Mapping Contemporary Europe's Moral and Religious Pluralist Landscape: An Analysis Based on the Most Recent European Values Study Data

Abstract

We explore the less prominent and often neglected issues of religious and moral pluralism in contemporary European society. Using the survey data from the most recent European Values Study (EVS), the patterns of religious and moral pluralism are investigated. Analyses of the previous EVS data demonstrated that Europe is not homogeneous. European countries differ not only in levels of economic development, but also in cultural heritages, languages, religious and ideological traditions, and educational and political systems. Variety in the degrees to which European societies are religiously and morally pluralistic was expected. Several hypotheses were developed to explain this variety. Our analyses do not support most of the generally accepted hypotheses.

Notes

1. There are other measures of heterogeneity or homogeneity. We also calculated inter-quartile distances and correlated these with the measures of homogeneity based on standard deviations. The correlations were, however, .90 or higher.

2. Factor analysis was applied. The purpose of factor analysis is to discover patterns in the relationships among a number of observed variables. It aims at discovering if the observed variables can be explained by a limited number of variables (or factors). Analyses were performed on the merged data-file. Countries were weighted equally.

3. Since we wanted clear one-dimensional items, the following items were excluded: taking the drug marijuana or hashish, married people having an affair, accepting a bribe in the course of duties, having casual sex, and smoking in public buildings. Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.

4. The categories were: 1) under 2,000 inhabitants, 2) 2–5,000, 3) 5–10,000, 4) 10–20,000, 5) 20–50,000, 6) 50–100,000, 7) 100–500,000, 8) 500,000 and more.

5. In the figures presenting the results of our data-analyses, countries are grouped based on this classification.

6. The Herfindahl concentration index is calculated using the formula where is the proportion with value i. The maximum value of the index is 1.0 and can easily be transformed into a pluralism index by subtracting the Herfindahl index from 1.

7. Not all indicators were available for all countries, thus we had to limit our measure to those available for all countries.

8. The answer categories were ‘locality or town where you live in’, ‘region’, ‘your country’, ‘Europe’, and ‘the world as a whole’.

9. Thus, in the case of religious pluralism, we tested five models, whereas in the case of the moral pluralism scales, six models were tested.