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<\/a>People living in the UK will have noticed that Christians have been getting noisier in recent years. More clamour for more state-funded faith schools, more litigations, and more complaints<\/a> against perceived anti-Christian bias.<\/p>\nEvidence of a popular religious revival? Or the death throes of a once-powerful ideology? A team from Erasmus University in the Netherlands has some answers.<\/p>\n
It seems that when Christianity is popular, Christians are content with the idea of a firewall separating Church and State. It\u2019s only when Christianity begins to lose it\u2019s influence over the population at large that Christians begin to campaign for the State to adopt a Christian character.<\/p>\n
Looking at survey data from 18 Western countries, they found:<\/p>\n
- \n
- The fewer Christians in a country, the greater the support among Christians for a greater public role for religion (as shown in the graph).<\/li>\n
- The polarization of views between Christians and non-religious on a public role for religion is greatest in countries where there are fewest Christians.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Then they took a look at data from the Netherlands, where the proportion of Christians has plummeted from 60% in 1970 to 35% in 1996. There\u2019s a good time-series of data covering this decline in Christianity.<\/p>\n
In the Netherlands they found a similar picture. As the numbers of Christians declined, the support among Christians for a greater public role for religion went up, and the gulf in attitudes grew.<\/p>\n
I guess these results are not too surprisingly, but they do highlight a reality that is often not fully appreciated by researchers into \u2018secularization\u2019. And that is that secularization is not a single thing or process. What\u2019s more, it\u2019s possible to have different aspects of secular (or religious) trends to move in opposite directions, at least for a time.<\/p>\n
A resurgence of governmental interest in religion, and increased noise from religious adherents, can happen alongside a increasing popular disinterest!<\/p>\n
Well, that\u2019s nearly it for 2009! I hope you enjoyed the blog this year, and I wish you all a great Christmas (or whatever you choose to call the midwinter\/summer festival). I\u2019ll try to put a post up before the New Year, but just in case I don\u2019t \u2013 have a happy New Year as well \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
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\n![\"ResearchBlogging.org\"](\"https:\/\/www.researchblogging.org\/public\/citation_icons\/rb2_large_gray.png\")
<\/a><\/span>Achterberg, P., Houtman, D., Aupers, S., Koster, W., Mascini, P., & Waal, J. (2009). A Christian Cancellation of the Secularist Truce? Waning Christian Religiosity and Waxing Religious Deprivatization in the West Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 48<\/span> (4), 687-701 DOI: 10.1111\/j.1468-5906.2009.01473.x<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n![\"Creative](\"https:\/\/i.creativecommons.org\/l\/by-sa\/2.0\/uk\/88x31.png\")
<\/a><\/span> This article by Tom Rees<\/b> was first published on Epiphenom<\/a>. It is licensed under Creative Commons<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People living in the UK will have noticed that Christians have been getting noisier in recent years. More clamour for more state-funded faith schools, more litigations, and more complaints against perceived anti-Christian bias. Evidence of a popular religious revival? Or the death throes of a once-powerful ideology? A team from Erasmus University in the Netherlands […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2091,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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