Religious Assortative Marriage in the Netherlands, 1938-1983 (original) (raw)
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Churches in Dutch: Causes of Religious Disaffiliation in The Netherlands, 1937-1995
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 2001
The Netherlands has become one of the most secular countries in the world. A vast majority of the Dutch people does not attend church regularly and more than half its population is not affiliated with any church at all. In this study we set out to test which individual and contextual characteristics affect religious disaffiliation. We deduced several hypotheses from theories on social integration and rationalization. To test these hypotheses we used retrospective data containing information on events that took place in the lives of our respondents since adolescence. These data were analysed using a discrete-time event history model. We found that the higher the level of rationalization in a certain year, the more likely people were to disaffiliate. This effect was particularly strong for young people. Moreover, by introducing rationalization in the model we found a number of spurious relationships that at first glance seemed to be causal. Not surprisingly, respondents were more likely to disaffiliate in cases where their partners were nonreligious. However, as respondents and their partners presumably are effected equally by rationalization, we cannot but conclude that the process of rationalization is mainly responsible for the process of religious disaffiliation that takes place in The Netherlands.
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 2002
Research from the Netherlands has pointed out that the increased popularity of New Age since the 1960s by no means compensates for the dramatic decline of the Christian churches. From a theoretical point of view, however, it is more important to study why those remarkably divergent developments have occurred in the first place. This article does this by analyzing survey data collected among the Dutch population at large in 1998, focusing on a comparison of the young and the elderly. It is concluded, first, that there are no indications that the decline of the Christian tradition has been caused by a process of rationalization. Second, the decline of the Christian tradition and the growth of nonreligiosity as well as New Age are caused by increased levels of moral individualism (individualization). Implications for the sociological analysis of cultural and religious change are discussed.
Church Affiliation and Life Course Transitions in The Netherlands, 1850-1970
The Netherlands, with dozens of different religious denominations, offer a fine laboratory to study religious differentials in demographic behavior. In this article, I analyze a large historical database with more than 30.000 reconstructed life courses, to answer the question whether statistically significant and consistent behavioral differences across life course domains existed between members of different churches. For each domain – marriage, co-residence, fertility and mortality – the question will be whether the specific ideology of the denominations accounts for the differences or whether the social milieu or life style of the members of these denomination are more important, even after controlling for socio-economic status. By charting demographic differentials across the life course, it becomes possible to detect whether different churches had specific “life scripts” or ideal scenarios according to which their members should live their lives.
www.ssoar.info Church Affiliation and Life Course Transitions in The Netherlands, 1850-1970
2020
»Kirchenzugehörigkeit und Lebensverlaufsmustertransition in den Niederlanden 1850-1970«. The Netherlands, with dozens of different religious denominations, offer a fine laboratory to study religious differentials in demographic behavior. In this article, I analyze a large historical database with more than 30.000 reconstructed life courses, to answer the question whether statistically significant and consistent behavioral differences across life course domains existed between members of different churches. For each domain-marriage, co-residence, fertility and mortality-the question will be whether the specific ideology of the denominations accounts for the differences or whether the social milieu or life style of the members of these denomination are more important, even after controlling for socioeconomic status. By charting demographic differentials across the life course, it becomes possible to detect whether different churches had specific "life scripts" or ideal scenarios according to which their members should live their lives.
RELIGIOSITY AND SPATIAL DEMOGRAPHIC DIFFERENCES IN THE NETHERLANDS
This paper investigates whether current differences in religiosity between the Dutch regions are also manifested in spatial demographic patterns. We use cluster analysis to distinguish relatively homogeneous clusters of regions, specified by religious affiliation and the frequency of churchgoing among their populations. Although the regional demographic differences are relatively modest in the Netherlands, between-clusters contrasts are consistent with the expected influence of religiosity. The cluster including the most conservative region, the so-called Bible Belt, also displays the most traditional demographic patterns. In order to differentiate the impact of religiosity from the social and economic factors, we perform stepwise regression of selected indicators of fertility, union formation and living arrangements. The frequency of churchgoing rather than the fact of belonging to a certain denomination manifested the strongest impact on the regional demographic contrasts. In case of fertility of parity four and higher, marriage rate and the proportion of young women cohabiting, churchgoing turned out to be the most important predictor of regional differentiation. __________________________________________________________________________
Intermarriage and the demography of secularization
The British Journal of Sociology, 2003
One way of measuring religious affiliation is to look at rites of initiation such as baptism. English statistics show that for the first time since the Church of England was founded, less than half the nation is Anglican on this criterion. The pattern of formal religious transmission changed during the Second World War. Previously christening was quasi-universal, and the Church of England was the preferred provider. By the end of the war baptism was evidently optional, and chosen principally by parents whose religious identities matched. Further analysis suggests that affiliation now tends to be lost following marriage to someone from a different religious background, though the USA differs from Europe in this respect. A demographic theory of advanced secularization is outlined that specifies a proximal cause for declining religious affiliation, and provides tools for predicting the changes to be expected over future decades. The theory also helps to explain why affiliation may fall most quickly where there is most religious diversity.
The British Journal of Sociology, 2007
The individualization thesis advanced by sociologists of religion such as Grace Davie, Danièle Hervieu-Léger, Michael Krüggeler, Thomas Luckmann, Hubert Knoblauch, Wade Clark Roof, Wayne E. Baker, and others has become increasingly widespread especially in Europe within the sociology of religion. In contrast to the secularization theory it assumes that processes of modernization will not lead to a decline in the social significance of religion, but rather to a change in its social forms. According to the individualization theory, traditional and institutionalized forms of religiosity will be increasingly replaced by more subjective ones detached form church, individually chosen, and syncretistic in character. The article examines the empirical applicability of the individualization thesis on the basis of how religiosity and church affiliation have evolved in Germany over the past 50 years. It comes to the conclusion that the rise of individually determined non-church religiosity cannot compensate for the losses of institutionalized religiosity, since non-church religiosity remains rather marginal and is interwoven with traditional Christian religiosity. Religious individualization is only a component of the predominant secularization process.
'Losing my religion'1: a dynamic analysis of leaving the church in the Netherlands
European Sociological Review, 1996
In this article, we examine the influence of individual attributes (education, parental education, religious homogamy of parents, religious homogamy of respondent and spouse, frequency of attending religious services, and denomination) and contextual characteristics (cohort and period effects of secularization) on the risk of leaving a faith, using life-event data from the Dutch Family Survey 1992-1993. This approach allows a stronger test of the direction of causality, and enables us to disentangle life-cycle, period, and cohort effects.
СОЦИОЛОШКИ ДИСКУРС, 2017
Th e process of modernization is understood to imply changing tends in prevalenceof certain value orientations. Th eoretical accounts dealing with theprocesses of global value changes include notions such as secularization, modernization,and postmaterialist value shift, among others. Th e paper analyzestrends in prevalence of thee basic value or ideological orientations: religiosity,postmaterialism and nationalist attitudes. Th e classical theories of valuetransformation imply decrease in religiosity and nationalist orientations, andincrease in post-materialism. Th e problem is examined using data the DutchParliamentary Election Studies (DPES). Th e Netherlands is an especially appropriatecase to address these problems. Th e trend of the initial sharp secularizationand then persisting religious cleavage is particularly clearly outlinedhere. Th e Dutch have also been found to be among the most postmaterialistnations. Finally, the new trend of anti-immigrant politics has also been ear...
Historical Life Course Studies, 2017
This study focuses on the seasonal pattern of marriages in seven provinces of the Netherlands from 1810 to 1940. We ask whether the prevalence of May as the preferred marriage month was diminishing when industrialization changed the course of workload over the year. And if so, when did this occur, and were there differences between the regions? Given the ban on marriages during Lent and Advent, by studying the number of marriages during these months (approximated as March and December), we can determine which provinces adhered most to the religious rules, and how this pattern developed over time. In doing so, we have an excellent demographic measure for secularization. The analysis is based on the LINKS dataset which currently includes almost 2 million marriages that were contracted in seven Dutch provinces: Groningen, Drenthe, Overijssel, Gelderland, Noord-Holland, Zeeland and Limburg. The main conclusion of this study is that although Dutch society substantially transformed (eco...