Religion's Sudden Decline: What's Causing it, and What Comes Next?

by Ronald Inglehart

Mass attachment to religion is rapidly declining in most of the world; Why, and What comes next?

The world is becoming less religious. Since 2007, there has been a pervasive decline in religious belief and most of the world's people now say that God is less important in their lives than they said He was in the quarter century before 2007. The American public showed the most dramatic shift of all. The United States, which for many years stood as a highly religious outlier among the world's high-income countries, now ranks as the 12th least religious country for which data are available. Many factors contributed to this dramatic worldwide shift, but as Inglehart shows, certain ones stand out. For centuries, virtually all major religions encouraged women to stay home and produce as many children as possible; and they sternly discouraged divorce, abortion, homosexuality, contraception, and any other form of sexual behavior not linked with reproduction. These norms were necessary for societies to survive when facing high infant mortality and low life societies that didn't
instill them tended to die out. Recent technological advances have greatly increased life expectancy and cut infant mortality to a tiny fraction of its historic levels, making these norms no longer necessary for societal survival. These norms require repressing strong natural urges, but, since they present traditional norms as absolute values, most religions strongly resist change. The resulting tension, together with the fact that rising existential security has made people less dependent on religion, opened the way for an exodus from religion. Utilizing a massive global data base, Inglehart analyzes the conditions under which religiosity collapses, and explores its implications for the future.

Genres: Religion, Sociology, Nonfiction, Audiobook, History, Science, Atheism

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2021

About the author

Ronald F. Inglehart (born September 5, 1934) was a political scientist at the University of Michigan. He was director of the World Values Survey, a global network of social scientists who have carried out representative national surveys of the publics of over 80 societies on all six inhabited continents, containing 90 percent of the world's population. The first wave of surveys for this project was carried out in 1981 and the latest wave was completed in 2014. Since 2010 Inglehart was co-director of the Laboratory for Comparative Social Research at the National Research University - Higher School of Economics in Moscow and St Petersburg. This laboratory has carried out surveys in Russia and eight ex-Soviet countries and is training Phd.-level students in quantitative cross-national research methods.

In the seventies Inglehart began developing an influential theory of Generational Replacement causing intergenerational value change from materialist to postmaterialist values that helped shape the Eurobarometer Surveys, the World Values Surveys and other cross-national survey projects. Building on this work, he subsequently developed a revised version of Modernization theory, Evolutionary Modernization Theory, which argues that economic development, welfare state institutions and the long peace between major powers since 1945, are reshaping human motivations in ways that have important implications concerning gender roles, sexual norms, the role of religion, economic behavior and the spread of democracy.

Reviews

[عبدالكريم الدخين · Rating 3 out of 5]

سادت تقريبا في الدراسات الحديثة حول العلمنة والدين في العقدين الأخيرين رؤية جديدة ناقدة لما قدمه علم الاجتماع الكلاسيكي حول أفول الدين في العالم الحديث، ذهب بيتر بيرجر وخوزيه كازانوفا وتشارلز تايلور وطلال أسد وغيرهم كثير جدًا إلى أن الدين ليس بالضرورة إلى زوال، سواءً أفولًا كليًا أو مخصخصا أو ضمور مجاله في الشأن العام، ومن شدة سطوة هذا التوجه قام فيلسوف كبير مثل هابرماس بخلق نظرية ما بعد العلمانية والتي يقدم حلولًا لمأزق التدين في العالم السياسي الحديث ..

في هذا الكتاب يدير الكفة على بيرجر وأصحابه، ويقدم دراسات اجتماعية كثيرة _أشار فيما بعد إلى أن بعضها غير دقيقة لكنها غير مؤثرة على النتائج_ ويقول أن التدين عالميًا انحدر سوى في الدول الإسلامية وبعد دول فلول الاتحاد السوفيتي .. وهذا الانحدار حصل في العقد الأخير تحديدًا من 2007 إلى 2020 ولكن إرهاصاته كانت منذ التسعينات،، والعجيب أنه يجعل أمريكا في قلب هذا التغير وهي الدولة الرأسمالية التي حالفت التدين لقرنين من الزمان والتي اتكأ عليها كل الانثروبولوجيين الجدد في رؤيتهم عن عودة الدين .!!
قدم انجلهارت تفسيرات عديدة لكنها على الأقل بالنسبة لي غير مقنعة بشكل كاف، ومن أبرزها مسألة انخفاض معدلات الخصوبة والإنجاب والجرائم مما يوفر الأمان وبالتالي تسقط أسباب وجود الدين الذي استمد وجوده الروحي من كونه إطار قيمي يحفز المجتمع على مقاومة الموت من خلال الإنجاب قديما ويردع المجرمين من خلال وعظه وتخويفه والتالي المجتمع يتمسك به ، وهذا يشبه تفسير اليسار القديم للعلمنة كنتيجة لحضور التقنية في الزراعة وبالتالي لم يعد للعالم السحري تأثيرًا على المحاصيل بالنسبة للمزارع وهذا يجعل وجود الدين ليس له فائدة ..
على العموم هناك الكثير من الكلام والنقاش في كثير من فضول الكتاب بالذات الخمسة الأوائل منها ليس هنا محله ، ولكن مجرد وجود هذه الفكرة هي مهمة جدًا لأننا فعلًا نعيش تغيرًا عميقًا للأسف مع فرط الحضور التقني لم نعد نشعر به حتى في مجتمعاتنا العربية ..

[Mark Huisjes · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very thorough analysis of the reasons for the decline of religion. This is probably not a welcome message for those who value religion but Inglehart makes a strong case that the decline of religion is the predictable end result of a long process of shifting cultural values driven by socioeconomic development. Religion is set to decline a lot further than it already has. If overall economic stability and growth continue in the long run.

I particularly liked the discussion about the USA which for a long time was the exception to the rule and maintained high religiosity rates. But starting in 1990 religion has started to collapse in the USA as well. Apparently when the Soviet Union fell (along with its forced atheism) the argument that atheism is unpatriotic and anti-American has ceased to apply.

This is a must have for everyone who liked Inglehart's "Cultural Evolution: People's Motivations are Changing and Reshaping the World".

[Kiel · Rating 3 out of 5]

An objective and bleak sociological survey of the global religious landscape, this book suggests religion’s wane, and proposes exclusive naturalistic focuses in humanity’s quest for meaning. The author sees strong correlation between secularism and developed countries, as well as decline in pro-fertility norms which is a term covering a large basket of cultural markers around sexuality. While he surveys a lot of relevant data, highlights that the USA is no longer a religious outlier, and suggests outcomes from a sociological perspective, ultimately I found the societal interpretations lacking historical perspective. I found the same problem in Zuckerman’s Society Without God. In both books there’s an obsession with the Scandinavian happiness index, and with the secularity and social focused capitalism that seems to bare the explanatory power for why it’s so consistently high. Missing in these appraisals is the insight in Tom Holland’s historical treatment Dominion, that the ethical structures that make thriving civilizations come from a single source, Christianity. Also missing is the perspective of a realized future which will answer the question, how long can Christian civilizations stay civil once the populace abandon their personalized religious roots? I believe the answer will play out in my lifetime. 208 pages or 6 hours of raw religious sociology.

[Nick]

Endlessly repetitive and not exactly well-written, but this is a fascinating analysis of mass secularization from the late Dr. Ronald Inglehart, creator of those famous cultural values charts that mapped clusters of cultures along survival/self-expression and traditional/secular-rationalist axes. There are a few features of his pretty plausible explanation for the mass collapse of religious affiliation in the West since the year 2000:

1) Notes a growing transition from pro-fertility norms toward individual-choice norms and the huge effect this has had on secularization in various societies - including the previously implacably Christian United States of America. Strong emphasis on how younger generations, especially young women, are moving en masse away from traditional pro-fertility norms, especially tolerance towards LGBTQ+, gender roles, and reproductive rights. There is a reciprocal influence between pro-fertility norms and religiosity, but what is new is that this causal arrow has now shifted - changing values are now leading to secularization. The author posits we have now reached "critical mass" in the value shift, where the values are now dictating religiosity rather than the other way around.

The reasons for this? Insecurity, as prevelant in poorer societies, strongly incentivizes religiosity as a way to cope and build meaning in harsh circumstances. This, in turn, incentivizes adoption of pro-fertility norms. High religiosity levels are noted in less secure societies, particularly as seen in the example of Muslim-majority countries and increasing religiosity in some former communist societies.

2) The insights suggest that as security improves, the need for religious adherence declines. We're seeing a sharp increase in secularization post-2000 in high-income countries, with a focus on the U.S. and Western Europe. We are also seeing cultural tipping points in the U.S., where the majority view now supports individual-choice norms over traditional religious norms. Once the values are the norm, we see sudden mass adoption as people alter values to match the perceived "normal".

3) So... what's replacing religion (i.e. "what comes next?"): he posits that we may see new/strengthened forms of secular humanism and individual moral codes take root (with potential externalities on community cohesion). One danger of this is that when insecurity rises in rich socities in the absense of religion as a fallback, this further incentivizes authoritarian reflexes, including increased xenophobia and in-group solidarity. This insinuates a cyclical pattern where crises revive authoritarian tendencies within secularized societies

4) All this is framed in the context of previous historical shifts in values, particularly emphasizing how Protestant Northern Europe has often led the way in shaping secular values over the last century, and how these values are later adopted by cultures lower on the secular/self expression curve. It explores in a more-or-less compelling way the correlations between religiosity, secular values, individuality, self-reported happiness (which secular societies are the best at, by and large), and various indicators related to wealth and security.

Since the book was written (and the author's death), it's interesting to see how things have shifted since 2020 - women now obviously are driving this secularization change, with huge re-orientation of the political landscape in the US, for example (and men perhaps moving in the opposite direction). It would be interesting to examine this new gendered bifurcation in values from the model's perspective of perceived security, wealth, and religiosity, etc, as it seems to buck the trend (or imply that men are now moving more towards the traditional axis of the curve - maybe because of decreases in perceived security/happiness, while women see reproductive rights as now essential to their security).

[John Martindale · Rating 3 out of 5]

America was thought to contradict the secularization thesis. Prior to 2007, almost every developed country grew increasingly secular except the United States. Yet after 2007, religion is declining in America at a faster rate than in any other developed country.

Inglehart's dry, extremely repetitive thesis seemed to be tied to things such as the changes in fertility norms. Traditionally, high infant mortality and low life expectancy meant it was necessary to have several children and religions made it imperative to have several offspring. But now the situation has changed, the religious imperatives seem quaint and outdated. Another change is more economic and physical security and political stability. As lives improved in these ways, the State began to replace God and the church. These things have led to more security and individual choice norms. Ironic, since it was Christianity that was the driver in the West, that led to this, but as it succeeded, it is now cast off as no longer needed. Inglehart sees this as good, since the Nordic countries lost religion, but are on the cultural cutting edge of change and have universal health care, welfare, child care, gender equality, and low crime, as well as ranking high on the happiness index.
It will be interesting whether the Nordic countries, having been cut off from the foundation for their values, will continue enjoying success in the future. Also, as the cost of the welfare system continues to expand and grossly exceed production, I wonder about their long-term economic health. The Scandinavians are a unique people with a homogeneous culture shaped by their deeply protestant history, and this seems part of the reason for their success. I don’t see how this progress will last though, since education and popular culture are forming the new generation to hate the West and have a self-loathing if they are white. Penance for being white means they must welcome Islamic immigrants who share few of their values and have high fertility rates. Scandinavians have decreasing fertility rates, and by being white, they are inherently evil, colonial oppressors, who should be replaced anyhow. Muslims, however, are the noble oppressed, due to their brown skin. It is Islamophobic for a Scandinavian to express discomfort with Muslims executing gays, taking part in honor killings, enforcing blasphemy laws, gang-raping white girls, doing female genital mutilation to girls, forbidding women's rights, marrying girls who are 14, and engaging in terrorism. None of this can be thought wrong, and to acknowledge it and disagree with it, is racist and xenophobic—it is to be a nazi. Sadly, if the perpetrator of rape is a Muslim, for a woman to press charges is considered to be slandering this ethnic group. The legal system is afraid to get involved since this will look Islamophobic. So it is MeToo unless raped by a Muslim, similar to how for the UN it was MeToo unless you are a Jew, after October 7th. Due to identity politics, I suspect this little phase in Nordic countries will not last.

In France, based upon a major survey of French Muslims, 39% have a very bad opinion of Judaism.
45% called what Hamas did an "act of resistance", many of whom support Hamas and state that all Jesws must be killed. 42% said they respect Sharia law over French law. 36% want churches turned into mosques. 25% reject the word France, 49% want all Catholics to convert to Islam.
But again, their radical Islam's biggest champions? The woke progressives. To even mention discomfort is to be a bigot and a far-right extremist. Most likely Europe will become religious again. Ironically, the progressive Left will be the first to see their heads roll when they finally get their way.

In America, I think that Marcuse instigation of the long march through the institutions has successfully led the groundwork for today's cultural revolution. It seems the newer generations are passionately opposed to the "olds" and the capitalistic, sexist, and gender binary hegemony is associated with white evangelicals. Christianity is lumped with homophobia, sexism, racism, environmental destruction, exploitation, colonialism, straight white dead men, and everything bad and oppressive. The assumption is that the West shouldn't be reformed, but it must be completely and fundamentally deconstructed and transformed into a social justice world of diversity, equity, and inclusion. When the education system, the media, the science establishment, and popular culture embody this new cult-like ideology, then the old religions and the parents who convey it to their children, are fascists who have nothing to say, they are evil, and shouldn't be negotiated or engaged with, but rejected, silenced, de-platformed and canceled. Evangelicals' embrace of Donald Trump did not help anything and has surely exasperated the decline. Bizarrely, though Hamas brutally mutilating and raping Jewish women, torturing and dismembering babies and children, has resulted in woke people embracing Islam, putting on the headscarf and calling for the complete annihilation of Israel, queers expressing unwavering support for Palestinians. Maybe Radical Isalm's hatred of the West makes religious fundamentals and terrorists attractive bedfellows for the new Left.

[Martin Henson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have an almost pathological reaction to the taking of means (averages) of ordinal data, although the WVS mostly uses a 10-point scale, so the troublesome issues (e.g. that average "satisfied" can go up when the proportion of those "dissatisfied" also increases) are less likely to arise. Nevertheless, I found myself wondering about the "distribution" in many cases - rather than knowing the "average" is 8.4, it would be interesting to know the proportions of respondents, say, 3-and-below, and 8-and-above. I wonder whether some of the plots would look different if the analysis was based on proportions in categories, rather than averages ...

Anyway, the results are - as usual for Inglehart's work - startling. The book, stylistically like his others (like Cultural Evolution: People's Motivations are Changing, and Reshaping the World, is quite dry - and often reiterates in words what can be seen in the data. His broader comments are often so compressed as to be misleading. For example, his comment that "... when West Germany emerged as an independent nation in 1949 it adopted democratic institutions and launched extensive programs to reeducate the German public about the horrors of the Holocaust" (p. 144) somewhat distorts history. As Susan Neiman in Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil carefully documents, West Germany was slow and stuttering in this regard - and East Germany more rapidly addressed the past. This is the problem with high-level summary statements - and one does wonder, a bit, whether the same can be said for the high-level results of the WVS itself. I am inclined to think that these results are, nonetheless, pretty compelling.

Among the wealth of interesting indicators described, there are a few that are particularly noteworthy. First, the fact that the US appears to be ditching God faster than anyone else - who woulda thunk it! This was one place where I wished there were a lot more intra-country analysis in addition to the inter-country analysis that forms the most part of the book. The US is a highly unequal society, and many of the differences the inter-country analysis shows (for example, the increase in individual versus traditional choice norms correlating with a decrease in religiosity - and the links with economic security; Figure 5.3, p. 61) would surely be seen within the US. In this regard, since the US is treated homogeneously in the inter-country analysis, it is even more startling that the US shows the greatest decline in religiosity.

A second highlight are the negative correlations between religiosity and crime rates (Figure 9.3, p. 194) and between religiosity and murder rates (Figure 9.4, p. 196). Clearly, as he notes, these are not causal relationships - religion doesn't make people more likely to steal and murder - but both are related to economic security. The less secure, the more religious and the more likely it is to see high crime rates, including murder. What it also indicates, though, is that the argument that more religion secures better behaviour is highly dubious at this coarse-grained level.

These are all observations from 50,000ft - and should be treated with caution. But it is actually quite amazing that such very strong correlations come from such stratospheric data. It implies - strongly - for a materialist account: if you want to reduce the significant social, cultural, and political polarisation in, say, the US, the way to do this is to address the significant economic inequities - not to marshal "the arguments". Reagan 0, Marx 1! (Well, Reagan was also a self-avowed materialist - but not in quite the same sense).

[Titus Hjelm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inglehart's posthumous summary of his decades-long work on the WVS, this is a nice combination of data and theory on secularisation. The argument about the acceleration of secularisation in certain countries (most notably the US) around 2000-2005 is persuasive and backed with solid data. The book itself suffers somewhat from repetition and doesn't quite succeed in balancing the academic and the popular, which it tries. But it is a book no one interested in secularisation can miss.

[Jeffrey Cavanaugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another excellent piece of sociology on an important, timely subject.

[A.P. Dannenfeldt · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent, up-to-the-minute review and interpretation of our rapidly secularizing world. Made necessary by the recent plateau and decline in the trend

[Pradyumna Das · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fairly objective and informative. It does feel a little repetitive at times, though. Writing style could use some improvements, I thought, but outside of that, a great read.

[Wayne's · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit repeating of simple ideas..

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very strange book. It was written by the late Ronald Inglehart, the head of the World Values Survey project (data from which I used as a graduate student, so I am somewhat familiar with it), and looks at the decline of religion and rise of other values across the world. However, for most of the book, he doesn't really talk about or explain religion's decline according to the data from his Values Survey. Instead, he talks about things like industrialization, urbanization, declines in fertility, etc. to explain the decline in religious belief across the world. However, none of those things are "sudden," although they may be increasing in the non-Western world. This is also well-worn territory, and does not represent novel approaches or information. Some of these major social changes may be occurring in the non-Western world, and it would have been interesting for him to document them, but he doesn't really do that here.

Also, the World Values Survey has been done every few years since the 1970s, so he could document changes in people's enthusiasm for religion in various parts of the world over time. However, he only has one chart showing dramatic drops in the number of people who are deeply religious starting about 2007. He then argues that the reason for this is that the post-World War II years were very stable, and people didn't have to worry about their survival, so they became interested in other things and left off concerns with religion. Again, this might be true, but it seems odd to me that the years that saw the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the rise of ISIS in the Middle East, rising authoritarianism, and a global pandemic would be seen as more stable. Also, since the data from the World Values Survey only goes back to the 1970s (and an even shorter time in the non-Western world) I'm not sure how well he can measure change.

He also talks about religions promoting pro-fertility norms, but then demonstrates that the most secular countries in Europe have the highest fertility rates. This isn't necessarily a contradiction, people have ideals that they don't live up to all the time, but it did seem a bit strange that he didn't explain the contradiction more.

He had some interesting insights into East Asian cultures that have been shaped by Confucianism (which he considered to be a secular system) and Nordic countries. However, I'm not sure to what extent those demonstrated change over time vs cultures that differ in important ways from the English speaking world. He also explains in more detail how female politicians in the Nordic countries have advanced women's interests, which I thought was interesting, because I didn't know much about the actual policies in place in those countries. Overall, however, I thought the book's thesis was confused, and didn't really match what the author was arguing.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I welcome books that takes a look at secularization and try to identify the causes and the cultural signs - maybe here in a overly simplified manner, dividing into two camps, leading itself to a few difficulties. We have lots to learn and to take in. I would even say that he tries to be objective, and should be better than then becoming suddenly subjective when it comes to topics like Trump. He reveales himself, and makes me hope that he really is objective. In either case, the data show a reality Chrisitans have to take seriously. On the other hand, in the years after this book it seems that the tide is turning, or at least it seem that "religion"(as if all are the same) is able to combat further decline.

For the casual reader, this book is bery dry - with a lot of graphs and explanations - sometimes too much. But, this is how book like this reads, like it or not.

[Zeynep · Rating 2 out of 5]

İki farklı makale şeklinde yayınlamak yerine kitap olarak basılması talihsiz olmuş. Çok fazla tekrar var ve bu sadece argümanlarla sınırlı değil maalesef. Bazı noktalarda ben bu cümleyi 5 sayfa önce okumadın mı diye beni düşündürecek kadar özensiz bir yazım söz konusu.

[Thomas Cavan Gui · Rating 3 out of 5]

本文揭示了全世界宗教的进一步衰落，并指出宗教衰落与现代化的生活方式有关，而与科技相对无关（说真基督教的衰落让我有点沮丧）。目前宗教已经逐步退守到形而上学和道德领域，其振兴必须激进地抛弃更多的律法与教条，以神学与逻辑实现形而上学与伦理学理论的进步，重新吸引中产阶级。

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reads like someone undergrad thesis.

[Yanick Punter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Philosopher John Gray claims progress is an illusion. This book has counter-evidence to that claim. Note, I am still in the progress of reading this.

This book makes me proud of the Netherlands. I am thankful to have been born there.

The rise of the far-right scares me. However, I can understand the anti-immigration feelings some people have. I think we should take it seriously.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

An ignorant who apparently could not be bothered to read any of the 20th century European thinkers' books. He probably only browsed the few volumes mandated for his tenure. And now, amazing! Suddenly the world becomes different from what his minister lover was telling him.