group structures/cleavages? What kind of political standpoints do the new (religious or denominational) parties in Eastern Europe represent and do church-affiliated persons approve of them?

2 However, an increase in persons who proclaim religious faith does not necessarily cause an increase in church members. People can live their religiosity without a connection to a religious institution.

Secularization of Electoral Behavior 113

2. Basic Assumptions about Group-Related Voting Behavior 2.1 Historical Development of Cleavages in Europe In order to answer the research question, it seems appropriate to start out with a recollection of the main ideas of the cleavage theory. Lipset and Rokkan (1967) determined a founda-tion of the party systems that developed in Europe after the Second World War. According to them, these are based on lines of social tension which go far back in history in part (see figure 1).

The oldest cleavage – center vs. periphery – dates from the time of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. It was sparked off by the question of the dominant culture, language and whether religion should be organized either on the country level or whether it should be centralized in Rome. This challenged the church’s hierarchical structure which the believers were faced with and thus it questioned the believers’ access to the Gospel through the (ver-bal) proclamation of the priest. The membership in certain ethnic groups of the majority or minority of the population or the majority’s or minority’s culture is also part of this line of social tension. It determines the main points of access to power and political influence. A line of social tension developed between the culture of the majority and the culture of the minority within the church and the population,. Within the (partially) democratic political systems in Europe, the minority founded parties based on linguistic or ethnic criteria which disputed with the political parties of the majority in the political realm.

In a next step, the churches’ sovereignty of interpretation was challenged by the secula-rized community of the state that was the churches’ equal in terms of being a worldly sys-tem of order. By attempting to break the control of mass education of the churches and by conveying their own educational ideals in the schools, worldly political rulers established their own ideological foundation within society. This in turn was independent of the matters of faith as taught by the church and the thought that positions of power were granted by grace of God. Conflicts between church -associated and state-related secular interests arose among the political elite and within society – the state vs. church cleavage developed. Both types of conflict structures are framed by cultural conflicts. At first glance at least, so far, this does not concern economic interests or functional structures. European denominational and religious parties established themselves according to these cleavages.

They represent the interests of religious or church-affiliated groups in society against the interests of secularized social groups. The incipient industrial revolution brought about further conflict: The urban vs. rural cleavage reflects the diverging interests of urbanized industrials vs. the rural population who depend on agricultural production. The first func-tional, economic cleavage was initiated by the price level of agricultural products which hardly sufficed to make a living in the countryside on the one hand and the question of state control over new industrial plants and their owners as well as the way they treated their workers who had moved to the cities from the countryside out of sheer economic necessity, on the other hand. This conflict resulted in two political groups: the farmers’ parties who protect the needs of the rural population who work in agriculture and the liberal parties who protect the needs of market oriented industrials.

Susanne Pickel 114

Figure 1: Cleavage Formation in Europe

Cleavages Critical historical phase

Issues Party families

Center – Periphery

Reformation-Counter-Reformation; 16th-17th centuries

nationale vs. supra-national religion; national language vs. Latin

ethnically and linguistically based parties

State – Church

National Revolution; 1789 and later

secular vs. religious control of mass education

religious parties

Rural – Urban

Industrial Revolution; 19. century

tariff levels for agri-cultural products; control vs. fred-dom for industrial enter-prise

agrarian parties; conservative vs. liberal parties

Owner – Worker

Russian Revolution; 1917-1991

integration into national polity vs. commitment to international revolutionary movement

Socialist and Communist parties

Materialism – Post-Materialism

Students Revolution; Welfarestate and expansion of educa-tion; 1968 and later

traditional, survival values vs. secular-rational, self-expression values

ecologic and human rights parties

Kommunism – Anti-Kommunism

Change in Eastern Europe – Third Wave of Transformation

commitment to Communist Regime vs. opposition to former regime

Communist and anti-Communist parties

Source: Lipset/Rokkan 1967: 47, Römmele 1999: 8, author’s suplementation The second functional cleavage concerns the conflict between owner vs. worker. The pro-ceeding industrialization, a high demand for industrial workers, the enforcement of capital-ist economic principles and the attendant profit aspirations nourish the conflicts between the workers who strive for decent working conditions and wages that lead to modest pros-perity and the capitalists who seek to limit the expenditures for the industrial production and who strive to maximize their profits. Along these cleavages, the socialist or communist parties established themselves as representatives of the interests of the workers whereas the liberals or, at times, the conservative parties represent the interests of the capitalists. After the church’s position of power had been challenged by the political state’s claim to power, this represented another challenge to the church’s sovereignty of interpretation of moral and social values: workers’ associations not only took over the socialization of universal com-munal values but also the accompanying cultural setting. While priests used to look after the believers from the cradle to the grave, they were increasingly substituted by secular socialist or communist workers’ associations in the workers’ milieu. According to Lipset and Rokkan (1967), stable party systems originated from these cleavages in Europe. They considered them to be so stable due to their strong social entrenchment as to nearly prevent any changes and thus spoke of a “frozen party system“. After 1945, the parties thus reflect the social cleavages of the 1920s.

Only in passing did Lipset and Rokkan (1967: 56) take note of the modernization of western societies, which was initiated by the student revolt in 1968 in Europe: “It is still too


early to say what kinds of politics this will engender“. Actually, the thrust of modernization in the 1970s proved to be able to break up the old party systems – at least in part: New, postmaterialistic values were introduced to the value systems in European societies. They confronted the value of the accumulation of material wealth and the conservative life-style with values related to the environment, individualism, self-realization and solidarity (Ingle-hart 1997). Ecological and human rights parties were established which sought to enforce these new values politically. The thus established cleavage materialism vs. postmaterialism poses yet another challenge to the validity of religious and church-related values: Postmate-rialistic individuals increasingly tend to strive for an inner-worldly “salvation“ of human-kind by vehemently promoting human rights and environmental protection. Thus, they no longer justify their actions with traditional, hierarchically oriented or transcendental argu-ments but rather refer to inner-worldly, rationalist and individualistic decisions (Beck 2008). In this respect, the increase in social welfare during the socio-economic moderniza-tion is of major importance (Norris/Inglehart 2004).

Historically, in Europe, the most recent social cleavage developed in the course of the major political changes in Eastern Europe: During the conflict between supporters of the former socialist and communist systems and democratizers as well as anti-communists, political parties were established which are either immediate successors of the former communist parties from the time before the collapse of communism or they share the same ideological basis. They are opposed by parties that seek to overcome this kind of economic, political and social system and who strive to approximate western-style democracies as quickly as possible. Unlike previous cleavages, the resulting conflict between communism vs. anti-communism can promote religious life and the sense of belonging to the church among the members of society. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, the primacy of secularity, which had existed in many countries, was abolished. Churches were either re-established or were no longer inhibited in their practice. Believers were able to participate in church ser-vices without hindrance. In many instances, people spoke of a “revitalization of religion“ (Graf 2004; Zulehner 2002; Tomka 1995). If this is indeed the case, then the increase in religiosity or bonding to the church should be reflected in the voting behavior of the (East) Europeans: Denominational and religious parties should not only rise from the ruins of socialist societies, they should also receive lasting support by religious voters. Independent of the group size of the religious population, the core members of the churches or the high-ly religious citizens should maintain their party alignment. Consequently, the share of votes for denominational or religious parties may vary, however, the alignment of the core mem-bers should not. This is reflected by the probability with which the respondents vote for “their“ party. These values should remain as similar as possible across time. 2.2 Basic Conditions and Elements of the Cleavage Structure When can we speak of a cleavage that represents more than a conflict within society or a political issue? (1) First, there must be a conflict (or a division) in society that is represented by substantial groups within the population which share certain socio-cultural or ideological characteris-tics (socio-cultural basis).

Susanne Pickel 116

(2) Second, the prevailing conflict has to continue over a long period of time and it must have a certain historical foundation (permanence).

(3) Third, the cleavage has to be transferred into the political sphere, i.e. political represent-atives – parties and party wings – have to take up and serve these interests (transfer into the political sphere).

(4) In order to do so, the above-mentioned social groups form coalitions with collective political actors (parties, unions) which manifest themselves in a relationship based on an exchange of votes for political representation (interest coalitions with specific benefits).

The state-church cleavage fulfills all of these conditions: It is (1) a denominational or reli-gious conflict between large social groups. It has lasted at least since the 18th century in Europe, i.e. it has continued over a long period of time (2). Since the end of the 19th cen-tury, parties have represented this conflict in the political sphere (3). For example, the Ger-man Center Party (Zentrum) in the Weimar Republic, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) since the Second World War in the Federal Republic of Germany or the New Slo-venia party (N.Si) in Slovenia after the breakdown of Yugoslavia. These parties were the basis for the formation of interest coalitions which provided the specific benefit of representing religious or church-related values in politics and society for example by speak-ing out for religious education in public schools or a church tax levied by the state.

People differ with respect to the intensity with which they align with social groups. When outlining the origins of the state-church cleavage, we already spoke of religious or church-related conflicts. While religiosity reflects a person’s turning to transcendental ideas, bonding to the church includes the membership of the respective person in a church organization. Based on the membership of members of society in different social classes, Sartori (1968) developed the concept of increasing intensity of class membership. The same logic can be applied to the membership in and bonding to the (Christian) churches. The first degree merely captures formal church membership as listed in registers. It depicts the for-mal group size of the church-affiliated members in society at the national (macro-)level, and therefore the structure of the respective society. The second degree necessitates the individual’s statement as to his/her church membership. This reflects the dissociation of the respective person as a member of a “we-group“ (church group) from a “group of others“ (non-church group) at the micro-level. It is thus based on the principle of identity-based group formation. The individual is aware of the fact that (s)he belongs to a certain group.

The third degree requires a certain commitment of the individual to his/her group: (S)he regularly participates in church service and his/her Christian values which (s)he ad-vocates against the “group of others“ are regularly reinforced (principle of conflict). The individual’s acute awareness of belonging to a “we-group“ is integrated into the respective value system. The last and most intense degree of group membership is the active engage-ment for the individual’s group. Voluntary engagement or professional activities corres-pond to the principle of behavior with respect to group membership.


Figure 2: Class and Behavior

objective class membership class status formal churchmembership [principle of structure]

1

2

subjektive class membership status awareness Eigendefinition als Mitglied [principle of group formation]

class consciousness religious identity (integration into the value system) [principle of conflict]

3

4

class activity voluntary engagement (active engagement) [principle of behavior]

Source: Sartori (1968); author’s suplementation The more intensely an individual participates in “his/her“ group, the closer the bond with the group. With respect to voting behavior, this implies that the closer the bond with the group, the higher the probability of voting for the political party that represents the respec-tive group in the political sphere. With reference to the assumption in the beginning of the article, this means that the strength of the bond determines the actual voting behavior, while the size of the social group with a strong affiliation (among other things) determines the proportion of votes of its political party.

Concerning the state-church cleavage, this may not necessarily cause the sense of be-longing to the church of the core members (3rd and 4th degree) to decrease, however, it may alter their group size. This leads to a mere ecological but not to a sectoral dealignment. Voters’ alignment with their religious or denomintional parties remains, however, the group of those who feel a close bonding grows smaller. This causes the parties to lose votes, how-ever, it does not cause the core members’ bonding to the church or their party to weaken.

Susanne Pickel 118

3. Hypotheses and Operationalization 3.1 Hypotheses Based on the socio-political changes after 1989, the processes of modernization after 1945 as well as the tendency of lifeworlds to become pluralized and individualized, we can de-rive the following hypotheses with respect to the origins and development of cleavages: 1. Hypothesis (New beginning hypothesis): Eastern European societies are not structured or only weakly structured. Therefore, no clea-vages or only weak social cleavages exist which could have an effect on the voting beha-vior of the Eastern European population. 1a. Counter-hypothesis (Freezer hypothesis): In Eastern Europe, societies’ socio-structural organization and thus the basis of the cleavag-es was preserved during socialist times. Thus, cleavages are relevant due to the fact that they are “premodern“ and have persisted through the processes of post-modernization and concomitant value changes. In Eastern Europe, voting behavior is shaped by these cleavage structures. This becomes particularly evident in the revival of classic cleavages in Eastern European societies. 1b. Counter-hypothesis (Socialism cleavage hypothesis): In the course of the break-up of socialism, a communism vs. anti-communism cleavage developed. It is decisive both for the societies in Eastern Europe as well as the local party systems in structuring the party system and the voting behavior. 2. Hypothesis (Dissolution hypothesis): Once a country has modernized, the influence of the cleavage on voting behavior decreases and the structure of the party system becomes more volatile. Consequently, more moder-nized societies have less pronounced cleavages than less modernized societies. 2a. Counter-hypothesis (Compression or condensation hypothesis): Once a country has modernized, the cleavages intensify and the influence of cleavage affili-ation on the voting behavior inreases among the voters who are affiliated with the respec-tive social groups even if the group sizes decrease. 3. Hypothesis (Sectoral dealignment hypothesis): Not only does the relevance of cleavages decrease with increasing modernization, the long-term affiliation of voters with their parties also declines. The relevance of short-term as-pects such as pure cost-benefit considerations of the voting decision increases, bringing about a sectoral dealignment. 3a. Counter-hypothesis: (Resistance to modernization hypothesis) Increasing modernization does not have an effect on voters’ affiliation with their party. Existing cleavages after the Second World War continue to prevail despite the progression of modernization as do pre-socialist cleavages.


3b. Counter-hypothesis (Realignment hypothesis): Traditional affiliations between voters and parties cease to exist with increasing moderniza-tion. They are displaced by newly established – mainly value based – cleavages. 3c. Counter-hypothesis (Cleavage generation hypothesis): With the beginning of modernization in Eastern Europe societies, a wide range of cleavages establish themselves. They are comparable to the cleavages that developed in the course of democratization in Western Europe. These hypotheses also fully apply to the state-church cleavage. However, concerning cer-tain assumptions, we can only test them with respect to this cleavage if we consider its effect on voting behavior in conjunction with possible effects of the other cleavages men-tioned above. Possibly, there are interdependencies or so-called cross pressures that exert conflicting group pressures on the individual.3 3.2 Operationalization In order to test these hypotheses, we need to keep in mind that the explanatory potential is located on different levels of analysis and evidence: two different levels are involved when determining an effective cleavage in a society which influences voting behavior. First, we need to determine the structure of society at the macro-level, i.e. the size of the different social groups – in our case, the persons who feel a sense of belonging to the church. Second, we need to analyze whether individuals who belong to these groups behave in a manner that corresponds with the cleavages, i.e. whether they actually vote for “their“ par-ty. Voting behavior generally occurs at the micro level, i.e. at the individual level. It is measured and analyzed via surveys.

The following analysis of voting behavior traces the arrow that leads from the position of the individual within the structure of the social cleavages to his/her voting behavior. If (s)he behaves according to his/her group membership by voting for “his/her“ party, we can assume cleavage based voting behavior to exist.

In order to verify this voting behavior, we will analyze 25 democratic European coun-tries at the macro level and we will relate the group size of church-affiliated persons to the number of votes for religious or denominational parties. If the values correlate, then the share of votes for a religious or denominational party depends on the group size of church-affiliated voters in a society (ecological alignment). Due to the fact that we cannot draw any conclusions about the actual voting behavior of the individual voters (ecological fallacy), we will also analyze the actual voting behavior in four Eastern and four Western European countries, namely Slovenia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Germany, the Netherlands, Swe-den, and Spain at the micro level (the surveys include approximately 1000 respondents per

3 Cross pressures occur when individuals belong to social groups that frequently differ with respect to their values and life-styles. A popular example is that of the Catholic worker in Bavaria. Depending on the group that exerts the greatest influence on the individual, he will cast his vote for the respective party. If the worker lives in Nuremberg, it is highly probable that he will decide to vote for the Social Democratic party; if he lives in Würzburg, he is more likely to vote for the CDU. If both groups’ pressure, that of the church and his work-ing environment or union, is about the same, he will probably abstain from voting.

Susanne Pickel 120

country). This analysis will show us how strongly the group membership influences indi-viduals’ voting behavior (sectoral alignment).

Figure 3: Levels of Explanation Source: author’s own descritption on the basis of Bürklin/Klein 1996: 75 and Gabriel 1997: 251. With respect to the Western European countries, the time period of analysis covers four periods of modernization and ranges from 1950 to 2000. Concerning the Eastern Eurpean countries, it covers up to three periods of modernization and ranges from 1990 to 2000.4 We choose the following countries from the population of Eastern European countries for the analyses at the micro level: Bulgaria and Romania (continuously in modernization stage 1), Hungary (example of a country with a heterogeneous structure in modernization stage 2 with respect to the modernization factors) and Slovenia (the country that has remained in modernization stage 3 the longest, the population’s voting behavior is most likely to resem-

4 By means of a cluster analysis, we determined four phases of modernization between 1950 or 1990 (estab-lishment of new states) and 2000 by applying the “Elbow criterion“ (Backhaus et al. 2003: 529-531). We used the following modernization indicators: GNP per capita, share of students with a secondary and tertiary educa-tion, infant mortality and share of employees in the service sector. In most Western European countries, phase 1 ended in the mid or late 1950s, phase 2 lasted approximately until the end of the 1960s, phase 3 ended in the mid or late 1980s. By applying this differentiation, we can largely control for dynamic processes of moderni-zation (S. Pickel 2009).

macro-level (system characteristic)

social structure and societal cleavages

strucutre of party competition

micro-level (indicidual chrarcteristic)

individuals‘ position within the structure of societal cleavag-es

party identi-fication

candidate orientation

issue orienta-tion

Voting behavior


ble the voting behavior in Western European societies). From the population of Western European countries, we choose Spain (as it is a transformation country currently in the initial phase of the third wave, it can be compared with Eastern European transformation countries the best) Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany (modernized states in stage 4).5

In order to determine the influence of structural data on the share of votes of the parties and the effect of the position of the individuals in society on their voting behavior, we as-signed variables reflecting the structure and the groups to the degrees of group membership according to Sartori’s concept (1968): Figure 4: Operationalization focus group politization structural

data objective and subjectivegroup membership: social strucute and class

group conciousness: cleavage

ideology

owner vs. worker

workers‘ share in labor force

income, profession, status of profession (class)

union membership (class consciousness)

church vs. state

share of church memebers

church membership frequency of church attandence

left-right-

center vs. periphery

share of natio-nal minorities

ethnicity, regional affilia-tion, affiliation with minorities‘ denomination

minoritylanguage, regional identity, commitment to minorities‘ denomi-nation

self-position

rual vs. urban

share of rural population

size of location (size of location)

controlling variables social structure

age, sex, education

Source: author’s own description; cleavages partly according to Berglund/Hellén/Aarebrot 1998: 10; Weßels 2000: 136. At the macro level, the effectiveness of the state-church cleavage with respect to voting behavior is determined by the share of church members in a society in proportion to the share of votes for religious or denominational parties. At the micro level, the variable “church membership“ fulfills the same structural function (ecological alignment). At this level, personal affiliation with the church or a denomination and the corresponding beha-vior of the voter provide an idea of the behavioral effectiveness of the cleavage (sectoral alignment). In the last part of our analysis, the variables measuring the other three cleavag-

5 Based on the selection of countries, those national election studies were chosen, which were carried out approximately around the time corresponding to the years when the values in the modernization clusters of the respective country lie closest to the center of the cluster. For example, in Germany, this refers to the year 1953 for the first modernization phase, 1961 for the second phase, 1976 or 1980 for the third phase and 1998 or 2002 for the fourth phase. Due to the fact that the election to the German Bundestag in 1998 should be consi-dered an exceptional election, we used the data for the election year 2002 for the analyses.

Susanne Pickel 122

es serve to control for the behavioral effectiveness of the state church cleavages in relation to the behavioral effectiveness of the other cleavages. As Weßels (2000) assumes that a politicization requires the transfer of social cleavages into a political ideology and that it finds expression in the self-positioning on an ideological left-right scale, the ideological cleavage as well as purely socio-structural variables will also be taken into account. 4. Development of the State-Church-Cleavage over time 4.1 The State-Church Cleavage at the Macro Level According to Lipset and Rokkan (1967), we can expect two things with respect to the rela-tionship between the number of church members and the share of votes for Christian or conservative parties: First, an increasing share of Catholics in a country should go hand in hand with a marked increase in the success of Christian and/or Christian conservative par-ties. These cases take up the original conflict between the Catholic church and the state, which was particularly fierce concerning the supremacy over education. Second, Christian and conservative parties can expect to be more successful in societies with a higher degree of church integration and more relevance of the church. Conversely, the advancement of secularization in the course of modernization undermines the chances of Christian parties.

Extending the analysis to Eastern Europe is complicated by the fact that politics partly imposed considerable social pressure on this relationship during socialist times. Thus, most churches in Eastern Europe were subjected to numerous restrictions which have left behind a kind of (premature) secularization atypical of modernization (G. Pickel 2009), which does not correspond to the classic course of secularization in Western Europe. On the other hand, it will be interesting to see whether this cleavage will be re-established after the fundamen-tal political changes in the course of the movements to revitalize religion which can be observed in part in Eastern Europe. However, the relationship between voting behavior for Christian parties and affiliation with Catholicism does not provide a clear picture at the macro level:

Christian parties enjoy electoral success among populations with high, medium and low shares of Catholics. However, there are certain tendencies: Orthodox Christians in Greece largely vote for a Christian democratic party, which does not contradict the assumption of the relationship between Christian voters and parties. When we delete them from the analy-sis, Christian parties appear to have a difficult stand in countries with lower shares of Cath-olics. In addition, we need to take into account that conservative parties frequently take over the role of independent Christian parties. Therefore, it seems sensible to include these parties in the analysis. This procedure in turn suffers from the drawback that voting beha-vior in favor of conservative parties without religious motivations conceals the true rela-tionship between religious or church affiliated persons and religious or denominational parties in the scatter plot.


Figure 5: Macro-Level- Relation of Formal Churchmembership and Parties

Source: author’s own calculation on the basis of data drawn from Barrett u.a. 2002; Pickel 2009.

Despite these qualifications, the cultural influence of Catholicism has a notably positive effect for conservative and Christian parties. As seen in figure 5, there is a tendency of Catholics to affiliate with Christian conservative parties. This effect is even stronger when excluding the above-mentioned data points for Greece from the analysis and when consi-dering that Great Britain’s deviation from the general trend can be accounted for by the privileged position of the Anglican church. In addition, the relatively low share of Christian and conservative parties in Belgium most likely results from the fact that another rather conservative ethnic party exists which succeeds in aligning voters that would otherwise be of benefit to the Christian conservative group of parties. In summary, it is reasonable to assume that certain aspects of Catholicism continue to be relevant with respect to voting behavior. The results are an initial indication of this relationship which will have to be elucidated with analyses of individual level data.

Based on the preceding thoughts, the question arises whether secularization and thus the influence of modernization should rather be measured with another indicator that is inde-pendent of Catholicism, but which includes religious affiliation at the same time. In this case, frequency of church attendance in the sense of active participation in the respective

Shar

e of

Vot

es o

f Chr

istia

n an

d C

onse

rvat

ive

Parti

es

Ireland 1951-1997

Share of Catholics

Susanne Pickel 124

intermediary organization6 suggests itself as an indicator. A lack of participation may be better able to reflect the process of secularization than the, frequently passive, number of members of a denomination. 7 Figure 6: Macro-Level – Relation of Religous Identity and Parties

Source: author’s calacultation on basis of data drawn from Pickel 2009; avarage church attendence rate per year. Aside from the fact that religious participation is turned into votes for Christian and con-servative parties to a markedly limited extent, there is at least a rough pattern of relations. It is mainly determined by Ireland, which is a special case from the perspective of sociology of religion. However, if we take into consideration the above-mentioned deviations from this pattern which can be accounted for (non-religiously motivated election of Christian conservative parties), the relation between religious affiliation and the election of parties that represent the respective interests remain.

6 The determination of frequency of church attendance includes all “church members“, i.e. Catholics, Protes-tants, Orthodox, Muslims, Jews etc.

7 In addition, changes in the Christian democratic and conservative electorate can be reconstructed from changes in the share of Catholics in the population only to a limited extent, as the latter decreases extremely slowly, if at all, despite numerous statements referring to secularization (Bruce 2002; Pollack 2003, 2009; G. Pickel 2009). These processes can be traced much better when looking at active participation.

Ireland 1973-1997

Shar

e of

Vot

es o

f Chr

istia

n an

d C

onse

rvat

ive

Parti

es

Religious Identity - Avarage Church Attendence Rate


Figure 7: Macro-Level – Relation of Religious Identity and Parties in the Course of Mod-ernisation

Source: author’s own calacultation on basis of data drawn from Pickel 2009. This relationship becomes more apparent when differentiating between different phases of modernization (figure 7). As Western European countries were dropped in modernization phase 1 due to data problems (average church attendance rates are available in a usable form starting in 1972 at the earliest), only several Eastern European countries remain which do not provide any information about the relationship between religiosity and Christian conservative parties during this phase. Starting with the second phase of modernization, this correlation can be shown to exist. Across all time periods, there are more or less consistent patterns of a relationship between average church attendance in a country and the share of votes for Christian and conservative parties – the share of votes for Christian and conserva-tive parties declines during the course of modernization. A decrease in church affiliation is

Irland 1997

Italien 1992-1996

Slowenien 1996-2000

Irland 1989-1992

Portugal 1991-1995

Irland 1973-1987

Portugal 1987

Slowakei 1990-1998

Ungarn 1990-1998 Slowenien 1992

Polen 1997

Irland 1997

Italien 1992-1996

Slowenien 1996-2000

Irland 1989-1992

Portugal 1991-1995

Irland 1973-1987

Portugal 1987

Slowakei 1990-1998


Polen 1997

Irland 1997

Italien 1992-1996

Slowenien 1996-2000

Irland 1989-1992

Portugal 1991-1995

Irland 1973-1987

Portugal 1987

Slowakei 1990-1998


Polen 1997

Ireland 1997

Italy 1992-1996

Slovenia 1996-2000

Ireland 1989-1992

Portugal 1991-1995

Ireland 1973-

Portugal 1987

Slowakia 1990-1998

Hungary 1990-1998 Slovenia 1992

Poland 1997

Perc

enta

ge o

f vot

ers o

f con

serv

ativ

e pa

rties

Avarage church attendance rate per year

Susanne Pickel 126

also apparent. It points to the process of secularization which is related to modernization. We can observe an ecological dealignment.

This development applies to all of Europe. However, in Ireland and Portugal, it does not begin until the third phase of modernization. In Slovakia and Italy, there appeared to be a slight counter development. In 1996, there was an “interim high“ in Slovenia, which col-lapsed in 2000. It seems that the effects of the mainly Christian religious culture have not disappeared entirely. Possibly, the state-church cleavage will condense (sectoral align-ment). 4.2 The Effectiveness of the State-Church Cleavage with Respect to Voting Behavior at

the Micro Level

Apparently, secularization at the macro level has led to a decreasing relationship between the bonding of church members or church-affiliated groups and political parties that represent them in the political sphere. In order to determine whether this is indeed the case, we need to consider whether the relationship between voters who feel a sense of belonging to the church and “their“ parties has become less close at the micro level. If the fact that an individual is affiliated with a church and its values has an effect on his/her voting behavior over the course of modernization, we can indeed merely speak of an ecological instead of a sectoral dealignment. Hence, the effectiveness of church affiliation with respect to individ-ual’s behavior has not decreased. Instead the group of church affiliated voters has merely become smaller.

Therefore, we analyze citizens’ voting behavior at the individual level by means of their group membership and their recorded voting intention (“Sunday poll“).8 This not only al-lows us to extract party affilitations which correspond to the theoretical pattern of relations that was developed for Western European societies; we can also discern all kinds of stabi-lizing relationships between a social group and a political party independent of whether they conform with the theoretical concept or not.

Due to the nominal coding of the dependent variables, the effect of the independent va-riables on the intention to vote for a certain party is determined using odds ratios from a logistic regression for each single party at each data point across the four phases of moder-nization.9 Based on this differentiation, we can now test whether there is a relationship between subjective group consciousness and voting behavior at the attitudinal level (micro level). These analyses produce 21 tables overall which cannot be displayed here (see S. Pickel 2009: chapter 7.1.2). However, the results can be presented in a well structured manner. They produce the following table on the state-church cleavages over the course of modernization (figure 9):

8 The voting intention is determined by the responses to the sunday poll at the time of the respective election to the national parliament.

9 The logistic regression was applied due to the fact that the dependent variables were dichotomized. The parties were coded as party dummies, i.e. the recorded intention to vote for party x was coded 1, the other par-ties were coded 0 (reference category: non-voters). The variables thus no longer meet the normal distribution requirement of an OLS regression. Nagelkerke R² was chosen as pseudo R² due to the fact that it can be inter-preted unambiguously (Backhaus et al. 2003: 441).


Figure 9: Microlevel – Cleavage State vs. Church during Course of Modernisation

phase of modernisation

1


2


3


4 Germany CDU/CSU, BP

vs. SPD CDU/CSU

vs. SPD CDU/CSU

vs. SPD CDU/CSU

vs. – (PDS, SPD) Netherlands

state vs. church --

ARP, KVP, CHU, small right parties vs. PvdA,

VVD

CDA, small right parties vs. PvdA, (small left par-

ties)

CDA, small right parties vs. -

denomination

D’66, ARP, KVP, CHU, small right

parties vs. (small left

parties), PvdA, VVD

small right par-ties, CDA vs.

small left parties, PvdA

CDA, small right parties vs. PvdA

Spain

--

UCD, AP-PDP, EA-PNV

vs. PCE/IU, PSOE

PP vs. - --

Sweden -- - vs. S KD vs. - Hungary KDNP, FKgP vs.

MSZP (KDNP) vs. - -- --

Romania -- -- -- Bulgaria -- -- -- Slovenia -- SKD vs. ZLSD

(DS) N.Si vs. - --

Source: author’s own calculation. Abreviation of party names: CDU/CSU=Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union; SPD=Social Democratic Party; PDS=Party of Democratic Socialism; ARP=Anti Revolutionary Party; KVP=Catholic People’s Party; CHU=Christian Historical Union; PvdA=Labour Party; VVD=People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy; CDA=Christian Democratic Appeal; D`66=Democrats 66; UCD=Union of the Democratic Center; AP-PDP=Popular Alliance-Democratic Popular Party; EA-PNV=Basque nationalist Party; PCE=Communist Party of Spain; IU=United Left; PSOE=Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party; PP=People’s Party; S=Socialdemocrats; KD=Christiandemocrats; KDNP=Christian Democratic People’s Party; FkgP=Independent Smallholders, Agrarian Workers and Civic Party; MSZP=Hungarian Socialist Party; SKD=Slovene Christian Democrats; ZLSD=Social Democrats; N.Si=New Slovenia-Chrsitian People’s Party; --=modernization phase is not relevant; empty cells=not significant.

Susanne Pickel 128

Generally speaking, the state-church cleavage has developed in a rather similar manner in European in general: In Slovenia, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, the size of the social group of church-affiliated members of the population has de-creased markedly in the course of modernization. However, with respect to the re-maining group members, their bonding to the church has retained its effective influ-ence on their voting behavior. Thus, the cleavages are condensing. In this respect, Christian and conservative parties seem to have lost their political opponent in part. Frequently, the electorate of the left parties no longer has above average anti-church sentiments and resembles the average population.

Contrary to this development, a new state-church cleavage could develop in Sweden after the formal separation of the church from the state: after the initiation of the separation of the church from the state, a new party joined the political com-petition which explicity represents the interests of the church-affiliated population. So far, no party represents those citizens with anti-church sentiments so explicitly as to induce secularized voters to vote for them above average simply because they present themselves as a secularized party.

In Hungary, bonding to the church has increased, however, structurally, the clea-vage has not been able to develop as much influence on voting behavior in the second modernization phase. In this case, the cleavage is not likely to condense. Instead, it is likely that a cleavage that dominates the social conflict is overlapping it. In Bulgaria and Romania, there is no socio-political state-church cleavage. For the time being, it is unlikely for it to develop in the future due to the non-confrontational attitude of the Orthodox Church toward the state.

Due to the fact that the trend of condensation is almost uniform throughout Eu-rope, we can only speak of a development in the sense of “catch-up modernization“ with respect to the state-church cleavage if this implies a very similar development in different societies. However, the modernization process in Eastern European countries is more advanced with regard to the process of secularization. Western European countries could catch up during the next years. However, this requires that a general revitalization of faith – as observed in part – will not take place in Eastern Europe. After the cessation of socialist repressions, the political conditions of the churches will change without a doubt, thus creating new opportunities for the devel-opment of a socio-structural basis for this cleavage. Maybe they will shift to the general European pattern of development after the revitalization of religion. They would thus catch up with the European process. However, this can only be identified empirically in the long run (a greater time period after the major political changes) (G. Pickel 2009).

Concerning the decrease in church attendance rates and the loss of relevance of religion for individuals, the secularization process is well underway: in almost all countries under comparison, the cleavages are condensing or even merging with other conflicts. Privatization and a loss of sovereignty of interpretation render the churches unnecessary as institutions that frame the interpretation of political infor-mation and interest representation. However, these processes hardly apply to the core members of the churches who defend their interests and interpretive claims. To them, the conflict between the church and the state continues to be highly charged


and has a considerable impact on their voting behavior. Actually, initially, the revi-talization of religion and bonding to the church in Eastern European countries could also be discerned with respect to their effect on voting behavior. However, their effectiveness concerning voting behavior was short-lived, i.e. after a short period of time, privatization mechanisms and the loss of relevance of religion appear to take effect just like in large parts of Western Europe. Figure 10: Micro-Level – Type of Cleavage

country type of cleavage Germany religious cleavage: condensation Netherlands denominational cleavage: dealignment by trend

religious cleavage: condensation Sweden relifious cleavage: (possible) evolement after abolition of state religion Spain religious cleavage: condensation Rumania Irrelevant Bulgaria Irrelevant Hungary religious cleavage: dealignment

(overlapping with other cleavage) Slovenia religious cleavage: condensation

Source: author’s own desciption. In two out of the four Eastern European Countries, cleavages also (re-)appeared. However, in the process of crossing from one phase of modernization to another, they are either condensing (Slovenia) or they are overlapped by more pronounced lines of social tension and thus lose their structural effectiveness to influence beha-vior (Hungary). Sweden, for example, shows that new cleavages can develop when the political conditions concerning the representation of specific interests change. This applies to the opening up of society due to democratization and the resulting religious commitment which is in need of political representation as well as to the abolition of automatic church membership and the resulting necessity to form inter-est groups whose interests are also represented politically. Both cases blaze a trail for a new kind of interest implementation: In Eastern Europe, it will be officially possible, and in Sweden it will be necessary for the first time.

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When looking at the development of the state-church cleavage without taking into consid-eration the other effects that influence voting behavior (individual models), it becomes apparent that the church-state conflict is condensed whenever it is relevant, i.e. society’s secularization proceeds while the cleavage hardly loses any of its effectiveness regarding its influence on the voting behavior of church-affiliated voters. This observation pertains to Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Slovenia; it does not apply to the Orthodox countries of Romania and Bulgaria where the church and the state were either already closely interre-lated during socialist times (Romania: tacit agreement) or strictly separated (Bulgaria). In the other countries, the process of ecological dealignment is taking place.

Similar developments particularly occur in those countries that have already reached a certain level of modernization, in our case the second phase: The course of the development of the cleavage and its effectiveness in Slovenia indicate that we can only assume a similar future course of modernization and a similar effectiveness of the cleavage regarding voting behavior once a country has reached a certain level of development. In this case, there are considerable similarities with the Western European countries in comparison concerning the development of the state-church cleavage (with Germany, the Netherlands and Spain), the urban-rural cleavage (with Sweden) and the ideological cleavage (all countries) as well as the content of the left-right continuum (with Germany and the Netherlands).

In Romania and Bulgaria, however, similar developments do not even occur in part within the first phase of modernization: both societies are very similar, however they mar-kedly deviate from the other countries in comparison. They differ considerably from the other countries in comparison due to the cultural influence of the Orthodox denomination as well as the fact that their territories are populated by relatively large, politically active ethnic minorities. In addition, at least until 2000, they have modernized very slowly. Even though several indicators point to an acceleration of modernization in Romania and Bulga-ria, no effect on voting behavior has appeared so far. Overall, the combination of delayed progress in modernization and their individual religious and cultural characteristics produc-es a considerably different pattern of societal factors which occur in part as general social background variables, and in part as group variables that affect voting behavior.

When considering the models that comprise all cleavage indicators (general models), it becomes apparent that the state-church cleavage continues to have an effect on voting be-havior when taking into account the other influential factors. With respect to Germany and the Netherlands, it continues to have a pronounced effect on voting behavior whereas in Spain and Sweden, the effect is weak. Slovenia and Hungary follow approximately the same pattern. In Bulgaria and Romania, church affiliation has no effect at all on voting behavior that is the state-church cleavage does not exist in these cases.

4. Conclusion - The Tabula Rasa Thesis is Buried!

In conclusion, when looking at the course of development of the state-church cleavage in Eastern Europe, it is entirely justified to support Geoffrey Evans’ assertion at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Boston in 2008: “The tabula rasa thesis is buried!“ There are no indications to justify the new beginning hypothesis (1. hypo-thesis). Eastern European societies are structured (from an objective point of view), howev-

Susanne Pickel 132

er unlike in Western Europe, the structures are not transferred into cleavages or have a smaller effect on the development of cleavages compared to Western Europe.

However, there is some proof of the freezer hypothesis in Slovenia and Hungary. In Hungary, the cleavages are the weakest – they are quickly overlapped by a conflict that is based on the socialist era and its consequences. The example of the state-church cleavage in particular shows that both the freezer hypothesis as well as the counter-hypothesis 1b, the socialism cleavage hypothesis hold true in part: on the one hand, there is evidence of a revitalization of the church in Eastern Europe, on the other hand, in this area, socialist mod-ernization has left massive tracks of secularization. Consequently, the cleavage frequently overlaps with the socialism cleavage; or it can best be described with the following pair of terms: communism vs. anti-communism.

The second hypothesis, the dissolution hypothesis, could only be confirmed as an eco-logical dealignment at the macro level which occurred in the course of modernization due to a decrease in the size of socio-structural groups. The third hypothesis referring to the sectoral dealignment, i.e. the assumption of a dwindling voter-party affiliation, could not be generally confirmed. It only applies to a limited extent to the European countries under research (which probably goes for the other European countries as well): In line with the condensation hypothesis, active group members continue to be closely affiliated with their parties through intermediary organizations.

Therefore, hypothesis 3a, the resistance to modernization hypothesis, should largely hold true with respect to the state-church cleavage at the individual level and thus the rela-tionship between the church-affiliated voters and “their“ parties. Those who have broken out of this relation increasingly affiliate with groupings and no longer refer to certain indi-vidual parties but to a certain political grouping instead (re-alignment hypothesis 3b). In addition, we find a trend toward the development of new value-based cleavages in almost all countries under research (cleavage generation hypothesis 3c).

Hypothesis 2a – the compression or condensation hypothesis - was clearly confirmed: the state-church conflict condenses as the cleavage hardly loses any of its effectiveness with regard to the voting behavior of church-affiliated voters despite progressing secularization in society: This observation applies to Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Slovenia; it does not pertain to the Orthodox countries of Romania and Bulgaria, where the church and the state were either already closely interrelated during socialist times (Romania: tacit agreement) or strictly separated (Bulgaria).

The effectiveness of bonding to the church with regard to voting behavior does not only apply to those countries in Eastern Europe where religion actually revitalized (Russia, Ukraine and Georgie). It also occurs in those countries where the churches were not that popular after 1989. In all of the Roman Catholic/Christian European countries under re-search, church-affiliated voters clearly have a higher probability of voting for a Christian, denominational or religious party than for any other political group. This observation may be related to the particular institutions of the Roman Catholic/Christian churches and their relation to the political state as well as the relation between the Orthodox churches in Bul-garia and Romania with the former political rulers. What we know for sure is that a close personal relationship to a Christian church still continues to influence individual voting behavior substantially. God’s not dead, God still casts his ballot…


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Bruce, Steve 2002: God is Dead. Secularization in the West. Oxford. Bürklin, Wilhelm/Klein, Markus (1998): Wahlen und Wählerverhalten. Eine Einführung. Opladen. Denz, Hermann (ed.) (2002): Die europäische Seele. Leben und Glauben in Europa. Wien. Gabriel, Oskar W. (1997): Parteiidentifikation, Kandidaten und politische Sachfragen als Bestim-

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Europa II. Tübingen.

Susanne Pickel 134

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Ost(mittel)europa. Entwicklungen seit der Wende. Ostfildern: Schwabenverlag.

Religiosity and Bonding to the Church in East Germany in Eastern European Comparison – is East Germany Still Following a Special Path? Gert Pickel 1. Introduction – Is East Germany Following a Special Path instead of Being an

Exceptional Case? Again and again, researchers in Germany but also beyond, point out that the situation in East Germany is somewhat exceptional or, in other words, that it is a special case when it comes to matters of religion. Now, the use of the term “exceptional case“ refers to a pecu-liar status which can hardly be explained by other factors. But couldn’t it be that East Ger-many is merely an exceptional case in so far as a number of specific general conditions coincide here? In that case, is it still an exceptional case? 20 years after the major political changes it seems appropriate to take up this question once again and to test it empirically. At the same time, the question arises in how far there may have been an exceptional devel-opment in this region or whether we find that its situation is similar to that of those coun-tries that started out under very similar conditions in a politically opened Europe 20 years ago, and that they have undergone similar trends of development.

This shows that it is sensible to consult comparable cases in order to be able to judge the developments in a region correctly. Only then it is possible to comment on whether the region under research is indeed exceptional. In addition, such a comparative approach provides the opportunity to determine fundamental explanations for the situation under scrutiny, which go beyond the ad hoc explanations that refer to the individual case. This seems particularly appropriate when considering religiosity and bonding to the church in East Germany, as public statements frequently simply ascribe the religious situation in this region to the political and cultural legacy of the SED regime while largely forgoing a more thorough analysis. At the same time, the mode of comparison provides the opportunity to relate to the theoretical approaches in the sociology of religion.

A comparative consideration of the questions raised above requires broad data access. For reasons of space, I will mainly refer to data from the study on “Church and Religion in an enlarged Europe 2006 (C&R)“ 1 in the analyses presented here. However, where neces-sary, I will complement them with additional data.

1 The study, coordinated by a project team located at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) until

2009, than at the Universities of Münster and Leipzig,, comprised nine countries, namely Germany (West and East), Portugal, Ireland, Finland, Estonia, Poland, Hungary, Croatia and Russia. The reference survey was car-ried out in the fall of 2006. Since 2004, the project ’Church and Religion in an enlarged Europe (C&R)‘ has been financed by the Volkswagen Foundation. The joint directors of the project are Detlef Pollack (University of Münster) and Gert Pickel (University of Leipzig), the project work was conducted by Olaf Müller (Univer-sity of Münster) and Anja Gladkich (University of Leipzig). The international project partners are: Helena Vi-


Gert Pickel 136

2. Theoretical Approaches in the Sociology of Religion Currently, the discussion in modern sociology of religion mainly refers to three theoretical approaches which provide different interpretations of the social evolution of religion. First, the classic secularization theory approach which points to a continuous loss of social relev-ance of religion in modern societies (Berger 1967; Bruce 1992, 2002, 2011; Dobbelaere 2002; Pickel 2009a, 2012; Pollack 2006, 2009; Tschannen 1991; Voas 2008; Wilson 1982). This development arises from the tension between modernization and religion: It is based on processes of rationalization, functional differentiation of modern societies and the oust-ing of religion from public life (privatization). In addition, religious norms decreasingly succeed in committing members of society to them and their institutional and communal basis are disintegrating. Consequentially, the situation in East Germany and its develop-ment can be interpreted as premature secularization. In socialist times, the communal basis of religion eroded extensively. In light of this as well as the simultaneous process of accele-rated modernization in the new Bundesländer, it is hardly to be expected that religious revitalization will make headway. At the most, there may be movements of revitalization for a limited amount of time which are likely to shift to the general European trend of secu-larization fairly quickly.

The religious market model is rather indeterminate as to the development of religiosity and bonding to the church. According to the market model, a country’s religious vitality is mainly determined by the services offered by the churches as well as the degree of regula-tion of the religious market (Finke/Stark 2003, 2006; Iannaccone 1991; Stark/Bainbridge 1987; Stark/Iannaccone 1994). The monopoly churches can no longer satisfy the continual-ly widening interests of the individualized believers – and in the market model, every citi-zen is in some way an individualized believer. If the religious market continues to be li-mited to the established suppliers (churches), this will surely result in a decrease in the religious vitality of the citizens. Only the emergence of competition on the religious market will revive religious vitality. The assumptions in which the market model crucially differs from secularization theory are that religious pluralism has a positive effect on religious vitality, the fact that modernization does not necessarily lead to a loss of relevance of reli-gion in society and that every individual is in search of a religious model in order to find an answer to the “ultimate“ questions of meaning. According to the market model, this applies to every believer. Consequently, there is a continuous demand.

A consistent application of the explanatory model of the religious market approach promises a revitalization of all kinds of religion with respect to East Germany. Thus, on the one hand, the new situation on the market is characterized by the cessation of political re-pressions, on the other hand, the market is largely freed from the restrictions which have been imposed on it by the Christian churches until now. Hence, traditional affiliations with the Christian churches have loosened which offers believers who are looking for religious

laca (Portugal), Marat Shterin (Russia), Miklos Tomka † and Gergely Rosta (Hungary), Kati Niemelä and Kimmo Kääriäinen (Finland); Sinisa Zrinscak and Krunoslav Nikodem (Croatia); Karen Andersen and Tom Inglis (Ireland); Tadeusz Doktor † and Dorota Hall (Poland) and Eva-Liisa Jaanus (Estonia). For more details on the study see Pickel (2009a: 95-97).

Is East Germany Following a Special Path? 137

ideas a whole new variety of religious approaches. This in turn should bring about an in-crease in religious plurality as well as vitality. Froese and Pfaff (2009: 137; 2005) qualify this general statement in so far as they believe that the religious market has only opened up to a very limited extent due to the accession of the new Bundesländer to the German federa-tion of states. In addition, these changes entailed an even greater involvement of the state, such as for example the introduction of a church tax.2 Chart 1: Fundamental Lines of Thought in Contemporary Sociology of Religion Secularization

Theory Theory of

Individualization Theory of Pluralization and

Vitalization Authors Brian Wilson

Steve Bruce Peter L. Berger

Thomas Luckmann Grace Davie

Rodney Starke Roger Finke

Laurence Iannaccone Basic Thesis Generell differences

between Modernity and Religion lead to a consis-tend decline of the social significance of religion

Institutionalized religion can loose significance, but

because religious beliefs of man are an anthropological constant, only a chance in forms of religiosity appear

There is a constant demand for religiosity and religious beliefs. Therefore the level of religious vitality depends from the supply of religious

products on the religious market

Relation to general theory

Modernization Theory

Theory of Individualization

Rational-Choice and Market Theory

Explanation for Western Europe

Continuous decline of all forms of religiosity

Decline of involvement in the churches, but consistent individual religious beliefs

Development of religiosity depends from the level of pluralisation of the society

Explanation for Eastern Europe (East Germany)

Continuous decline of all forms of religiosity, perhaps after a period of revitaliza-

tion until a certain point

Decline of involvement in the churches, but increasing individual religious beliefs

Revitalisation of religiosity after the fall of repression

and rebuilding of a religious market

Source: Own composition, see also Müller 2009: 67. The thesis of religious individualization, which is discussed in particular in the European realm (Davie 1994, 2002; Luckmann 1967), differentiates between the personal level of faith and the individual’s affiliation with the church. Individual religiosity is conceived as an anthropological constant which is inherent in the nature of man. Consequently, religious urges will never cease entirely. This does not equally apply to public manifestations of religion, as particular social forms of religion as they occur in certain regions may indeed lose relevance. In that case, individual religiosity modifies its form (Luckmann 1991: 96-101), which manifests itself either in new types of religious practices and affiliations or in “invisible religiosity“. Proponents of the thesis of religious individualization criticize secu-larization theory for focusing too narrowly on questions related to the sociology of the church as well as a substantial concept of religion which no longer adequately reflects so-ciety due to the fact that it is mostly limited to a Christian concept of religion. With respect

2 At the same time, they name additional reasons for the absence of religious revitalization which are peculiar to

the new Bundesländer such as the tarnished image of the Protestant church since the Nazi regime and its in-volvement with the Stasi surveillance practices (Froese/Pfaff 2009: 138).

Gert Pickel 138

to East Germany, supporters of the individualization thesis assume that new forms of reli-gion will spread substantially. They expect them to be highly diverse and to manifest them-selves more in private rather than in institutionalized forms. In this respect, the expansion of the right to self-determination is crucial, as it prepares the ground for religious individua-lization alongside the loosening of traditional affiliations with the predominant Christian religion.

The latter two theoretical approaches agree in that they both rebut the secularization theory as an unsuitable explanatory pattern of religious vitality in modern societies. They consider the assumption of an “innate“ tension between modernity and religion in addition to an almost inevitable and irrevocable decline in the relevance of religion to be both out-dated and inadequate with respect to the empirical reality in world wide comparison. Processes of secularization do not necessarily have to proceed in a linear fashion: They can be interrupted by alternative explanatory factors or social conditions or they may reflect path dependencies (see Martin 1978; Norris/Inglehart 2004; Pickel 2009a, 2009b, 2012; Voas 2008).3 Overall, secularization theory’s line of argument continues to be instructive due to its complexity (Pickel 2009a; Stolz 2009) and assists in structuring further empirical analyses. The analyses are based on Dobbelaere’s ideas (2002): He differentiates between societal secularization and individual secularization. At the same time, he extends the pers-pective to include religiosity outside the church.

3. East German Religiosity in European Comparison In the following, I will present an initial assessment of the state of religious vitality in East German in European comparison. For reasons of space, the presentation will at times be cursory, based on a rather superficial run through different frequency distributions. Among other things, secularization theory focuses on the processes of functional differentiation, that is, societal secularization. It is particularly characterized by a loss of relevance of reli-gious norms but also in the sense of a reduction of services for society which people used to take advantage of. With respect to this process, it is crucial that the citizens believe that religion no longer has any relevance and no longer has the right to have any relevance in any other functional spheres in society. Dobbelaere (2002: 169-170) refers to these convic-tions as “compartmentalisation“ or secularization in the minds of the people. They have far-reaching consequences as they constitute the public realm as a secular realm and thus acce-lerate the process of privatization of religion in Berger’s sense (1967).

Chart 2 draws a relatively straightforward picture: Societal secularization is a European commonality. The separation of religion and politics or church and state is firmly rooted in the minds of the citizens in all European states under research. According to the citizens, religion’s public influence has no place in politics. The responses between the countries hardly vary at all – East Germany does not particularly stand out compared to the other countries. Apparently, the separation of religion and politics is a basic constant feature of

3 See also the article from Spohn in this volume.


all modern societies – and one largely shared by the citizens of Europe as well as beyond, as studies of the International Social Survey Program have shown. However, concerning the inclusion of a reference to God in the preamble of the European Constitution, despite all similarities, the opinions differ between Catholic and non-Catholic countries. In Croatia and Poland, there is a slim majority and in Portugal and Ireland a large minority which would approve of a reference to God in the European constitution. In West Germany, Finland, Estonia and East Germany, three quarters of the citizens would oppose such a reference. The results are very similar with respect to the influence of religious norms on scientific research (see also Pickel 2009a: 98-99). Chart 2: Indicators of Societal Secularization 2006

WG Port Irl Fin EG Pol Hun Cro Est Rus Religion and Politics

“Religious Leaders should not try to influence government decisions“

70 75 67 62 70 73 68 73 80 75

“The constitution of the European Union should make explicit reference to God”

27 48 46 22 20 51 39 58 18 37

Religion and Science “Scientific Research should not be restricted by religious norms and values”

72 68 62 82 74 58 77 69 88 87

Religion and School “Education at school should be free from religion”

42 31 30 34 60 27 29 36 64 42

“Religious symbols, such as crosses, should be forbidden in state schools”

31 27 20 11 55 16 13 30 28 33

Source: Own Calculations on C&R 2006; percent of positive answers (a lot + quite a lot). The attitudes toward the influence of religion on the educational system are by far less clear-cut. The majority neither approves of an education without any religious elements nor a rigid separation of church and state in the sense of keeping state schools clear of religious symbols. In Catholic countries, there is usually a more benign attitude compared to Protes-tant countries. What is noticeable about East Germany is that there is no country in our sample with such an advanced societal secularization with respect to the uncoupling of the educational system and religion - this statement can be extended to almost all European countries. Only in East Germany do we find a majority of citizens who believe that religion should be largely excluded from the school.

Due to the fact that the exposure to socialization is of crucial importance for the delay of secularization according to secularization theory, this can be interpreted as an initial limited indication of East Germany’s peculiar status with respect to the religious sector.4 In line with secularization theory, the observed societal secularization should also have an effect on the relevance of religion in the everyday lives of the individual. Indeed, despite the fact that many people continue to consider religion an important factor in their lives in 2006, the

4 This background information makes it easier to comprehend the debates in the new Bundesländer concerning

the introduction of ethics as a school subject and the abolishment or externalization of religious education.

Gert Pickel 140

differences between the countries are more apparent than before. These differences in social relevance of religion largely depend on cultural conditions. In Western as well as Eastern Europe, religion is more important in the everyday lives of the people in Catholic countries compared to countries in the Protestant or Orthodox cultural realm. The social relevance of religion seems to have suffered particularly from the conjunction of Protestant cultural heritage and recent socialist past. Not only East Germany but also Estonia displays the by far lowest rates of people who consider religion an important part of their lives (23 percent and 18 percent, respectively) (see Pickel 2003: 253-254, see also Meulemann 2009). Thus, in 2006, only one out of seven citizens in East Germany or Estonia considered God to be an important deciding factor in their everyday lives (Pickel 2009a: 101). Western European countries with a Protestant cultural heritage also display a far lower degree of relevance of religion compared to Catholic countries. However, apparently, the conjunction of Protes-tantism and Socialism is the most unfavorable condition for the maintenance of social re-levance of religion in society. This does not only apply to East Germany. Unlike societal secularization, which is very common across the countries, individual secularization does not seem to have progressed that far. Consequently, the differences in individual social relevance of religion in European comparison become apparent: While societal seculariza-tion is a phenomenon shared across Europe, processes of secularization at the individual level pertaining to personal religiosity have proceeded along certain cultural paths and path dependencies.

Chart 3: Individual Social Relevance of Religion in 2006 WG Port Irl Fin EG Pol Hun Cro Est Rus

Religion is an important part of my life 45 75 78 54 23 79 58 78 18 35

God determines life 25 65 44 40 13 47 50 51 14 28

Source: Own Calculation C&R 2006. This observation is confirmed when comparing mean church attendance and church mem-bership rates. Aside from the two “problematic“ cases of Estonia and East Germany, the culture of church affiliation is still predominant in the European realm. In Hungary and Russia as well as in most other states in the Orthodox Russian region, as well as in Estonia and Croatia, membership rates have increased since 2000. Particularly in Russia, the Ukraine and Bulgaria, they increased drastically (see Pickel 2009b: 13; Tomka 2010). In Eastern European countries, the abolition of political repressions has caused many people to return to the church – at least during the first years after the radical changes (see also Tom-ka et al. 1999). After a short time, the initial increase in membership turned into a rather static development or moderate decrease in some countries (Slovenia, the Czech Republic). Among the group of countries under research, only East Germany displays a continuous decrease in church membership and bonding to the church. This finding has also been rec-orded in surveys in Great Britain and the Netherlands – both of which also have a mixed denominational culture (see Pickel 2009b: 14). Overall, more general overviews of Western


Europe show that membership and participation in all kinds of religious practices have decreased for at least three decades.

This also indicates that the churches’ hope for a broad wave of return to religion has on-ly been fulfilled to a limited extent in the post-socialist states in Eastern Europe (Tomka 2010). Despite the fact that there are obvious trends of return to the Christian churches, they remain limited to moderate rates of increase, which partly decline again fairly quickly and which only apply to certain countries and groups of countries.

Chart 4: Mean Church Attendance in Pan-European Comparison 1981 1990

-1991

1994-

1998

2000-

2002

2003-

2008

1990 (1981)

1991 1994-

1998

2000-

2002

2003-

2008 Italy 23 23 21 24 20 Poland 38 37 32 33 33 Portugal - 23 22 21 17 Lithuania - 14 12 12 10 Spain 24 18 17 15 11 Slovakia 20 22 - 20 20 Cyprus - - 11 - 11 Slovenia 15 14 14 12 12 Ireland 45 43 38 35 34 Hungary 14 8 11 8 8 France 7 7 8 6 6 Croatia - - 15 20 16 Luxemburg 23 19 15 14 10 Czech Republic 4,5 9 6 5 4,5 Belgium 18 16 14 11 6,5 Germany (East) - 3 3 3,5 3,5 Austria - 18 16 15 11 Latvia 4 6 6 6 5 Netherlands 16 13 10 9 8 Estonia - 4 3,5 3,5 3,5 Switzerland - 16 10 9 8,5 Romania 13 17 - 17 17 Great Britain 10 10 10 9 8,5 Bulgaria 4 6 6 7 6 Germany (West)

13 12 11 11 10 Serbia- Montenegro

- - 6 8 9,5

Northern Irl. 30 30 27 27 - Macedonia - 11 8 14 - Sweden 5 4,5 4,5 4 3,5 Russia 2 4 3 3 4 Denmark 4 4 4,5 4 3,5 Belorussia 3 4 5 5 - Norway 5 5 4,5 4 4 Ukraine - 8 7 7 7,5 Finland 5 4 4 4 4 Georgia - 10 9 8 - Island 3,5 3,5 - 4 4 Moldavia - 10 8 11 10 Greece 17 16 15,5 11,5 17 Albania - 9 - 13 - Turkey - 20 23 21,5 19,5 Bosnia-Herzeg. - - 19 18 -

Source: Own Calculations different data-sets; Mean attendance of church = number of church visits for the year in the mean of the whole population. Possibly, many of these developments reflect levelling processes, whereby Eastern Euro-pean countries adapt to the “normal“ level of religious vitality in pan-European comparison (see Pickel 2009b): The growth rates increase the level of religious vitality in Eastern Euro-pean countries to a degree which they – according to secularization theory – would have reached due to their degree of modernization if it had not been for their (unnatural) socialist past. According to the assumptions of secularization theory, the developments in the coun-tries will adapt to the common European trend once they have reached the “reversal point“. Such an observation relates the course of development to the respective social conditions. It is the location in certain macro structures and not a wide array of country particularities that cause a certain level of religious vitality in a country. In this respect, the differentiation

Gert Pickel 142

between Catholic and Protestant countries as well as the initial historical and political situation and the level of socio-economic modernization are of crucial importance.

This perspective is also helpful when comparing East Germany to the other countries. In this case, the average rate of church attendance is hardly below that of the other Protes-tant countries (Sweden, Norway). Thus, in this respect, it is not an exceptional case. In addition, the trend of development of this indicator is insignificant compared to the other European Protestant countries in comparison. Only when comparing it to the phases of revitalization which occasionally occured in Eastern Europe (for example in Bulgaria and Russia) do we notice a certain peculiarity.

Chart 5: Subjective Religiosity 2006

WG Port Irl Fin EG Pol Hun Cro Est Rus I am religious to the teachings

of my church 16 46 34 20 9 56 21 52 14 21

I am religious in my own way 61 45 56 58 34 39 59 37 41 49

I can not decide, whether I am a religious person or not

7 2 4 10 4 3 6 4 11 14

I am not religious 16 7 6 12 53 2 14 7 34 16

Source: Own Calculations on C&R 2006; percent of positive answers (a lot + quite a lot). There are indications of a certain exceptional status of East Germany when considering the indicators of subjective religiosity. In European comparison, the citizens of the new Bun-desländer display the lowest rates both with respect to religious self-assessment as well as the confession of the belief in God or the belief in a higher power. In Estonia as well as in East Germany, the statement “a personal God exists“ – which is in line with the teachings of the Christian churches – was chosen by only 14 percent of the respondents. The majority of East German citizens either tend to consider themselves as atheists or regard themselves as non-religious. In comparison, in Estonia – which until now has almost always displayed the same levels as East Germany with respect to the indicators of religious vitality - these two groups comprise more than a quarter of the population, however, most Estonians still believe in a higher being. Overall, there are high rates of approval of this more diffuse kind of faith in most other European states as well. In West Germany, they represent the largest group and even in Poland and Croatia, over 30 percent profess such a general form of faith. In Portugal, we find the largest group of faithful who believe in a personal God. However, in Poland, Hungary, and Croatia, still more than half of the population believe in God in a more traditional Christian sense. Overall, it appears that the trend toward a more diffuse image of God is slowly spreading in many European countries – except for East Germany, where more than half of the respondents decidedly assess themselves as being non-religious or atheist. In this respect, David Voas (2008: 39-41) refers to a creaping increase in reli-gious indifference (Gärtner/Wohlrab-Sahr/Pollack 2003; Wohlrab-Sahr 2008) via processes


of the diffusion of faith.5 The analysis of the respondents’ self-assessed religiosity yields similar results (see also Pickel 2009a: 103-104).

If the individualization thesis of religion is correct, then we should be able to find alter-native forms of religiosity that act as alternatives or substitutes, i.e. functional equivalents, for Christian religiosity in those countries that display a loss of social relevance of tradi-tional religiosity (such as East Germany, in particular). However, empirically, there is a rather low demand for such religious substitutes. At most, one third of the citizens in one of the countries under research indicate an affiliation to one of the alternatives to traditional religiosity presented here. Furthermore, in contrast to the assumption of the individualiza-tion thesis, the countries that record a loss of relevance of traditional religiosity and bond-ing to the church are not the same as those that display the highest rates of alternative reli-giosity. Rather, this occurs in those countries where Christian religiosity is particularly well-established (Ireland, Portugal). Chart 6: Religiosity Outside the Christian Churches 2006

I believe in … WG Port Irl Fin EG Pol Hun Cro Est Rus Magic/Spirituality/Occultism 12 24 20 9 8 8 12 13 17 16

Astrology/Horoscopes 18 27 18 16 16 20 32 26 31 31 Amulets, Stones and Crystals

could be helpful

25

36

20

12

16

24

26

29

38

37

Source: Own Calculations on C&R 2006; percent of positive answers (a lot + quite a lot). East Germany is a prime example for disproving the individualization thesis. When analyz-ing the approval ratings in East Germany, they usually include the lowest rates of affiliation with alternative forms of religiosity. This is in line with the unequivocal statements on personal religiosity as presented in chart 6. Even if the image of Christian religiosity under-lies these statements, they nevertheless point to the fact that the majority of East German citizens have decisively distanced themselves from transcendental matters in general. In this respect, they differ from the Estonians who have displayed the same distance to deno-minational matters so far. More so than in all of the other European countries, seculariza-tion seems to have spread beyond the communal basis into the realm of personal faith in East Germany. The empirical evidence points to the fact that East Germans seem to have a relatively coherent concept of religion which causes them to be sceptical about all kinds of non-worldly rational explanations.6

5 Among the countries in the C&R study, there is a clear opposing trend in Hungary and Croatia. On the one

hand, this highlights the fact that the societies are polarized, on the other hand, it underlines the interrelation of religion with nationalist ideas in the two countries. However, the developments in Western Europe rather consistently point to a gradual process of loss of faith.

6 These arguments do not suffice for a final rejection of the individualization thesis entirely as Luckmann (1967) and the adherents to his theory list a number of other possible types of “invisible religion“ which could not taken into account here. According to Luckmann, many of these types cannot be measured with a survey as the method of data collection. This may bet rue, however, the results raise doubts as to the validity of an anthropologically founded religiosity that is only reflected in changes in types of religiosity. It seems more

Gert Pickel 144

What remains is the religious market model: The argument of the market model claims that a free religious market with the lowest possible extent of state regulations and the highest possible extent of competition foster more religious vitality (Iannaccone 1991). This pre-supposes a certain interest on the part of those seeking religion. Consequently, there should be substantial groups among the population who would like to see more plurality among those promoting a form of religion in case they do not belong to a religious community. Chart 7: Demand for Religious Variation 2006

Source: Own Calculations on C&R 2006; „I would prefer a greater variation of religious organisations and groups in my neighbourhood, because then, I could choose between different demands“; percent of positive answers (a lot + quite a lot). However, in the European countries under research, the citizens of hardly any country re-quest a greater variety of possibilities in the religious realm. Only in the Catholic countries of Ireland, Poland and Portugal, more than 20 percent of the respondents argue in favor of a larger variety of religious organizations and groups. This result contradicts one of the basic assumptions of the religious market model as there are particularly few requests for reli-gious pluralism in those countries with low religious vitality. Consequently, it is not true that those who are religiously indifferent seek a new religious place in society. East Ger-many fits this description very well, as it reports the fewest requests for a larger variation in religious organizations and groups among all countries under research. Therefore, the reli-gious market, which was opened after the major political changes, was not revived after all unlike we would have expected from the basic assumption of the market model (see also Froese/Pfaff 2009: 124-126). Simply put: there is no demand for the promotion of various forms of religion (see also Jagodzinski 2000: 66).

plausible to include possibly existing religiously indifferent or non-religious persons who exist side by side with persons who have truly undergone a transformation of their religious convictions (Dobbelaere 2002).

10

27

36

107

2217 17

13

7

05

10152025303540

WG Port Irl Fin EG Pol Hun Cro Est Rus


What remains in the end is the secularization theory. One of its main assumptions is that the decline of the social relevance of religion is a slow, continuous process that results from the fact that the intergenerational transmission is interrupted. The individuals themselves do not distance themselves drastically from the church nor do they develop a profound reli-gious indifference. Instead, these traditions disappear over generations. Socialization is of particular relevance in such a process. Chart 8 indicates how powerful its influence is: Indi-viduals’ religious socialization highly corresponds to the degree of religious vitality, be it at the micro level or the macro level. The transmission of religious knowledge, religious expe-riences and religious practices are thus essential for the survival of a vivid religion.

Chart 8: Religious Socialization in European Comparison 2006

WG Port Irl Fin EG Pol Hun Cro Est Rus Socialization

Parents brought me up in faith 68 94 94 59 38 96 71 85 26 30 I think that it is important to bring up children in faith (own intention)

76 88 92 78 38 90 78 81 40 50

Correlations

Religious Socialization / own intention .51 .50 .26 .46 .58 .49 .51 .63 .55 .51 Religious Socialization / belief in God .21 .34 .19 .34 .31 .19 .45 .34 .33 .23

Source: Own Calculations on C&E 2006; percent of positive answers (a lot + quite a lot). This highlights the far-reaching consequences of social conditions. Across Europe, East Germany is the region with the lowest extent of the transmission of religious beliefs. This is mainly the result of the low number of people who state that they themselves were not raised in a faith either. When we relate the strong correlation between individuals’ sociali-zation and the extent of the transmission of religious traditions to the low degree of sociali-zation experiences, it becomes obvious why religion was not – and cannot be – revitalized in the new Bundesländer:7 What is passed on are non-religious, non-denominational and sometimes religiously hostile traditions and values – that is, an irreligious culture. Howev-er, this appears to be less of an exceptional situation in the sense of a peculiarity but rather a long-term interaction of unfavorable social conditions.

7 What is interesting to note is that the number of those who believe that their children should be raised in a

faith is slightly higher than the number of those with personal religious socialization experience. Consequent-ly, there is a certain open-mindedness with respect to the knowledge of religious convictions. However, we cannot directly infer from these positive remarks to behavior as it is frequently subject to additional restric-tions which reduces the share of those who actually expose their children to religion and faith.

Gert Pickel 146

5. An Exceptional Case or a Special Path or Simply Unfavorable Conditions What might explain the differences in religious vitality between the countries – and why is religious vitality particularly low in the new Bundesländer of the Federal Republic of Ger-many? In line with a narrow interpretation of the secularization theory that focuses on so-cio-economic modernization, we would actually expect religious vitality to be lower in general across all Western European countries compared to Eastern European countries (see also Norris/Inglehart 2004: 83-110), as they continuously displayed significantly higher levels of socio-economic modernization. Following the assumption of the tension between modernization and religion, this should have a negative effect on religiosity.

In effect, this is not the case empirically, as substantiated by the data presented above as well as the first row in Chart 10 (influence of the socialist past). Socialist political repres-sions by themselves do not sufficiently explain the country differences in the religious sector in Europe. Political pressure on the churches and religion have had an undoubtedly unfavorable effect on religious vitality in Eastern Europe, however, these effects vary: on the one hand, the extent of the repressions – which is very difficult to quantify empirically – differed, on the other hand, different social conditions facilitated or impeded the implemen-tation of political repressions. These factors resulted in specific path dependencies of secu-larization in European comparison (see also Pickel 2009a: 110-115).

The degree of religious regulation is practically irrelevant when considering today’s ex-tent of religious vitality in Europe. On the contrary, when the degree of regulation does have an empirically observable influence on religious vitality, it rather seems to have a positive effect on the different indicators of religious vitality. In other words: a harmonic and intertwined church-state relationship has a rather favorable effect on religion and reli-giosity (in Europe), a strict separation of church and state, on the other hand, does not – contrary to the assumptions of the religious market model.8 These results correspond to Norris’ and Inglehart’s conclusions (2004: 131): “The supply-side thesis that religious markets are critical, so that participation is determined by religious pluralism and the lack of state regulation of church institutions, is given no positive support from the evidence“.

The low religious vitality in East Germany is also consistent with the previous results, independent of the fact whether we merely compare it with the other Eastern European countries or with all European countries (see also Meulemann 2009). This is illustrated by the negative correlation of the East German dummy variable with all of the indicators of religiosity. How can we explain the low level of religiosity in this particular region? Is it indeed an exceptional case and/or is it following a special path in the European trend?

8 This could very easily be a discrepancy compared to the situation in other parts of the world. However, this

does not reduce the explanatory power of alternative models such as secularization theory. Instead, it under-lines the relevance of historical and cultural paths.


Chart 10: Macro Effects and East Germany (partial correlations) Member

Denomination Attendance at

church Belief in God Subjective

religiosity

Europe

Socialist history -.30 -.27 n.s. n.s. Levels of modernization (UN Human Development Index)

n.s. n.s. -.48 -.37

Protestant cultural tradition n.s. -.39 -.54 -.50 Level of religious regulation (Fox) +.44 n.s. +.35 +.25 Dummy-Variable East Germany -.36 n.s. (-.16) -.46 -.38

Subgroup postsocialist countries (Eastern Europe)

Levels of modernization (UN Human Development Index)

-.55 n.s. -.64 -.43

Protestant cultural tradition -.74 -.34 -.74 -.70 Level of religious regulation (Fox) +.43 n.s. +.40 +.43 Dummy-Variable East Germany -.45 n.s. (-.23) -.59 -.47

Partial Corelations

Dummy-Variable East Germany

Controlled for level of modernization -.40 n.s. (-.16) -.45 -.37 Controlled for socialism -.36 n.s. (-.13) -.45 -.38 Controlled for protestant tradition -.36 n.s. (-.05) -.36 -.26 controlled for level of modernization for protestant tradition

-.34

n.s. (-.03)

-.36

n.s. (-.25)

controlled for level of modernization for protestant tradition for socialism

n.s. (-.23)

n.s. (+.09)

n.s. (-.21)

n.s. (-.18)

Source: Own calculation on the base of pooled aggregate-data: World Values Surveys, European Values Sur-veys; Eurobarometer; European Social Surveys; Level of regulation from dataset „Religion and State“(Jonathan Fox); combinded indicator for regulation of religion (Fox/Tabory, 2008: 251-255).

Chart 10 clearly demonstrates9, that today’s low degree of religious vitality in East Germa-ny is primarily the result of the interaction of three social conditions. Thus, there are no statistically significant differences between East Germany and the other European states when we partial out the explanatory variance of the degree of modernization, socialist re-pressions and Protestant heritage. In other terms, if we (statistically) equalize the effect of the three general explanatory factors, East Germany is no longer an exceptional case with respect to its degree of religious vitality.

9 A statistically proper regression model could not be calculated due to the fact that the independent variables

are highly correlated. However, a systematic series of partial correlations is fairly suitable in order to test the effects under varying conditions.

Gert Pickel 148

These straightforward results are even more remarkable when taking into account that the label “political repressions“ was assigned broadly, i.e., the level of political repressions was set equal in all Eastern European countries, which is certainly not justifiable. The reli-gious situation in East Germany is by no means an “inexplicable“ exceptional case but rather a sequence of particularly unfavorable social conditions. Consequently, the religious situation in East Germany can indeed be explained – and, in part, predicted.

What does this mean substantially? In the main, nothing other than the fact that the East German (Protestant) church was unable to maintain a lasting commitment of its members due to the interaction of these three conditions. However, the effect is not limited to the church as an institution, it has manifest consequences for subjective religiosity in this re-gion. In accordance with the thoughts of secularization theory on the relevance of the com-munal basis and socialization (Bruce 2002, 2011), individual religiosity is particularly low in East Germany under the given social conditions. Thus, it is a matter of an initially forced secularization, which has become firmly rooted in the minds of the people over time and which has been passed on from generation to generation since then. With respect to the issue of identification with East Germany in terms of maintaining a unique East German identity (Pollack/Pickel 1998), having no denomination or religion is supported both politi-cally and culturally, as “being East German“ is associated with having no denominational or even no religious affiliation (Wohlrab-Sahr 2008).

The commencement of rapid socio-economic modernization has only added to the rein-forcement of this premature secularization and to the acceleration of the secularization process (Norris/Inglehart 2004; Pickel 2012). At the same time, the effect of secularization resulting from modernization is stronger compared to the reverse trend of the slow elimina-tion of socialist resentments toward the church and religion. The Protestant cultural herit-age, which was less resistant to political repressions, rather facilitated than impeded this process.10 This results in a conjunction of Peter L. Bergers’ ideas on the immanent seculari-zation of Protestantism, classic secularization due to socio-economic modernization and the cessation of the compensatory function of religion, which Karl Marx already discussed. The low degree of religiosity and religious vitality observable today in the new Bundesländer in the Federal Republic of Germany in this case simply reflects the unfavorable social condi-tions, which, by the way, similarly exist in Estonia, the other European country with such low religious vitality.

10 Thus, apparently, Protestantism was less able to counter the politically motivated repressions in socialist

countries. One of the reasons could be that Protestantism is rooted more strongly in current society. Another reason shared by the Orthodox church is the fact that it was less able to fight off political interventions due to the fact that it is organized in regional churches unlike Catholicism with its point of reference in Rome, out-side the socialist territory.


7. Summary The comparative results presented here indicate that the respective cultural and historical heritage is of crucial importance with respect to European countries’ religious vitality to-day. Particularly the denominational heritage of a country has a positive or negative effect on the pace of the loss of religious traditions. While Catholic countries succeed in maintain-ing the religious vitality of its members, Protestant countries apparently do not manage that well. Protestantisms’ inherent rationality as well as the societal affiliation via the regional churches seem to have had an unfavorable effect on the power to resist the socialist re-gime’s political repressions.11 Orthodox Christian churches usually suffer from similar problems. However, unlike the Protestant churches, they were able to induce a certain revi-talization after the major political changes.

The political conditions are also highly relevant, particularly when they are directed against religion and the churches. They undermine the transmission of religious traditions and religious knowledge and thus set the foundation for premature processes of seculariza-tion. Once the restrictions cease to exist, the countries are able to develop their “true“ extent of religious vitality - as we can see in Eastern Europe. However, the observable processes of revitalization should not be interpreted as a continuous development as they are inter-rupted at a certain point, namely when they are confronted with the effects of socio-economic modernization. While the cultural and political conditions determine the initial situation or paths of development, modernization effects - which secularization theory con-siders to be crucial for the loss of social relevance of religion – generate global, dynamic consequences in the sense of a loss of social relevance of religion. This pertains to all Euro-pean countries, albeit differently due to their political and cultural conditions. We need to keep in mind that cultural path dependencies not only indicate the level of resistance to secularization, they can also be subject to change (political changes, national identity form-ing processes).

In Eastern Europe, these differing effects collided after the period of major political changes: Thus, the processes of modernization, repression and cultural heritage either rein-forced or contradicted each other in part. Analyzing the effects is difficult as one has to deal with both the interactions as well as the inertia of the empirical processes: On the one hand, there is an ideological position against religion due to socialist repressions of the church, which, over generations, slowly cease to have an effect, on the other hand, there is the process of catch-up modernization. The contradictory effects of catch-up modernization and the abolition of political repressions of the church and religion become blurred and thus complicate the identification of the “true“ explanatory power of the individual explanatory models. Thus, many countries in Eastern Europe should display a higher degree of reli-gious vitality from the perspective of modernization theory. However, the consequences of socialist repressions have created an artificial setting which has only begun to slowly dis-

11 While the tradition of regional churches of the Protestant churches in Eastern Europe provided a particularly

inadvantageous basis for maintaining religious vitality especially under repressive circumstances, the Catholic churches probably managed to avoid political repressions better due to the fact that they had an external au-thority they could refer to in Rome.

Gert Pickel 150

solve. In cases where the communal basis of religions is not as fundamentally destroyed as in East Germany or in parts of Estonia, we would actually expect a revitalization. However, it is counteracted by the considerable gains through modernization in the Eastern European EU member states.

Historical and cultural factors that have evolved over the years complicate matters fur-ther. While the religiously charged political conflict in Ireland (and Northern Ireland) has induced an above average level of religious vitality, the association of religion with the nation has increasingly come to the fore in several Eastern European states. This particular association can increase the religious vitality of a country due to the fact that it assists in forming identities, as in Poland, Russia and Croatia.

These elaborations show that the secularization model by itself does not sufficiently ex-plain the current development of religious vitality in Europe. In order to analyze the stock and the development of religious vitality adequately, we must rather take into account the path dependencies of the individual countries or the groups of countries. When keeping these paths in mind, it is indeed possible to use the assumptions of secularization theory. In doing so, one should particularly focus on the tension between modernity and religion ra-ther than the assumption of an inevitable secularization. For example, the processes of modernization could run in the opposite direction (decrease in modernization) or they could be impeded by other factors (political repressions, the formation and determination of iden-tity, radical social changes). At least from a European perspective, the explanatory model of the secularization thesis is more promising with respect to religious vitality than the market model preferred by US researchers. The latter has been substantiated only to a limited ex-tent in Europe. With respect to Eastern Europe, the explanations are not very convincing either. This does not imply that elements of the market model should not be taken into account as additional explanatory factors nor does it deny the fact that these factors may obtain more relevance outside of Europe.

This similarly applies to the individualization thesis of religion. It provides only limited additional information for the country comparison. In particular, Eastern European coun-tries, which display revitalization trends in part, report a return of religious vitality in the sense of an increase in affiliations with a religious denomination, which is accompanied by an increase in the participation in religious acts. The differentiation between subjective religiosity and integration in a church as highlighted by the individualization thesis rather occurs in Western Europe. However, these countries also report a decrease in the degree of faith – even though not to the same extent as in the societal sector of church integration. Nevertheless, at this point, we cannot determine whether this indicates a dissociation of individualized religion from its socio-cultural basis or a delayed development. Due to the fact that secularization theory is concerned with the loss of social relevance of religion, this is of minor interest.

What can we conclude about the question whether East Germany is following a special path or whether it is an exceptional case? Nothing other than the fact that East Germany is not really an exceptional case if the term ’exceptional case’ refers to an unexpected, unfore-seeable or inexplicable case. East Germany is only exceptional in so far as it displays a particularly unfavorable combination of conditions, under which institutionalized as well as non-(institutionalized) individual religiosity has to try to prevail. These conditions will


not change for the better in the medium run either, as broad processes of socio-economic modernization (and consequently of secularization) have clearly established themselves. In addition, the communal basis of religion has eroded to such a large extent that there is very little potential for a return of religion. Thus, considering the substantial increase in welfare, it is not surprising that there is no religious revitalization – at least when following the secularization theory. At the same time, this shows that while East Germany can be consi-dered an exceptional case with respect to its unfavorable conditions, it is by no means fol-lowing a special path as its socio-structural conditions are similar to those of the other European countries – including the Eastern European countries.

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Religious Revival in Romania: Between Cohort Replacement and Contextual Changes M lina Voicu and Andreea Constantin

1. Introduction During the first decade of post-communist transition, Romania registered an important religious revival (Muller 2004; Pollack 2001, 2003, 2004; Voicu 2007). Both, religious practices and beliefs have increased, Romanian population sharing the same level of reli-gious beliefs as people from Poland or Ireland, while church attendance is the highest among Orthodox European countries (Halman/Draulans, 2006; Pollack/Pickel, 2009). Ro-manian case is not a special one, religious revival being reported in other communist socie-ties as well (Pickel 2009a). However, the magnitude of change is very high as compared to other countries in the region (Voicu, 2007: 54). Moreover, in some cases, like Slovenia or Poland, the positive trend has reached a peak during the first years of transition, followed by a descending trend (Pickel 2009a: 117, 2009b: 18).

This article aims to investigate how religious beliefs have evolved during two decades of transition and which processes mainly contribute to this evolution, in terms of population turnover, aging effect or contextual changes. We already know from previous researches that during the first decade, the religious change was very important and we intend to de-termine which the evolution was during the second decade. While the first part of the post-communist transition was one of economic crisis, during the second one the economy re-covered and the country was integrated into European Union. How was the evolution of religiosity in Romania during the entire period? Is it a linear, uniform trend or there are two distinct periods?

Moreover, what has determined the transformation in religious beliefs: the population turnover or the historical changes? The problem of cohort effects on religiosity is an impor-tant one, because allows us to investigate how enduring is the impact of forced seculariza-tion imposed by the communist regime. According to Need and Evans (2001), forced secu-larization produced a different relationship between age and religiosity, as compared to self-induced one. Is it possible to identify such relation in Romanian case? This is our second research goal for the present analysis. To our knowledge no other study investigated these topics in Romanian context. Our analysis are based on data coming from 3 different waves of European Values Survey (1993, 1999 and 2008), one wave of World Values Sur-vey (2005), as well as on data provided by the research ‘Values pattern from a comparative perspective’ carried out in 1997. All five data sets contain similar information about reli-gious beliefs, allowing longitudinal comparisons. We have employed standard linear cohort decomposition, controlling for life cycles’ effects, considered as proxies for aging effects. We have focused our analysis on orthodox religious beliefs, namely beliefs in traditional religious ideas aiming to investigate whether the revival was directed towards traditional religiosity or not. The article is structured in six parts. In the first section we provide a short


M lina Voicu and Andreea Constantin 156

overview of the existing on literature on age – period – cohort effects on religiosity and the second one include an overview on self-induced and forced secularization in Romania. The third part introduces the indicators and the strategy used for analysis, while the fourth com-prises the data analysis. The final sections are dedicated to a short discussion and to some conclusions. 2. Age-Period-Cohort Effects on Religious Beliefs and Practices

Changes in religious beliefs and behaviors are usually attributed to three different causes: cohort effects, contextual effects and age affects. The first mechanism relies on the assump-tion that values and beliefs are formed during the childhood and youth period and remain stable during the adult life. Thus, early formative experiences leave an imprint on the val-ues and attitudes of generations or cohorts (Mannheim 1952; Ryder 1965). Each cohort significantly differs from the others depending on the context experienced during the for-mative period. The differences among generations with respect to attitudes and values orientation reflect a historically specific set of conditions, generating a cultural imprinting that creates a momentum of its own (Alwin 1990: 348). Social change results from cohort replacement, younger cohorts socialized in a different social and political context replacing the older ones.

Cohort socialized in highly religious societies will be more religious during their life, while individuals coming into age in more secularized societies will be less inclined to share religious beliefs (Bruce/Glending 2010; Kelley/de Graaf 1997). Modernization pro-duces a fast secularization and younger cohorts are more likely to be less religious then the older ones (Need/Evans 2001: 232). Consequently, each cohort is less religious than the previous ones (Crockett/Voas 2006: 568) and the general level of religiosity in a given society declines. According to Voas, religious change in European countries is mainly the result of population turnover, occurring ‘largely across rather than within generations’ (2009: 161). Similar results are reported by Wolf (2008) for Germany and by Gautier (1997: 295) for Hungary.

The second mechanism, related to contextual effects, assigns changes in religious be-liefs and behaviors to economic, politic or social transformations which might occurs at a definite moment of time. Such events exert similar effects across all birth cohorts, changing values and attitudes in the same direction for the entire population (Crockett/Voas 2006:567). The implicit assumption is that values are open to change, even after the early formative period, and that they can be influenced by the general context. The literature reports specific period effects for the World War II, the 1960s, the post Council Vatican II, religious restriction imposed by communist political power in Central and Eastern Europe or for post-communist transition in the same region (Argue/Johnson/White 1999; Bruce/Glending 2010; Crockett/Voas 2006; Hout/Greeley 1987; Need/Evans 2001).

The third mechanism assigns changes in religiosity, which occurs during the life span, to life cycle effects. Here again, the implicit assumption is that religious beliefs are exposed to changes during the adulthood. Life events like marriage, parenthood or growing old may boost the religiosity, while employment might have the opposite effect. Marriage is a tradi-

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tional arrangement which could enhance religious values and behavior (Chaves 1991; Hoge/Hoge 1984; Sandomsky/Wilson 1990). Having children has a similar effect, because parents might wish to socialize their children in religious values and tend to increase their religious practices and beliefs (Hoge/Hoge 1984; Stolzenberg/Blair-Loy/Waite 1995). On the other hand, people become more religious when they growing old because they ap-proach the end of their lives and religion provides strength and comfort and the perspective of eternal life (Argue/Johnson/White 1999; Greely 2003; Miller/Nakamura 1996). Em-ployment imposes more time restriction and consequently, employed people are less likely to attend religious services (Iannaccone 1990). Most of the cited studies have approached the life cycles effect on religiosity in United States. However, some analyses carried out on European data do not provide support for the aging effect on religious behavior and beliefs (Crockett/Voas 2006; Tilley 2003; Voas 2009; Voas/Crocket 2005). 3. Secularization in Romania: an Overview for Communist and Post-Communist

Period Secularization is the process in which religious thinking, practice and institutions lose so-cial significance (Wilson 2000). Modernization is considered as the main force behind the secularization process, because ‘altered the place and nature of religious beliefs, practices and organizations as to reduce their relevance to the lives of nation-states, social groups, and individuals’ (Bruce 1996: 1). Processes like urbanization, industrialization, technologi-cal development, community dissolution, growth of massive bureaucracy and increasing rationalization seriously erode the general level of religiosity and the social significance of religion (Bruce 1996, 1999; Berger 1969; Verweij/Easter/Nauta 1997; Wilson 2000).

While society becomes wealthier and developed, the social significance of religion de-cline and younger generation are raised into a more secular culture. According to seculari-zation thesis, the changes in religiosity occur mainly by the cohort replacement process, younger and less religious cohorts replacing the more religious and older ones (Tilley 2003; Voas/Crockett 2005; Voas 2009; Wolf 2008). This scenario was developed and tested mainly for highly industrialized countries from Western Europe and North America. Secu-larization thesis is supported by the empirical researches for most of European countries, both from Western and Eastern regions, while in United States raises many controversies (Halman, Draulans 2006; Glenn 1987; Voas 2009).1 Communist societies have experienced a dual process of secularization, a self-induced as well as an enforced one imposed by the totalitarian regime (Meulemann 2000, 2004; Need/Evans 2001; Pollack 2001). Marxist ideology considered religion as ‘the opium of people’ and the communist parties did their best to exclude religion from public and private life. All around the region churches were eliminated from the political and social life, religious education was forbidden, while reli- 1 See also the contribution of Pickel in this volume.


gious practices were strictly controlled (Stan/Turcescu 2007; Tomka 1991, 2002; Voicu, 2007). Consequently, communist societies experienced a higher degree of enforced secula-rization, at least in the public sphere.

The effect of enforced secularization generated a different relation between age and re-ligiosity in countries under consideration (Need/Evans 2001: 232-3). Like in self-induces secularized societies, younger generation were less exposed to religious beliefs and ideolo-gies and a generational decline most likely occurred. Moreover, in communist societies, the state repression equally affected all age groups, inducing a period effect. There are no em-pirical data allowing tracing the effect of official restriction on the religious beliefs and practice. However, the evolution of religious field during the post-communist period helps understanding of what happened in the past.

During the communist period, Romania was exposed to two types of secularization, the self-induced, as well as the enforced one. After World War II, Romanian society expe-rienced processes of modernization, industrialization, urbanization and of highly bureaucra-tization. In 1946, 77 percent of population was living in rural settlements (CNS 1996) and working in agricultural sector. According to Vulc nescu (1997) the agricultural work has exploited the physic force, due to the very low level of technological development. By the end of the communist period only 22 percent of population was employed in agriculture (CNS 1996). The level of education raised up too, while in 1956 less than 2 percent of population had graduated university, in 1992 the percent was of about 10 (CNS 1996). Moreover, the welfare system had provided generous welfare benefits for the entire popula-tion reducing the uncertainty and social risks (Zamfir/Zamfir 1999: 25), which in turn re-duce the level of religiosity (Verweij/Easter/Nauta 1997: 316). As compared to other Euro-pean countries from Western and Eastern Europe, Romania still has had in the beginning of transition period a higher percent of rural population and a lower level of education, but during the communist period the society changed from an agricultural to an industrialized one. This fact produced a certain degree of self-induced secularization, which overlapped with the process of enforced secularization generated by the state repression. Consequently we expect to find a cohort effect on religiosity, younger cohort socialized during the com-munist period being less religious as compared to those socialized in pre-communist period.

During the post-communist time many social transformations have affected Romanian society. Restrictions imposed by the communist regime to religious institution and to indi-vidual practices were removed and there are some signs of a religious pluralization (T nase 2008: 120). After 1990 people were free to return to religious practices and beliefs and, in fact, the Romanian state strongly support Romanian Orthodox Church, which become a quite powerful institution (Stan/Turcescu 2007). The state subsidized the main religious institutions, investing a significant amount of money in religious issues (for details T nase 2008), religious education becomes almost compulsory in schools and the number of stu-dents in religious studies has drastically increased. Moreover, religion and religious issues became very visible in the public space and this vitality has had an impact on individual life. Consequently, previous studies report a significant religious revival for Romania (Mul-ler 2004; Pollack 2001, 2003, 2004; Voicu 2007). Generally speaking, the Romanian socie-ty becomes more concern about religion and this has an impact on peoples’ beliefs and values.


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Furthermore, other additional factors exert an important effect on religious beliefs of Romanians. Post-communist transition came with economic crisis, poverty and unemploy-ment (ICCV, UNDP, 2001), at least during the first decade of transformation. The quite generous system of welfare provision set up by the communist regime was restructured and, due to economic shortage, the total amount of welfare expenditures seriously decreased (Zamfir 1999: 67-69). Consequently, the population was exposed to a highly existential insecurity, which can produce, according to Inglehart and Norris (2004), a return to religion seen as a source of salvation. During the same decade, a transformation in the pattern of internal migration occurred. Due to the high rate of unemployment and urban poverty, many industrial workers fired by the former employers, return to their original villages. A significant flux of urban - rural migration was registered during the 1990s (Sandu 2010), generating an increased in the total number to rural population. One might talk about a return to rural traditional life which encouraged a vivid religious life.

Summarizing, the first decade of post-communist transition produced some social trans-formations which have had an impact on individual religiosity. The removing of restriction imposed to religion by the communist power provided people with the opportunity to freely express their religious beliefs. In addition, the higher existential insecurity and the urban-rural pattern of internal migration stimulate a de-secularization process, which fuelled a religious revival, already noticed by the previous studies. There are good reasons to expect a contextual effect on religious beliefs, affecting in similar way all the cohorts.

The second decade of post-communist transition was different from the social and eco-nomic point of view. After year 2000 the economy growths, the unemployment and poverty rate decreases and the society pass by a period of relative wealth and modernization, boost by the European Union accession. There are no reasons to assume that the de-secularization process persists over this period since personal vulnerability decreased and the society was influenced by modernization forces. Therefore, we expect to find a different dynamic of religious beliefs for the second decade, described by stability or by a very slow pace of change in religiosity.

One aspect should be specially emphasized: the level of religious beliefs registered among the youngest cohort, those born after 1980 and mainly socialized during the post-communist period deserve special attention. This cohort was exposed during their formative years to a stronger religious context as compared to the adult cohorts. Most of the people from this cohort have studied religion in elementary and secondary schools. They grown up in a society in which over 95 different religious radio stations are broadcasting (T nase 2008: 249) and the Orthodox Church has very much to say in political and moral issues (Stan/Turcescu 2007). Moreover, during their formative years, the individuals are very sensitive to religious issues and are very likely to internalize religious beliefs and values. Need and Evans (2001: 232) expect to find a higher level of religiosity among the youngest cohort in post-communist countries, but they did not use longitudinal data and they could not relay their conclusions on empirical data. Similar to Need and Evans we expect to find a higher level of religiosity among people born after 1980 and socialized during the post-


communist time. Summarizing the aspects mentioned before, one can formulate the follow-ing hypotheses: (1) There are two distinct periods with respect to religiosity’s dynamics during the

post-communist period: the first one, between 1990 and 2000 being one of a signifi-cant religious revival, while the second one, between 2000 and 2008, is characte-rized by stability of religious beliefs or by a reduced pace of change.

(2) During the first decade of post-communist transition, contextual effects raised the level of religiosity, having similar effect on the religiosity of each cohort.

(3) There are significant differences between the levels of religiosity registered for dif-ferent cohorts, those socialized during the communist time being less religious as compared to cohorts socialized in pre-communist or post-communist time.

4. Data, Method and Measurement The analysis is based on data set resulting from four successive waves of the World Values Survey and the European Values Study (WVS and EVS), EVS 1993 (N=1103), EVS 1999 (N=1146), WVS 2005 (N=1776) and EVS 2008 (N=1492). We have used an additional information coming from the survey ‘Values pattern from a comparative perspective’, car-ried out in 1997 in Romania (N=1000). The questionnaire provides information on various attitudes and value orientations, including religious beliefs and behaviors. Other informa-tion regarding social background variables are available too. All of the samples are proba-bility samples and are representative for Romanian adult population.

The estimation of age, period and cohort effects on social change is a difficult issue, due to perfect collinearity which exist between the three components (age = period – cohort) (Firebaugh 1997). Different methods were employed to separate the three components and to estimate theirs effects. We have used linear cohort decomposition, proposed by Fire-baugh (1989, 1992) to test the hypotheses. This method decomposes the social change into two orthogonal components, intracohort change and cohort replacement, the first compo-nent collapsing the effect of aging and social, political and economic context. Thus, the method does not solve the confounding impact of aging, period and cohort.

Because we have theoretical reasons to assume that aging might have its own influence on religiosity dynamic, we have to control for the aging effects too. Hagenaars and Cobben (1978) suggest using proxies for estimating the effect of one of the three components of the social change. Consequently, we use marital status and parenthood as proxies for life cycle effect and retirement status as proxies for growing old. One has to consider that the com-munist societies practiced a full employment policy, almost everyone being employed and being retired at the appropriated retirement age. Therefore, being retired could be a good proxy for growing old. Finally, our research strategy consist in running linear cohort de-composition without any control and with control for aging effects and to estimate the net effect of cohort replacement and contextual effect. We assume that intra-cohort change, as result from linear decomposition analysis, can be attributed to contextual effect when con-trolling for aging effects. The first step in linear cohort decomposition is to pool the cross-sectional data and to regress the target variable on the survey year and the respondent’s


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birth year. The intracohort change can be estimated by the slope for the year weighted by the length of the time interval tT-t1 (the difference between the year of the last investigation and the year of the first one) (Firebaugh 1989: 253). The cohort replacement effect is esti-mated by the slope for birth year weighted by rate of cohort turnover (the difference be-tween the mean of birth year at the time of the last survey and the same mean at the time of the first survey). Because of nonlinearity and interactions, the sum of the two components is rarely equal to the social change of the target variable between the last measurement and the first one, but larger differences indicate nonlinearity (Firebaugh 1989).

We estimate the two components of social change in two different ways using regres-sion slopes. Even if both independent variables in the regression equation are measured in years, they each have a different standard deviation and quite different standardized effects (Alwin 1996). We compute the estimation for cohort replacement and intracohort change using both unstandardized regression coefficients for the survey year and for the cohorts (results shown in Table 1) and standardized regression coefficients for the same variables (results shown in Table 2). In the last stage we estimate the contribution of intracohort and inter-cohort variation to social change, controlling for the effect of aging on the targeted variable. We have run two sets of analysis for two period of time 1993-1999 and 1999-2008, because we have hypothesized different dynamic for the two intervals. In all the models described we use listwise deletion of missing values.

The dependent variable, orthodox religious beliefs, is built as a summative score, count-ing the positive answers to the questions: Which, if any, of the following do you believe in? God / Life after Death / Hell / Heaven / Sin.2 The dependent variable takes values from 0 to 5, value of 0 indicating the lack of orthodox religious beliefs, while a values of 5 pointing out that the respondent share all the orthodox beliefs investigated by the questionnaire. Halman and de Moore (1993) show that these items belong to the same dimension, measur-ing the cognitive dimension of religiosity. The Categorical Principal Component Analysis run on the Romanian datasets indicates that the five items load on the same component, which explains between 47% (in1997) and 60% (in 2005 and 2008) of the variances of model’s variance. The component loadings and the variance explained are shown in Ap-pendix (Table A1). Therefore there are solid reasons for including the five items on the same scale. The control variables employed by the analysis are the proxies for aging ef-fects: marital status, parenthood and retirement. Marital status is a dummy variable indicat-

2 We have chosen to tap variations in religiosity by an indicator measuring religious beliefs considering it the

best option for this kind of analysis. The alternative indicators, such self-description as religious person or church attendance are not suitable, for decomposing the social change in intra- and inter cohort changes, in the Romanian case. The self-description as religious person has very high values in Romania and since the varia-tion between cohorts is very reduced, self-description is not suitable for analyzing social change in religiosity. Religious practice is influenced by other exogenous factors, such as employment and time spent on labor mar-ket (Iannaccone 1990). During the post-communist transition Romania experienced an significant increasing in unemployment rate and the variation in church attendance might be due to changing the employment status not only to variations in religiosity.


ing whether the respondent is married or not, while the parenthood is tapped by a dummy variable which takes values of 1 if the person declares to have children. The last variable is a dummy one, taking value of 1 if the individual is retired for old age.

5. Results The results of the analyses confirm our first hypothesis, suggesting that there are two par-ticular periods in the evolution of orthodox religious beliefs. First period is delimitated by the first wave of the survey and the 1999 wave, when an important change in the religiosity trend occurred. The second period covered the second decade of the post-communist trans-formation, namely between 1999 and 2008. Data also reflect that between 1993 and 1999 the slope of growth is higher than the slope of the second period when the pace of change gets slower. The first hypothesis is also sustained by the results of decomposition showing that in the first period the social change has a higher level than it has in the second period (see Table 1). When comparing the intra-cohort change (ICC) between the two periods, one should consider that the two time intervals are not equal, the first one being shorter than the second one. However, the social change and the intra-cohort change is higher during the first interval as compared to the second, indicating that a highly significant change occurred during the first part of the transition period. Table 1: Linear Decomposition Results - Unstandardized Coefficients

No controls Controlling for Life Cycles SC ICC CR N SC ICC CR N 1993 – 1999 0.480 *** 0.573 *** -0.037 *** 3249 0.480 *** 0.578 *** -0.040 *** 3249

1999 – 2008 0.350 *** 0.285 *** -0.015 4414 0.350 *** 0.279 *** 0.000 4414 Notes: *** p <0.001; ** p<0.01; * p<0.05; + p<0.1 SC = social change ICC = intra-cohort change CR = cohort replacement N = listwise sample size for the analysis The decomposition’s results do not support entirely our second hypothesis. The data shows that the intra-cohort changes are higher than the generational effects for both periods (see Table 2). This fact confirms that intra-cohort changes are the main factors that push up the level of religiosity, while the generational effect has an opposite consequence. This effect is significant only for the first decade under investigation and it is two times lower than the intra-cohort change, while for the second period is very low and non-significant.


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Table 2: Linear Decomposition Results - Standardized Coefficients

No controls Controlling for Life Cycles

ICC CR N ICC CR N

1993 - 1999 0.795 *** -0.388 *** 3249 0.802 *** -0.416 *** 3249

1999 - 2008 0.602 *** -0.162 4414 0.586 *** -0.003 4414

Notes: *** p <0.001; ** p<0.01; * p<0.05; + p<0.1 SC = social change ICC = intra-cohort change CR = cohort replacement N = listwise sample size for the analysis To differentiate between the effect of aging and the one of context we have computed a second model by controlling for the life cycles effects, which stand for the ageing effect. Even controlling for ageing the results do not significantly differ. The contextual effects are still higher than the generational ones (see Table2). One can says that in the first part of the analyzed interval the level of religiosity is strongly influenced by the contextual effects and, in a lower degree, by the generational factors, while during the second part only the context matter.

On the other hand, the differences among cohorts change over the interest period. As the Figure 1 shows, by the end of the period under investigation there are no significant differ-ences among cohorts, while in the beginning, younger cohort are less religious as compared to older ones. Therefore we can conclude that the effects of the context are not the same for each of the seven cohorts, as we have anticipated in our hypotheses.

Our analyses shows that in the beginning of the interval there were important differenc-es between the cohorts (see Figure 1). In 1993, there are significant differences between the six cohorts with respect to their religious beliefs (F test= 14.009, p<0.001), post-war co-horts being less religious than those socialized during pre-war period. The lowest level (2.47) of religiosity has been registered for the respondents born between 1960 and 1969. The cohort born in 1929 and before has the highest level of religious beliefs at the begin-ning of the reference period and its evolution over the interest period was an ascending one. The most spectacular evolution can be observed for the cohort born between 1950 and 1959. People belonging to this cohort registered a very low mean of their religious beliefs (2.62) in 1993, but after 15 years of important growth they reached the highest level (3.96), being even more religious than the older cohorts.

The youngest cohort, born between 1980 and later, enters in the surveyed population in 1999. As we have expected, their level of religiosity is quite high (3.37), but the growth slope is a small one. This high level can be explained by the fact that these people had been


socialized in a religion friendly environment. They spent their second part of their child-hood after 1989, when the religious manifestations were legitimate again and the religion classes in schools were generalized. However, during the observed period their religiosity does not increase, but it remains stable. One should mention that the differences, in 2008, among this cohort and the rest of the population are very small and not significant (F=1.474, p>0.1). Figure 1: Means of Orthodox Religious Beliefs Score by Cohorts and Survey Years

Source: Own calculations based on EVS (1993, 1999, 2005) and WVS (2005) data The differences between cohorts are statistically significant in 1997 for some cohorts (F=5.750, p<0.005). Starting by 1999, two different evolutions are observed: the rhythm of growth gets slower and the differences between cohorts diminish (see Figure 1). In 2005 and after, these differences get even smaller and are not statistically significant. By the end of the observed period the population is quite homogenous with respect to religious beliefs and no differences induced by socialization can be observed among cohorts. One can say that intra-cohort changes erase the effect of socialization. Additional tests of differences among means values of religiosity by cohort, over the investigated period, are shown in the Appendix (see Tables A2 to A6).

Our third hypothesis is partially supported too by the analyses. The data presented in Figure 1 confirm our expectations, pointing out that the cohorts born and socialized before communist period are the most religious ones. However, the cohort 1980+, socialized mainly during the post-communist period does not differ from the rest of the population.


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The data shows that in the second part of the analyzed interval the differences between cohorts almost disappear and are not statistically significant, contrary to what we expected to find (see Tables A3 to A6 in Appendix). 6. Discussion Is the Romanian case a special one? Does it contradict the secularization thesis? The an-swer, based on empirical data, is no. Romania passed over a period of ‘de-secularization’ and religious revival during the first decade of post-communist transition, due to contextual factors. The increase in existential insecurity, the return to rural community and the remov-ing of religious restrictions exert a strong effect on social significance of religion in Roma-nia. The second decade is characterized by slower pace of change in religious beliefs, there is a significant increase during this decade but the amplitude is lower as compared to the first period. The contextual changes which fuelled the ‘de-secularization’ during the first period lose their power in the second decade.

However, what is unusual in our results is not the dynamic itself, but the evolution of each cohort. In the beginning of the transition, younger cohorts were less religious then the older ones, each cohort being less religious than the previous one, as predicted by the secu-larization thesis. By the end of the first decade contextual effects erase the inter-cohort differences. Basically, the effect of secularization forces, acting for 50 years, disappeared in one decade. In 1999/2000 there were no differences between age groups in orthodox reli-gious beliefs. The same is valid for the next period under investigation, pointing out that we deal with a long term effect. We have expected significant contextual effects, which pro-duce similar changes in all cohorts, which it means that the differences among cohorts remain the same. The data does not support our hypothesis, all cohorts reaching a quite similar level of religiosity. The data indicates that the effects of forced secularization are not enduring ones, at least not in Romanian case. Once the state control over religions life was removed, people return to religion, which become equally important for all cohorts. Moreover, once they reach a similar level of religiosity, all cohort still move into the same direction towards a more religious and homogenous society.

Some inter-connected explanations can be employed to understand the dynamic of reli-gious field in Romania. Firstly, it seems that both self-induced and enforced secularization failed in transforming Romanian society into a secularized one. When the political restric-tions were removed, the entire society returned to religion. Similar religious revivals were documented in other post-communist countries but the amplitude of change was lower. It seems that communist regime managed to better undermine religion in Czech Republic, Hungary or Slovenia than it did in Romania. The reason is probably related with the general level of modernization of each country and with the speed of modernization process. Ro-mania is still among the less modern country in the region and this deficit of modernization fuels the religious life. In fact, this case does not contradict the secularization thesis, but is


an example of what happened when the secularization was artificially imposed. Romania is not an outlier, but a society which experienced a premature secularization (Pickel 2009b: 11).

However, premature secularization cannot fully explain the evolution of religiosity in Romania. Bulgaria has a quite comparable level of development and a similar recent histo-ry, but the level of religious practices and beliefs is lower as compared to Romania (Muller 2004). Some additional factors might be employed for explaining the ‘de-secularization’ in the society under investigation. Pollack (2001) mentions among the factors which have influenced the dynamic of religious filed during the post-communist transition, besides the level of modernization, political repression and the close proximity of religion to nationalist ideas. According to Martin (1978; 2005), in the context of an external threat, such as those represented by the Soviet Union in Central and Eastern Europe during Cold War, religion might be the carrier of the national culture and the defender of the historic of national and ethnic identity. Thus, in Romania religion was the preserver of the Latin tradition and helps in delimitating from the Slavic external threat. In Bulgaria, a Slavic country, the ethnic identity was not so much challenged by the external conqueror and the religion lost the social role as protector of national identity and culture.

Even if the communist state worked against religion, the political repression was not so harsh, Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC) having a better situation as compared to other religious institutions in the region (Stark, 2001; Stan/Turcescu 2000; Gillet 2001; Meyen-dorff 1996). Communist power subordinated it and strictly controlled its actions. However, ROC gained access to some resources and by the end of communist time it has registered an increasing in membership (see Pollack, 2001), due to inclusion of Greek-Catholic Church in 1948, by the state. The relationship between ROC and the communist power was in accord with the concept of symphonia which historically governed the collaboration between orthodox churches and the political power (Wach 1955; Meyerndorff 1996; Confi-no 2005). This complex game helped ROC to survive to communist prosecution, but force it to legitimize the political actions in exchange (Stan/Turcescu 2007).

In the beginning of the transition period ROC was better prepared, as compared to other churches from post-communist countries, to be involved in the public life and to channel individual beliefs and behaviors. This could explain why the religious revival was mainly directed towards traditional religiosity, while New Religious Movements do not gain too much on the ‘religious market’. After two decades of religious pluralism, 87 % of popula-tion belongs to ROC, while other 17 churches and religious denominations’ share only 13% of the market. The market’s share was identical in the beginning of transition as well as one decade later, according to 1992 and 2002 census data. Supply – side theory completely failed to explain the religious revival in Romania, since the pluralisation has no effect on religious belonging.

On the other hand, religion and ROC were always interconnected with national identity and nationalist ideology in Romania (Gillet 2001; Gheorghe 2004; Stan/Turcescu 2000; Franklin/Lytle 1998). After the fall of the communist regime, ROC took over the nationalist discourse abandoned by the communist party (Stan/Turcescu 2007). The ground was fertile for such ideology, as long as the post-communist period challenged ethnic and national identity. Political and social democratization open the discussion about ethnic minorities’


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rights, nationalist issues and territorial disputes about Republic of Moldova. All these are very sensitive issues for the public opinion, as survey research have pointed out (IPP 2003) and the church was involved leading the nationalist discourse.

According to Bruce (1996), ‘modernization generates secularization except where reli-gious finds or retains work to do other then relating individuals to the supernatural’ (1996: 62). In such cases, religion many play a role in cultural defense or in cultural transition (Bruce, 1996, 2002). In the first case, religion helps in defining a new ethnic border in con-text of ethnic conflict, while in the second situation it assists people in dealing with difficult social changes. Romania just passed a period of significant social transformation, which involved the redefinition of ethnic borders too. Moreover, Romanian is not modern enough to be fully secular. Even if it is more modern than half a century ago, there is enough room for religion to do other work then to connecting individual with the divinity. Religious revival is based on both incomplete modernization and revitalization of nationalist ideology and feelings among ordinary people. ROC was strong enough at the beginning of the transi-tion period to channel all these religious beliefs and nationalist feelings towards themselves, which explains why new religious movements were not successful.

7. Conclusions The chapter aims at identifying the dynamic of religious beliefs in Romanian over almost two decades of post-communist transformation, focusing on the cognitive aspect of reli-gious beliefs, called by Halman and de Moor (1993) religious orthodoxy. The analysis investigates which mechanism was more involved in changing religious beliefs: cohort replacement or contextual effects. This issue helps understanding how important and endur-ing the effects of forced secularization were and what might happened after removing the restrictions imposed to religion.

The data support our first hypothesis, indicating the existence of two different period in evolution of religious beliefs, the first one a very fast social changes, followed by another of significant change but at much slower rate of transformation. The first decade corres-ponds to a period of economic crisis and increased existential insecurity. During the second phase economy recovered, the positive trend in religiosity being fueled by a combination between nationalist feelings and significant social investments in religion.

The second hypothesis is partially supported by the results. There are strong and signifi-cant contextual effects over both periods. However, the effects are stronger for the younger and adult cohorts, socialized during communist time. Over a decade of transition all the cohorts reached almost the same level of religiosity, the effect of self-induced and forced secularization being erased. The third hypothesis is partially supported too. At the begin-ning of transition there were significant differences among the cohort, those coming into age during totalitarian regime being less religious. Moreover, pre-communist and post-communist cohorts were the most religious one. This clearly indicates the strong effect of


early socialization on religiosity. However, the differences among cohorts disappeared, due to contextual effects as shown before.

The analyses show that religious issues are open to change in post-communist Romania and that they are still very important for social life. An obvious question rises at the end of this analysis: what are the predictions for the future? Does the positive trend will persist in the future or self-induced secularization will erode it? As we have shown before, this reli-gious revival is based on a combination between incomplete modernization and a higher reinforcement of nationalist ideas and ideology. Economic growth and continue moderniza-tion will transform Romanian society, eroding religion by secularization. Mass-communication, external migration and integration into European Union will probably gradually decreases the relevance of nationalist ideology, supplementary affecting the role of religion as vehicle for nationals ideology.

The most likely scenario is that religiosity will increase in Romania until a certain peak, when society will be modern enough, as Pickel (2009b) predicted. One can add, that mod-ernization will not be enough for the secularization of Romanian society, declining in na-tionalist idea should be involved as well. The further research will confirm or infirm this assumption. 8. References Alwin, Duane (1990): Cohort replacement and changes in parental socialization values. Journal of

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Appendix Table A1: Component Loadings and variance explained for Orthodox Religiosity (Categorical Principal Component Analysis)

Do you belief in: 1993 1997 1998 1999 2005 2008 God .526 .404 .555 .519 .393 .555 Life after death .762 .698 .725 .743 .815 .739

Hell .852 .803 .860 .892 .925 .885

Heaven .876 .843 .879 .900 .918 .902

Sin .678 .608 .717 .692 .703 .739

% of variance explained 56% 47% 57% 58% 60% 60%

Cronbach’s Alpha .805 .724 .813 .820 .835 .833 Table A2: Multiple Comparisons between Cohorts for Religiosity in 1993 (Test Bonferroni)

Cohorts -1929 1930-1939 1940-1949 1950-1959 1960-1969 1970-1979 1980+

-1929 0 0.263 0.425 0.967*** 1.109*** 0.939*** -

1930-1939 -0.263 0 0.162 0.704*** 0.847*** 0.676** -

1940-1949 -0.425 -0.162 0 0.542* 0.685*** 0.514 -

1950-1959 -0.967*** -0.704*** -0.542* 0 0.142 -0.028 -

1960-1969 -1.109*** -0.847*** -0.685*** -0.142 0 -0.170 -

1970-1979 -0.939*** -0.676** -0.514 0.028 0.170 0 -

1980+ - - - - - - -

Notes: *** p <0.001; ** p<0.01; * p<0.05; + p<0.1


173

Table A3: Multiple Comparisons between Cohorts for Religiosity in 1997 (Test Bonferroni)

Cohorts -1929 1930-1939

1940- 1949

1950- 1959

1960-1969

1970-1979

1980+

-1929 0 0.057 0.465 0.424 0.713*** 0.220 -

1930-1939 -0.057 0 0.409 0.367 0.656*** 0.163 -

1940-1949 -0.465 -0.409 0 -0.041 0.247 -0.246 -

1950-1959 -0.424 -0.367 0.041 0 0.289 -0.204 -

1960-1969 -0.713*** -

0.656*** -0.247 -0.289 0 -0.493* -

1970-1979 -0.220 -0.163 0.246 0.204 0.493* 0 -

1980+ - - - - - - -

Notes: *** p <0.001; ** p<0.01; * p<0.05; + p<0.1

Table A4: Multiple Comparisons between Cohorts for Religiosity in 1999 (Test Bonferroni )

Cohorts -1929 1930-1939

1940- 1949

1950- 1959

1960-1969

1970-1979 1980+

-1929 0 -0.028 0.118 0.085 0.131 -0.253 0.080

1930-1939 0.028 0 0.146 0.113 0.159 -0.225 0.108

1940-1949 -0.118 -0.146 0 -0.033 0.013 -0.371 -0.038

1950-1959 -0.085 -0.113 0.033 0 0.046 -0.337 -0.005

1960-1969 -0.131 -0.159 -0.013 -0.046 0 -0.384 -0.051

1970-1979 0.253 0.225 0.371 0.337 0.384 0 0.333

1980+ -0.080 -0.108 0.038 0.005 0.051 -0.333 0

Notes: *** p <0.001; ** p<0.01; * p<0.05; + p<0.1


Table A5: Multiple Comparisons between Cohorts for Religiosity in 2005 (Test Bonferroni)

Cohorts -1929 1930-1939

1940-1949

1950- 1959

1960-1969

1970-1979

1980+

-1929 0 0.253 0.202 0.199 0.263 0.200 0.234

1930-1939 -0.253 0 -0.051 -0.054 0.010 -0.053 -0.019

1940-1949 -0.202 0.051 0 -0.004 0.061 -0.002 0.032

1950-1959 -0.199 0.054 0.004 0 0.064 0.001 0.035

1960-1969 -0.263 -0.010 -0.061 -0.064 0 -0.063 -0.029

1970-1979 -0.200 0.053 0.002 -0.001 0.063 0 0.034

1980+ -0.234 0.019 -0.032 -0.035 0.029 -0.034 0

Notes: *** p <0.001; ** p<0.01; * p<0.05; + p<0.1 Table A6: Multiple Comparisons between Cohorts for Religiosity in 2008 (Test Bonferroni)

Cohorts -1929 1930- 1939

1940- 1949

1950- 1959

1960-1969

1970-1979 1980+

-1929 0 0.120 0.083 -0.082 0.079 0.118 0.303

1930-1939 -0.120 0 -0.037 -0.202 -0.041 -0.001 0.184

1940-1949 -0.083 0.037 0 -0.165 -0.003 0.036 0.221

1950-1959 0.082 0.202 0.165 0 0.161 0.201 0.386

1960-1969 -0.079 0.041 0.003 -0.161 0 0.039 0.224

1970-1979 -0.118 0.001 -0.036 -0.201 -0.039 0 0.185

1980+ -0.303 -0.184 -0.221 -0.386 -0.224 -0.185 0

Notes: *** p <0.001; ** p<0.01; * p<0.05; + p<0.1

Religiosity and Marriage. Family Attitudes in Croatia Krunoslav Nikodem 1. Introduction to Contemporary Croatian Society; Some Remarks about Recent

History Contemporary Croatian society is created within the specific context of different socio-cultural, political, economic and other processes. One of the important factors in constitut-ing contemporary social relations in Croatia was also the period of socialism and the rule of the communist ideology, from 1945 to 1990, generally referred to as the “communist pe-riod”. Perhaps the key consequence of the “communist period” is the dissolution of the system of norms and values which contributed to the creation of anomie1 as a prevalent state of contemporary Croatian society. The assumed anomie as the dominant condition of contemporary Croatian society does not of course imply an absolute absence of norms, but rather their social insignificance. Such condition does not only open up the question about the reality of democratic changes, but it also presents the need for a clear consideration of the foundations on which contemporary social relations in Croatia are built.

Referring to the almanac by Miller and Walchik, Županov explains the “communist leg-acy” through three broad headings. The first are the legacies that flow from the tacit social contract between the citizens and the party in power. The citizens have given legitimacy to the single party system, and in return the party has secured their high social benefits and social rights. The second are the legacies that represent the system of values that the party attempted to either instill or extirpate. Considering the main characteristics of the commun-ist ideology the emphasis was, as expected, placed on the collective values. The third are the so called “unintended consequences” of the communist rule (Županov 2002: 15). This probably includes such social phenomena as strengthening of national and religious identi-ties in Croatian society. It is also necessary to mention one relevant fact which is easily overlooked today – the communist rule had the majority support of Croatian citizens. With regards to this, a reminder is also needed that the totalitarian rule rests on majority support, rather than on ignorance and ideological “brainwashing” (Arendt 1996). Of course, through time and because of growing poor economic and social conditions of life, this support turned into opposition which culminated at the end of the 1980s.

Ivan Rogi warns about several aspects of the “communist legacy”. The first aspect deals with the specific process of industrialization which arises from the “anxiety of legiti-macy” of the political elite that presents itself as the “savior of the working class” in a so-ciety where such a class for the most part does not exist. It was therefore necessary to create social conditions for industrial workers to form a majority. Such process of industrializa-tion did not strive toward efficiency or market valuation because its main goal was primari-ly political rather than economic or social. The second aspect of the “legacy” is according

1 Miklos Tomka (1991: 96) called this process “institutionalization of anomy”, which it fits for Croatia.


Krunoslav Nikodem 176

to Rogi the “traditions of the demimonde” which presume “a specific kind of behavior of the citizens that real socialism systematically legitimized”. In short, this is an ideological legitimization of the combination of high social expectations and demands and inaction. Egalitarianism is the third aspect and Rogi places particular emphasis on the consequences of reduced social ability to live with and through differences. The fourth aspect, the “tradi-tions of wild entrepreneurship”, logically results from the first two. Partial opening up to market economy within the stated context of the “tradition of wild entrepreneurship” meant that the most prominent were the consequences of political control of “new entrepreneurs” and a kind of “alliance” between these entrepreneurs and their political protectors. Along-side this, as part of the “communist legacy”, corruption and plunder appear as the forms of parallel economy, as well as seemingly paradoxical lack of confidence in work as a means of personal achievement (Rogi 1998: 53-63).

When considering the “legacy of communism” it is important to emphasize that this pe-riod mostly radicalizes the already existing negativities in Croatian society. Politically, a dual system is established with a formal legal framework; however the decisions are mostly made outside this framework by the political elite in power (the party). Therefore, the laws serve foremost to sanction the unsuitable and politically unlike-minded. Strict formalization of the laws, without their real application, consequentially leads to the citizens’ distrust in the fundamental institutions of the society and state, as well as pragmatic disobedience of the laws. Besides, the laws were mostly abstract, not practically applicable and subject to various interpretations that depended on the “daily politics”, which is a logical presumption of such dual system. Furthermore, in political life prevailed political clientelism, obedience, suitability and nepotism, and because the politics “took over” all other areas of social life, the same “criteria” was applied to culture, art, education and science, economy, etc. The political elite in power, implicitly (abstract laws) and explicitly (the party made the deci-sions “outside” of the law), instigated deviant behavior, enabling it, when needed, to have more control over the “unsuitable”.

Economically, there was a prevalence of command economy, with later added elements of market economy (but still strictly controlled and directed by the party), state ownership and demand over supply. Within the dominant collective ideology, there was a decrease in personal responsibility while the diffusion of responsibility increased, i.e. for the most of the “economic failures” “nobody was responsible”. The main characteristics of such eco-nomic system were low productivity and large losses, partially “covered” by going into debt abroad. Socio-culturally, “political indoctrination” was conducted, based on “erasing and rewriting” history, with pronounced anti-citizen and anti-Croatian direction, which consequentially led to the formation of the opinion (and behavior) “against the state” that “is not ours anyway”. Today it seems that both the citizens and the political elite in power quite successfully “sabotaged” the social and state community in which they lived. The party’s “subversive action” was the behavior which was in discrepancy with the communist ideology, for example, excessive accumulation of wealth by individual members of the party, etc. The citizens have “acted subversively” in their work places (stealing from their own company, taking more “sick leaves”, avoiding and neglecting responsibilities) and everyday lives (disobedience of the laws, development of “grey economy”, etc.). However, on the other hand, especially if we exclude the first decade and a half, the “communist

Religiosity and Marriage 177

period” is also characterized by a number of positive social changes and processes, from urbanization and industrialization in a general sense, to wide employment and the opportu-nity for education of most citizens and the creation of a socially sensitive system. Besides, the party had, especially in a socio-cultural sense, left the “area of reduced control” as a kind of “crack” which made everyday life somewhat “easier” and in this way contributed to the stability of the political system. After the period of “communism”, Croatian society entered the period of “transition”, in which it mostly is today.

The term transition, although not without dispute, is one of the key terms used to de-scribe socio-political and economic changes that pervaded the Eastern-European “socialist world” at the end of the 20th century. The transition processes in Croatia bring changes at four levels: political, economic, national and historical and pro-European (Šundali 1998: 183). Furthermore, it is necessary to differentiate between the terms transition and trans-formation. Transition as the interval between two regimes, in this case socialism and de-mocracy, assumes a transformation of concrete social structures. Inherent to this are the processes of liberalization and democratization which do not have to occur simultaneously. That is, it is possible to liberalize social conditions without democratizing the behavior of the political actors (Cifri 1998: 50-51). Transition from the socialist to democratic system is, as a specific high risk social process, characterized by “objective” and “subjective” so-cio-economic difficulties and tensions. Under “objective” difficulties we can list the de-crease in the standard of living, accelerated social de-layering with the decline of the mid-dle class, political control over economic activities, the spread of corruption and organized crime. “Subjective difficulties” mark the confrontation between high social expectations and often discontented reality, which can cause an increase in general discontent, disap-pointment, social passivity and anxiousness (Štulhofer 2000: 105).

One of the key aspects of the transition process of Croatian society, especially in the economic sector, is transformation and privatization. In the period between the sixties and the end of the seventies, Croatia marked an economic growth and socio-cultural develop-ment characteristic of countries in the “middle development” phase (Nikodem 2000). But the eighties have brought different programs of “economic stabilization”, a high rate of inflation, shortage of a number of products, etc., as consequences of economic inefficiency that tried to be covered up by going into debt abroad. However, considering the specific position of the former federation within the “socialist context” and the fact that Croatia, alongside Slovenia, was the most developed part of the federation, we can say that Croatia, by the end of the eighties, had a number of comparative advantages in comparison with other socialist countries. “Workers’ self-management”, the partial mixed economy (with elements of market economy), developed tourist services, openness of borders and therefore an increased mobility and connection with developed countries, are just a few advantages that Croatia had at the beginning of the transition process. Comparative advantages were mostly annulled during the “homeland war” which brought Croatia into a difficult and specific socio-cultural and socio-economic position. The “homeland war” significantly reduced the possibilities of real democratization of Croatian society, opened by wide socio-political changes in Europe at the end of the eighties, and in accordance with growing dis-satisfaction and the desire of Croatian people for an independent state.


The Act on the transformation of socially owned enterprises was adopted in April 1991 and it mostly presented a model of sale with the right of first purchase by the employees. However the chances for conducting the privatization of socially owned property only through sale and recapitalization were highly overrated. The employees were the main targeted group of buyers. However the given time of fourteen months for the transformation of socially owned property was too short. The largest part of social ownership was therefore transferred to three funds without compensation – Croatian development fund, Pension and disability fund of workers and Pension and disability fund of agricultural workers, thus coming under state ownership. The main course of action of the government was to use the privatization process for a short-term increase in treasury revenue ( u kovi 1998: 78-82). Those who gained from the privatization process are: the state funds (the state fund), a narrow circle of private entrepreneurs (managers) who bought off large parts of former social capital without investing their own money (managerial credits from the state banks), and, in part, employees who had a privileged position in the sale of socially owned capital ( u kovi 1998: 93). The most public attention was given to a selected narrow circle of managers, chosen mostly according to the criterion of political clientelism, who bought whole companies with government money.

Rade Kalanj states that transition encompasses three quite different phases: the phase of the breakdown of the socialist system, the phase of the transition cuts and the phase of the consolidation of democracy (Kalanj 1998: 10). It seems that Croatian society is still deep in the “phase of the transition cuts” which could, at least formally, end with the accession of Croatia into the European Union. The expected time of accession into the EU is between 2011 and 2012, but the question remains whether this will also mean moving into the third phase of transition in the sense of “democracy consolidation”.

Theoretically-conceptual and empirically-practical complexity of the transition period of Croatian society is essentially connected with the imperative of modernization. Some authors believe that with social and political changes at the beginning of the 20th century actually begins the period of the “third modernization” of Croatian society (Rogi 2000; Cifri 2003). So, for example, Ivan Rogi places the first modernization of Croatian society in the period between 1868 and 1945. The period of the second modernization of Croatian society spans from 1945 to 1990, and the third modernization of Croatian society starts in 1991 (Rogi 2000: 612-613). The first Croatian modernization is characterized by the con-text of periphery, as in Wallerstein’s scheme, but also considering certain Croatian specific-ities. The specificities are: the paradoxical position of the bulwark, the extinction of the elites of aristocratic origin, the twofold meaning of empire and kingdom, as well as the trap of forceful continentalization (Rogi 2000: 325).

The second Croatian modernization is marked by the period of the socialist system and the rule of the communist party. At the beginning of his analysis, Rogi emphasizes a sur-prising imposition of the communists as the main organizers of the modernization process, mostly because of the “vacancy in the citizens’ subjectivity” which came out of the “nego-tiation period” of the first modernization. The legitimacy of the communist rule in moder-nization arises from the participation in the fight against fascism, so that its authoritarian and totalitarian characteristics were mostly not interference. In this, a kind of continuation of “negotiation politics” and modernization “against Croatia”, Rogi , among other things,


emphasizes the necessity of the creation of the greatest possible number of industrial work-ers, because they form the “political base” of the communist ideology. This significantly disturbs and diminished the importance of the traditional rural way of life (Rogi 2000: 431). The third Croatian modernization began with socio-political changes at the beginning of the nineties. The main characteristics of the third modernization of Croatian society are the “homeland war” and its consequences, neo-colonial relation of the part of the interna-tional community toward the Croatian state and the incompetence of the political elite in power. It seems that contemporary Croatian society is literally “occupied” by a single non-homogenous interest group which represents itself as the political elite with legitimate power. The modernization potentials of Croatian society have because of this been signifi-cantly reduced. The domination of the political over all other areas of social action leads to the conclusion that contemporary Croatian society is still dominantly political society, and that political logic for the most part directs and controls the modernization processes (Karaji 2000: 229).

The third modernization of Croatian society is created in the context of the gaining of independence of the Croatian state and the strengthening of national consciousness, result-ing in the domination of traditional content within the modernization frame.2 However, traditional legacies are, instead of the socio-cultural context, mostly used in the daily and political context, which significantly diminishes their content value. Considering the ad-verse international position of the Croatia, characterized by “constant demands for the ful-fillment of ever new conditions”, it seems, at least for now, that the “third modernization” of Croatian society resembles the first two.

2. Theoretical Frame and Methodological Remarks The theoretical framework of the paper, in a general sense, consists of modernization theo-ries. As emphasized in the introduction, contemporary Croatian society is characterized by the modernization processes in the sense of the development of liberal democracy, market economy, etc. Social changes also bring about religious changes that were, due to the speci-ficity of Croatian socio-cultural and political context, expressed first through religious revi-talization and re-traditionalization (Marinovi Jerolimov/Zrinš ak 2006: 280; Zrinš ak/Nikodem 2009: 13) Recent insights, based on the results of empirical research, show that contemporary Croatian society is dominated by traditional forms of religiosity connected with religious institutions (institutionalized religiosity) ( rpi /Kušar 1998; Marinovi Jerolimov 2000; Ara i / rpi /Nikodem 2003; Nikodem 2004; Marinovi Jerolimov 2005; rpi /Zrinš ak 2005; Nikodem/Zrinš ak 2010) and traditional attitudes toward marriage and family (Nikodem/Ara i 2005). The main hypothesis of the work is that under the influence of the modernization processes the elements of secularization, individualization and subjectivization arose in contemporary Croatian society. The work relies on those elements of the secularization theory that emphasize the decline in social significance and role of religious institutions (Wilson 1966, 1976, 1982; Berger 1990;

2 See also the contributions of Voicu, Rosta and Pickel/Gladkich in this volume.


Dobbelaere 2002; Bruce 2002), as well as the theories of individualization and subjectiviza-tion in the sense of the development of individualized religiosity and changes in attitudes toward marriage and family in the sense of moving away from tradition (Ester/Halman/de Moor 1994; Heelas/Woodhead 2005; Lewis 2001; Beck/Beck-Gernsheim 2002).

In the empirical sense, this article is based on the results of the international empirical research European Values Study3 (N=1003; 1999; N=1525; 2008). Religiosity in general is analyzed using the following indicators: denominational structure, the importance of reli-gion in life, Church attendance, the social importance of religious rituals, religious self-perception, the social role of the Church, the belief in God, life after death, hell, paradise and sin, different concepts of God and personal relation with the Divine. Most of these indicators represent traditional and institutionalized religiosity, while others (representing the so called “alternative religiosity”, for example, the belief in reincarnation, etc.) are excluded because they are not so relevant for our main hypothesis. Attitudes toward mar-riage and family are analyzed using several indicators: the importance of family in life, the statements on marriage and children and the statement about a woman as a single parent without a stable relationship with a man. The mentioned statements on marriage and child-ren cover the following issues: marriage as an outdated institution, marriage as a necessity for happiness, children as fulfillment in life for man and woman, children as duty toward society, complete family (father and mother) as a necessity for a happy childhood, homo-sexual couples and adopting, and a life together without marriage. In further analysis two factors were extracted from these statements. The first covers more traditional attitudes toward marriage and family and was named “children and marriage as fulfillment in life”. The second is about “alternative lifestyles”.

The paper is divided into six parts. Apart from the introduction which contains some remarks about recent history of Croatian society and these theoretical and methodological remarks there are four additional parts. The first following part deals with the basic ele-ments of religiosity in Croatia which were mentioned above, while the second part dis-cusses the mentioned statements about marriage and family. The data are analyzed together with the basic socio-demographic characteristics (sex, age, education, monthly income, place of residence and regional belonging). In order not to crowd the paper with too many tables, only a selection of the results is presented. The third part deals with the relation between the elements of religiosity and two extracted factors, while the fourth is the con-clusion. Except for the simple percentage distribution (comparison between two surveys in 1999 and 2008), Chi-square test, Pearson’s correlation, analysis of variance, factor analysis and regression analysis were used in the analysis of the data. All of these analyses are based on the data from 2008 survey.

3 European Values Study Project (EVS) is known today as a large-scale, cross-national and longitudinal survey

research program on basic human values, the most important source of research information for European so-cial scientists. The first survey was carried out in ten European countries in 1981. The second survey was car-ried out in 1990, covering all Western European countries, including the USA, Canada and, for the first time, some post-communist countries. The third survey covered 33 European countries in 1999/2000, and Croatia was included for the first time. The fourth survey in 2008 covered more than 40 European countries. For more information and data see http://www.europeanvalues.nl


3. Social Changes and Religious Stability in Croatia? One of the main characteristics of contemporary Croatian society is strong religiosity, espe-cially in comparison with most other European countries. According to all available data, the religious situation in Croatia over the past twenty years is very stable, despite all social, economic and political changes (Nikodem/Zrinš ak 2010). How can this be explained? Does this mean that Croatia presents an exceptional case in the European context? Have religious revitalization and re-traditionalization of the early 1990s become a long-term trend? Or perhaps the modernization processes did not take place in Croatian society in reality, and therefore did not have any significant influence on the condition of religiosity.

A possible explanation of religious stability is the rootedness of religion in tradition and culture, as well as the combination of religious and national identity, which was an impor-tant form of resistance against the communist rule, and today it represents a “stable alterna-tive” to the unstable conditions of modernization.4 The modernization processes from 1945 to 1990 were imposed (“forced modernization”) by the communist party; however, the modernization after 1990s can also be understood as a “forced modernization”, only this time imposed from the outside by the international community. The second possible expla-nation of religious stability lies in the very processes of modernization. It is very questiona-ble whether the modernization changes in Croatia are real, or whether they are only formal in character, without real content, and therefore without any real influence on everyday life and religion in particular. The third possible explanation is that the religious picture of contemporary Croatian society is not as stable as it may seem, i.e. the stability presents itself only at a general level, while some changes can be observed when looking at the concrete issues. It is clear that the religious situation in any society, including Croatian, is not monolithic or static but dynamic, oftentimes marked by the simultaneity of seemingly contradictory processes. The comparison of the EVS research-results in 1999 and 2008, points towards certain changes in this sense. Table 1: Denominational Structure of Croatian Society from 1991 to 2008

(%) 1991 1999 2001 2008 Roman Catholic 76.6 84.5 87.8 80.6 Orthodox 11.2 0.1 4.4 3.0 Muslim 1.2 - 1.3 0.2 Other Christian Churches or Denominations 0.7 1.8 0.6 0.3 Others and Not Classifiable 4.7 13.6 0.7 14.4 No Religion 3.9 - 5.2 -

Source: Census 1991, 2001; EVS 1999, 2008.

4 Steve Bruce claimed “that religion diminishes in social significance, becomes increasingly privatized, and

loses personal salience except where it finds work to do other than relating individuals to the supernatural. Such work can be described under two headings: cultural defense and cultural transition.” (Bruce, 2002:30). Both “headings” are applicable for Croatian society.


Concerning the denominational structure there have been some changes in the last twenty years, but the data mostly indicates a general stability of denominational belonging.5 Reli-gion in general is important to the majority of Croatian citizens, too. However there is a slight decrease in the number of those who consider religion as “very important” in their lives. Table 2: How Important is Religion in your Life?

(%) Very important Quite important Not important Not important at all 1999 25.3 51.9 16.4 4.3 2008 19.0 52.6 18.1 7.3

Source: EVS 1999, 2008. For older female respondents (born 1943 and earlier), with primary education and from rural areas religion is important in their lives, while for middle-age and younger respon-dents (born 1962 and later), with secondary or higher education and from urban areas it is not important.6 The results from different surveys over the last twenty years indicate that there are about 25 percent of “practical believers” in Croatian population (those who attend religious services regularly, i.e. “every week or more often”) (Nikodem 2004: 267). Ac-cording to the EVS surveys (1999/2008) there is a slight decrease in the number of “prac-tical believers” and also a slight increase in those who never attend religious services. However these changes are still within the mentioned frame. Table 3: Church Attendance from 1997 to 2008

Attending religious services (%) 1999 2008

Never 10.4 15.7 Less than once a year or once a year 9.7 15.1 Several times a year 26.9 25.2 Monthly (once or 2-3 times) 21.1 16.2 Every week or more often 31.4 26.4

Source: EVS 1999, 2008. The socio-demographic “profile” for Church attendance is very similar to the findings from previous surveys: female respondents, with lower monthly incomes, from rural areas and from the north part of Croatia, are “practical believers” (those who attend religious services

5 It is visible that the number of Catholics is shifting, and that the number of Orthodox has decreased. Two

main reasons for this are some methodological changes in the Census between 1991 and 2001 and the Croa-tian War of Independence (“Homeland War”), both of which had strengthened the feeling of belonging of the Croats to the Catholic Church and influenced migration processes (many Serbs left Croatia, and many Croats came to Croatia from other parts of the former Yugoslavia).

6 Results from Chi-square test and variance analysis, p<0.01. There are no statistically significant differences considering monthly income and regional belonging.


weekly or more often). Those who never attend religious services are male, with higher monthly income, from urban areas and the west of Croatia.7

Table 4: Do you Personally Think that it is Important to Hold a Religious Service for any of the Following Events?

(%) 1999 2008 No Dk/na Yes No Dk/na Yes

Birth 8.6 2.1 88.4 17.8 3.7 77.1 Marriage 4.6 2.0 93.4 9.7 5.0 85.3

Death 4.3 2.0 93.7 6.9 4.6 88.5 Source: EVS 1999, 2008. As already mentioned, religion in Croatia, as in many other, especially Catholic, countries, is strongly rooted in culture and tradition. For the majority of Croatian population it is im-portant to hold a religious service for birth, marriage and death. Although the numbers are still very high, we can notice a decrease in the importance of religious services for all of the three rites of passage. Generally, older female respondents, with primary education and lower monthly income, from rural areas and from the north and east parts of Croatia, are more inclined to the opinion that it is important to hold religious services for the mentioned events. On the other hand, middle-age (born between 1962 and 1979) and younger (born 1980 and later) respondents, with higher education and higher monthly income, from urban areas and the west of Croatia, are more inclined to the opinion that religious services are not important in this sense.8 The number of those, who consider themselves “religious” is al-most the same within the given period, which indicates religious stability at this general level.

Table 5: Independently of whether you Go to Church or Not, would you Say you are…

1999 2008 A religious person 79.9 79.0 Not a religious person 10.9 10.4 A convinced atheist 2.9 4.6 Don’t know and no answer 6.3 6.3

Source: EVS 1999, 2008. Religious people are female, with primary education and lower monthly income, from rural areas and the north and east parts of Croatia. Those who are male, with higher education, from urban areas and the west of Croatia perceive themselves more as “convinced athe-ists”.9 The question about the social role of the Church in contemporary Croatian society is

7 Results from Chi-square test and variance analysis, p<0.01. Although there are differences considering age

and educational level, these relations are not so conclusive. 8 Results from Chi-square test and variance analysis, p<0.01. 9 Results from Chi-square test and variance analysis, p<0.01.There is no statistically significant difference

considering age.


burdened not only by the high expectations of the citizens, because of the role the Church has had so far, especially in communism, but also by the Church’s lack of ability to adapt to new socio-political conditions. During the communism the Church was the only system outside the whole system, only to now become part of the system which carries new re-sponsibilities. It is clear that the number of those who think that the Church is giving ade-quate answers to the mentioned issues (table 6) is decreasing in the given period.

Older (born 1943 and earlier) female respondents, with primary education, from rural areas and the south part of Croatia are more inclined to the opinion that the Church is giv-ing adequate answers to “moral problems and needs of the individual”, contrary to middle-age respondents (born between 1962 and 1979), with secondary education, from urban areas and the west of Croatia. Almost the same relations (only without gender differences) can be seen in the answers given to whether the Church adequately answers “the problems of family life”. More inclined to the opinion that the Church is giving adequate answers to “people’s spiritual needs” are female respondents, with primary education, lower monthly income, from rural areas and the north part of Croatia, while middle-age respondents and younger (born 1980 and later), with secondary and higher education, from urban areas and the west of Croatia think otherwise. Older females, with primary education, lower monthly income and from the south of Croatia are more inclined to the opinion that the Church is giving adequate answers to “social problems facing Croatia today”, contrary to younger respondents, with higher education and higher monthly income, from urban areas and the west part of the country.10

Table 6: Church is Giving Adequate Answers to…

(%) 1999 2008

The moral problems and needs of the individual No 34.5 50.1 Dk/na 13.8 11.8 Yes 51.7 38.1

The problems of family life No 35.5 51.5 Dk/na 14.0 12.9 Yes 50.5 35.5

People’s spiritual needs No 11.6 21.9 Dk/na 9.9 9.0 Yes 78.5 69.1

Social problems facing our country today No 46.7 60.8 Dk/na 16.5 13.3 Yes 36.8 25.9

Source: EVS 1999, 2008. A “decreasing trend” in considering the social role of the Church is also evident in the sys-tem of belief. All analyzed questions regarding beliefs show a decrease, especially in the belief in hell and sin. While a strong majority of Croatian population still believes in God, only one half believe in life after death and paradise.

10 Results from Chi-square test and variance analysis, p<0.01.


Table 7: Do you Believe in …?

1999 2008 Yes No Yes no

God 91,4 6,6 86,9 9,0 Life after death 59,5 28,2 53,1 33,2

Hell 48,9 36,7 40,4 46,4 Paradise 55,8 31,3 53,2 33,5

Sin 68,8 21,2 61,3 28,1 Source: EVS 1999, 2008. Female respondents, with primary education and lower monthly income, from rural areas and the north part of Croatia, are more inclined to the belief in God, while those with sec-ondary and higher education, higher monthly income and from the west part of Croatia are less inclined to the belief in God. Younger respondents (born 1980 and later), with primary education and from the south of Croatia are more inclined to the belief in life after death, contrary to older respondents (born between 1944 and 1961), with secondary education and from the west of Croatia. The same socio-demographic profile is repeated for the belief in hell and paradise (with additional differences regarding place of residence, with those from rural areas more inclined to the belief in hell and paradise, contrary to those from urban areas). Younger (born 1980 and later) female respondents, with primary education, lower monthly income and from rural areas are more inclined to the belief in sin, while older respondents (born 1943 and earlier), with secondary education, higher monthly income and from urban areas are less inclined to the belief in sin.11

As we can see from the table above, there are about 90 percent of Croatian citizens who express the “belief in God”, however it is worth considering what the perception of God actually is. Although Croatia is a “Catholic country” it is very interesting that less than one half of the population accept the concept of a “personal God”, although the acceptance of this concept has slightly increased in the last nine years and the acceptance of the non-Christian concept of God has decreased accordingly.

Table 8: Personal Opinion about the Existence of God from 1999 to 2008

% 1999 2008 There is a personal God. 39.9 42.4 There is some sort of spirit or life force. 45.0 36.3 I don’t really know what to think. 8.2 12.7 I don’t really think there is any sort of higher being, or God. 3.3 4.3 I am an Atheist. - -

Source: EVS 1999, 2008.

Female respondents, with primary education, from rural areas and the north and south parts of Croatia, are more inclined to the Christian concept of God, while those with higher edu-cation and from urban areas are more inclined to the non-Christian concept of God. Those with secondary education and from the west part of Croatia are less inclined to the belief in 11 Results from Chi-square test and variance analysis, p<0.01.


God.12 In another paper we claimed that religious changes in contemporary Croatian society are marked by two main simultaneous processes: stability of institutionalized (Church-related) religiosity (with some indicators of a slight increase) and firm presence of indivi-dualized, personally shaped religiosity (for example, 34.3 percent of Croatian citizens con-sider themselves as “religious in their own way”); (Nikodem/Zrinš ak 2010).

The results of the EVS 2008 confirmed this trend, among other things, with one third (33%) of Croatian population claiming that the statement “I have my own way of connect-ing with the Divine without churches and religious services” is “very much” true for them (32% not at all; 34% Dk/na). Female respondents, with higher education and higher monthly income, from urban areas and the north of Croatia, are more inclined to the attitude that they have their own way of connecting with the Divine without churches and religious services. Religious stability of contemporary Croatian society is confirmed by stable deno-minational structure, great importance of religion in people’s lives and stable level of reli-giosity in general. However this stability is disturbed mostly by the decrease in the Church’s social role and in the importance of religious services for the important rites of passage, and to some extent by the decrease in the beliefs.

4. Importance of Marriage and Family in Croatia In the contemporary context of late modernity it is important to emphasize one process, very influential for marriage and family perception and praxis: that is the process of subjec-tivization. This presents a “great subjective turn”, i.e. “it is a turn away from life lived in terms of external or ‘objective’ roles, duties and obligations, and a turn toward life lived by reference to one’s own subjective experience” (Heelas/Woodhead 2005: 2). In this sense the importance of life as belonging to the ‘given’ order of things (tradition, religion, and community) is replaced by the domination of “subjective life”. Social changes and changes in marital and family relationships are mutually interconnected and some authors empha-sized the development of postmodern families which no longer represent institutions of the society but merely nonobligatory friendship connections (Cheal 1993: 5-19).

Contemporary Croatian society is currently characterized by significant changes in all areas of social life, family, culture, religion, politics, economy, education, etc. As expected one of the main characteristics of these changes is the confrontation between modernization and tradition, which due to a number of “objective” as well as “subjective” socio-historical reasons opens up the space for various deviations that contribute to the general condition of anomie. Adverse political and economic condition, inherited in part from the former social-ist system and in part from the war, also influences the general adverse socio-cultural con-dition. Alongside this, long-term political imposition of the ideology of collectivism opened up the space for the globalization processes. This foremost means an uncritical acceptance of radical subjectivism on the one hand, seen especially in the development of consumer culture and emphasis on rights without regard to responsibilities, and on the other hand mythological strategies for the “return to the past” in the sense of “optimistic remem- 12 Results from Chi-square test and variance analysis, p<0.01. There are no statistically significant differences

considering age and monthly income.


brance”. Within this context we analyze the questions about the importance of marriage and family in contemporary Croatian society, because it is in this area of close and intimate relations that all contradictions between traditional and (post)modern can best be observed. For the majority of Croatian citizens family is “very important” in their lives.

Table 9: How Important is Family in your Life?

Year (%) Very important Quite important Not important Not important at all 1999 78.4 20.3 0.8 0.1 2008 77.0 21.2 0.5 0.1

Source: EVS 1999/2008.

There are no socio-demographic differences regarding this question as almost “everybody” states the importance of family in their life. The importance of family is additionally con-firmed by the opinion that marriage is not an outdated institution (80.9 percent) and that marriage or a long-term stable relationship is necessary for happiness in life (56.0 percent). Table 10: Statements about Marriage and Children

1999 2008 No Yes No Yes

Marriage is an outdated institution. 87.3 7.9 80.9 14.6 Marriage or a long-term stable relationship is necessary to be happy. 14.8 67.4 18.6 56.0

A man has to have children in order to be fulfilled. 10.9 76.3 14.4 67.1 A child needs a home with both a father and a mother to grow up happily. 10.7 86.1 17.7 79.3

Woman has to have children in order to be fulfilled. 38.6 55.3 50.4 44.2 Homosexual couples should be able to adopt children. - - 76.0 6.7

It is alright for two people to live together without getting married. - - 20.7 54.6 It is a duty toward society to have children. - - 45.3 23.3

Source: EVS 1999/2008; residual values are Dk/na. On the other hand, these numbers are decreasing and one half of Croatian population think that “it is alright for two people to live together without getting married”. Furthermore, it is visible that there is a decrease in the opinion about the importance of children for a fulfilled life (for men and especially for women). Only less than one fourth of Croatian population thinks that “to have children” is a duty toward society. Another issue that can disturb mar-riage and family as highly-evaluated values in contemporary Croatian society (Niko-dem/Ara i 2005) is a “woman as a single parent”. The majority of Croatian population (66.2 percent) approve of the situation in which a woman wants to have a child as a single parent, without a stable relationship with a man.

Female respondents, born between 1962 and 1979, from the west part of Croatia, are more likely to approve of this situation, contrary to those born 1943 and earlier, with prima-ry education, lower monthly income, from rural areas and the south of Croatia.13 Addition-ally factor analysis (component model, varimax rotation, GK criteria for reduction of di-

13 Results from Chi-square test and variance analysis, p<0.01.


mensionality) was conducted on eight statements about marriage and children (table 11) and two factors were extracted. Considering the saturation of each item, the first factor was named “children and marriage as a fulfilled life” and the second simply “alternative life-styles”.

Table 11: If a Woman wants to Have a Child as a Single Parent, but she doesn't want to

Have a Stable Relationship with a Man, do you Approve or Disapprove?

Year Disapprove Approve Depends Dk/na 1999 17.4 65.2 17.0 1.3 2008 23.9 66.2 7.0 2.9

Source: EVS 1999/2008. The three most important predictors for the first factor are age, educational level and place of residence, and for the second factor age, monthly income and educational level (see also Appendix tables A1 and A2). Considering regional differences for the analyzed concept “marriage and children” it is visible that the citizens from the north part of Croatia are more inclined to “marriage and children as a fulfilled life”, while those from the west part are more inclined to “alternative lifestyles”. Table 12: Matrix of Varimax Factors: “Marriage and children”

CHILDREN AND MARRIAGE AS A FULFILLED LIFE

ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLES

A man has to have children in order to be fulfilled. .768 A marriage or a long-term stable relationship is necessary to be happy. .740

Woman has to have children in order to be fulfilled. .690 It is a duty toward society to have children. .445 Homosexual couples should be able to adopt children. .716 Marriage is an outdated institution. .604 It is alright for two people to live together without getting married. .537

A child needs a home with both a father and a mother to grow up happily. -.428

Extracted factors explain 42.15% of variance. Table 13: Correlation between “Marriage and Children” Factors and Basic Socio-

demographic Characteristics

CHILDREN AND MARRIAGE AS A FULFILLED LIFE ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLES

Sex -.044 .066* Age -.272** .183** Education -.216** .195** Monthly income -.141** .198** Place of residence -.210** .124**

**p<0.01; *p<0.05


The correlation (bivariate correlation, Pearson’s coefficient) between these factors and basic socio-demographic characteristics of Croatian population revealed that older respon-dents, with primary education, lower monthly income and from rural areas are more in-clined to the concept “children and marriage as a fulfilled life”. On the other hand, younger respondents, with higher education and monthly income and from urban areas are more inclined to “alternative lifestyles”. Table 14: “Marriage and children” factors and regional belonging

“Children and marriage as a fulfilled life” M

F =8.176 sig. p < 0.01

Contrast North Croatia .1339

North>South Central -.0455 East .1943 West .0314 South -.2423 “Alternative lifestyles” M Contrast North Croatia -.0505

F =6.308 sig. p < 0.01 West>South

Central .0470 East -.0309 West .2400 South -.2051

Source: EVS 2008. 5. Relation Between Religiosity and Attitudes toward Marriage/Family In this part of the paper I would like to analyze the relation between religiosity (presented in the paper through already mentioned indicators) and attitudes toward marriage/family (presented by the two factors). The simplest hypothesis could be that those who consider themselves religious (institutionalized religiosity) by all analyzed indicators will be more inclined to the first concept which sees marriage and children as a necessity for a fulfilled life; and, consequently, those who consider themselves otherwise (non-religious or more inclined to individualized religiosity) will be more inclined to “alternative lifestyles”.

From simply observing the correlations in table 16 we can see that this simplest hypo-thesis is not the best one. Although supposed relations for “alternative lifestyles” fit well, those for “marriage and children as a fulfilled life” do not. There are no statistically signifi-cant correlations (or they are very low) between the importance of religion in life, Church attendance, the system of belief, personal relation with the Divine and the concept of “mar-riage and children as a fulfilled life”.


Table15: Correlation between Religiosity Indicators and “Marriage and Children” Factors

CHILDREN AND MARRIAGE AS A FULFILLED LIFE

ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLES

Importance of religion in life .049 -.297** Church attendance .039 -.257** Importance of religious service for birth .166** -.166** Importance of religious service for marriage .149** -.244** Importance of religious service for death .105** -.141** Religiosity self-perception .121** -.168** Church adequately answers to the moral problems and needs of the individual .142** -.165**

Church adequately answers to the problems of family life .110** -.149** Church adequately answers to people’s spiritual needs .122** -.136** Church adequately answers to social problems facing our coun-try today .111** -.167**

Belief in God .066* -.211** Belief in life after death -.090* -.174** Belief in hell -.056* -.170** Belief in paradise .024 -.210** Belief in sin .007 -.106** Personal relation with the Divine -.030 .104**

**p<0.01; *p<0.05

The analysis of variance between the belief about God and these two factors revealed that those who believe that “there is a personal God” are more inclined to “marriage and child-ren as a fulfilled life”, and those who do not believe that “there is any sort of spirit, God or life force” are more inclined to “alternative lifestyles”.

Table 16: Factors “Marriage and Children” and the Belief in God.

“Children and marriage as a fulfilled life” M

F =12.959 sig. p < 0.01

Contrast There is a personal God .1885

1>all others There is some sort of spirit or life force -.1068 I don't really know what to think -.1962 I don't really think there is any sort of spirit, God or life force -.1720

“Alternative lifestyles” M Contrast There is a personal God -.2424

F =25.912 sig. p < 0.01 1,2<4

There is some sort of spirit or life force .0905 I don't really know what to think .3056 I don't really think there is any sort of spirit, God or life force .4653

Source: EVS 2008.

As visible from tables A3 and A4 in the appendix, important religious predictors for the concept “marriage and children as a fulfilled life” are the importance of religious service for birth and Church’s relation toward social problems. On the other hand, unimportance of


religion in life and of religious service for marriage, as well as personal relation (without the Church) with the Divine, are important religious predictors for “alternative lifestyles”. The relationship between religiosity and attitudes toward marriage/family are very impor-tant for the analysis of contemporary Croatian society since the majority of the population in Croatia agree that “their parents brought them up in faith” (82.9 percent) and that reli-gious education for children is important (78.2 percent); (Nikodem/Zrinš ak 2010). Fur-thermore, the results of the national surveys in Croatia in 1997 and 2004 show that family has the biggest influence on respondents’ attitudes toward religion (72.8 percent in 1997 and 75.9 percent in 2004); (Nikodem 2004: 273).

6. Conclusion Comparison of the results of the EVS 1999/2008 shows that contemporary Croatian society is still strongly religious and that religiosity in the general sense is stable despite the socio-cultural context characterized by significant social changes. Of course it is possible to argue that religiosity is stable precisely because of the unstable social context. However, the stated stability of religiosity is not unambiguous and static because a certain decrease can be seen in most indicators of stability. In denominational structure the number of Catholics has decreased from 87.8 percent (according to the last census in 2001) to 80.6 percent. The importance of religion in life has slightly decreased, from 77.2 percent to 71.6 percent. “Regular” Church attendance has decreased from 31.4 percent to 26.4 percent and the num-ber of those who “never” attend religious services has increased from 10.4 percent to 15.7 percent. Religiosity in general is stable, with around 80 percent of Croatian citizens who consider themselves to be “religious persons”. The importance of religious services for the main rites of passage has decreased, however these numbers are still very high (77.1 per-cent for birth, 85.3 percent for marriage and 88.5 percent for death). In this sense changes are mostly evident when considering the social role of the Church which has decreased considerably in all analyzed issues. One half of Croatian population state that the Church is not giving adequate answers to “the moral problems and needs of the individual” and to “the problems of family life”, and even more (60.8 percent) state the same for “social prob-lems facing our country today”. A decrease is also visible in the system of belief, but to a lesser extent. On the other hand, the acceptance of the Christian concept of God has slightly increased. Individualized religiosity remains stable with 34.3 percent of Croatian citizens who consider themselves “religious in their own way” in 2006, and 33.0 percent who claim that they have “their own connection with the Divine without churches and religious servic-es” in 2008.

Marriage and family are still very important in Croatia; however the analysis of con-crete questions about these issues revealed a different situation. The number of those who claim that “a marriage or a long-term stable relationship is necessary for happiness” has decreased from 67.4 percent to 56.0 percent in the given period. Less than one half of Croa-tian population think that a “woman has to have children in order to be fulfilled”, while only 23.3 percent state that “to have a child is a duty toward society”. A stable majority approve of the situation in which a woman wants to have a child as a single parent, without


marriage or some kind of cohabitation. All data clearly indicate modernization influences, especially influences of subjectivization and individualization processes and to some extent the influence of secularization process as well.

It seems that, fifteen years after the end of the War of Independence, the period of reli-gious revitalization and re-traditionalization has ended and Croatian society is entering a new period which will be marked more by the influence of the modernization processes. The stability of the religious situation at the beginning of this new period is not unambi-guous, however, only the next wave of the EVS research will be able to clearly show whether the revealed decrease in specific indicators is a sign of a more long-term trend. For now we can only claim that the social role of the Church has been significantly disturbed, as the result, in part, of the modernization and secularization of the society and, in part, of the inability of the Church to adapt to new democratic conditions. Authoritarian communist rule in a way suited the authoritarianism of the Church (Tomka 1991: 95), and oftentimes chaotic social conditions of the development of democracy reveal a lack of preparation by the Church for the participation in the creation of a democratic society.

Considering attitudes toward marriage and family we can also claim that one period has ended and Croatian society is entering a new period which will prove especially difficult for marriage and family. The period of traditional, patriarchal family is over and Croatian society is entering the period in which marriage and family will take on new meanings and definitions. At the same time it is clear that the modernization processes do not change the importance of family and marriage as much as they do change the perception of what mar-riage and family life should be.

Changes in perception and practice of marriage and family life open up possibilities for changes in the area of religiosity as well. Marriage and family, i.e. religious socialization in the family, are the key to the development and persistence of institutionalized religiosity. Analyzed data show that while the family is very important for religion, religion is no long-er as important for the family. I consider this fact to be more significant for a possible strengthening of secularization influences, than the marked loss of the social influence of the Church. Whether secularization is really “the fate” (Pickel 2009) of Croatian society also is still too early to say.

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Wild Capitalism. Zagreb.


Appendix Table A1: Regression Analysis of “Children and Marriage as a Fulfilled Life” and Socio-

demographic Characteristics (predictor set).

Standard Coefficient Sig.

Correlation Beta Direct Partial

Age -.231 .000 -.274 -.224 Educational level -.132 .000 -.238 -.119 Place of residence -.132 .000 -.208 -.132

R=.349, R2=.122, p<0.01; Source: EVS 2008. Table A2: Regression Analysis of “Alternative Lifestyles” and Socio-demographic Cha-

racteristics (predictor set).


Correlation Beta Direct Partial

Age .132 .000 .190 .127 Monthly income .119 .000 .196 .108 Educational level .096 .002 .181 .084

R=.272, R2=.074, p<0.01; Source: EVS 2008. Table A3: Regression Analysis of “Children and Marriage as a Fulfilled Life” and Religios-

ity (predictor set).


Correlation

Beta Direct Partial Importance of religious service for birth .114 .000 .179 .102 Church is giving adequate answers to social problems facing our country today .101 .000 .122 .096

Importance of religious service for marriage .097 .002 .163 .085 Religiosity self-perception .073 .017 .125 .065 Church is giving adequate answers to moral problems and needs of the individual .064 .029 .133 .059

R=.287, R2=.083, p<0.01; Source: EVS 2008.


Table A4: Regression Analysis of “Alternative Lifestyles” and Religiosity (predictor set).


Correlation

Beta Direct Partial Importance of religion in life -.148 .000 -.263 -.130 Importance of religious service for marriage -.126 .000 -.207 -.106 Personal relation with the Divine .116 .000 .106 .121 Belief in life after death -.085 .003 -.196 -.082 Church is giving adequate answers to social problems facing our country today -.069 .010 -.158 -.070

R=.350, R2=.122, p<0.01; Source: EVS 2008.

The Instrumentalisation of Religious Beliefs and Adat Customery Laws in Chechnya Marit Cremer 1. Introduction The Caucasus is the home of an abundant number of small ethnic groups which were ruled over by different empires in the course of history and subjected to changing cultural, religious and political influences. The article deals with the religious beliefs of the Vainakh group1 to which the tribes of the Chechens2 and Ingushes belong and whose main settlement area can be found between what is today North Ossetia in the west and Dagestan in the east. To the south, in the high mountains, is the border with Georgia whilst in the north the lowlands extend to the Terek river. Today most Vainakhs consider themselves to be Moslems. Being one of the peoples who converted to Islam the latest – Islam did not become established until the 19th century – they maintain a number of traditions which date back to pre-Islamic times. These particularly include adat customary law which determined the social structure with its influential power continuing to banish Islam to limited spheres up until the present day. Years of atheistic state ideology during the communist regime from 1917 onwards, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Chechen war from 1994 onwards with the accompanying radical changes in the ethnic composition of the population, have led to a different balance of adat, Islam, Christian and Soviet-atheistic life designs. The intentional instrumentalisation of religion for power by rival groups in Chechnya, again intensive at present, already played just as significant a role in the 11th century due to Christianisation through Georgia.

For an ethnic group which does not possess its own historiography, myths which constitute the nation and the handing down of traditions are of particular significance for constituting one’s own identity, which had once again become an issue after the dissolution of Soviet ideology and once again the power struggle in the Republic seems to be born out via the tense relationship between adat and sharia. It is not unusual for the lines of conflict to cut across families and clans and to lead to a collapse of the social network which had previously fulfilled an important protective function for its members. Yet it is precisely the supportive family unit which is of particular importance in a society which is socially and politically destabilised by war with no reliable code of law and order.

1 Vainakh (Chechen): our people. 2 Chechens (their self-designated name is Nochtschi) were given this name by the tsarist troups of Ivan

Grozny. They gave the inhabitants who they encountered this name when marching into the Caucasus in the proximity of the area of e en-Aul.


Marit Cremer 198

The following essay deals with the question of the significance of customary law and Islam in historical and present day Chechnya for the stability of its society and with the question as to how both have been consciously instrumentalised by social protagonists to achieve power and resources. To this end, in the first part, we take a short look at pre-Islamic beliefs. We then explain the process of Islamisation and the tense relationship that ensues between the resulting customary law and partially contradictory newly introduced Islamic law codes (2). The third part deals with how the Soviet regime treated religious practise and adat after 1917. For this, I go back to excerpts from biographic-narrative interviews which I conducted in 2006 with women from Chechnya in my study (Cremer 2007).

I subsequently deal with the changed meaning of Chechnyan popular Islam, adat and atheism since Perestroika examining its consequences for the social and political stability of the republic. In my observations, I also include the role of new religious currents from abroad imported into Chechnya (4). I then focus on the social and legal situation of women living in Chechnya which has been criticised in the last years by human rights organisations as being increasingly critical (5). In résumé, with the help of established results, I attempt to make a prognosis of the social and sociopolitical development of the Chechnyan Republic.

2. Preislamic Religion of the Vainakhs The Vainakhs had no historiography of their own. Therefore, sources before the 19th century when Russian researchers began to record the traditions and customs of the Caucasus were primarily based on the reconstruction of history thanks to archaelogical finds. When Georgia christianised part of the Vainakh line between the 11th and 13th centuries, it encountered a population whose religion was characterised by family and ancestral worship (Sarkisyanz 1961: 114-140). Their beliefs reflected the social structure of the lineage and have been preserved until today in customs and popular beliefs in the face of Christianity and Islam. The dry climate permits sun burials of deceased persons in mausoleums, which was probably influenced by Zoroastric models. The village alliances (taipa3) and lineages (tukhum) had their own protective gods with particular locations for the cultural worship of the same high up in the mountains. These mountains were considered to be sacred and on special occasions, sacrificial offerings were taken to the gods of the air, of hunting and thunder as well as to the one-eyed hunting god Jelt and Tuscholi, the much respected fertility goddess of women remained part of popular belief until into the 18th century and, in the case of the Ingushes, even until the middle of the 19th century.

They were even still remembered by some elderly people in the 20th century. Great significance was attributed to the god of fire, Sela: he was the guardian god of the fire in the hearth, the symbol of family happiness and conservation of the lineage

3 taip: from Arabic. Taifa: group, community.

The Instrumentalization of Religious Beliefs 199

through descendants. Some cults and customs were adopted by Islam with a changed meaning. The main god and father of all gods was Dela, his name being used for Allah after the conversion to Islam. As well as gods and ancestors, there were also various good and evil gods who inhabited woods, water, sky and mountains and were attributed with human characteristics. They helped good people and punished bad ones for their acts (Zel’kina 1999). Christianisation of the Vainakhs through Georgia did not last. After the Mongolian conquest of Georgia by Timur4 who was influenced by Islamic Pietism at the end of the 14th century and the subsequent invasions of the golden horde under Toktami'sh5, the gradual conversion to Islam began and was to last several centuries.

Customary law Adat6 Adat also already existed in the Caucasus in pre-Islamic times and could vary from village to village. It settled all the social relationships between members of the respective lineages or village alliances and consisted of secular traditions, local norms and customs. For Dagestan, a number of Arabic and Turkish documents exist which describe legal acts and agreements. "They generally deal with killing, injuries, rape, robbery, theft, arson but also with questions of the settlement of guilt issues, of utilisation of fields, meadows and water as well as with keeping cattle and general defence of the village or of the community alliance. Here the ittifaqs7 often describe the single bearers of responsibility of the community and their tasks and present a picture of the social situation of other groups (especially women, students, Sufis and tradespeople)." (Kemper 2005: 317). As already mentioned, there is no one unified adat for the whole Caucasus, even if there are a great number of common points. The Chechnyan tribes can be differentiated from the Dagestanian in that they had no political hierarchy with sovereigns. This results in differences in customary law. 3. The Islamisation of Chechnyan Tribes There is contradictory documentation on the development of Islamisation of Chechnyan tribes. It is possible that Kumyk missionaries came from the east and Kabardian missionaries from the west into the areas settled by the Vainakhs to spread Islam. Most researchers assume that from the 16th century onwards, the

4 Timur (1336-1405); also Tamerlane, Mongolian nomads, conquered at their time of rule areas of eastern Anatolia over the Caucasus and Persia to the western borders of China and India.

5 Toktami'sh (who died 1406/07): Khan of the Golden Horde, ruled approx. 1380-1395 6 Customary law: Arabic: adat came into existence in remote, mainly mountainous areas, which were

self-sufficient and lived from bartering. Adat also exists, for example, in Indonesia, Middle Asia, Kabylie and Albania (canons)

7 Ittifaq (Arabic): agreement

Marit Cremer 200

population had preponderantly adopted Islam of the Shafiitic8 school. Sheik Mansur (1760-1791) from Aul9 Aldy gained great international renown for the lasting diffusion of the new religion over a greater area. He succeeded in creating religious and political unity against colonisation by the Russian Cossaks, who advanced further and further into the Caucasus from the north pushing the Vainakhs further and further back from the fertile plains into the mountains. In 1785, Mansur besieged the Russian fortresses Kisljar and Mozdok. It is related that, due to his charisma, he was idolised as Mahdi, an Islamic Messiah, by his followers. Furthermore, it was said that also Jews and Christians had fought on his side against the Tsar. After his arrest by soldiers of Tsarina Catherine II, the rumour circulated amongst Chechens that "Mansur was imprisoned for a hundred years "under the mountains" and that after this time had elapsed, he would again lead the army of Islam into combat" (Sarkisyanz: 119). 3.1 The Tense Relationship between the Sharia and Adat Legal Systems The adoption of Islam by the Vainakh did not only lead to the dissolution of customary law by the sharia. In fact, what resulted was more the mingling of both legal systems to varying degrees, depending on the greater or lesser extent of Islamisation. In the regions which were very strongly influenced by Islam, it can hardly be ascertained as to whether the sharia changed customary law to its advantage or if it maintained it in its original form. On the other hand, the adat applied great restrictions to the interpretation of Islamic law, in order to conserve the regulations of the adat. Zel'kina names four main differences between sharia and adat: 1. Customary law "One for all, all for one" was opposed to the principle of individual

responsibility in Islam. 2. The differentiation between premeditated criminal acts and unintentional criminal acts

with the corresponding fixation of the degree of punishment was unknown to adat. 3. In the law of sharia, punishment and inflicted harm have to be appropriately proportional

to one another. 4. Whilst legal conflicts are decided upon in formal sharia courts and their sentences are

executed by civil servants, for adat courts, the conflict parties chose their representatives from the most respected elders themselves. (Zel'kina 1999). The sentence was not binding. This frequently led to long drawn-out unresolved animosities between clans.

With the exception of some of the strongly Islamised tribes in the settlement area of the Kumyks, in spite of the varying adat corpuses, Zel’kina adopts a uniform legal system which only superficially integrates Islam for the Vainakh settlement area from the 19th century onwards. The population assumedly respected its regulations

8 Islamic Shafiitic school: one of the four schools of law of Sunnite Islam, founded by Muhammad ibn Idris asch-Schafi'i (767-820), a descendant of the family of the Prophet Mohammed

9 Aul (Russian): fortified village found throughout the Caucasus mountains


to a greater degree. That was allegedly particularly clear in the revenging of crimes such as murder, killing which call for blood revenge under adat. This concerns all male members of a lineage from which the offender comes and frequently has the consequence that the families affected by blood feuds bewail the almost complete loss of their male relatives. The sharia on the other hand gave the possibility of ending the conflict peacefully, for example by paying a sum of money. Such a solution was mostly considered by the Vainakhs as wounding to their honour and rejected as undignified. For theft and other property crimes, as with the unauthorised use of meadows, the affected people usually acted according to customary law, negotiating a compensation and reversed Islamic jurisprudence.

The law of inheritance was also regulated according to adat but had to be legitimated by a sharia law court. Although the sharia had the strongest influence on family affairs such as marriage, divorce and burial, nearly all the pre-Islamic traditions were kept. Generally speaking, the population continued to live preponderantly according to the regulations of customary law, thus weakening religious jurisdiction in its authority.

3.2. Mysticism in Chechnyan popular Islam: Sufism With this backgound, the strong influence of Sufism in the Vainakhs finds its explanation. Tishkov argues that "such a selective perception of Islam did not require the mountaineers to give up their way of life" (Tishkov 2004: 165). The Sufis constituted a mystical sect within Islam, which was split into different directions and groups. Its members were men and women who inherited its membership and who were organised in tariquats (brotherhoods). The ideological basis of Sufism was based on the sharia; furthermore on the mystical way Tariqa; ecstatic gnosis Haqiqa (the Truth), which was exclusively restricted to the Naibs (the elite) of the ascetic order and the cognition Ma'rifa, the fusing with God, which only the Imam (master) could achieve. The Sufis stood for a non-violent, spiritual, enlightened way, considered themselves to be a part of the world and yet outside the world and had high moral expectations of themselves. In the northern Caucasus, two significant tariqats were represented, the Naqshbandiyya10 and the Qadiriyya11. 3.3. Militant Islam: the Murid Movement After the beligerent conflicts between tsarist troups and the mountain peoples of the Caucasus the branches of the brotherhoods radicalised into groups of militant-religious warriors of faith, the so- called Naib-Murids. They firstly fought for the independence of Dagestan from Russia, before the movement took on the character of a war of religion under their first Imam, Ghazi Muhammad (ruled 1828-1834). After the murder of the second Imam, Kamsat Bek (ruled 1832-1834) by Hadschi Murat (at the end of the 1790s-1852), Imam Shamil (1796-1871) - who like Sheikh

10 Naqshbandiyya: founded by Bacht ud-Din Naqshband al-Bukhari, who died in 1388 in Bukhara. 11 Qadiriyya: founded by Abdullah Qadir Gilani, who died in 1166 in Bagdad.

Marit Cremer 202

Manusur also belonged to the Naqshbandiyya - took over leadership. Each one of the three Imams had had a religious education at an Islamic university and received religious instruction from Naqschbandiyya teachers and therefore enjoyed the respect of the population. 3.4 Religious Struggle against the Adat - Shamil’s Imamate Shamil constructed his own political system, the so-called Imamate. He himself was a religious and secular autocrat, the head of the army of Naib-Murids, a fiscal system and governor. The teachings of Naqshbandiyya-Sufis were state religion and were celebrated by the tariqa-Murids. The Chechnyan settlement areas fell to the Murid State of Shamil in 1839, who had been elected by his supporters as Imam in 1834. Shamil represented a form of Islam which was marked by discipline, puritanism and ascetic pietism, forbidding dance, music, smoking etc. The brutal collective punishment of entire villages when the strict rules were not respected met with rejection by many Muslim Vainakhs and by other inhabitants not affected by the Russian occupation. However, particularly the attempt to forbid the tribes the implementation of customary law with great brutality, which contradicted the sharia to a great extent, met with vehement resistance even amongst Muslims.

With the help of the Chechnyan tribe of the Itshkerians, Shamil organised a war of religion against the Ingushes who were preponderantly still supporters of pre-Islamic religion and against the westerly Chechnyan tribes and the Christian Ossetians. It was his aim to win them all over as allies against the tsarist troups in the Caucasus war which he led from 1834-1859. „Having become a religious and political leader and taking charge of the state - the imamate - Shamil was obliged to solve the problem of 'adat and take resolute measures to eradicate many of them. As an Islamic ruler, he came out first and foremost against those customs that not only violated Shari'ah precepts outright but also hindered reforms aimed at uniting the mountaineers and opposing the colonial policy of tsarist Russia“ (Sykiainen 1999: 89). Schamil’s Murids also fought for years in ethnically diverse Dagestan, repeatedly against the same villages which clung to adat and were partially supported by tsarist troups against Schamil. The Murids wiped out entire dynasties at the Caspian Sea and confiscated their estates – in contradiction to their initial contempt for worldly goods and values.

To combat opposition within, Schamil created an elitist squad which had to renounce the tight Caucasan family bonds and to swear absolute loyalty to him. However, Schamil progressively lost more and more power due to intrigues within the order and the venality of his Naibs, who defected to the tsarists. This was also noticeable in the case of supporters who felt more greatly committed to adat than to the Islamic canon. Schamil had to give up in 1859 and was arrested. During his 25 year authoritarian rule, he had not succeeded in imposing Islamic law against adat either. After Shamil’s defeat the Qadiriyya under the leadership of Kunta Haji (1829/30-1867) took over the power, preaching a mystical-Pietist way of enlightenment (tariqat zikr) the struggle of resistance against Russia. The Murid


movement rapidly lost significance since it was to fixed on the person of Shamil. During the Russian-Turkish war, there was once again a bigger popular uprising from 1877-1878 in Dagestan and Chechnya, which was however defeated by tsarist troups. In the First World War the Vainakh troups fought together on Russia’s side. Even before the October Revolution, in March 1917, the foundation of the Union of United Mountain Peoples was to take place.

4. Religion and Resistance after 1917 The establishment of the Soviet regime in the Northern Caucasus was accompanied by a civil war, described by Tishkov as having "almost religious character" (Tishkov: 165). "In August 1917, prior to the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia, the Islamic Congress of local clergy elected Shaikh Nadjimuddin (Gotsinsky) as imam of Dagestan and Chechnya. With Shaikh Uzun Hadji, he attempted to unite the two regions into a theocratic state. Shaikh Hadji proclaimed Chechnya and the north western part of Dagestan 'the North Caucasian Emirate', and the following words are ascribed to him: 'I am making a rope to hang engineers, students, and all those who write from left to right'."

The pietist emir Shaikh Uzun Hadji from Dagestan tried here to revive the Murid tradition from the Caucasus war. When he died in 1922, the Islamic Movement broke down, disintegrating with him. The union had declared its independence as an Islamic Mountain Republic in 1918, however it already lost it to the Soviet Union in 1920 through the invasion of the Red Army. Chechnya and Ingushetia were transformed into an Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic (Gorskaja ASSR).

In the ensuing civil war from 1920-1921, customary law become stronger and with it the institution of blood revenge, which was prohibited in 1923, because it worked against the establishment and stabilisation of the Soviet system. And yet it is still used in the present day. For the armed resistance against the Bolschewiki, led by Shaikh Nadjimuddin until 1925 by means of single local uprisings, Islam firstly played "a mobilizing and ideological role" (Tishkov: 165).

4.1 Prohibition of Religious Practice From 1928 onwards, religious communities in the whole of the Soviet Union were subject to extremely harsh persecution. The tariqats were also affected, and decided to go underground. Islam was criticised as being a "rudiment of the past" (Tishkov: 165) and put in state control. Churches and mosques alike in the whole country were used for other purposes or destroyed, clergy were persecuted and murdered, sharia lawcourts were abolished. The repression of religious practise led within a few decades to succeeding generations growing up as atheists and only some of the older generation practised Islam. Their descendants were handed down memories of pious relations, as the example of Heda shows, who I interviewed for my aforementioned study in 2006. "Mum’s aunts were also very pious, they knew the Koran very well,

Marit Cremer 204

and could interpret it and so forth. They had a holy place, there they could read the Koran a whole month. It was a place under the ground. There they were far away from everyday things. They only ate corncakes which had been baked for a whole month. They spoke to nobody, cleansing themselves in that way. Only a few people had the right to go to this place (…) Mum’s grandfather had two wives and then he married a third one. That was mum’s granny. They said that they wanted to become his relations so much that we gave you our sister. He already had grandchildren, when he got married the third time. When he married the second woman, he was allowed to take a second, third and fourth according to the sharia, but he took his first wife with him on the Hajj- Pilgrimage12 and begged her to forgive him there. When he married the third, he took his second wife on the Hajj and begged her to forgive him. One of the two wives, who took part in this Hajj, so they say that women bear the name Hajji13 only three days after they have come back home again. And she asked God to allow her to bear this name hajji for the rest of her life and on the third day she died. She is buried in Vedeno and on her grave there is a stone and everyone knows that Zara hajji lies there“ (Cremer 2007: 118 f; all the quotations were translated by the author). In the decades of Soviet rule, Muslim and Soviet values obviously merged. In the same interview, Heda describes her experiences with religion in the following way: "My religious education was neither one thing, or another, although our great grandmother always read the Koran and was a very godfearing woman. My granny, who I grew up with, she was far away from these theories. Well, she also prayed and so on, but not like my great granny, who did so with great awe. So she didn’t say, that you have to pray or to do this or that, no-one explained why you do it like that. I don’t have a religious upbringing, not only me, nobody did. At the time when we were children and every Russian had to be an atheist, that was all - I don’t know, when you see someone hungry and you‘ve had enough to eat and you have the possibility to help him, that’s is what the Koran teaches us. You have to give him something to eat, as God gave you something to eat and not him. You share what you have with others or not. That was how we were brought up. They didn’t say that it’s in the Koran, but everyone who knows compassion cannot allow himself to go to bed full when he knows that his neighbour is hungry. That’s what they taught us." (Cremer 2007: 117)

4.2 Islam as a Part of Vainakh Identity From just under 3000 mosques and houses of prayer, in the middle of the eighties, thirteen were still open as well as a madrasah of formerly 180 schools of religion. (Islam na territorii byvshei Rossiiskoi imperii: 108) And yet in spite of decades of anti-religious propaganda and lack of religious beliefs, in the central Asian and Caucasian Soviet Republics influenced by Moslems, certain Islamic practises were carried out in everyday life. The relatives often called out a Mullah to give the last

12 Hajj, pilgrimage to Mecca, which is obligatory for every adult Moslem who can afford it and must be carried out once in a lifetime.

13 Hajji, title of honour for persons who have completed a pilgrimage to Mecca.


blessing or carry out the last rites even if the deceased was not a believer. Islam appeared to be an integral part of Vainakh culture. The slaughtering of cattle and distribution of meat to neighbours on the occasion of a funeral – a Muslim tradition – was retained. This was the case in spite of the fact that for several generations, the population had had a Soviet socialisation when Perestroika again allowed the embracing of religion. Tishkov states: "That is why postfactual representation of Chechnya as an 'Islamic Republic' and of Chechens as ardent followers of Islam is a romantic simplification." (Tishkov: 167). 5. Islamic Renaissance and New Moslem Currents after Perestroika

At the end of the nineteen eighties, the more mainstream religions in the Soviet Union were socially upgraded. In Chechnya, Arabic and Koran courses were in vogue after pilgrimages to Mecca and studies at Moslem institutions of higher education had once again been authorised. Whilst in Chechnya Islam was influenced by local customs and pre-Islamic traditions, graduates of religious schools from abroad imported a normative Sunnite Islam which was not necessarily fanatical. The latter was radically different in some ways to northern Caucasan Islam. It was erroneously and exaggeratedly characterised by Russia as wahhabism and its devotees were equated with terrorists. The established clergy in Chechnya, who did not enjoy hardly any influence in the community, considered these new Moslems to be rivals and villainised them as dangerous fundamentalists and extremists (Cf. Halbach 2010: 9-11.) 5.1 Islam as Life Support In the population at large, purist currents can be seen to have found little acceptance as another interview in the aforementiond study with 27 year old Amina from northern Chechnya shows: "That Wahhabit centre was also strange, when was it, in 1995 or 1999? I was surprised that a lot of young people went there. The director of the centre was an Arab. It was a well-equipped centre with computers, internet and all the right books which we didn’t have at the time. And the girls wore hijabs14. I often went past it and could not understand what kept them there and why they so conscientiously tried (…) to learn Arabic and to study the various prayers of Islam. I think that at that time Maschadow played a certain part because it came from him, or that’s to say it already began under Dudaev. He began to talk about sovereignty and that we should go back to our roots, our Islamic roots. That’s what he talked about and our youth was crazy about it. But that was only for a very, very short time. The centre was bombarded and completely destroyed" (Cremer 2007: 131 f.). Devotion to God can also be explained by the many years of instability and constant threats to life, by violence and loss. The feeling of not being able to depend on constitutional

14 hijab (Arabic): a covering for the head, which is prescriped for women by Islam, only leaving the face and hands free.

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structures and of being unable to protect oneself may have developed a vague form of belief. What is typical is Amina’s account of a life-threatening situation: "I had no registration certificate in my passport. I knew they could get me for it. I was registered in a rural district. I had deregistered myself in Grosny and registered in a rural area. That was reason enough to ask me a lot of questions. Anyway, all the prayers occured to me that they say in Chechnya! (she laughs). I know I don’t have the right attitude to religion although I’m very religious but I sometimes scold myself that I’m not so religious as I should be. In any case, at that moment everything occurred to me, I asked God for everything." (Cremer 2007: 130)

5.2 Islam as a Political Pawn in Moscow and Grosny After the first war from 1994 to 1996 which ended with the recognition of Chechnya as an independent republic, the factor of religion gained increasing significance for the positioning of the rival camp in politics. The secular constition of 1992 was changed under the first elected president Maschadow15 and Islam was declared the state religion. Maschadow thus tried to promote the establishment of a state and nation and, by adopting some of the elements of the sharia in the legal system, to win over votes from the Islamic opposition. However, this political decision was not supported by the majority of the population. In an opinion poll of Chechnyan women, which was carried out by The Rostov NGO Alliance of the Women of the Don in 2000-200116 ( erevantenko/Pjatin: 2001), the result was that the attitudes of the women to various aspects of religion were directly related to their civil status and education. Only one in three approved of the creation of an Islamic state on the territory of Chechnya, and in the case of university graduates it was only twelve per cent. Female graduates rejected this idea to a very great degree (30 per cent as opposed to 6 per cent of the women with a school leaving examination). Only a quarter expressed positive thoughts on the sharia and yet less than 0.1 per cent had had good experiences with the sharia.

A good 16 per cent of the women stated that the practise of Islamic law had negative consequences for their lives. Maschadow involved fundamentalist opponents such as Schamil Basaev in the government and opposed radical Islam with popular Chechnyan Islam. He nevertheless did not succeed in preventing military conflicts with religious-political groups. Instead, he at once found himself confronted with an Islamic opposition which built up its own violent structures and strived for an Islamic jihad against Russian rule. Possibly, Moscow supported the opposition, in order to weaken Maschadow’s government and to integrate Chechnyna back in the Russian Federation. (Cf. Halbach 2003: 30). The Russian government fuelled the image of international Islamists, who were waging a war against the Russian civil population through terrorist-attacks on Moscow and other cities of the Federation. When the Russian army again invaded Chechnya in 1999,

15 Maschadow, Aslan: first elected president of Chenya, killed by Russian secret service 2005. 16 According to their own statements, the Women of the Don are the only organisation which carried

out statistical research in Chechnya and Ingushetia during and after the wars.


Islam was already being equated with terrorism. On this subject, Amina reports: "In 1999 a change of government took place. There were a lot of books which the federalists burnt, Islamic literature was strictly forbidden. There were situations where our boys took such books home with them. Most of them,- or some of them - could read them, but I, for instance, couldn’t. They just took them home out of curiosity and when the books were found in house searches, then someone was arrested in every case and no-one could prove that just some dumb boy had taken the books out of the centre and that this family didn’t have anything to do with wahhabism." (Cremer 2007: 132)

5.3 Militant Islam The terror attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 was used by Moscow as a confirmation of the supposed involvement of Islamic fundmentalists in the Northern Caucasus conflict, in order to pursue its war on international terrorism in Chechnya with a vengeance. Civil victims of military operations carried out by so-called special forces were also declared to be terrorists, whose 'eradication' served to protect the population at large from militarily motivated attacks. The consequence was an increasing radicalisation of Chechens and its turning towards military-Islamistic groups. The latter operated in loosely networked local squads (Jama’at) and contributed through confrontations with the state security apparatus but also through attacks and clashes of rival groups with one another to a further destablisation of the Northern Caucasus. Supposed pro -Russian compatriots, Islamic clergy and policemen increasingly fell prey to them. The groups recruited their supporters mainly from relatives of victims of Russian cleansing campaigns. In this, the motive of revenge plays a fundamental part. Furthermore the possibility of making a living in a republic which was otherwise dominated by destruction and unemployment attracted young Chechens to the Islamic fundamentalists:

"For my acceptance of the new purified faith, the Arab gave me money as a gift and told me that if I brought round two more followers, they would give me $5,000 for each of them. So I brought two of my relatives from Dagu-Barzoi. They gave them $1,000 each, and I earned $10,000" (Tishkov: 173). In spite of the attraction of financial security and a new footing in the community of the strugglers for faith, Arabic wahhabism did not become a movement of the masses in Chechnya. The Carnegie Centre Moscow estimated the number of militant purist Islamists in 2002 as being five to twenty per cent of Muslims in the Northern Caucasus. (Malašenko/Trenin 2002: 87). One reason for this– as was already the case under Imam Schamil - must be taken to be the deep-rootedness of adat in society which contradicts a Salifistic form of worship. My interview partner Amina depicts the consequences of a conversion to Wahhabism by quoting the example of her elder brother: „Before he went to Charkow17 he was with the Wahhabists at some point or another. Our relatives on our father’s side were angry because of that. Anyway, they

17 Charkow. A city in the Ukraine

Marit Cremer 208

set him an ultimatum, either them or the Wahhabists, for him to decide. And he said that it was so difficult to get away from the Wahhabists (…) Anyway, he just went away and in the first two years we didn’t know where he was. He had gone away and simply disappeared, vanished into thin air. At this time, the contact to the Wahhabists was severed, first he was an official member, then an unofficial member, then he slowly vanished und then he got in touch with us again. (…) There was no more trace of his Wahhabist views, he was very modern, his wife (…) is also very modern, she has modern views…".

5.4 The Caucasian Emirate It is not clear as to what extent the Jama’at was centrally controlled by Doku Umarov18 in October 2007 since the proclamation of the so-called Caucasian Emirate by the same and as to whether they are globally linked with al-Qaida (Cf. Halbach 2010: 160 f. on this subject). Umarov’s aim is no longer the independence of Chechnya from Russia, but an Emirate which incorporates the entire Northern Caucasus as well as parts of South Russia and in which the sharia is the only form of law. The model for the emirate is Shamil’s Imamate of the 19th century. In his speech of proclamation of the emirate, Umarov stresses that the unity of all Muslims and the struggle against so-called infidels and greatly digresses from the long-standing aim of an independent Chechnyan Republic:

"I am announcing to all Muslims that I am at war against all infidels under the banner of Allah. This means that I, Emir of the Caucasian Mujahideen, reject all infidel laws that have been established in this world. I reject all laws and systems that the infidels have established on the land of the Caucasus (…). Those who attack Muslims are our common enemies; our enemy is not only Russia, but also America, England and Israel – all those who conduct war against Islam and Muslims." (Kavkazcenter.com). Through this statement, Umarov distances himself at one and the same time from his earlier committment to Chechnyan nationalism and North Caucasian Sufism. The Chechnyan exile parliament immediately condemned his declaration as an attempt to "convert our struggle for national liberation into a category of so-called 'international terrorism'“. (Chechnya weekly 8: 44)

This turning towards radical forms of Islam had already become apparent two years previously in an interview which Umarov gave to the journalist Andrei Babitsky. In answer to the question on what basis he hopes to win the war in spite of the present hopeless prospects, Umarov answers: "We are believers. A person without faith is not a whole person. We are on Allah’s path; it is a sacred path for us. So we are obligated to perform the jihad. Today there is a superpower that the entire world believes cannot be defeated militarily – that idea also needs to be analyzed. (…)". In answer to the following question, Umarov takes a clear stand on the conflict between traditional Chechnyan legal structures and those of the sharia: "How correct is it to say that in the forests there are no longer any people who are

18 On Doku Umarov (Chechnyan underground president sinces 2006), Cf. Leahy: 2010.


not motivated by radical Islam, who are not trying to establish a sharia based state, a sharia based legal system, who reject the traditional Chechnyan way of life?

Umarov: That is an FSB fantasy. Ideological work has come to the forefront during this war. This is the ignorant thinking of Kadyrov’s clan, because Kadyrov considered himself a traditional Muslim. A Muslim, any Muslim, any person must live according to some law. And if a Muslim lives according to sharia, then sharia forbids him from goofing around or smoking or doing such things, then I consider that good. But I, for example, came to this war as a patriot. The switch to war happened in Moscow and when the occupation began, I understood that war was inevitable and I arrived as a patriot. Maybe at that time I didn’t know how to pray, I don’t remember. Now, they say I am a Wahhabi or a follower of radical Islam. That is laughable. I have a whole front. I go along that front and I don’t see people fighting to bring to the world Wahhabism or terror. The whole world is just clinging to those two words."

6. Uncertainty and Endangering of Women in Chechnya between Adat, Sharia and Russian Constitution

Various representatives of Chechnyan NGOs19 deny that in the struggle for political power, more radical forms of Islam are gaining ground. However, the population is confronted today with Kadyrov’s religiously inspired acts of law, attacks by Salafite morality guardians and a secular constitution of the Russian Federation, three conceptions of law at odds with each other, which results in the population’s considerable insecurity: "Now it looks like there are several directions in Islam. Young people do not know who to listen to, there are hardly any old people. The Wahhabi Movement is being preached to us in a stronger and stronger form." ( erevatenko 2006; all the quotations were translated by the author). For those members of the population who conceive Islam as being part of Chechnyan Identity, religion has changed many times in the last decades in the way in which it is directed and in what it signifies. Today, knowledge about interpretation of the Koran can be vitally important. Chechnyan women in particular get into a conflict beween century old adat customary law as they do with traditional and new interpretations of the holy book for Islam. The previous coexistence of Vainakh and Muslim identities seems to have lost its functionality and its rivaling position for the legal system in force in order to acquiesce to the present legal system.

If formerly women could depend on adat, i.e. they knew which rights and obligations resulted from customary law and how they had to behave, today we can observe arbitrariness and lack of respect towards women. The result of the studies of the Women of the Don (Cerevatenko 2006, 2010) indicate that in Chechnya at present there is no binding legal system which the people can orientate themselves upon. On the other hand, adat and sharia are mixed together – in matters of divorce

19 In the interests of their safety the representatives in this case remain anonymous.

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and inheritance - mainly to the disadvantage of women. This involves a greater hazard for their physical and mental integrity and a higher risk of poverty. The authors of the study particularly deplore the disrespectful, cynical and sexist treatment of women which very clearly breaches rules of the adat. Women from all social classes are threatened by state and domestic violence. Additionally, difficult economic situations force women to contribute to the family income. At the same time, the majority of men demand that women go back to domestic duties which cannot be combined with a profession. When women are harassed by men at work, they are often faced with the decision or either defending themselves and losing the much needed income or of keeping quiet and tolerating the harassment.

New Interpretations of the Sharia and Adat to the Disadvantage of Women Since 2008, with the help of the press and electronic media, increasing pressure has been put on women who allegedly do not dress and behave according to national standards. In this way, women who behave in an undignified way for Chechens are filmed if, for example, they are not wearing a headscarf or their skirts are too short or they are carrying cigarettes with them. Other videos, which are also sent to mobile phones, show women having sex (but the man is not shown) violence against women and their punishment even up to the point of execution. The publication of these videos in the internet signifies a breach of honour for the relatives, which has to be avenged by the adat. The women questioned complain that they can hardly protect themselves against such accusations. In the case of transgressing sexual boundaries, women are the ones to be given the blame:

"Women do not speak about it. Women are always the ones to get the blame anyway. Men are not punished: That has already become a phenomenon of the masses: extreme flirting and sex. And the woman is always to blame. Like in the fable: 'It’s your fault that I’m hungry.' That’s what it’s like here. It’s your own fault. It’s just presumed that the victim of violence is to blame for having become a victim" ( erevatenko 2010). Women find themselves in a weaker social position than men. They are given less the benefit of the doubt when moral codes are transgressed. They bear the burden of honour and the good reputation of the entire clan. The danger of defamation together with inadequate legal protection implies a considerable limitation of their field of action. In the last few years, press reports on out of court executions of young women resulted in a widespread feeling of insecurity of the population. Kadyrov‘s government justifies such executions with the allegedly immoral behaviour of the victim, which entailed killing her in the interests of family honour. The president thus contributes to a further increase in the endangering of women in his republic. 7. Resumé A prerequisite for the successful Islamisation of Vainakh ethnic groups must be considered to be the significance of customary law before the application of the


sharia. The well balanced system of Islam and adat which even produced a popular Chechnyan form of Islam influenced by local customs was however thrown out of balance due to 70 years of Communism and 20 years of war and crisis in Chechnya. For the stability of society, it was of upmost importance. Imam Schamil failed in his struggle against the tsarist invaders in the Caucasian War from 1834-1859 not the least due to the resistance of the mountain peoples and their refusal to give up customary law in favor of the sharia.

The Soviet power encouraged Islam at the beginning of its rule with the aim of playing it off against the adat and overcoming the latter as a barrier to the implementation of Soviet ideology. The plan was however unsuccessful and every form of religious practise was already banned at the end of the 1920s. However, certain religious customs were conserved up to Perestroika, even in families with a Soviet socialisation. With the breakup of the Soviet Union in the course of the new construction of collective identity, a renaissance of Islam took place, also in northern Caucasus. Nevertheless, the opening of the country also brought about new religious currents in the northern Caucasus which were politically contradictory and which if nothing else led to conflicts between the political camps. Moscow both under President Jelzin and President Putin fostered the fear of the Islamic threat in order to justify sending troups into Chechnya. The wars from 1994-1996 and from 1999-2002 resulted in a religious radicalisation of parts of the resistance whose aim was no longer purely the independence of the Chechnyan Republic from Moscow, but in imitation of Schamil’s Imamate, the creation of an Islamic Republic or, from 2008 onwards, a Caucasian Emirate. Such endeavours are however rejected by the majority of the population which supports Chechnyan popular Islam with its customary law elements. In the meantime, conflicts divide clans and families. The consequence is the collapse of the family and with it the loss of its socially protective function which is of vital importance especially for women in a republic characterised by state arbitrariness and lack of rights under President Kadyrov.

Conflicts over a binding legal system, today’s adat, sharia and the Russian constitution vie with one another and are still very much alive. Whether it will end with a balance which takes the interests of the majority of the population into consideration cannot be foreseen today. The fear expressed in the west that the Islamists could win the upper hand is not shared by Chechnyan observers. And yet, the Russian constitution, which could represent human and civil rights according to the conception of modern societies, seems to be the weakest link and is not even desired by the government. The struggle for power is fought out through customary law and Islamic jurisprudence.

8. Bibliography Abašin, Sergey N. (2005): Qalïm und mahr in Mittelasien: Die moderne Praxis und die

Debatten über Scharia und Adat. In: Kemper/Reinkowski (Hrsg.): 195-207. Babitsky, Andrei (2005): Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty interviews chechen field

commander Doku Umarov. http://engforum.pravda.ru/showthread.php?140125-Rfe-rl-

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Interviews-Chechen-Field-Commander-Doku-Umarov&langid=1#top, 19.08.2005, Last access 11.02.2011.

erevatenko, Valentina (2010), Prava ženš in v e enskoj respublike (The rights of women in the Chechen Republic) Don women. Rostov.

erevatenko, Valentina (2006): e enskie ženš iny i vooružennyj konflikt: izmenenie položenija i roli v sem'e i v obš estve (Chechnyan women and the armed conflict: changes in their position and role in family and society). Don women. Rostov.

erevatenko, Valentina/Pjatin, Valerij (2001): e enskie ženš iny v vooružennyh konfliktah (Chechnyan women in armed conflicts). Don women. Rostov. No page no. http://home.novoch.ru/~donwomen/Report_Chechen%20Women%20and%20War_%2001.htm. Last access: 20.05.2006

Chechnya Weekly, „ChRI Parliament Condemns 'Caucasian Emirate' Proclamation“, vol. 8/44, Nov 15, 2007.

Cremer, Marit (2007), Fremdbestimmtes Leben. Eine biographische Studie über Frauen in Tschetschenien. Bielefeld.

Halbach, Uwe (2010): Russlands inneres Ausland. Der Nordkaukasus als Notstandszone am Rande Europas. Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik. Berlin.

Halbach, Uwe (2003): Rußlands Welten des Islam. Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Berlin. Islam na territorii byvshei Rossiiskoi imperii: Entsiklopedicheskii slovar' (Islam in the

Territory of the Former Russian Empire: Encyclopedic Dictionary), 1998-2001, 3 Bde, Moscow, Vostochnaya Literatura, vol.1.

Jonson, Lena/Esenov, Murad (eds.) (1999): Political Islam and Conflicts in Russia and Central Asia. Stockholm, Swedish Institute of International Affairs.

Kavkazcenter: Interview with Dokka Umarov, March, 8, 2007, http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2007/03/08/7655.shtml; last access 11.02.2011

Kemper, Michael/Reinkowski, Maurus (Hrsg.) (2005): Rechtspluralismus in der islamischen Welt. Gewohnheitsrecht zwischen Staat und Gesellschaft. Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des islamischen Orients. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift „Der Islam“ Hg. v. Lawrence I. Conrad, Bd. 16. Berlin, New York.

Kemper, Michael (2005): Arabischsprachige Adat-Ethnographie auf russische Bestellung? In: Kemper/Reinkowski (2005): 317-330.

Leahy, Kevin D. (2010): From Racketeer to Emir: A political portrait of Doku Umarov, Russia's most wanted man. Caucasian Review of International Affairs, Vol. 4/3.

Malašenko, Aleksej/Trenin, Dmitrij (2002): Vremja juga. Rossija v e ne. e nja v Rossii. Moscow.

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Muzhukhoyev, Maksharip B.: 1979, Proniknovenie islama k chechentsam i ingusham (The spread of Islam amoung Chechens and Ingush) in: V.B.Vinogradov (Hrsg.): Arkheologicheskie pamyatniki Checheno-Ingushetii (Archaelogical Sites in Checheno-Ingushetiya), 125-150. Groznyy.)

Tishkov, Valery (2004): Chechnya: Life in a war-torn society. Berkeley. Zel’kina, Anna (1999): e nja i Rossija: obš estva i gosudarstva (Chechnya and Russia:

societies and states), Moscow: Polinform-Talburi. http://www.sakharov-center.ru/chr/chrus03_1.htm. Last access: 15.03.2011.

Authors Daniel Bergelt, graduate sociologist, is research assistant at the research project “Worldviews in Precarious Conditions of Life” at the University of Leipzig, Germany. His main academic interests are qualitative and quantitative research methodology, sociology of religion, questions of gender, precarity and social inequality. Publication: (2010): Arbeit als Sinnstiftung in prekären Lebenslagen in Ostdeutschland. In: Pickel, Gert/Sammet, Kornelia (eds.): Religion und Religiosität im vereinigten Deutschland. Zwanzig Jahre nach dem Umbruch. Wiesbaden (VS Verlag). 263-278 (with Marliese Weißmann and Timmo Krü-ger). Andreea Constantin is master student in IMPALLA Program, Catholic University of Leu-ven, Belgium. Her main research interests are related to changes in gender and religious values, as well as with quantitative research methodology. Marit, Cremer, dipl.soz., studies in Berlin and St. Petersburg. Her main interests of re-search are sociology of migration and gender. She writes her PhD-thesis on perspectives of migrants in Chechnya. 2007 she published her study "Fremdbestimmtes Leben. Eine bio-graphische Studie über Frauen in Tschetschenien" (transcript verlag Bielefeld), which deals with the changes in the chechen society in the last decade by using biographical-narrative interviews with chechen women-migrants. In her last study, she analyze the context of successful advise for migrants protestant psychosocial advise-centers. Friedrich Fürstenberg, Dr.rer.pol., is Professor emeritus of Sociology at the University of Bonn, Germany, after holding positions at the Technical University Clausthal (1963-66), the University of Linz, Austria (1966-81), and the University of Bochum (1981-86). Major areas of research are theory and empirical analysis of social structures, especially econom-ic organizations, and socio-cultural studies., especially the sociology of religion. 1964-1967 he acted as Chairman, Research Committee on Sociology of Religion at the German Socio-logical Association. He was advisor for social sciences at the 3rd edition of the encyclopedia “Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart”. 1991 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Soka University, Tokyo. He is member of the Section for Sociology of Eastern and Mid-Eastern Europe at the German Sociological Association. Among his numerous publi-cations are: Religionssoziologie (1961). In: RGG³, Sp. 1027-1032; Religionssoziologie (ed.)(1970²) Neuwied/Rh./Berlin (Luchterhand) (with Ingo Mörth) (1979): Religionssozi-ologie, in: Handbuch der empirischen Sozialforschung Bd. 14, Stuttgart (Enke). 1-84, and 1999: Die Zukunft der Sozialreligion. Konstanz (uvk). Anja Gladkich, dipl. kult., is academic research assistant at the chair of the Sociology of Church and Religion at the University of Leipzig. There working on her PhD-thesis on

G. Pickel, K. Sammet (Eds.), Transformations of Religiosity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-531-93326-9, © VS Verlag für Sozialwisenschaften | Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2012

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youth and religion in Germany. Her main research areas are empirical sociology of religion, religion and social capital, political culture. Publications: (2010) Säkularisierung, religiöses Sozialkapital und Politik – Religiöses Sozialkapital als Faktor der Zivilgesellschaft und als kommunale Basis subjektiver Religiosität? In: Antonius Liedhegener/Ines-Jacqueline Werkner (eds.): Religion zwischen Zivilgesellschaft und politischem System. Befunde - Positionen – Perspektiven. Wiesbaden (VS Verlag) (with G. Pickel); (2011) Religiöse Vita-lität und Religionslosigkeit bei jungen Erwachsenen in Ost- und Westdeutschland nach der Wende. In: Gert Pickel, Kornelia Sammet (eds.): Religion und Religiosität im vereinigten Deutschland. Zwanzig Jahre nach dem Umbruch. Wiesbaden (VS Verlag). 225-243. Krunoslav Nikodem, PhD, is assistant professor on the Department of Sociology at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University in Zagreb, Croatia. His major re-search interests include sociology of religion and sociology of cyber culture. He is author of numerous articles including (2009) Why, at all, Do We Need Religion? Religion and Moral-ity in Post-Communist Europe (with Siniša Zrinš ak) In: Pickel, Gert/Müller, Olaf (eds.): Church and Religion in Contemporary Europe. Results from Empirical and Comparative Research. Wiesbaden (VS Verlag) 13-24; Kiborzi i «djeca po narudžbi». Prilog sociološkom istraživanju osnova cyber kulture/Cyborgs and «Custom-made Babies»; Con-tribution to Sociological Research in cyber culture/Socijalna ekologija. 18/2: 109-129. Gert Pickel, Dr. phil., is Professor of Sociology of Religion at the Institute for Practical Theology at the University of Leipzig, Germany. His major areas of research include the theoretical and empirical sociology of religion as well as political sciences in international comparison. Special points of research are the international development of secularization combined with the thesis of a contextualized secularization theory, and the connection between religion and politics. He has written and published numerous books and articles such as Religious Individualization or Secularization (2007) in the British Journal of Soci-ology (with Detlef Pollack); (2011) Religionssoziologie. Einführung in die zentralen The-menbereiche. Wiesbaden (VS Verlag) or edited (2009) the volume Church and Religion in Contemporary Europe (with O. Müller) or (2003) Political Culture in Post-Communist Europe. Attitudes in New Democracies. Aldershot (Ashgate). (with D. Pollack/O. Müller/ J. Jacobs). He is also member of the board of the Section for Sociology of Religion at the German Society of Sociology, member of the board of the working group Politics and Re-ligion of the German Associatoion for Political Science (DVPW) and member of the Centre for the Studies of Religion (CSR) at the University of Leipzig and involved in different international societies dealing with questions of religion.

Susanne Pickel, Dr. phil., is Professor of Comparative Politics at the Institute for Political Science at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. Major areas of research are theoret-ical and empirical analysis of comparative politics and political sociology. Her research is focused on political culture, voting behavior, political systems and the measurement of the quality of political systems. She is member of the board of the Section “Comparative Poli-

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tics” at the German Association of Political Science. Publications: (2006) Politische Kultur- und Demokratieforschung. Grundbegriffe, Theorien, Methoden. Eine Einführung. Wiesba-den (with G. Pickel); (2010) Political Culture(s) in Eastern Europe: An Eastern European Map of Political Support. In: Halman, Loek/Voicu, Malina (eds.): Mapping Value Orienta-tions in Central and Eastern Europe. Leiden (Brill). 139-168; (2011) Politische Kultur(en) von Autokratien. In: Albrecht, Holger/Frankenberger, Rolf (eds.): Autoritarismus Reloaded. Neuere Ansätze und Erkenntnisse der Autokratieforschung. Baden-Baden (Nomos). 201-226 (with T. Stark); (2007) Modernization, Cleavages and Voting Behavior in East Europe. An analysis of Romanian voting behavior in comparative perspective. Romanian Journal of Sociology Vol. V, No. 2/2007: 85-111. Gergely Rosta, Dr. phil., is research associate at the Department of Sociology of Religion in the University of Münster, Germany. His major areas of research include the sociology of religion as well as the sociology of values. Special points of research are the changing religiosity of Central and Eastern Europe, especially Hungary, and the changing relation between religious and political attitudes. His recent publications include Religion and Po-litical Values in Central and Eastern Europe in Acta Sociologia and Mit értékelnek a magyarok? (What is Valued by the Hungarians?), a volume presenting the Hungarian re-sults of the European Values Study (EVS) 2008 research, co-edited by Miklós Tomka and himself. He is the Hungarian Program Director of the EVS and member of the Auditing Committee of the International Study of Religion in Central and Eastern Europe Associa-tion (ISORECEA). Kornelia Sammet, Dr. phil., is sociologist and research group director at the Institute for Cultural Studies at the University of Leipzig, Germany. Her current research project enti-teld “Worldviews in Precarious Conditions of Life” explores the relations between religion and social inequality. Besides the sociology of religion her research areas include questions of gender, precarity and social exclusion as well as biography. Her special research interest is qualitative methodology. She published various books and articles, for example (2005) Frauen im Pfarramt: Berufliche Praxis und Geschlechterkonstruktion and (2010) Die Be-deutung des Geschlechts im evangelischen Pfarramt. In: GENDER. Zeitschrift für Ge-schlecht, Kultur und Gesellschaft. Recently she edited (2011) Zwanzig Jahre nach dem Umbruch - Religion und Religiosität im vereinigten Deutschland 1989-2010 (with G. Pi-ckel. She is member of the board of the Section for Sociology of Religion at the German Society of Sociology. Willfried Spohn, PD, Dr., coordinator of the research project “ , Multiple Modernities and Collective Identities - Religion, Nation and Ethnicity in an Enlarging Europe” at the Insti-tute for Sociology at the University of Göttingen. His research interests are historical com-parative sociology, nationalism and religion in European comparison, globalization and social change in comparative view. He published article in numerous international journals and books. Publications are: (2005) Collective Memory and European Identity. Effects of

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Integration and Enlargement (with K. Eder), London (Ashgate); (2002) Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration: Changes in Boundary Constructions Between Western and Eastern Europe (with A. Triandafyllidou) London (Routledge); (1995) Can Europe Work? Germany and the Reconstruction of Postcommunist Societies (with S. Hanson) Seat-tle (University of Washington Press). Malina Voicu, PhD., is post-doctoral research fellow with GESIS - Leibniz Institute, Co-logne, Germany. Her research interests are related to social values, with a special focus on religious and gender values. Her research activity deals especially with the inter-connection between religion and gender, as well as with the transformation of religious values in post-communist societies. She published articles on international journals, like Effect of Natio-nalism on Religiosity in 30 European Countries (2011) in European Sociological Review, Religion and Gender across Europe (2009) in Social Compass, Housework and Gender Inequality in European Countries (2009) in European Sociological Review (with Bogdan Voicu and Katarina Strapcova) and she has co-edited the volume Mapping Values Orienta-tion in Central and Eastern Europe (Brill, 2010) with Loek Halman. She is member of the board of International Association for Study of Religion in Central and Eastern Europe and member of the European Values Study's Executive Committee and Theory Group and she is co-editor of the journal Religion and Society in Central and Eastern Europe.

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