Engaging with some of the central issues in the sociology of religion, this volume investigates the role and significance of churches and religion in contemporary Western and Eastern Europe. Based on an extensive international research project, it offers case studies of various countries (including Finland, Ireland, Portugal, Germany, Poland, Russia, Estonia, Hungary and Croatia), as well as cross-country comparisons. Researching more precisely the present social relevance of church and religion at different levels, The Social Significance of Religion in the Enlarged Europe raises and responds to both descriptive and explanatory questions: Can we observe tendencies of religious decline in the various Western and Eastern European countries? Are we witnessing trends of religious individualization? To what extent has there been a religious upswing in the last few years? And what are the factors causing the observed processes of religious change? Marked by its broad range of data and a coherent conceptual framework, in accordance with which each chapter assesses the extent to which three important theoretical approaches in the sociology of religion - secularization theory, the market model of religion, and the individualization thesis - are applicable to the data, this book will be of interest to scholars of sociology, politics and religion exploring religious trends and attitudes in contemporary Europe.
Contents: Church and religion in the enlarged Europe: analyses of the
social significance of religion in East and West, Detlef Pollack, Olaf
MĆ¼ller and Gert Pickel; Church, religion and spirituality in Finland, Kimmo
KƤƤriƤinen and Kati NiemelƤ; Ireland in the 21st century: secularization
or religious vitality? Karen Andersen; Portugal: secularization and religious
vitality of the Roman Catholic Church in a Southern European country, Helena
VilaƧa; The religious landscape in Germany: secularizing West - secularized
East, Olaf MĆ¼ller, Detlef Pollack and Gert Pickel; Questioning
secularization? Church and religion in Poland, Dorota Hall; Secularization or
de-secularization? The challenges of and from the post-Soviet experience,
Marat Shterin; Some aspects of religiosity in Estonia, Eva-Liisa Jaanus;
Church and religion in Hungary: between religious individualization and
secularization, Gergely Rosta; Croatia's religious story: the coexistence of
institutionalized and individualized religiosity, Krunoslav Nikodem and
SiniŔa ZrinŔcak; Differentiated secularization in Europe: comparative
results, Gert Pickel, Detlef Pollack and Olaf MĆ¼ller; Index.
Detlef Pollack is Professor of Sociology of Religion at Wilhelms-University MĆ¼nster, Germany. Olaf MĆ¼ller is Research Associate at the Institute for Sociology at Wilhelms-University MĆ¼nster, Germany. Gert Pickel is Professor of Sociology of Religion at the Institute for Practical Theology, University of Leipzig, Germany.
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