This article examines nationally representative survey data from the Netherlands, collected in 2015 (N = 2,197) to study whether the 'spiritual but not religious' embrace New Age spirituality and reject traditional Christian religion, whereas the 'both religious and spiritual' adhere to traditional Christian religion and understand spirituality in a non-New Age fashion (spirituality in a Christian sense). Yet, we find just as much affinity with New Age spirituality among the 'both religious and spiritual' as among the 'spiritual but not religious'. This is because the more liberal and progressive Christians in the former category embrace New Age spirituality, too, while their more conservative and traditional Christian counterparts in the 'both religious and spiritual' category rather dismiss it. Thus, both within Christian religion and beyond it, self-identification of 'being spiritual' has become a reliable shortcut to identify sympathy with what used to be called 'New Age' in the past.

Whereas attitudinal polarization has become a hot topic for academic debates in the USA over recent decades, the question of whether, and over which issues, European countries are polarized has so far received limited scholarly attention. Existing studies focus on single countries and different types of attitudinal polarization, not allowing for cross-national comparisons. This article provides such a comparison of the state of attitudinal polarization across 21 EU member states. Using the EVS-2017 data, we study three types of attitudinal polarization (disagreement, issue alignment, and sorting) over five key attitudinal dimensions: social inequality, immigration, EU-integration, gender, and environment. Contrary to prominent claims of a polarized Europe, our findings indicate medium levels of opinion disagreement, low levels of alignment and low but slightly higher levels of sorting. We further find that different types of attitudinal polarization do not coincide with each other on a country level but do produce geographical clusters. Polarization as disagreement is higher in the East and South of Europe, while issue alignment and sorting are higher in the North and West. Looking at the three types of polarization together, immigration is slightly more divisive than other dimensions. However, contrary to the new cultural cleavage expectations, disagreement over social inequality is still remarkably high, especially in the South and East of Europe.

AbstractThis article tests two contrasting hypotheses about changes in the electoral relevance of moral traditionalism–progressiveness, which pertains to attitudes toward matters of procreation, sexuality, and family and gender roles. While the “cultural turn” literature expects the electoral relevance of moral traditionalism to increase over time alongside that of all other cultural issues, studies inspired by secularization theory rather predict a decrease in its relevance—due to religious decline. Analyzing the data from the European Values Study (1981–2017) for 20 West European countries, we find empirical evidence for a decrease and no indication of an increase in the electoral relevance of moral traditionalism. Religious decline weakened the effect of moral traditionalism on religious and conservative voting over time due to the most traditionalist voters shifting away from these parties. Our findings, therefore, highlight the need to differentiate between different types of cultural motives behind voting choice in Western Europe.

Studies on cultural divisions in Western European politics typically combine two different value divides. The first divide is moral traditionalism versus progressiveness, which pits the religious and the secular against each other on matters of procreation, family and gender roles. The second one is authoritarianism versus libertarianism, which captures the opposition between the high- and low-educated about basically secular attitudes towards matters of immigration and law and order. Since the first divide is religiously inspired and the second one is basically secular, this article systematically distinguishes between them and studies whether secularization in Western Europe affects them differently. We perform multilevel regression analysis using European Values Study data (four waves, 1981–2008) for 17 Western European countries. Our findings show that the divide between the religious and the secular about moral issues declines with secularization, while the divide between the high- and low-educated about secular issues becomes wider.

Background The thesis of religious decline, central to secularization theory, has become massively contested among social-scientific students of religion. Its critics observe not so much decline, but rather change in the religious landscape of Western Europe, in effect pointing out that the decline of Christianity's traditional institutional, doctrinal and ritual dimensions should not be mistaken for a decline of religion tout court. Purpose In this research note, we address this ongoing debate among sociologists of religion by studying whether traditional Christian religiosity has declined in Western Europe over the past four decades, and whether the same applies to religiosity more broadly conceived. Methods To examine these trends over time, we analyze data from the European Values Study (1981–2017) for nineteen Western-European countries. More specifically, we carry out multi-level linear- and multi-level logistic regression analyses. Results We demonstrate that both traditional Christian religiosity and religiosity more broadly conceived have declined, with the former declining at a much higher pace than the latter. We also find that those who continue to be religious and/or spiritual deviate increasingly from the traditional Christian model. Thus, when one does encounter religiosity, it is much more likely to be non-traditional religiosity than was true in the past. Conclusions and Implications We conclude that religion has declined, whether one understands it narrowly as traditional Christian religiosity, or more broadly. Even though new forms of religiosity and spirituality cannot compensate for the loss in traditional Christian religiosity, they do make up an increasing portion of the overall declining religious pie. Finally, we reflect on the limitations of the data from the European Values Study (1981–2017) and make an urgent call for better survey data, especially by including more suitable questions with which to measure types of religiosity and/or spirituality that deviate from the traditional Christian model.

AbstractMoral traditionalism versus progressiveness and secular authoritarianism versus libertarianism are often understood as central to the same “new” cultural cleavage in politics. Despite the often-found sizable correlations between these two cultural value divides, the present paper theorizes that this relationship is not a cross-contextual constant, but rather a specific feature of secularized contexts where moral traditionalism is relatively marginal. We test this theory by means of a two-stage statistical analysis of the data from the four waves of the European Values Study (1981–2008) for 17 Western European countries. Our findings confirm that the two value divides are most strongly connected in the most secularized contexts because the latter are least morally traditionalist. While the two cultural divides hence tend to be distinct in more religious Western-European countries, they tend to coalesce into one single “new” cultural divide in more secular ones.

Extending and building on previous work on the merits of Grace Davie’s theory about ‘believing without belonging’, this paper offers a comparative analysis of changes in the relationships between ‘believing’ and ‘belonging’ across countries. In doing so, two renditions of the theory that co-exist in Grace Davie’s work are distinguished, i.e., the typically foregrounded version about a de - institutionalization of Christianity and its often unnoticed counterpart about a spiritualization of religion . Societal growth curve modelling is applied to the data of the European Values Study for twenty European countries (1981–2008) to test hypotheses derived from both theories. The findings suggest that the typically foregrounded version of a de - institutionalization of Christianity needs to be rejected, while the typically unnoticed version of a spiritualization of religion is supported by the data.

The aim of this master thesis in Ethnology and Folkloristics is to study how non-binary transgender people relate to words and identity positions which concerns primarily gender and sexuality. What are their opinions on words such as intergender, queer, trans, man, woman, lesbian and gay? What role do such words play in their everyday life and in the construction of their identities?The study is based on interviews with eight people. Six of the informants have non-binary gender identities and two of them are transgender women with some non-binary experiences. At the time of the interviews, the informants were between 21 and 37 years old.The thesis consists of five chapters, whereof the first chapter introduces the topic, the material and the theoretical foundation of the thesis. The main theoretical framework for this study is queer theories. In the second chapter, some aspects of the everyday life of the informants are presented. How is it to live with a non-binary gender identity? Many informants give an account of the complications which occur because they are neither women nor men. People of the majority population often consider their identities unreal and unintelligible.In chapter three it is discussed how the informants explain their relationship to different words for non-binary gender identities. Their reasons for choosing to use certain words to define themselves with are also presented. Some informants claim that they would prefer to live in a world where they did not have to name themselves. Yet every informant still uses different words to describe themselves with.In chapter four it is demonstrated how choosing a word for one’s identity is a process affected by other aspects in a person’s life. The informants decide on a word for themselves depending on the people around them. Furthermore, sexuality and sexual identity also play a big part in how they conceive and name their gender identity.Finally, chapter five consists of a summary of the thesis and a short passage to widen the discussion