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By Faith Alone? Church Attendance and Christian Faith in three European Countries1

2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 22; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13537900601114479

1469-9419

Peter Lüchau,

Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology

Abstract Many social scientists seem to believe that Catholics attend church more often than Protestants because of differences in theology and not necessarily because Protestants are more secularised. In an attempt to settle this issue, this article uses data from the 1999 European Values Study to determine what factors influence church attendance in a Catholic, Protestant, and mixed European country (Italy, Denmark, and Germany). Using an ordinary least squares multiple regression the article shows that for both Catholics and Protestants it is predominantly the level of Christian faith that determines the rate of church attendance. Hence the differences in church attendance among Catholics and Protestants reflect differences in overall levels of religiosity and are not just artefacts of different views of the importance of going to church. Even Protestants do not live by faith alone. Notes NOTES 1. I would like to thank the following individuals for their critique and suggestions: Peter B. Andersen, Lars Kjær Bruun, and Morten Warmind in the History of Religions Section at the University of Copenhagen, Peter Gundelach in the Department of Sociology at the University of Copenhagen, and the two anonymous referees of the Journal of Contemporary Religion. Any errors or omissions are the sole responsibility of the author. 2. The European Values Study included items on the level of Christian faith in all three waves (1981, 1990, 1999), whereas the International Social Survey Programme had similar items in the 1991 and 1998 waves only. 3. For details on the exact recoding of variables and copy of the applied data set for re-analysis, please contact the author. 4. Whether this variable can be assumed to be at interval level is debatable. The alternative would have been to use a loglinear or logit model, but as ordinary least squares multiple regression is generally known (and understood), I have chosen to regard the church attendance variable as being at the interval level. 5. There are statistically significant differences between all possible pairs of countries using a Gamma test (p < 0.001). Only with regard to the difference in Christian faith between Denmark and Germany is the significance a little less (p < 0.05). 6. All three Pearson's R values are significantly different from each other when compared in pairs. The difference in Pearson's R for the Danish and German samples and for the German and Italian samples is significant at the 0.001 level, while the difference between the Danish and Italian samples is significant at the 0.01 level. 7. The R 2 value can be interpreted as the percentage of the variation in the dependant variable (here church attendance) explained by all the variables used in the ordinary least squares multiple regression analysis. 8. In the Nordic countries, respondents were asked if they were 'members of' a church, whereas the phrase used in the English master questionnaire was 'belong to'. There is a subtle, but important difference between the way the two phrases are worded, as membership signifies something more formal than belonging does. The German questionnaire used the word 'gehören' which is closer to the English 'belong to' than to the Danish 'member of', which would usually be translated with the German 'Mitglied'. The Italian questionnaire used the word 'appartiene' which is again closer to 'belong to' than to 'member of'. 9. In the Danish data from the 1999 EVS, a bivariate correlation between the dummy variable on being Protestant and church attendance produces a rather small Pearson's R of 0.10 (p < 0.01). In the Danish data from the 2002 ESS (where the word 'belong' is used instead of 'member of'), a bivariate correlation between similar variables produces a Pearson's R of 0.23 (p < 0.001). The difference between the two correlations is significant at the 0.001 level, suggesting that the lacking influence of being Protestant in the multiple regression in the Danish sample is largely a consequence of the wording in the Danish EVS questionnaire. 10. This was either because they were insignificant or because the standardised coefficients were negligible.