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Religiosity compared ... Western European vs. US
I found an article about some interesting new research:
US atheists are more religious than Western European (WE) christians.
Or taken the oither way round ... WE christians are more secular than US atheists
Of US atheists/agnostics (well, all those who state their religion as "non" on questionnaires) 27% say that they believe in god with absolute certainty.
Of WE christians, only 23% believe this
Here other results of the poll:
The article also states that in the USA you encounter religiosity at every corner and that there even are atheist churches
In WE on the other hand, while there is less traditional religiosity, there seems to be more spirituality, as an intermediate state between religiosity and actual atheism,
where "believers" do away with certain aspects of religions, but keep others.
For example, most WEs still believe in concepts like the "soul", but without the baggage of the christian religious system around it.
This intermediate stage seems to also be widespread in the US with 27% identifying as spiritual ... some of them believing in a soul and some even in a personal god to which they pray.
Source:
https://www.theatlantic.com/internat...stians/560936/
Seems to be quite right, from my own experience in germany.
In germany the catholics are seen as more religious than the evangelicals (i.e. totally contrary to the USA), but actually, with the exception of small villages in Bavaria, or small evangelical independent parishes, there seems to be not the same level of religiosity as in the USA.
(to elaborate more on this: Most of the evangelical churches in germany are organized into a large umbrella association, the EKD (Evangelische Kirche Deutschland (Evangelical church of germany) ... but there are several small parishes who aren't associated with it ... they are called independent churches (Freikirchen).
I know noone, neither catholic or evangelical, who, for example, would adhere to any rules towards contraception (despite the catholic church officially restricting the allowed contraception methods to KJnauss-Ogino and abstinence) or virginity before marriage.
Even my mother, who is the religious person in the family, restricts her religiosity to watching (or hearing) service in radio or on TV, every sunday ... and sometimes talking about the sermons the pastors held (sermons usually are less bible thumping and more, the pastor talking about every day things and how he thinks they relate to religiosity)
Guess, a lot of this secularism has to do with the fact that in germany we have compulsory school attendance (with state controlles quality management) where it also is compulsory to have sexual education (that included education about contraception and male and female anatomy ... and never ever is abstinence only education) ... and homeschooling is allowed only as a very rare exception (for example for kids who cannot leave home for medical reasons), as well as private schools (they exist, but only a tiny minority of school children visits one
Also, we have church taxes (that are collected, like normal taxes, via the state tax office and then distributed to the churches), taking a lot of pressure out of the churches, to get lots of donations from people via scaring them with fire and brimstone rhetorics, or appeasing them by inventing things like the prosperity gospel
I for my part have been raised as protestant (of one of the denominations in the EKD), been confirmed and so on, but my faith changed a lot between my 15th and 30ths year of life. From a believer in the christian religion to someone who identifies more as spiritual (as depicted in the article) ... a little bit leaning to Unitarian Universalism. Part of this surely can be attributed to hearing about the US fundamentalists and their accusation (towards more lenient christians, to be cherry picking the bible) ... and as a result reading more of the uncomfortable parts of the bible, that usually don't get read in service (like god ordering (or commiting) mass murder, rules regarding raped women and so on) and judging these parts (and therefore also god himself) with nowadays moral standards.
The last time I was at a service must have been around 1.5 decades ago, at a memorial service for my grandfather and all the other people who died at his parish during the same year that he died
The last time that I was at a church at all must have been around 5 years ago, for an unplugged concert of the german medieval/pagan rock band Faun
So, what are your experiences with religion in the society of your country and what do you identify as
US atheists are more religious than Western European (WE) christians.
Or taken the oither way round ... WE christians are more secular than US atheists
Of US atheists/agnostics (well, all those who state their religion as "non" on questionnaires) 27% say that they believe in god with absolute certainty.
Of WE christians, only 23% believe this
Here other results of the poll:
The article also states that in the USA you encounter religiosity at every corner and that there even are atheist churches
In WE on the other hand, while there is less traditional religiosity, there seems to be more spirituality, as an intermediate state between religiosity and actual atheism,
where "believers" do away with certain aspects of religions, but keep others.
For example, most WEs still believe in concepts like the "soul", but without the baggage of the christian religious system around it.
This intermediate stage seems to also be widespread in the US with 27% identifying as spiritual ... some of them believing in a soul and some even in a personal god to which they pray.
Source:
https://www.theatlantic.com/internat...stians/560936/
Seems to be quite right, from my own experience in germany.
In germany the catholics are seen as more religious than the evangelicals (i.e. totally contrary to the USA), but actually, with the exception of small villages in Bavaria, or small evangelical independent parishes, there seems to be not the same level of religiosity as in the USA.
(to elaborate more on this: Most of the evangelical churches in germany are organized into a large umbrella association, the EKD (Evangelische Kirche Deutschland (Evangelical church of germany) ... but there are several small parishes who aren't associated with it ... they are called independent churches (Freikirchen).
I know noone, neither catholic or evangelical, who, for example, would adhere to any rules towards contraception (despite the catholic church officially restricting the allowed contraception methods to KJnauss-Ogino and abstinence) or virginity before marriage.
Even my mother, who is the religious person in the family, restricts her religiosity to watching (or hearing) service in radio or on TV, every sunday ... and sometimes talking about the sermons the pastors held (sermons usually are less bible thumping and more, the pastor talking about every day things and how he thinks they relate to religiosity)
Guess, a lot of this secularism has to do with the fact that in germany we have compulsory school attendance (with state controlles quality management) where it also is compulsory to have sexual education (that included education about contraception and male and female anatomy ... and never ever is abstinence only education) ... and homeschooling is allowed only as a very rare exception (for example for kids who cannot leave home for medical reasons), as well as private schools (they exist, but only a tiny minority of school children visits one
Also, we have church taxes (that are collected, like normal taxes, via the state tax office and then distributed to the churches), taking a lot of pressure out of the churches, to get lots of donations from people via scaring them with fire and brimstone rhetorics, or appeasing them by inventing things like the prosperity gospel
I for my part have been raised as protestant (of one of the denominations in the EKD), been confirmed and so on, but my faith changed a lot between my 15th and 30ths year of life. From a believer in the christian religion to someone who identifies more as spiritual (as depicted in the article) ... a little bit leaning to Unitarian Universalism. Part of this surely can be attributed to hearing about the US fundamentalists and their accusation (towards more lenient christians, to be cherry picking the bible) ... and as a result reading more of the uncomfortable parts of the bible, that usually don't get read in service (like god ordering (or commiting) mass murder, rules regarding raped women and so on) and judging these parts (and therefore also god himself) with nowadays moral standards.
The last time I was at a service must have been around 1.5 decades ago, at a memorial service for my grandfather and all the other people who died at his parish during the same year that he died
The last time that I was at a church at all must have been around 5 years ago, for an unplugged concert of the german medieval/pagan rock band Faun
So, what are your experiences with religion in the society of your country and what do you identify as
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