Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme, David Voas, Kirstie Hewlett
{"title":"Religious Polarization in Europe","authors":"Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme, David Voas, Kirstie Hewlett","doi":"10.1093/socrel/srae017","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n We define two types of religious polarization and investigate the extent to which they are present across European countries, based on data from the 2008 to 2017 European Values Study and hierarchical linear modeling. The first type is polarization by religiosity, with declines in the middle ground between the actively religious and the nonreligious as secularization reaches an advanced stage. The second type is issue polarization, with the religious and secular taking different positions on a range of socio-political values, including social conservatism and ethnic nationalism. We find limited evidence of bimodality in the distribution of religiosity. We find more evidence, however, of issue polarization between the religious and secular in Europe, especially in social conservatism. Religious polarization should thus be understood as a multidimensional concept where one dimension may be more prevalent than others in society.","PeriodicalId":47440,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-06-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Sociology of Religion","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srae017","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"RELIGION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
We define two types of religious polarization and investigate the extent to which they are present across European countries, based on data from the 2008 to 2017 European Values Study and hierarchical linear modeling. The first type is polarization by religiosity, with declines in the middle ground between the actively religious and the nonreligious as secularization reaches an advanced stage. The second type is issue polarization, with the religious and secular taking different positions on a range of socio-political values, including social conservatism and ethnic nationalism. We find limited evidence of bimodality in the distribution of religiosity. We find more evidence, however, of issue polarization between the religious and secular in Europe, especially in social conservatism. Religious polarization should thus be understood as a multidimensional concept where one dimension may be more prevalent than others in society.
期刊介绍:
Sociology of Religion, the official journal of the Association for the Sociology of Religion, is published quarterly for the purpose of advancing scholarship in the sociological study of religion. The journal publishes original (not previously published) work of exceptional quality and interest without regard to substantive focus, theoretical orientation, or methodological approach. Although theoretically ambitious, empirically grounded articles are the core of what we publish, we also welcome agenda setting essays, comments on previously published works, critical reflections on the research act, and interventions into substantive areas or theoretical debates intended to push the field ahead. Sociology of Religion has published work by renowned scholars from Nancy Ammerman to Robert Wuthnow. Robert Bellah, Niklas Luhmann, Talcott Parsons, and Pitirim Sorokin all published in the pages of this journal. More recently, articles published in Sociology of Religion have won the ASA Religion Section’s Distinguished Article Award (Rhys Williams in 2000) and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion’s Distinguished Article Award (Matthew Lawson in 2000 and Fred Kniss in 1998). Building on this legacy, Sociology of Religion aspires to be the premier English-language publication for sociological scholarship on religion and an essential source for agenda-setting work in the field.