Konfessionslose – Kirchenfern, indifferent, religionslos oder atheistisch?

Towards a Society of Stable Nones: Lifelong Non-Denominationalism as the Prevailing Pattern in East Germany

“…Most research that explicitly deals with the nones refers to the situation in Western European countries or in the non-European "Western" world (see Baker and Smith 2009;Bullivant 2017;Clements and Gries 2017;Hayes 2000;Hout 2017;Hout and Fischer 2002;Lim et al 2010;Merino 2012;Scheitle et al 2018;Schwadel 2010;Tanner 2022;Wilkins-Laflamme 2017, 2020;Vernon 1968;Voas and McAndrew 2012;Wilkins-Laflamme 2015;Woodhead 2016Woodhead , 2017; for a global overview, see the report by Balazka 2020). Nonetheless, there have been an increasing number of studies published primarily in German over the past 25 years on the characteristics, situation, and development of the nones in East Germany (often in comparison to West Germany) (see, for example, Neubert 1998;Pickel 2000Pickel , 2003Pickel , 2013Pickel , 2014bPickel et al 2019;Pittkowski 2006;Storch 2003; in English, see, for example, Hardy et al 2020;Stolz et al 2020).…”

“…There are now a wide variety of attempts to name, categorize, or typologize nones on the basis of their religiosity or attitudes towards religion, the spectrum identified ranging from secular, atheist and anti-religious, to agnostic and religiously ambivalent, to spiritual, and including "structural", "cultural", "stable", and "liminal" nones (see Baker and Smith 2009;Clements and Gries 2017;Lim et al 2010;Stolz et al 2016;Tamney et al 1989). 3 In order to outline the situation in Germany, we should refer here to two typologies developed by Pickel (2013) and Pickel et al (2019). The older version distinguishes between "devout", "tolerant", and "normal" non-denominationalists, as well as "fully distanced atheists".…”

“…We include this aspect in our analyses in such a way that we empirically answer the question of the connection between non-denominationalism and non-religion from a socialization-based view of religious change. Unlike studies that differentiate the non-denominational according to their religious-spiritual convictions and practices (see Pickel 2013;Pickel et al 2019;Stolz et al 2016), we distinguish between two fundamental types of the non-denominational: those who grew up in a religious tradition and later left their denomination (leavers), and those who grew up from the beginning without any ties to a religion (stable nones). We examine how these groups have developed quantitatively, which (family) conditions of origin characterize them, and what their current religiosity is like.…”