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A Christian Cancellation of the Secularist Truce? Waning Christian Religiosity and Waxing Religious Deprivatization in the West
Author(s) -
Achterberg Peter,
Houtman Dick,
Aupers Stef,
Koster Willem de,
Mascini Peter,
Waal Jeroen van der
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal for the scientific study of religion
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.941
H-Index - 71
eISSN - 1468-5906
pISSN - 0021-8294
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-5906.2009.01473.x
Subject(s) - religiosity , secularization , realm , sociology , secularism , public sphere , religious studies , sociology of religion , general social survey , theology , social science , political science , law , philosophy , politics , islam
Analysis of International Social Survey Program (ISSP) data collected in 18 Western countries in 1998 demonstrates that Christian desires for a public role of religion are strongest in countries where Christian religiosity is numerically most marginal. Moreover, Dutch data covering the period 1970–1996 confirm that the decline of the number of Christians in the Netherlands has been coincided by a strengthening of the call for public religion among the remaining faithful and by increased polarization about this with the nonreligious. Religious decline and religious privatization, two of the most crucial dimensions of secularization ( Casanova 1994 ), hence develop dialectically: as the number of Christians declines, the remaining faithful seem increasingly unwilling to accept the “secularist truce”—the secularist contract that guarantees religious freedom yet bans religion from the public sphere by relegating it to the private realm.