The debate over religious change in Italy is far from having reached unanimous conclusions: some scholars point to an unbroken trend toward a decrease of religiosity, while others highlight the signs of a religious revival, especially in younger generations. Besides difficulties with definitions, different conclusions are also due to a lack of information over a sufficiently long period of time. This problem is tackled here by developing a pooled analysis of repeated cross-section surveys that span over four decades. Using six different studies, the article analyzes the secularization trend in Italy on the basis of church attendance that, despite well-founded criticism, continues to be a crucial indicator of this phenomenon. The results, estimated using multilevel models, show that the trend of attendance at Mass in Italy has decreased since the 1960s until today, despite a period of stability at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s. The overall trend looks like a “recumbent S” trend (decrease up to the 1970s, stability in the 1980s, decrease afterwards). Thus, the claims of a religious revival in Italy are not supported by our results.
Church attendance and religious change in Italy 1968-2010 : a multilevel analysis of pooled datasets / C. Vezzoni, F. Biolcati-Rinaldi. - In: JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION. - ISSN 0021-8294. - 54:1(2015 Mar 05), pp. 100-118. [10.1111/jssr.12173]
Church attendance and religious change in Italy 1968-2010 : a multilevel analysis of pooled datasets
C. Vezzoni;F. Biolcati-RinaldiUltimo
2015
Abstract
The debate over religious change in Italy is far from having reached unanimous conclusions: some scholars point to an unbroken trend toward a decrease of religiosity, while others highlight the signs of a religious revival, especially in younger generations. Besides difficulties with definitions, different conclusions are also due to a lack of information over a sufficiently long period of time. This problem is tackled here by developing a pooled analysis of repeated cross-section surveys that span over four decades. Using six different studies, the article analyzes the secularization trend in Italy on the basis of church attendance that, despite well-founded criticism, continues to be a crucial indicator of this phenomenon. The results, estimated using multilevel models, show that the trend of attendance at Mass in Italy has decreased since the 1960s until today, despite a period of stability at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s. The overall trend looks like a “recumbent S” trend (decrease up to the 1970s, stability in the 1980s, decrease afterwards). Thus, the claims of a religious revival in Italy are not supported by our results.File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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