Can the State Accelerate the Secular Transition? Secularization in East and West Germany as a Natural Experiment

Abstract

Germany was a divided country from 1949 until 1989. During this period, West Germany remained a rather religious country, while East Germany became, under socialist rule, one of the most secular regions in the world. We use this case of socialist state intervention as a natural experiment to test Voas’ model of secular transition, which states that all Western and Central European countries follow the same path and speed of secularization. We employ ESS, GSS, and KMU surveys, as well as church statistics, to show that Voas’ model holds for West Germany but not for the East. In East Germany, the state accelerated the secular transition substantially: through coercion, incentive structures, and education, it succeeded in triggering mass disaffiliations from the church irrespective of age, and in discouraging parents from socializing their children religiously. This led to a self-perpetuating process that resulted in a rapid increase in the number of people who were never socialized religiously at all.

A Tale of Decline or Change? Working Toward a Complementary Understanding of Secular Transition and Individual Spiritualization Theories

“…Our analysis here is not as detailed in some ways as those found in Brauer (2018) and Voas (2009) in that we are not splitting populations into distinct religious, fuzzy fidelity, and secular groups and mapping their variations along the secular transition decline curve. This said, our results do suggest, like those of Stolz, Pollack, and De Graaf (2020), that assuming decline happens at a similar speed across countries once it is underway is a poor assumption to make within the secular transition framework, especially when including countries outside of Europe in the analyses.…”

“…Stolz, Pollack, and De Graaf (2020) state that the Voas model of secular transition assumes the same rate of decline across all countries once the process is underway. Quotes from Voas like the following seem to reinforce this: “Although there are some minor differences in the speed of the decline (the most religious countries are changing more quickly than the least religious), the magnitude of the fall in religiosity during the last century has been remarkably constant across the [European] continent” Voas (2009:155).…”

Secularization theories in the twenty-first century: Ideas, evidence, and problems. Presidential address

“…A synthesis of the various new insights might look like the following (see Figure 9). , 1950-1990. Source: Adapted with permission from Stolz et al (2020).…”

“…However, not all tests are positive. In a replication that focuses on the German case, Stolz et al (2020) show that, while West Germany fits the model very well, East Germany does not, the latter witnessing a strongly accelerated and qualitatively different secular transition. What this means is that the secular transition can be strongly influenced by external shocks.…”

“…Second, government policies may have very important secularizing effects on religiosity when states crack down on religions in various ways, which can be seen in the fact that post-communist countries are significantly less religious than countries not subjected to 'communist treatment' (Fox and Tabory, 2008;Froese and Pfaff, 2005;Meulemann, 2004;Pollack, 2003). To give just one example of how a government crackdown on religion was able to hamper religion, we can point to Figure 8, which shows the 'natural experiment' conducted in Germany after 1949 (Stolz et al, 2020). Here, the socialist regime's crackdown in East Germany led parents to desist from having their children confirmed, and to their sending them instead to the non-religious Jugendweihe (which was sanctioned by the state).…”