Catholic Commitment Around the Globe: A 52‐ Country Analysis

This article investigates variation in Catholic religious commitment in different macro world regions. Although sociologists have examined variation in Catholic religiosity, this research has tended to be limited to Western European and Latin American contexts and has not gone beyond employing more than one measure of religiosity. In addition, prior research has rarely examined the effect of several explanatory frameworks together. Drawing on data from the European and World Values Survey as well as national‐level data, we test for the influence of secularization/existential security, religious markets, and historical legacies on self‐rated importance of God, private prayer, and church attendance across 52 countries in five world macro‐regional contexts—Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Oceania—of the church. Our findings provide strong support for the existential security perspective and partial support for the historical legacy perspectives. We conclude with implications for the study of religion and society in general.     

Religious Market Share and Intensity of Church Involvement in Five Denominations

Proponents of the supply side approach to religion theorize that religious market share—the proportion of people in a geographical area who belong to a given denomination—is inversely related to religious commitment in that denomination. They argue that a small market share motivates religious leaders to compete harder in the religious market place, increasing the participation of members. Another perspective, often associated with secularization theory, make the opposite prediction. It argues that people find it difficult to remain religiously committed in social environments where they are numerical minoritiesbecause other people do not reinforce their beliefs and practices. We use data from a large study of financial giving to analyze the relationship between market share and commitment for five denominations in the United States. We find that market share has a negative effect on church financial giving within all five denominations and a weaker negative effect on attendance in threeof the denominations. We explore whether these effects are the spurious byproducts of pro-religious cultural norms associated with either the South or the presence of conservative Protestants in local areas. In models pooling all denominations, the negative effect of market share on financial giving and attendance cannot be explained away by either of these factors. However, the effect on attendance can be accounted for by congregational size.     

Does Duration of Deregulated Religious Markets Affect Church Attendance? Evidence from 26 Religious Markets in Europe and North America Between 1981 and 2006

This study tests the deregulation hypothesis of religious market theory in 26 European and Northern American countries by examining differences in religious involvement between and within countries. The deregulation hypothesis, which is assumed to be universally valid, predicts that religious involvement is higher in deregulated religious markets. Moreover, countries having deregulated religious markets for a longer period of time are supposed to have higher levels of involvement. Therefore, we test the duration hypothesis. This test is important, as it also has been argued that it may take time for deregulation to have an effect on religious involvement. Multilevel analysis on the stacked European and World Value Surveys of 1981, 1990, 2000, and 2006 show that deregulation fosters church attendance, but duration of deregulation does not increase church attendance. Although the deregulation hypothesis cannot be rejected, we find that modernization corrodes church attendance to a larger extent than deregulation can stimulate church attendance.     

Social Factors in the Church and Positive Religious Coping Responses: Assessing Differences Among Older Whites, Older Blacks, and Older Mexican Americans

Findings from a growing number of studies point to the social basis of a wide range of religious beliefs and behaviors. This study has two main goals. The first is to see whether four social aspects of congregational life (church attendance, attendance at Bible study groups, attendance at prayer groups, and informal spiritual support) are associated with greater use of positive religious coping responses. The second goal is to determine if the relationships between these social aspects of the church and religious coping vary across older whites, older blacks, and older Mexican Americans. The data suggest that more frequent church attendance is associated with greater use of religious coping responses in all three groups. However, the findings further reveal that the relationship between informal spiritual support and religious coping is especially stronger among older whites. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Religious Resources or Differential Returns? Early Religious Socialization and Declining Attendance in Emerging Adulthood

The transition from adolescence into emerging adulthood is usually accompanied by a decline in religious participation. This article examines why such decline occurs at different rates across major Christian traditions and whether this variation can be explained by early socialization factors. Using data from waves 1 and 3 of the National Study of Youth and Religion (N = 1,879), I examine the effects of parental religiosity, church support, religious education, and youth group involvement on the decline in attendance five years later. Results show that these socialization processes adequately explain why attendance declines at different rates across religious traditions. However, these socialization factors do not have the same effect across traditions and often yield differential returns for attendance outcomes. These findings also suggest that comparisons across religious traditions can resolve the “channeling hypothesis” debate about whether parental influence on an offspring's future religiosity is primarily direct or indirect.     

The Limits of Secularization? The Resurgence of Orthodoxy in Post‐Soviet Russia

The collapse of the Soviet Union ended a long period of state repression of religion, facilitating a possible religious revival in Russia. Despite evidence of increasing levels of Russian Orthodox identification in the 1990s, however, the debate over whether post‐Soviet Russia is an exception to secularization trends elsewhere continues. We address this debate by examining trends in Orthodox identification and church attendance and their impact on conservative moral values, as well as the basis of religiosity in age cohorts, using a seven‐wave national, stratified random sample survey covering 1993–2007. The analysis indicates continued growth in Orthodox self‐identification, increased church attendance, and an increasingly strong association between religiosity and conservative morality over this time period. Moreover, signs of religious revival are most pronounced among the cohort of people who came to maturity after communism ended. The resurgence of Orthodoxy in Russia provides a robust exception to secularization trends in Western Europe.     

Religion and Paranormal Belief

This article uses a Canadian national sample to examine the relationship between conventional religious belief, church attendance, and belief in paranormal phenomena. Greater religious belief is strongly associated with greater paranormal belief. Church attendance (and other measures of religious participation) are only weakly associated with paranormal belief until conventional religious belief is statistically controlled; once this is done, greater church attendance is strongly associated with lowered paranormal belief. Together, these two religious variables explain about one-quarter of the variance in paranormal belief, making them the strongest predictors that have yet to be identified.     

Changing patterns of religious affiliation,church attendance and marriage across five areas of Europe since the early 1980s: trends and associations

This study draws on three waves of the European Values Survey (conducted between 1981 and 1984, between 1989 and 1993, and between 1999 and 2004) across five countries for which full data are available (Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Spain, and Sweden) in order to address five research questions. Question one examined changes in religious affiliation. Across all five countries, the proportions of the non‐affiliated increased. Question two examined changes in church attendance. Across all five countries, the proportions of the non‐attenders increased. Question three examined changes in marital status. Across all five countries the proportions of the population checking the category ‘married’ declined, although in Spain the decline was marginal. Question four examined the association between religious affiliation and being married. The religious affiliated were more likely to be married than the non‐affiliated. Question five examined the association between church attendance and being married. Weekly attenders were more likely to be married than the non‐attenders. Overall these data support the close association between religion and marriage across five European countries (where there are very different religious climates) and support the hypothesis that changing religious values and changing family values go hand‐in‐hand.     

The impact of religion on men's blood pressure

Most clinical studies examining the relation between religion and blood pressure status have focused on church attendance, finding lower pressures among frequent attenders. The present study examines the effect on blood pressure status of a religious meaning variable, importance of religion, both by itself and together with frequency of church attendance. The relation between blood pressure, self-perceived importance of religion, and frequency of church attendance was examined among a rural sample of 407 white men free from hypertension or cardiovascular disease. The data confirmed an interaction between the effects of both religious variables on blood pressure status, with importance of religion having an even greater association with lower pressures than church attendance. Diastolic blood pressures of persons with high church attendance and high religious importance were significantly lower than those in the low attendance, low importance group. These differences persisted after adjusting the analyses for age, socioeconomic status, smoking, and weight-height ratio (Quetelet Index). The difference in mean diastolic pressures based on response to the religious importance variable alone was statistically and clinically significant, particularly among men aged 55 and over (6 mm) and among smokers (5 mm). These findings suggest that both religious attitudes and involvement may interact favorably in their effects on cardiovascular hemodynamics.     

Reaching the Limits of Secularization? Turkish‐ and Moroccan‐Dutch Muslims in the Netherlands 1998–2006

This research note focuses on Muslim minorities living in a secular context, the Netherlands. The question is whether mosque attendance among Turkish‐ and Moroccan‐Dutch changed between 1998 and 2006, testing mechanisms of religious decline and religious vitality. Elaborating on previous research of the same Muslim groups, this study examines a longer time span and adds contextual‐level explanations. Whereas previous research reported a linear trend towards secularization over time and over generations, in recent years the trend has become more complex. The revival of religious attendance among the second generation is most striking. Forces of secularization such as educational attainment and generational replacement gradually lose their predictive power. Over time, processes of secularization are therefore not inevitable.     

Investigating the Sect-Church-Sect Cycle: Cohort-Specific Attendance Differences Across African-American Denominations

Varying religious commitment across generations plays a key role in explaining transitions from sect to church, and the formation of sectarian movements. Within a sect, elite members of younger generations are seen to spur internal secularization that transforms otherworldly sects into world-affirming churches. In this paper I examine how cohort differences in religious commitment across denominations evidence the sect-church transformation process, and point to sources of sect formation among African-Americans. Using data from the 1972–1998 General Social Surveys, I analyze denomination-specific cohort differences in religious participation among African-Americans. Cohort-specific shifts in religious participation across denominations demonstrate the secularization of African-American mainline Methodist and Baptist groups, the continued vitality of sectarian denominations, and the nascent ascendance of "nondenominational" churches on the fringes of the religious marketplace.     

The Impact of Retirement Upon Religiosity

This longitudinal panel stud follows 51 industrial workers over a period of 6 years which g rackets the retirement event. Mean levels of belief and church attendance reveal extreme stability over time, whereas the frequency distribution of attendance indicates a polarization of behavior after retirement, with persons who had attended church once or twice a month reporting weekly or infre uent attendance in retirement. Belief in the supernatural and church attendance were more strongly related after retirement than before, suggesting a reduction in normative pressures on attendance. However, church attendance is much more stable across retirement than other outside-the-home activities. Correlational analysis suggests that there may be more individual change in religious belief and behavior in late adulthood than previously known.     

Religion and Political Economy in an International Panel

Two important theories of religiosity are the secularization hypothesis and the religion-market model. According to the former, sometimes called a demand-side theory, economic development reduces religious participation and beliefs. According to the latter, described as a supply-side theory, religiosity depends on the presence of a state religion, regulation of the religion market, suppression of organized religion under Communism, and the degree of religious pluralism. We assess the theories by using survey information for 68 countries over the last 20 years, measuring attendance at formal religious services, religious beliefs, and self-identification as religious. In accordance with the secularization view, overall economic development—represented by per capita GDP—tends to reduce religiosity. Moreover, instrumental estimates suggest that this link reflects causation from economic development to religiosity, rather than the reverse. The presence of an official state religion tends to increase religiosity, probably because of the subsidies that flow to organized religion. However, in accordance with the religion-market model, religiosity falls with government regulation of the religion market and Communist suppression. Greater religious pluralism raises attendance at formal services but has no significant effects on religious beliefs or self-identification as religious. Although religiosity declines overall with economic development, the nature of the interaction varies with the dimension of development. For example, religiosity is positively related to education and the presence of children and negatively related to urbanization.     

Is Religious Service Attendance Declining?

Weekend attendance at conventional religious services remains the most common form of social religious action in American society. Debates about secularization, discussions of congregations as sites of political skill-building and mobilization, and research on religion's contributions to stocks of social capital often rely partly on claims about trends in religious service attendance. Yet, existing evidence does not definitively establish whether attendance at religious services declined in American society from the 1950s to the present. We examine the trend in religious service attendance between 1990 and 2006. Evidence from several sources converges on the same answer: weekly attendance at religious services has been stable since 1990. However one reads the evidence about trends between World War II and 1990, the recent past has been a time of stability. This has important implications for theories of religious change.     

Staying on Track in School: Religious Influences in High- and Low-Risk Settings

Religious communities are known to instill standards of achievement in their young people, but this observation may not apply as well to disadvantaged youth and their culture. In this study, we explore whether religious involvement enables youth in low-income neighborhoods to stay on track in school, rather than falling behind. Using data from two waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we find that adolescents in low-income neighborhoods do not differ in their church attendance patterns from their peers in higher-income areas. However, their religious involvement is more likely to contribute to their academic progress than it is among youth in higher-income neighborhoods, even with adjustments for key risk and protective factors. This cross-level interaction involving youth church attendance shows a consistent relationship with several other measures of neighborhood disadvantage. We explore explanations for church attendance's uniquely positive effect in impoverished neighborhoods and its broader implications.     

Religiosity and Adolescent Substance Use in Central Mexico: Exploring the Influence of Internal and External Religiosity on Cigarette and Alcohol Use

This study explores the multidimensional nature of religiosity on substance use among adolescents living in central Mexico. From a social capital perspective, this article investigates how external church attendance and internal religious importance interact to create differential pathways for adolescents, and how these pathways exert both risk and protective influences on Mexican youth. The data come from 506 self-identified Roman Catholic youth (ages 14–17) living in a semi-rural area in the central state of Guanajuato, Mexico, and attending alternative secondary schools. Findings indicate that adolescents who have higher church attendance coupled with higher religious importance have lower odds of using alcohol, while cigarette use is lower among adolescents who have lower church attendance and lower religious importance. Adolescents are most at risk using alcohol and cigarettes when church attendance is higher but religious importance is lower. In conclusion, incongruence between internal religious beliefs and external church attendance places Mexican youth at greater risk of alcohol and cigarette use. This study not only contributes to understandings of the impact of religiosity on substance use in Mexico, but highlights the importance of understanding religiosity as a multidimensional phenomenon which can lead to differential substance use patterns.     

The Religious, the Paranormal, and Church Attendance: A Response to Orenstein

Orenstein's (2002) JSSR article "Religion and Paranormal Belief" uses Reginald Bibby's 1995 Project Canada data to argue that religious and paranormal belief are positively correlated, but that church attendance and paranormal belief are negatively correlated. In this response, I use the same data to show that while his basic model is true, we also need to consider the interaction between church attendance and religious belief. Religious attendance conditions the effect of religious beliefs on paranormal beliefs in an important fashion. I find that religious and paranormal belief are positively correlated, but only for those who do not attend church regularly.     

The Religious Support Scale: construction,validation, and cross-validation

Cutrona and Russell's social support model was used to develop a religious support measure (C. E. Cutrona & D. W. Russell, 1987), including 3 distinct but related subscales respectively measuring support from God, the congregation, and church leadership. Factor analyses with the main sample's data (249 Protestants) and cross-validation (93 additional Protestants) supported the scales' reliability and validity. All 3 types of religious support were related to lower depression and greater life satisfaction. Moreover, several relationships between the 3 subscales and psychological functioning variables remained significant after controlling for variance because of church attendance and social support. Results suggest that religious attendance does not automatically imply religious support, and that religious support can provide unique resources for religious persons, above and beyond those furnished by social support. Findings are discussed regarding relevance to community psychology.     

Church Attendance and Religious Change in Italy, 1968–2010: A Multilevel Analysis of Pooled Datasets

The debate over religious change in Italy is far from having reached unanimous conclusions: some scholars point to an unbroken trend toward a decrease of religiosity, while others highlight the signs of a religious revival, especially in younger generations. Besides difficulties with definitions, different conclusions are also due to a lack of information over a sufficiently long period of time. This problem is tackled here by developing a pooled analysis of repeated cross‐section surveys that span over four decades. Using six different studies, the article analyzes the secularization trend in Italy on the basis of church attendance that, despite well‐founded criticism, continues to be a crucial indicator of this phenomenon. The results, estimated using multilevel models, show that the trend of attendance at Mass in Italy has decreased since the 1960s until today, despite a period of stability at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s. The overall trend looks like a “recumbent S” trend (decrease up to the 1970s, stability in the 1980s, decrease afterwards). Thus, the claims of a religious revival in Italy are not supported by our results.