The Religiously Unaffiliated in Germany, 1949–2013: Contrasting Patterns of Social Change in East and West

Hardy, Melissa A.; Skirbekk, Vegard; Stonawski, Marcin

doi:10.1080/00380253.2019.1593064

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 96 publications

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“…Regarding the literature comparing religion in West and East Germany (Froese and Pfaff 2005; Hardy, Skirbekk, and Stonawski 2019; Lois 2011a, b; Pickel 2003), our analysis offers the first in‐depth comparison and statistical modeling of disaffiliation rates and disaffiliation motives in East and West Germany. More specifically, we present the first estimations of the effects of different determinants in different time periods.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Losing My Religion as a Natural Experiment: How State Pressure and Taxes Led to Church Disaffiliations between 1940 and 2010 in Germany

Stolz

Pollack

Graaf

et al. 2020

Scientific Study of Religion

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The sociological literature has produced a remarkably consistent picture of the quantitative patterns of religious disaffiliations in Western countries. This article argues, and demonstrates, that strong changes in a social context may lead individuals to disaffiliate rapidly, leading to very different aggregate effects from those in the “western model.” We use the unique situation of the separation of Germany from 1949 to 1989 and its subsequent reunification as a “natural experiment” to show just how much the relationships routinely found can be disrupted under changed conditions. The state socialist “treatment” affected religious disaffiliations in East Germany profoundly as it (a) made disaffiliations 10 times more probable in the East than in the West in the 1950s and 1960s, (b) shielded East German church members from factors that led to mass disaffiliations in the West in the late 1960s and early 1970s, (c) reversed the education‐disaffiliation link in the East, thus making disaffiliation more likely among the less educated, and (d) led to an especially strong increase in disaffiliations in the East right after the reunification

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Losing My Religion as a Natural Experiment: How State Pressure and Taxes Led to Church Disaffiliations between 1940 and 2010 in Germany

Stolz

Pollack

Graaf

et al. 2020

Scientific Study of Religion

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“…Eastern Germany's communist past forced the pace of secularization (Froese & Pfaff, 2005 ; Hardy et al., 2019 ). Thus, in 2000, only a quarter of the population of the former East Germany (GDR) were church members, in sharp contrast to membership rates of about four‐fifths in western Germany (Pollack & Pickel, 2007 ).…”

Section: Theoretical Considerations and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Religious residue: The impact of childhood religious socialization on the religiosity of nones in France, Germany, Great Britain, and Sweden

Beider

2022

British Journal of Sociology

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One of the distinguishing features of religious life in Western Europe in recent decades has been the sharp increase in the proportion of people who identify as unaffiliated with any religious tradition (religious nones). Non‐affiliation entails a rejection of religious belonging, not the absence of all religious belief and practice; yet the determinants of religiosity among nones have not been fully explored. Drawing on data from the 1998–2018 ISSP surveys in four West European countries (France, Germany, Great Britain, and Sweden), I test the impact of childhood religious socialization on the religiosity of unaffiliated adults by comparing lifelong nones, who were never religiously affiliated, with disaffiliates, who were raised within a religious tradition and have since exited organized religious life. Disaffiliates are consistently more religious than lifelong nones due to religious residue from childhood, with greater residue found among those who were more religiously committed as children. Religious decline among the unaffiliated over time, combined with the increasing proportion of lifelong nones and second‐generation lifelong nones who lack even an inherited, minimal religious residue, suggest that secularization will gather momentum.

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“…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).…”

Section: State Of Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Müller

Porada

2022

Religions

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The increase in the number of people who do not belong to any religion (“nones”) has long been observed in many societies in the Northern hemisphere. This process is already well advanced in East Germany, where the proportion of “stable nones”, i.e., those who grew up without any ties to religion from childhood onwards, has become particularly large and will most likely form the majority in the near future. Given the sociocultural relevance of this group, it is worth taking a closer look at them. In this paper, we examine how far they differ in terms of their familial religious conditions of origin and their present-day religiosity from the nones who still grew up in a religious-denominational tradition (“leavers”), and also from those who still have ties to a denomination (“affiliates”). Finally, we discuss the consequences for the future development of the religious field that arise from the fact that the group of “stable nones” will constitute the majority.

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The Religiously Unaffiliated in Germany, 1949–2013: Contrasting Patterns of Social Change in East and West

Cited by 9 publications

References 96 publications

Losing My Religion as a Natural Experiment: How State Pressure and Taxes Led to Church Disaffiliations between 1940 and 2010 in Germany

Losing My Religion as a Natural Experiment: How State Pressure and Taxes Led to Church Disaffiliations between 1940 and 2010 in Germany

Religious residue: The impact of childhood religious socialization on the religiosity of nones in France, Germany, Great Britain, and Sweden

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

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