Church Commitment and Some Consequences in Western and Central Europe

Data from European countries allowed us to seek an explanation for different degrees of church commitment. The debate on church commitment has first and foremost contrasted secularization theory with the "new paradigm" of rational choice theory. This investigation focused on indicators rel...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Research in the social scientific study of religion
Authors: Billiet, Jaak (Author) ; Dobbelaere, Karel (Author) ; Riis, Ole (Author) ; Vilaça, Helena (Author) ; Voyé, Liliane (Author) ; Welkenhuysen-Gybels, Jerry (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2003
In: Research in the social scientific study of religion
Further subjects:B Social sciences
B Religion & Gesellschaft
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Summary:Data from European countries allowed us to seek an explanation for different degrees of church commitment. The debate on church commitment has first and foremost contrasted secularization theory with the "new paradigm" of rational choice theory. This investigation focused on indicators related to secularization and rational choice theories, besides additional sociological variables—among others, the religious socialization in the formative years, and the impact of the Enlightenment. Following this investigation, the research focused on two related issues. The first is compartmentalization, the mental disjunction of religion from other aspects of life—for example family, economy and education, to wit, individuals’ subjective view of secularization. The theoretical question here was whether higher levels of church commitment are reflected in a low degree of compartmentalization. The second issue asked how people reacted to being confronted by an expanding diversity of religions, in other words, religious pluralism. The questions here were whether people with a high degree of church commitment had a positive or a negative attitude toward religious pluralism, both at a cultural and a private level.
Contains:Enthalten in: Research in the social scientific study of religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/9789004496576_011