The Rise and Fall of Fuzzy Fidelity in Europe

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David Voas
Univ. of Manchester

European Sociological Review

April 2009 (Vol. 25 No. 2)

ABSTRACT

Two issues have been especially contentious in debates over religious change in Europe: the unity or diversity of the trends observed across the continent, and the significance of the large subpopulation that is neither religious nor completely unreligious. This article addresses these problems. An analysis of the first wave of the European Social Survey (ESS) shows that each generation in every country surveyed is less religious than the last. 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 continent. Despite these shifts in the prevalence of conventional Christian belief, practice and self-identification, residual involvement is considerable. Many people are neither regular churchgoers nor self-consciously non-religious. The term ‘fuzzy fidelity’ describes this casual loyalty to tradition. Religion usually plays only a minor role in the lives of such people. Religious change in European countries follows a common trajectory whereby fuzzy fidelity rises and then falls over a very extended period. The starting points are different across the continent, but the forces at work may be much the same.
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INTRODUCTION

Europe is a key battleground in the sociology of religion. The facts are fought over by every school of thought and have been claimed to support the secularization thesis (Bruce, 2002), the market model (Stark and Iannaccone, 1994), or some third way (Davie, 2000, 2002). Two key issues have been especially contentious: the unity or diversity of the trends observed across the continent, and the significance of the large subpopulation that is neither religious nor unreligious. This article addresses these two problems.

One common objection to the secularization paradigm is that European countries display no common pattern of religious change. Some show high levels of affiliation, other have high levels of participation, yet others may be low in both but have not abandoned religion. Because there is no clear or common pattern or trend, the argument goes, the standard story of secularization must be wrong. Perhaps no single explanation of the religious situation is adequate, such is the diversity one finds across the continent.

Based on an analysis of retrospective questions from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), Iannaccone (2003) suggests that the variety of religious trends he finds implies that secularization theory applies to few countries. Another prominent exponent of what one might call the ‘ragbag thesis’ is Andrew Greeley, whose avowed aim in a book entitled Religion in Europe at the End of the Second Millennium is to dispute the ‘dogma’ of religious decline. He writes:

In fact, if one looks at Europe with a relatively open mind, prepared to be surprised by its complexity, one discovers a wide variety of religious phenomena. In some countries, religion has increased (most notably the former communist countries and especially Russia), in others it has declined (most notably Britain, the Netherlands, and France), and in still other countries it is relatively unchanged (the traditional Catholic countries), and in yet other countries (some of the social democratic countries) it has both declined and increased. A single, one-directional model does not begin to cope with the variety of religious phenomena in Europe. ... ‘secularization’ ... is patently a useless theory because it says too much and hence fails to subsume a wide variety of interesting data (Greeley, 2003, p. xi).

Note that this approach does concede an important point: Europe is not a single entity but rather a collection of two dozen or more separate societies. If it is impossible to generalize about religious change in Europe, then the secularization thesis is indeed useless. If one can find a common account that works for these disparate countries, however, then the theory is potentially useful, especially if it may also apply elsewhere (e.g. in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, or even in Japan). While the sheer variety of history and culture across Europe makes unitary explanation a challenge, any hypothesis that survives testing in this arena has a considerable advantage.

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CONCLUDING REMARKS

While there are indeed many interesting variations in European religion—countries may be high or low in affiliation, attendance, and belief—there is also a single, inescapable theme. Religion is in decline. Each generation in every country surveyed is less religious than the last, measured by the best available index of religiosity. 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 from the early to the late 20th century has been remarkably constant across the continent.

There is a tension between the search for common patterns and describing the complexity of a situation. Despite the undoubted diversity that exists in Europe it is possible to identify common themes, with the rise and fall of fuzzy fidelity being one of the most important. The starting points are different across the continent, but the forces at work may be much the same. The consequences include the spread of indifference, which is ultimately as damaging for religion as scepticism.

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