Secularization in Europe: religious change between and within birth cohorts

There is ample evidence of religious decline in Western Europe but no general consensus on the situation in the East. Analysis of three waves of the European Values Study (from 1990, 1999 and 2008) adds to the evidence base on secularization across the continent. As expected, older people in most countries, even in Central and Eastern Europe (though not in parts of the former Yugoslavia), seem to be more religious than the rest of the population. More surprisingly, the data suggest that religiosity increased in Northern and Southern as well as Eastern Europe during the 1990s. It is far from clear that these apparent rises are genuine. It still seems fair to say that society is changing religiously not because individuals are changing, but rather because old people are gradually replaced by younger people with different characteristics. Much remains to be understood, though, about why recent generations are different. Parents may be partly responsible, by giving children more control over their own lives. The composition of society has changed, but so has the context in which people are raised. Young people acquire different values and face new conditions. Which factors are most important remains to be determined

Afterword: some reflections on numbers in the study of religion

Religious adherence can and should be quantified, but there are serious problems of validity and reliability in measuring religion. Sometimes the problems themselves are informative about the nature of identity and its significance or insignificance. Understanding the difficulties with numbers helps us to understand religion itself

Religious involvement over the life course: problems of measurement and classification

Longitudinal studies have the potential to enhance our understanding of stability and change in religious identity, practice and belief. Good individual-level data would help in developing and testing theories concerning the causes and consequences of religious involvement. Past research has shown, however, that even subtle differences in wording or context can substantially affect responses to questions on religion. The 1970 British Cohort Study offers an important opportunity to test the consistency of self-reported religion and religiosity. In addition, the 2012 sweep asked questions on belief in God and life after death as well as religious affiliation and practice, allowing us to explore the complexity of religious adherence. A close examination of the multiple waves of the BCS70 reveals a large amount of uncertainty in measurement, making it hard to detect whatever genuine change might have occurred. There are indications of considerable unreliability in reported past and present affiliation. It is also difficult to be confident about changes in religious commitment, though a substantial proportion of teenagers who reported that religion was an important part of their lives became relatively unreligious adults. The data on religious belief make it apparent that while some people seem wholly non-religious and a smaller number are actively (and consistently) religious, the majority fall into intermediate categories defined by nominal allegiance, unorthodox belief, or belief in the absence of affiliation or practice. It is clear that multiple survey items covering identity, practice and belief are needed to obtain a reliable picture of religious commitment

Psychological types and self-assessed leadership skills of clergy in the Church of England

The study uses data from an online survey of parish churches carried out in 2013 for the Church of England. It obtained a sample of 1480 clergy, mainly stipendiary. As expected from previous studies, there were relatively high frequencies of psychological types marked by introversion, intuition, feeling, and judging. Gender differences were small. Clergy also provided self-assessments of their abilities in a number of areas related to parish ministry. Personality has substantial effects on these leadership strengths, although the types that have positive associations are often not those most commonly found among Anglican clergy. A single scale can be created for most of the qualities (including managing, motivating, innovating, etc.), but empathising and connecting do not belong on the same dimension. If clergy are to be deployed effectively, it may be desirable to distinguish between positions calling for good general leaders and those where the emphasis is on pastoral work

Religion is in decline in the West, and America is no exception

The US is often taken to be a contrary case to the general decline of religion in the West. David Voas and Mark Chaves find that religiosity is in fact decreasing in the US, and for the same reason that it has been falling elsewhere. They comment that Americans are not becoming less religious over their lives; rather, the more religious generations born in the early 20th century are dying off and being replaced by newer generations that are less likely to be religious

Secularization Vindicated

In the 1960s, it was taken for granted that modernization eroded religion. In the 1980s, this consensus was challenged by the rational choice, supply-side, or market model proposed by Rodney Stark and associates. In particular, they argued that the UK was hardly less religious then than it had been in 1880. Clive Field’s compendium of statistical data allows us to test Stark’s approach to the religiosity of the UK. We follow this with data on Europe and the USA. While we may still argue over some of the precise levers, there is now so much evidence in favor of the secularization approach that we regard it as vindicated

Do Social Crises Cause Religious Revivals? What British Church Adherence Rates Show

Funding Some of author A’s research alluded to here was conducted while on a Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship. Author B’s research is supported by the ESRC Research Centre XXX.Peer reviewedPostprintPostprin

Squeeziness: An information theoretic measure for avoiding fault masking

Copyright @ 2012 ElsevierFault masking can reduce the effectiveness of a test suite. We propose an information theoretic measure, Squeeziness, as the theoretical basis for avoiding fault masking. We begin by explaining fault masking and the relationship between collisions and fault masking. We then define Squeeziness and demonstrate by experiment that there is a strong correlation between Squeeziness and the likelihood of collisions. We conclude with comments on how Squeeziness could be the foundation for generating test suites that minimise the likelihood of fault masking

Vicarious Religion: A Response

This is a postprint of an article whose final and definitive form has been published in the Journal of Contemporary Religion © 2010 Copyright Taylor & Francis; Journal of Contemporary Religion is available online at http://www.informaworld.co