Is There Really ‘Another’ Counterexample to the Secularization Thesis? Religious Dynamics in Italy between 1910 and 2013

Abstract

Background Among the modern Western countries where the issue of religiosity has been studied, the United States and Italy offer the only examples of empirically verified periods when religious practice was consolidated or even revived to some extent. A recent study, however, shows that the nature of religious exceptionalism in the United States does not constitute a real counterexample. This leaves Italy as the only country that might provide evidence of the falseness of the assumption that the secularization process is inescapable. Purpose This study seeks to enhance our knowledge about the case of Italy, where the many surveys conducted over the years have produced a wide variety of often divergent results, prompting a fervent debate among scholars. Several authors argue that the level of participation remained almost constant from 1980 to 1990. Others, on the contrary, claim that the level of participation increased between 1980 and 2000. This paper contributes to this path of study, aiming to shed light on the development of religiosity in Italy between 1910 and 2013. Methods Different data sets—time use surveys, ‘stylized surveys’, direct surveys and other kind of data—and an innovative method will be used to develop the reasoning and trace the trend of secularization. Results As will be shown, there are discontinuities in the pattern of religious practice over time. These fractures were due to attrition caused in turn by factors related to economic phenomena like migration and political/ideological subcultures, which temporarily changed the level of religious practice and, at least for a time, counterbalanced the long-term trend away from religious practice. Conclusions and Implications The trends presented suggest that secularization in Italy developed without any discontinuity, leading to confirmation that modernization and religious action ‘counteracted’ each other in an extremely regular manner. Therefore, according to the current state of knowledge, no documented modern Western country constitutes a counterexample to the secularization thesis. It can thus be claimed that modernization and secularization are inextricably linked processes.