Abstract Secularization theory is often criticized by pointing to counterexamples where— apparently or really—revivals of religion have coincided with modernization. But secularization theorists have responded to such criticisms by arguing that secularization is compatible with temporary religious upswings. Recently, Stolz and Voas (2023) have proposed a typology, distinguishing 5 mechanisms: “crisis”, “reaction”, “transition”, “state intervention”, and “composition”. This paper puts this typology to the test by examining the three most important religious revivals in the 20th and 21st century: the Pentecostal, the Islamic, and the Orthodox religious revival. We argue that all three revivals have led to strong increases in various indicators of religiosity, each of them built on a different combination of central mechanisms. While the Orthodox revival seems to have come to a standstill, the Pentecostal/Charismatic and Islamic revivals are ongoing.
Abstract This paper uses a sample of Utahans to estimate the percentage of the state belonging to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the LDS, or Mormon Church). We find that the Mormon share of Utah’s population is lower than is commonly believed. This finding has relevance for certain theories in the sociology of religion that make inferences about church growth and vitality based on the religious demography of Utah. We show how the process of secularization, changes in Mormon fertility, and shifts in migration into Utah combine to alter the religious landscape of the state. We close with a discussion of the implications of our findings for the sociology of religion.
Abstract Are Russians religious? In this paper, religiosity in Russia (2011–2021) is decomposed into age, cohort and period effects using panel data analysis techniques. It is shown that age effects on religiosity are U-shaped: respondents are more religious when young or old with the minima at the age of 41–45 for women and 46–60 for men. The most religious cohorts in Russia were born in 1960–1980. There is a sharp decline in religiosity in younger generations. There is also a large gender religiosity gap in older generations: women are more religious than men. However, in younger cohorts, the gender religiosity gap closes. Time effects suggest that religiosity in Russia was increasing before 2016, while in 2016, a substantial decline occurred. Since 2016, there has been no growth in religiosity.
The following tables represent the results of analysis of data on religion for all of the countries of the world which appear in the World Religion Database (Johnson and Grim 2008). These data are collected at the national level from a number of sources including censuses, surveys, polls, religious communities, scholars, and others.
This article offers analysis of religious affiliation for 18 categories of religion for the globe and six continents: Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, Northern America, and Oceania. Estimates of religious affilia¬tion are made for four dates, 1970, 2000, 2018, and projections for 2030. Annual average growth rates are provided for two 30-year periods, 1970–2000 and 2000–2030. These global and continen¬tal tables are aggregated from country data in the World Religion Database.
While Protestant and Evangelical groups started as small minorities in Latin America, they have recently experienced explosive growth and now make up a large proportion of the region's religious faithful. This unexpected shift led to a spate of scholarship speculating as to how the new Evangelical communities would impact society. Given the perennial concern over the health of democracy in Latin America, much of this work focused on how Evangelicals might differ from Catholics in terms of support for democratic values and civic participation. Some predicted that Evangelicals would be eager supporters of democracy and an active, positive force in the community. Others warned that Evangelicals were too focused on spiritual matters, which would lead to apathy and a passive acceptance of authoritarianism. This paper uses recent survey data from sixteen nations in Latin America to test these theories with the goal of answering the question: are Evangelicals a threat or godsend for democracy in Latin America?
This article presents a microsimulation that explores age, period, and cohort effects in the decline of religiosity in contemporary societies. The model implements a well-known and previously empirically validated theory of secularization that highlights the role of “fuzzy fidelity,” i.e., the percentage of a population whose religiosity is moderate (Voas 2009). Validation of the model involved comparing its simulation results to shifts in religiosity over 9 waves of the European Social Survey. Simulation experiments suggest that a cohort effect, based on weakened transmission of religiosity as a function of the social environment, appears to be the best explanation for secularization in the societies studied, both for the population as a whole and for the proportions of religious, fuzzy, and secular people.
Abstract This paper presents new estimates of the U.S. Jewish population based on a 2019–2020 Pew Research Center survey, which used a stratified address-based sample of all Americans to screen more than 68,000 respondents and complete full interviews with more than 5,800 adults who are Jewish or have some kind of connection to Judaism. We estimate there are about 5.8 million adult Jews living in the United States, including 4.2 million who identify as Jewish by religion and 1.5 million who are Jews of no religion. In addition, 1.8 million children live with at least one adult Jew and are being raised Jewish in some way. Altogether, about 7.5 million people, or 2.4% of the total U.S. population, are Jewish. We present population estimates for additional detailed categories of Jewish adults and children in Jewish households that are not available in any other recent source.
This paper aims to explain patterns of Charismatic revival by utilizing a quantitative lens on church growth in Singapore during the mid-1900s. The research digitized and then analyzed data from the archives of the Methodist Church of Singapore between the years 1889 and 2012. The annual conference reports recorded several variables over this 123-year period such as church membership, baptisms, and professions of faith. In recent years, it also records the average Sunday attendance at each of 23 churches throughout Singapore. This paper presents a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the historical data and concludes that, in line with predictions from the cognitive science of religion ( CSR ), religious revival can serve to energize religious communities that are primarily reliant on rituals with high frequency and low-arousal (see Whitehouse 2004). Typically, high frequency and low-arousal rituals allow for high levels of consensus and social identification among large religious groups. However, as a byproduct of their high frequency and low-arousal, the repeated rituals are predicted to suffer from the effects of tedium, which lowers motivation for the information presented during the rituals and can have negative effects on group cohesion. The ethnographic and historical records investigated within the theory of Divergent Modes of Religiosity ( DMR ) have suggested that short bursts of reinvigoration can be used to revitalize motivation in doctrinal religions. While the data from Singapore’s Clock Tower Revival events in the 1970s suggest that such an event did occur, the DMR , as traditionally formulated, is unable to capture the dynamics of Singaporean Christian demographics because 1) it does not clearly account for the high number of converts who have entered the religion and 2) it cannot account for the sustained presence of high-arousal rituals in the Pentecostal and Charismatic churches in Singapore since the Clock Tower Revival. Demographic data from Singapore, in particular the Singaporean Methodist church, complicate CSR ’s current approach to tedium because it appears that the religious communities in Singapore have not only sustained their motivation, they have grown since the initial revival period in the 1970s, suggesting that new amendments to our approach to tedium in doctrinal religions may be appropriate (Lane, 2021, 2019; Lane, Shults, & McCauley, 2019). As such, this paper discusses how the data from the Methodist church in Singapore are more easily explained through the use of a new approach toward understanding social cohesion in religions that relies on a cognitive (i.e., information processing) approach that links social and personal information schemas with rehearsal, memory, and personal experiences. The theory also aims to formulate its claims with sufficient specificity to be modeled in computer simulations (Lane 2018, 2013) to be further tested against other historical groups, which this paper discusses in regards to future directions for the research.
This article presents a series of projections for religious communities worldwide from 2020 to 2050. It offers details related to the projection methodology used to generate the estimates and comments on trends and patterns among Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, and atheists. It concludes with suggestions on how such projections might be improved in the future.
Using novel quantitative data from the Millennial Trends Survey administered online in March 2019 with over 2,500 respondents between the ages of 18 and 35 in both Canada and the U.S., we examine in detail inherited (non)religion as well as intergenerational conversion and disaffiliation among young adult birth cohorts. Key results include approximately two thirds of Millennials in our sample belonging to the same (non)religious tradition of at least one of their parents. Among the remaining one third who did have a different religious (non)affiliation than their parents at the time of the survey, intergenerational disaffiliation was the most common change present: especially in Canada, but also in the U.S. Intergenerational retention of nonreligion among families where both parents are nonreligious are especially high among Millennials in both countries, a characteristic of this generation’s much more secular social milieu.
This paper builds and tests a model of marriage as an incomplete contract that arises from asymmetric virginity premiums and examines whether this can lead to social inefficiencies. Contrary to the efficient households hypothesis, women cannot prevent being appropriated by men once they enter marriage if they command lower marriage market opportunities upon divorce. Because men cannot or do not commit to compensating women for their lower ex post marriage market opportunities, marriage is an incomplete contract. Men may seek to lower women’s ex ante “market wages” in order to induce entry into joint production. Inefficient or abusive marriages are less likely to separate. Equalizing virginity premiums may reduce domestic and non-domestic violence. Female circumcision and prices women pay doctors to appear virgin before marriage in many countries suggest asymmetric virginity premiums continue to exist. Evidence from China and the US suggest asymmetric virginity premiums persist over economic development. Asymmetric virginity premiums are strongly positively correlated with female but not male virginity premiums. I use variation in religious upbringing to help estimate the effect of virginity premiums on gender violence in the US. The OLS relationship between virginity premiums and female reports of forced sex may be biased downwards if shame is associated with abuse and this shame is greater for women with higher virginity premiums. But the OLS relationship for males might not be biased downwards. Asymmetric virginity premiums are positively correlated with men forcing sex on women and paying women for sex. The model complements a growing empirical literature on inefficient households and human rights abuses, visible manifestations of female appropriability across time and space.
Abstract There is lack of studies of global variation in religious affiliation alongside environmental change worldwide. The aim of the current study is to help fill this gap by exploring variation in religious affiliation alongside environmental change worldwide. We study this relationship by analysing religious affiliation, a variety of environmental stressors and environmental outcomes.
Abstract This study examines women’s attitudes toward the own use of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) by their religious affiliation in Germany. The social relevance of ART is increasing in Western countries due to overall low birth rates, a high rate of childlessness, and a gap between the desired and the actual numbers of children. Previous literature has been scarce, however, on attitudes toward ART, and religious diversity has not been included in studies on ART. Our analysis is based on data collected in a pilot study in 2014 and 2015. The sample includes 944 women aged 18 to 50 living in Germany. The results show that Muslim women were significantly more likely than Christian women to say they would consider using ART; having no religious affiliation was associated with the least open attitude toward ART usage.
Abstract This article investigates the fertility of female immigrants to Europe in relation to the characteristics of individual women (n=1,667), their countries of origin in Africa, Asia and Latin-America (n=68) and the European country where they reside (n=22), using the European Social Survey (ESS) collected between 2010 and 2017 (rounds 5 to 8). Many immigrants have fertility outcomes that converge towards the native fertility of their country of residence in Europe, a surprisingly strong factor. Immigrants from Muslim countries have higher fertility, though, and they compress their fertility over fewer years than immigrants from Christian countries. Multivariate estimates indicate that the effects of fertility rates and religious composition of countries of origin and individual religiousness are of similar magnitude for post-migration fertility rates. The highest fertility outcomes are found among highly religious immigrants from Muslim countries migrating to relatively high fertility countries in Europe at an early fertile age.
Abstract Since Pope John Paul II’s stock-taking of twentieth century martyrs, the Catholic Church has significantly increased the beatification and canonization of martyrs. Not only have the numbers of martyrs increased but the definition of martyrdom has expanded. Using a comprehensive new data set on Catholic martyrs (1588 to 2020), we argue that the Vatican’s recent emphasis on martyrs is a strategic response to competition with Protestants, specifically Evangelicals. Martyrs, unlike regular saints (confessors), tend to be predominantly male and died in parts of the world where the Catholic Church was actively involved in evangelization or had a significant presence. Martyrdom often associates with violent events, such as the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the French Revolution, and with mass persecutions, such as in the English Reformation or in cases of repression of missionaries, as in Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and China.
We analyze cohort fertility by religion and education in Latin America from periods previous to the general decline in period fertility in 1950s. We reconstruct cohort fertility and parity progression ratios of women born in 1930–1970 in a number of countries in the region, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Paraguay and Peru. Our main aim is to understand the past developments of cohort fertility in the course of fertility transition in Latin America and to assess the role of religious affiliation, as well as to understand these developments controlling for a number of socioeconomic characteristics. We also seek to grasp if religion becomes more or less important with rising school levels and human capital over time.
In most European countries more religious people have more children than the secular and are less likely to remain childless. However, in some ex-communist states this association is subdued or even inverted. This study investigates not only fertility and partnering outcomes, but also differences in the level of desire for a child. Four contrasting countries are compared: Austria, Switzerland, Bulgaria and Georgia. We found the more religious had higher expectations that a child would bring joy into their life than the non-religious. The religious ‘nones’ tend to be very worried about the financial impact of a(nother) child and negative effect on their sex life; these concerns are much less prevalent among active Christians. In Georgia, where highly educated young people are more religious than the old, differentials by religiosity are small. History and context cause the impact of personal religiosity on fertility behavior and attitudes to be potentially divergent.
The mutual relationship between demography and religion is explored in this paper through a comparison of the two largest Jewish populations worldwide: the U.S. and Israel. Special attention is devoted to the younger adult population – the Millennials – operationalized here as ages 18 to 29 and divided into three sub age groups. Data come from the Pew Research Center’s surveys of Jewish Americans in 2013 and of Israelis in 2015. After a short review of the main demographic differences between the two Jewish populations, the paper focuses on the multiple possible meanings and contents of Jewishness. The paper explores age-related differences regarding indicators of contemporary Jewish identity: religiosity, peoplehood and nationalism. We discover that young Jewish adults – the Millennials – in Israel and in the U.S., especially those 18–21 years old, are more likely than their elders to view their Jewishness mainly as a matter of religion rather than as a culture or ethnicity. Emerging similarities and differentials between Jews in Israel and in the U.S. are interpreted in the light of general theories of demographic change and religious identification, and are related to specific events and developments that have affected Jews in the two countries and their mutual relationships.
Indonesia – home to the world’s largest Muslim population – is an ethnically diverse archipelago with sizeable non-Muslim communities. There is a dearth of demographic study on how religions shape patterns of marriage partnerships in Indonesia. We use full enumeration data from the 2010 Indonesian Population Census to examine the incidence, regional variation, pairing patterns, and socio-demographic correlates of interreligious marriage (irm). We derived a subset of over 47 million co-resident heads of household and their spouses from the 2010 Census. About 228,778 couples (0.5%) were enumerated as having different faiths at the time of the Census. Rates of irm are higher in ethnically diverse provinces. Such findings are likely to underestimate the prevalence of interreligious marriage due to existing regulations and norms that effectively discourage irm, and the associated practice of pre-marital conversions. Our multivariate analysis focused on three provinces with the highest rates of irm: Jakarta, North Sumatra, and West Kalimantan. In Jakarta and North Sumatra, the likelihood of irm is higher among non-Muslims and among those at the higher end of the education spectrum. In these provinces, the likelihood of irm is lower among younger birth cohorts, supporting speculation about stronger institutional barriers against irm over time. This is the first study attempting to derive national and regional estimates of patterns of irm in Indonesia. Given the increasing polemics related to irm and the Indonesian Marriage Law, setting out this research is an important initial step for further study of this issue.
