The Spiritual Values of European Young People
What does the data of the latest wave of the European Values Study reveal about the spirituality of Europe’s young people today?
In the last issue of Vista we presented our first analysis of the fourth wave of the European Values Survey (EVS) carried out during 2008 in 47 countries and regions across Europe. By looking at five specific questions from the EVS we were able to observe some significant changes in values since the first wave of research in 1980. This analysis also enabled us to combine the results into a single league table of secularity which we have called “The NOVA Index of European Secularity”. For more details see Vista Issue 3.
For this issue we have gone a stage further in the analysis, extracting the data for each of the five questions not only by country but also broken down by the year of birth of the respondents. This has enabled us to generate results for ten-year age cohorts for each country. The responses of the 20-29 year-old group gives us invaluable insights into the spirituality of European young people.
Do you believe in God?
Across the complete 17 country dataset, 68% of people said that they believed in God but in the case of young people (20-29) the percentage was only 63%. There is a clear trend to increased belief in God with age, which whilst not quite linear, suggests that the probability that someone believes in God increases by approximately 3% per decade (Figure 1).
Poland, Romania and Greece have the highest number of respondents who believe in God (95%, 95% and 91% respectively), and this continues to be the case when the subjects are young people (Poland 93%, Romania 89% and Greece 86%). However some countries show huge generational differences . The difference between the percentage of young people who believe in God and the average person from that country is most significant in Spain (-18%), Finland (-16%) and Belgium (-13%) (Figure 2).
Figure 1
Figure 2
How important is religion in your life?
Once again we see a clear difference between the generations in regard to the importance of religion. Religion is “very or quite important” to 49% of the sample across all respondents to the survey, but in the case of the 20-29 year olds this drops to 41%.
Romanians, Greeks and Poles give the greatest importance to religion whereas Finns, Germans and Czechs give it the least importance (Figure 3). This also holds true for the young people from those countries. What is more interesting once again is how generational differences vary from country to country. Finland, Spain, Portugal, Belgium and Ireland all show a 15% decline in the importance of religion for the 20-29 cohort in comparison with the country average. Conversely young people in Bulgaria give a slightly higher import to religion than average (+2.3%).
Figure 3
Are you religious, non-religious or atheist?
Overall 61% of respondents described themselves as religious people. Even amongst the 20-29 age group 52% said likewise. Once again however, when considered country by country a more nuanced picture emerges. Greeks, Poles and remarkably, Albanians are the happiest to declare themselves as religious people, with more than 80% of all adults and more than 75% of 20-29 year-olds saying they are religious.
Conversely, 27% of people declared themselves atheist rising to 33% in the case of the 20-29s. Germany and the Czech Republic have the most self-declared atheists with 46% in both cases, whilst once again the most startling statistic is that the country where you are least likely to find someone calling themselves an atheist is the formerly atheist state of Albania (Figure 4).
Figure 3
Figure 5
How often do you attend religious services?
An average of 15% of respondents across the 17 countries said they attended religious services at least once a week. In the case of the 20-29 year-olds this was only 10%.
A ranking of attendance would have Poland, Ireland and Portugal at the top with 53%, 43% and 31% of adults attending a service at least weekly. At the bottom would be Finland and Denmark with 4% and 2% respectively. But this does not reflect the huge generational differences. The EVS data shows that Irish and Polish young people attend religious services much less frequently than previous generations. Nevertheless, Poland is the only country where more than 20% of young people attend religious services at least weekly (Figure 5).
How much confidence do you have in the church?
The final question relates to confidence levels in the church. Overall the data suggests that older respondents have more confidence in the church than younger ones: 31% of 70-79 year-olds surveyed have a ‘great deal of confidence’ in the church whereas in the case of 20-29 year-olds this was only 14%. Romania stands out from all other countries in its high levels of confidence in the church across all age cohorts, nearly 40% above the average and 20% higher than any other country.
Once again, focussing in on the relative confidence of young people in the church we observe a significant difference between them and their older compatriots. These lower levels of confidence are most evident in Poland (-13%), Greece (-12%) and Spain (-8%) (Figure 6).
On a more positive note by way of conclusion, an observation of the trend across the whole dataset shows a slight upturn in confidence in the church amongst 20-29 year-olds.
Figure 6
Conclusions
There is no question that European young people have a more secular worldview than previous generations. Even in some traditionally Catholic countries the young people have a markedly different attitude to the church to their compatriots.
However the EVS data does contain more hopeful signs. Belief in God, even amongst young people continues to hold up. In only three countries, France, Germany and the Czech Republic does belief in God amongst young people fall below 40%. Half of all Europeans and 41% of young people continue to believe that religion is ‘very or quite important’ in their lives.
Whilst attendance at religious services is very low, that is not only true for young people but for most age groups. In fact the EVS data suggests that the 20-29s may have more confidence in the church than we think.
If the results from Albania are anything to go by, perhaps we should not consider the self-conscious atheism of many Europeans as a threat but rather an opportunity for presenting afresh the gospel of Jesus Christ without the baggage of Christendom.
Note: This article is based on the data from 17 countries whose 2008 data was available. Unfortunately data from other important countries such as the UK, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Croatia were not available at the time of writing so could not be included. The averages quoted in Vista Issue 3 relate to the 8 countries who participated in all four waves of the EVS and whose data was available. This explains the difference in averages between the two analyses. The full 2008 EVS can be consulted freely at www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu
Jim Memory