Losing My Religion as a Natural Experiment: How State Pressure and Taxes Led to Church Disaffiliations between 1940 and 2010 in Germany
The sociological literature has produced a remarkably consistent picture of the quantitative patterns of religious disaffiliations in Western countries. This article argues, and demonstrates, that strong changes in a social context may lead individuals to disaffiliate rapidly, leading to very differ...
| Authors: | ; ; ; |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Wiley-Blackwell
[2021]
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| In: |
Journal for the scientific study of religion
Year: 2021, Volume: 60, Issue: 1, Pages: 83-102 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Germany
/ State
/ Church
/ Church tax
/ Leaving the church
/ History 1940-2010
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| IxTheo Classification: | AA Study of religion AD Sociology of religion; religious policy KBB German language area ZC Politics in general |
| Further subjects: | B
religious disaffiliation
B natural experiment B Secularization B Regulation B Church tax |
| Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | The sociological literature has produced a remarkably consistent picture of the quantitative patterns of religious disaffiliations in Western countries. This article argues, and demonstrates, that strong changes in a social context may lead individuals to disaffiliate rapidly, leading to very different aggregate effects from those in the "western model." We use the unique situation of the separation of Germany from 1949 to 1989 and its subsequent reunification as a "natural experiment" to show just how much the relationships routinely found can be disrupted under changed conditions. The state socialist "treatment" affected religious disaffiliations in East Germany profoundly as it (a) made disaffiliations 10 times more probable in the East than in the West in the 1950s and 1960s, (b) shielded East German church members from factors that led to mass disaffiliations in the West in the late 1960s and early 1970s, (c) reversed the education-disaffiliation link in the East, thus making disaffiliation more likely among the less educated, and (d) led to an especially strong increase in disaffiliations in the East right after the reunification. |
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| ISSN: | 1468-5906 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal for the scientific study of religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/jssr.12704 |