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Europe: The Exceptional Case. Parameters of Faith in the Modern World

Grace Davie

London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2002.

Secularisation in Europe?

Europeans observe fairly strong empirical connections between modernisation and secularisation in the evolution of Europe’s history and many assume that these will be repeated elsewhere, the conviction being that as the world modernises, so it necessarily secularises. Yet to sociologists of religion, Europe is increasingly beginning to look like the exceptional case.

Thesis: European religion is not a model for export, but something distinct, peculiar to the European corner of the world, and needs to be understood in these terms

It is plausible that Europeans are not so much less religious than populations elsewhere, but differently so.

There is a common thread which binds together almost all European societies in terms of religious behaviour:

Historically, the constitutional connections between Church and State in Europe whether they are retained or rejected applauded or critiqued. Such is not necessarily the case elsewhere.

Empirically, the value systems of modern Europe have a considerable amount in common (shared Judeo-Christian heritage). Yet while the authority of the institutional churches and creeds which underpin these value systems is systematically decreasing as decades pass, it is difficult to discern what, if anything, is emerging to replace these social and cultural forms. What is emerging in practice is a form of believing without belonging.

There is a common assumption that Western Europeans are secularised – it seems considerably more accurate to suggest that they remain, by and large, un-churched populations rather than simply secular. While many Europeans have ceased to connect with their religious institutions in any active sense, they have not abandoned either their deep-seated religious aspirations or (in many cases) a latent sense of belonging. Some assume that belief will follow practice downwards. Others (including Davie) consider belief a more independent variable. As institutional disciplines decline, belief not only seems to persist, but becomes increasingly personal, detached and heterogeneous, and particularly among young people.

The effect of Religious Pluralism in Europe following massive immigration.

Historically, a modus vivendi has emerged which has allowed Europeans of different religious persuasions to live alongside each other, both within and between nations. If it is possible to tolerate a variety of religious views in one society, can any one of these views be considered an embodiment of truth? Once more than one truth is permitted, all religions necessarily lose their plausibility, not to mention their capacities to discipline the faithful… or do they? What precisely is the relationship between increasing religious pluralism and religious vitality?

Secularisation theorists maintain that growing religious pluralism necessarily undermines the plausibility of all forms of religious belief, thereby encouraging a greater degree of secularisation, manifested in indifference as much as in hostility. Religion becomes a question of life-styles, options and preferences to the point that it loses much of its raison d’être. Rational choice theorists argue the reverse: religious pluralism enables the religious needs of increasingly diverse populations to be more adequately met, thereby encouraging rather than discouraging greater religious vitality.

Amnesiac societies and vicarious religion

Religion is a specific mode of believing. Important points to grasp –

a. the chain which makes the individual believer a member of a community, a community which gathers past, present and future members

b. the tradition (or collective memory) which becomes the basis of that community’s existence.

Danièle Hervieu-Léger (sociologist of religion) argues that modern societies (especially European societies) are not less religious because they are increasingly rational, but because they are less and less capable of maintaining the memory which lies at the heart of religious existence. They are amnesiac societies.

Europe’s churches no longer supply a sacred canopy embracing every citizen in the nation, but nor have they disappeared all together. They have become de facto influential voluntary organisations, capable of operating in a variety of ways, traditional as well as innovative. In the voluntary sector they are key players: central to the structures of modern democracy and they attract more members than almost all of their modern equivalents. They also imply church-goers (the social actors who carry and articulate the memory). But these are relatively well-educated, often professionals, older on average than the population as a whole, and disproportionately female.

What seems to be happening is that significant numbers of Europeans are content to let the churches and their church-goers enact a memory on their behalf (vicarious religion), more than half-aware that they might need to draw on this capital at crucial times in their individual or collective lives. The almost universal take-up of some form of religious ceremony at a time of death is the most obvious expression of this tendency; so too the prominence of the historic churches in particular at times of national crisis or national celebration.

A point of caution however: the evolution of the role of women in European Society that took place in the 1960’s has inaugurated a dramatic change. No longer were women (and particularly younger women) prepared to be the carriers of piety on behalf of the nation as a whole. The effects of this shift have been devastating for the churches and the culture they represent.

Contrasting Examples: Europe vs. America

· Americans are anxious to be seen as church-goers, even inflating their self-reporting of church attendance. For Europeans the reverse is true: the over-zealous church-goer may well run the risk of being called a hypocrite, especially in working-class communities, and is more likely to under-report their church-going.

· In the US, as some historically dominant denominations decline in active membership, there is some growth in newer churches to compensate for this. In Europe by contrast, while there is similar decline evident in the Catholic and Protestant communities, there is no – or at least very little – compensating growth.

· While in the US there is an active and forceful New Christian Right, in Europe, although a relationship exists between religious allegiance and political predilection (generally conservative political leanings) there is nothing similar in the sense of a social movement of conservative Christians that has an effect on the political map of the nation in question.

· The constituencies with which the US televangelists find a resonance in the US does not exist in Europe and no amount of trying by means of increasingly deregulated media can make good this fact.

Rational Choice Theory (the US corollary to the European Secularist theory)

RCT starts from the premise that the demand for religion in human societies remains constant – being religious is part of the human condition. Religious organisations offer to individuals rewards (certainty, comfort, fellowship, etc) whilst extracting from them a corresponding range of costs (participation, conformity, money, etc). Individuals choose their religion by weighing up the rewards and costs. Liberal forms of religion will offer less security than conservative ones, but at a lower cost. Such a theory assumes the presence of choice (it is in the US that this notion of religious choice is most developed). The most obvious contrast is in the monopolistic (historically speaking) state churches of Europe where the lack of choice has, according to RT theorists, depressed the demand for religion in any active sense. Secularisation in Europe, they claim, is caused by deficiency in religious supply, not in demand. There are those in Europe who favour the application of RCT (believing pluralism and religious vitality are positively related) and those who consider the theory to be too culturally American to be useful in Europe. Davie takes a middle position. For her, the crucial point to grasp is that Europeans, by and large, regards their churches as public utilities rather than competing firms. This is the real legacy of a state church history and is inexorably linked to the concept of vicariousness. Most Europeans look on their churches with benign benevolence – they are useful social institutions, which the great majority of the population is likely to need at one time or another in their lives. It simply does not occur to them to consider that the churches will or might cease to exist but for their active participation.

Churchgoing in Europe – a deviant behaviour?

While statistically deviant (churchgoing is essentially a minority activity), and in this sense more deviant for men than for women, for the young than for the old, and for the working class than for the better educated, deviant seems to be an inadequate descriptor of religious behaviour in Europe. Churchgoing, while a minority activity, does not fly in the face of the value systems of European societies; in many ways it upholds them. And for the most part, Europeans are grateful to rather than resentful of the churchgoers who articulate in an active sense what many of the European palpation assent to passively (vicarious religion). Quite what they are assenting to is not so easy to say and maybe has more to do with moral codes than Christian theology. Europeans are not entirely complacent about the reduction in churchgoing and there is evidence of a consciousness of Europe’s being in the process of removing the “keystone” in the arch of its value system without being altogether clear about what should be put in its place.

Static or Dynamic Categories

On the whole we continue to use static categories to measure increasingly fluid phenomena. We continue to divide our populations into churchgoing and non-churchgoing as if this black and white distinction reflected our current reality. Hervieu-Léger introduces the much more dynamic and mobile concepts of “convert” and “pilgrim”: concepts which capture the mood of contemporary European religious actors as they seek and search throughout their lives with the intention of finding the particular religious package that suits them best.

Patterns of European Religion

· Such patterns do not constitute a religious market in the sense that exists in the US. The historic churches of Europe are considerable closer to the notion of a public utility than they are to a competitive firm. They will be there when the population has need of them, but do not require overt commitment in the meantime. Europeans who are dissatisfied with their churches do not, on the whole, seek new allegiances; they remain, very largely, as passive members of their majority churches – reactivating their commitment at pivotal moments in their individual or collective lives.

· It is not possible to argue that religion and specifically Christian religion, is incompatible with modernity, even in its advanced forms. In the US, South Korea and other fast developing modern societies, the economic indicators are some of the highest in the world, yet the religious indices are equally impressive. What is it that makes Europe different then? The starting point has to be with European economic, social and political history. In most of Europe the modernisation process took place relatively early and relatively slowly and the process had moved through a discernible sequence – from incipient industrialism, through the dominance of heavy industries and their associated cities, to the forms of society known as late or post-modernity (post industrial economies). Each shift offers advantages and disadvantages for the churches but certain types of church organisation will have more difficulty than others on coming to terms with the particular stages in the process. Crucial is the degree to which the institution is embedded in the society. While Europe’s historic churches fitted well into the pre-industrial society, these territorially based institutions had a harder time adapting to the major movements of population that took place during industrialisation and urbanisation. Alternative ideologies emerged to take the place of church teaching. A major dislocation took place at this time from which the historic churches have never recovered.

· As society moves from an industrial economy to a post-industrial, service economy there is an associated shift in the value systems espoused by the populations in question, but not in the direction anticipated. More stress began to be placed on post-materialist values, not least an increasing emphasis on well-being and the quality of life – something more subtle than survival. There is a growing rather than declining interest in spiritual concern (indeed religious belief), though not, it is clear, of institutional commitment. Here there is support for the possibility that European patterns of religion will continue to develop. Western Europe may be distinctive but it is not static.

· Europeans who are actively religious become used to being a minority. They are prone to consider themselves outside the mainstream of their respective societies – a tendency reciprocated to a considerable degree by the mainstream itself. Not only do they become somewhat defensive in their reactions, they frequently attempt in everyday life to conceal the labels that the actively religious in other parts of the world wear with pride. However, the supposed secularisation of European society may not be as deeply rooted as it first appears.

· The historic churches, despite their continuing presence, are systematically losing their capacity to discipline the religious thinking of large sections of the population, especially amongst the young. The latter respond, however, in complex ways – they are just as ready to experiment with new forms of belief as they are to reject the notion of belief altogether. At the same time the range of choice is becoming wider – from new religious expressions imported by the growing number of immigrant communities, and by the greatly increased experience of foreign travel of many Europeans. The crucial question is not regarding the existence of the market itself, but the capacity of Europeans to make use of it (a major point of contrast with the US). But maybe there is the beginning of a European mutation beginning to take place – in the form of a gradual shift away from an understanding of religion as an obligation and towards an increasing emphasis on consumption. I now go to church because I want to, maybe only for a short period, maybe longer, to fulfil a particular need rather than a general need in my life, and where I will continue my attachment as long as it provides me with what I want, but I have no obligation to attend, or to continue if I don’t want to. This emergent pattern is not only entirely compatible with the notion of vicarious religion, but to a large part depends on it – the churches need to be there in order that individuals may attend if they choose to.

· Classic versions of secularisation theory carry the notion that chosen religion in Europe today is necessarily privatised religion. Davie disagrees. Those who opt seriously for religion in European society want to make their views heard in public as well as in private debate. Here the newer forms of Christian religion that have arrived in Europe (especially from Africa) begin to make an effective impact: they offer positive models to the host community – and so the learning process is beginning to run in both directions.

· Patterns of religion in Europe may be distinct from those of the rest of the world, but they are by no means immune from them. Europe is the exceptional case, but it is not an isolated one.