Losing My Religion as a Natural Experiment: How State Pressure and Taxes Led to Church Disaffiliations between 1940 and 2010 in Germany

The sociological literature has produced a remarkably consistent picture of the quantitative patterns of religious disaffiliations in Western countries. This article argues, and demonstrates, that strong changes in a social context may lead individuals to disaffiliate rapidly, leading to very different aggregate effects from those in the “western model.” We use the unique situation of the separation of Germany from 1949 to 1989 and its subsequent reunification as a “natural experiment” to show just how much the relationships routinely found can be disrupted under changed conditions. The state socialist “treatment” affected religious disaffiliations in East Germany profoundly as it (a) made disaffiliations 10 times more probable in the East than in the West in the 1950s and 1960s, (b) shielded East German church members from factors that led to mass disaffiliations in the West in the late 1960s and early 1970s, (c) reversed the education‐disaffiliation link in the East, thus making disaffiliation more likely among the less educated, and (d) led to an especially strong increase in disaffiliations in the East right after the reunification     

Changes in Religiosity Among Lesbian,Gay, and Bisexual Emerging Adults

Highly religious Americans are relatively likely to oppose lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) rights and many churches are unwelcoming to sexual minorities, which may lead LGB Americans to retreat from religion. To assess this possibility, we investigate trajectories of religious change for sexual minorities and other emerging adults. We use two longitudinal data sources (National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health and the National Study of Youth and Religion) to explore how sexuality predicts the likelihood of decreasing religiosity in emerging adulthood. Results show that three different operationalizations of sexual minority status—attraction, behavior, and identity—are each strongly and consistently associated with disaffiliating from religion and declines in religious service attendance. On the other hand, sexual minority status has inconsistent and relatively small associations with changes in prayer. We conclude by discussing how these results further understanding of religion, sexual identity, and the current generation of emerging adults.     

Secular or nonreligious? Investigating and interpreting generic ‘not religious’ categories and populations

In research dealing with religious affiliation, generic nonreligious categories – ‘no religion’, ‘not religious’, ‘nonreligious’, ‘nones’ – are frequently used to measure secularity and secularisation processes. Analysis of these categories is, however, problematic because they have not received dedicated methodological attention. Using qualitative research conducted in the UK, this article investigates what nonreligious categories measure and, specifically, whether they indicate non-identification or disaffiliation as assumed or an alternative form of cultural affiliation. Findings suggest that generic nonreligious categories are sometimes used to express substantive positions and public identities, and that these are diverse. These findings flatten distinctions between religious and nonreligious categories as ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ respectively and indicate problems therefore in using nonreligious identification to measure secularity and secularisation. They suggest nonreligious identification is, however, a useful indicator of the advance of nonreligious cultures and the ‘nonreligionisation’ of societies.     

Examining the Impact of Religious Initiation Rites on Religiosity and Disaffiliation over Time

Early religion scholars stressed the importance of institutionalized “rites of passage” to integrate and reinvigorate groups themselves. Surprisingly, little work, however, has explored the efficacy of such rites for the religious lives of individuals. Although research has examined the transformative role of semi‐institutionalized rites like short‐term mission trips and pilgrimages, we shift the focus to consider the potential influence of more fundamental initiation rites such as baptism, first communion, and bar/bat mitzvahs. Utilizing surveys 1 and 4 of the National Study of Youth and Religion and focusing on overall religiosity and disaffiliation as the outcomes, we examine whether experiencing a religious rite of passage during or before one's teenage years predicts the religious outcomes of young adults. We find no difference in religiosity over time between persons who experienced a religious rite passage and those who did not. However, those who underwent a religious rite of passage were 30 percent less likely to disaffiliate between data collection points. Tests for interactions show that the influence of such initiation rites does not vary across religious traditions. Findings suggest the experience of baptism, bar/bat mitzvah, confirmation, or other rites of passage matter primarily as durable markers of social identity, binding adherents to their faith community, if only nominally.     

Becoming a Religious None: Irreligious Socialization and Disaffiliation

The rise in the numbers of religious “nones” is an almost universal phenomenon across the Western world. The purpose of this study is to explore the extent to which religious nones are socialized to adopt a “no religion” position as children, as compared with disaffiliating during their teen or adult years. Related, among those religious nones who come from a religious background, we examine the timing and depth of a person's disaffiliation. This study sheds light on these issues by combining a quantitative analysis of religious nones samples in Alberta, Canada, America, and other international contexts with a qualitative analysis of 30 semistructured interviews with religious nones. Building on a stage of decline framework, we argue that while disaffiliation has been a lead catalyst for the growth among the religious none population—and we offer several observations of what fuels disaffiliation—moving forward we can and should expect irreligious socialization to gradually take the lead in explaining rising religious none figures.     

Exiters of religious fundamentalism: reconstruction of social support and relationships related to well-being

ABSTRACT

Over the past decade, researchers have documented the steady growth of religious “exiters” – those who drop their affiliation with any organised religion. Religious disaffiliation or “exiting” may affect health, and while most studies of religion and health are quantitative and emphasise the health benefits of religious involvement, little qualitative research has been devoted to documenting the lived experience of religious exiting. This qualitative study investigates the social psychological consequences of leaving religion in an understudied subgroup of exiters – individuals who have left Christian fundamentalist religions. Drawing on 24 in-depth interviews, this research reveals the processes through which former religious participants reconstruct supportive social relationships to reinforce their well-being. The results demonstrate that while it is challenging in the initial stages of the exiting process to forge and cultivate new supportive relationships, the construction of nonreligious social networks eventually contributed to their greater well-being.     

Reasons for Leaving: Causes and Initial Triggers for Disaffiliation from Orthodox Judaism

Investigating both the causes and initial triggers for disaffiliation from Orthodox Judaism is an important part of understanding the complex lived experiences of exiters. This study documents an extensive number of causes for leaving Orthodox Judaism, as well as initial triggers, a less-often investigated, yet important component of disaffiliation. Using an online survey, over 700 open-ended responses were collected from 303 participants who self-identified as having grown up practicing Orthodox Judaism but had since stopped practicing. Content analysis was used to organize responses, resulting in distinct categories that fit into two themes: intellectual and social-emotional, the former more often reported by males and the latter by females. The most commonly reported causes and initial triggers, respectively, were issues with the community and lack of belief in Torah and Orthodoxy. Our results give voice to exiters by documenting nuanced accounts of the full disaffiliation journey, beginning with the initial trigger.     

Looking Beyond the Church Tax: Families and the Disaffiliation of Austrian Roman Catholics

This study aims to understand the reasons why Roman Catholics leave the church based on the example of Austria, a country with high rates of disaffiliation since the 1980s. Although previous research focused mainly on the church tax, this study provides a more comprehensive analysis based on a mixed‐methods approach that reveals the central relevance of the family in the process. We began by conducting and analyzing 19 qualitative interviews with former Catholics. Next we used the Generations and Gender Survey (two‐wave representative panel data) to study the characteristics of Catholics who disaffiliated in the intersurvey period (2008–2012). Two types could be distinguished in the qualitative and the quantitative sample: attached and distant leavers. Both rarely attended religious services and were critical of the church, but attached leavers held a private form of religiosity and engaged in religious practices whereas distant leavers self‐identified as agnostics or atheists. The church tax was the main reason for disaffiliation among attached leavers while distant leavers disaffiliated on ideological grounds. One identical factor, however, was of major importance for explaining church‐leaving behavior among both types: family‐related matters and experiences. We conclude that family members and family transitions play a major role in the process of religious disaffiliation.     

Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain: A Quantitative Overview

This article presents a quantitative assessment of Catholic disaffiliates—those who were brought up Catholic, but who now no longer identify as such—in contemporary Britain. Using British Social Attitudes data, it seeks to: 1) gauge the overall extent of Catholic disaffiliation and its significance relative to the retention/disaffiliation rates of other major Christian groupings; 2) identify patterns in the changing rates of Catholic retention/disaffiliation over the course of the twentieth century; 3) analyse Catholic disaffiliation in terms of key demographic variables (sex and age); 4) compare the current religious beliefs and prayer practices of different groups of Catholic disaffiliates and retainees. As will be argued throughout this article, in-depth study of Catholic disaffiliates sheds important new light on the sociology of Catholicism in modern Britain. Furthermore, it contributes to ongoing discussions of secularisation, precisely as a case study of change over time within a significant religious minority.