Gärtner / Hennig / Müller Families and Religion

Dynamics of Transmission across Generations
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-3-593-45972-1
Verlag: Campus Verlag GmbH
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 32, 425 Seiten

Reihe: Religion und Moderne

This comparative study examines the transmission of religion in families in Germany, Italy, Hungary, Finland and Canada. The authors rely on the widely shared argument that religious change can primarily be understood as an intergenerational process. Based on a mixed-methods design, the book investigates the question of how, when exactly and under what conditions the following generations become less religious than the previous ones. From the perspective of familial and historical generations, the authors examine the significance of (religious) socialization for the transmission of (non-)religious worldviews, affiliation, practice, and identity. According to a central finding, religious change takes place primarily in the phase of adolescence against the background of the respective social context.

Prof. Dr. Christel Gärtner ist Soziologin und Mentorin der Graduiertenschule am Exzellenzcluster »Religion und Politik« der Universität Münster. Christel Gärtner is professor of sociology and mentor at the Graduate School in the Cluster of Excellence »Religion and Politics« at the University of Münster. Her main research areas are sociology of religion and culture, social theories, micro-sociology, and methods of hermeneutic and historical social research. Dr. Linda Hennig ist wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Centrum für Religion und Moderne der Universität Münster. Linda Hennig is postdoctoral researcher at the Cluster of Excellence »Religion and Politics« at the University of Münster. Her main research areas are sociology of religion, micro-sociology, migration, gender, professional biographies, and cross-country comparative approaches. Dr. Olaf Müller ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Institut für Soziologie der Universität Münster. Olaf Müller works as researcher at the Institute of Sociology and the Cluster of Excellence »Religion and Politics« at the University of Münster. His research focuses on sociology of religion, political culture, and social change.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gärtner, Christel

Hennig, Linda

Müller, Olaf

Leseproben

1.Patterns and dynamics of transmission in Germany
Christel Gärtner, Linda Hennig, Olaf Müller This chapter begins with a brief description of the religious field in Germany and how it has developed, since these impinge upon the transmission of religion in families (1.1). We then set out how we proceeded with the data collection and analysis according to the two different methodological paradigms (quantitative and qualitative) (1.2), before highlighting and discussing selected quantitative findings on religion and religious upbringing in families across three generations (1.3). The fourth section draws on family interviews to explore the interplay of interfamilial and societal conditions, and shows how these conditions shape the continuity and change of religious worldviews, practices and beliefs for each of the generations interviewed separately for West and East Germany (1.4). In section 1.5, we triangulate the qualitative and quantitative results regarding the continuity and discontinuity of transmission, before finally highlighting our most important results (1.6).13 1.1The historical, social and religious context in Germany
Historically, Germany was a religiously mixed country with a Protestant majority and a Catholic minority (Gärtner 2019b). At the turn of the 20th century, 98% of the population belonged to one of the two Christian churches (Hölscher 1990; Liedhegener 2012, 519). However, secularism and atheism emerged around 1900 as programmatic antitheses to the churches, these becoming more widespread in North and East Germany than in the western and southern parts of the country (Schmidt-Lux 2008). Even though the Religionspatent of 1847 explicitly allowed people to leave the church without having to convert to a new church, it was not until the Weimar Republic (1918–1933) that people could do so without serious consequences for them (Weir 2014, 64), with the number of non-affiliates rising from 0.02% to about 5% between 1920 and 1940 (Liedhegener 2012, 519). This constellation remained relatively stable up to the second half of the 20th century. During the National Socialist regime (1933–1945), the two major churches (Roman Catholic and Protestant) did not position themselves uniformly or consistently, and it is also necessary to make internal distinctions here: for example, both churches were divided into different milieus that supported or resisted National Socialism in different ways (Wehler 2003, 809–18; Gailus and Lehmann 2005). After the end of the Second World War and the division of Germany, the religious landscape increasingly diverged due to the fundamentally different political conditions in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR). As a result, the differences that already existed between the West and the East became more pronounced. In West Germany, three developments are significant: a shift in majority and minority relationships, a gradual dechurching, and the pluralization of the religious field. After the end of the Second World War, up to eleven million refugees and displaced persons settled in Germany, around half of whom were Catholics. Due to movements of the population, especially to rural areas, there was a significant blurring of the previously homogeneous Christian regions, which can be seen, for example, in the increase in mixed marriages. Overall, the demographic changes led to Catholics leaving their minority status behind them. While their share of the population in 1933 was 32.9%, their share in the FRG in 1950 was 45.2% (Braun 1977, 15–16). After two decades that saw the cultural hegemony of the two mainstream Christian churches grow, West Germany underwent a religious crisis triggered by the push toward modernization and liberalization in the 1960s, this gradually transforming the predominantly Christian country into a secular one (see McLeod 2007). During a general shift in values, which in turn can be attributed to improvements in the material standard of living, the church’s dogmatic faith lost its binding power, this development contributing greatly to establishing the ideal of individualization as a norm. Norms relating to family, marriage and sexuality shifted in just a few years, meaning that secular areas such as family and work gradually became more important than religious areas in terms of meaning-making (see Tyrell 1993; Gärtner 2019b). Church practice declined sharply. Thus, since the 1960s, the churches have lost not only their sovereignty of interpretation in society regarding central moral questions, but also their power to create identity. This turning-point has brought about a decisive change: “Not attending church, but staying away from it, has become the social norm” (Jagodzinski and Dobbelaere 1993, 76; own translation). A reversal of the burden of proof has taken place, meaning that people now must justify closer ties to church religion. It was not until 1967 that a rapid increase in religious disaffiliations began in the Protestant Church, and a year later in the Catholic Church, this wave reaching its peak in 1974 (when 216,000 members left the Protestant Church, and 83,000 left the Catholic Church). The wave flattened out again in the mid-1970s and did not pick up again more sharply until reunification (Pollack and Rosta 2017, 79). To a lesser extent than in the case of church membership and practice, but nevertheless unmistakable and continuous, there was also a weakening of “private” Christian faith during this period and into the 1980s (Meulemann 2000, 565; Pollack 2003, 165). Parallel to this, however, the FRG also experienced an increasing pluralization of the religious field in the 1970s and 1980s. In this context, special mention should be made of Muslims, who within 25 years developed from a small, exotic fringe group to the third largest religious group in the FRG, due primarily to the recruitment of guest workers and the subsequent influx of families (REMID 2009). But alternative religious ideas and groups also gained some popularity during the general shift in values, which led not only to pluralization but also to a certain individualization in the religious sphere (Nientiedt 1986). The situation was clearly different in East Germany: while still predominantly Protestant with a few Catholic regions at the end of the Second World War, the GDR developed into one of the most secularized societies in the world during its 40-year existence. When the GDR was founded in 1949, 81% of the population still belonged to the Protestant Church; in 1989, 25%. The proportion of Catholics decreased during the same period from 11% to about 4%, while the number of those without a religion rose from 7% to almost 70% (Pollack 2009, 249–50). Economic, social and cultural aspects undoubtedly played a role here, too, but the decisive moment can ultimately be found in the political overhaul of the entire society by the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). The anti-religious politics of the SED and the struggle that it waged against the churches thus met with a population that, although still consisting largely of church members, were already quite dechurchified internally, and who in a certain sense represented fertile soil for a crudely scientific worldview (Schmidt-Lux 2008, 132–34). The cohorts born in the GDR had fewer and fewer opportunities to encounter church or religious practices and knowledge in the first place (Pollack 1994). They grew up in a predominantly anti-church and religiously distanced environment in which not having a faith was anchored in people’s life worlds (Großbölting 2017, 261; Pollack and Rosta 2017, 237–50). This contributed to the formation of an attitude that largely ignored or rejected religion, and renounced transcendent meaning (Wohlrab-Sahr et al. 2009; Müller et al. 2013). The absence of ties to any institutional form of religion became the...