Protestant and Catholic Distinctions in Secularization

Abstract

Differences between Protestants and Catholics in religious beliefs and behavior are revisited in the light of growing theoretical and empirical evidence for stages of secularization and a remaining religious core in Western societies. To what extent are remaining Protestants more religious than before and compared with remaining Catholics? Analyzing repeated cross-sectional survey data from 1985 to 2012 in the US, Canada, and Great Britain, we find that, in most cases, Protestant affiliation has declined more significantly than Catholic affiliation. Yet, individuals who declare themselves as belonging to a Protestant denomination have higher rates of regular service attendance, prayer, and Christian beliefs than those previously. They have also surpassed these same rates among Catholics in both the US and Canada and are on track to do so in Britain in the coming years.

Keywords:

• Protestantism
• Catholicism
• secularization
• US
• Canada
• Britain

Acknowledgements

I would like sincerely to thank Nan Dirk de Graaf, Duncan Gallie, Christiaan Monden, and Jörg Stolz, who provided valuable comments on my DPhil dissertation, from which this article stems. I also wish to thank the two referees of the Journal of Contemporary Religion whose comments and suggestions made the final version of this article possible. This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Nuffield College (University of Oxford), and the Montreal Universities’ Centre for Ethnic Studies (CEETUM).

Notes

1. Also based on results from the 1985–2012 ISSP (ISSP Research Group; results not shown here).

2. These include gender, marital status, foreign birth (US and CAN), ethnic minority (GB), Black (US), French mother tongue (CAN), level of education, region, religious affiliation, year, and birth cohort. Results are similar when the original variables with missing values are used in the models.

3. Only linear year and year of birth effects are included in the regression models, according to the mostly linear trends observed in Figures 1–4. Similar results are obtained if 5-year period/cohort dummies are used rather than the continuous variables.

4. Descriptive statistics for all the variables used in the analysis can be found in Tables A.1-A.3 in the online supplementary material.

5. These Catholics being most notably of Hispanic origin in the US (Smith et al.; Wilde).

6. See Figure A.1 in the online supplementary material for these results. Immigrant trends from 1985–2012 cannot be mapped here for Great Britain, since the BSA only began asking respondents where they were born in 2011.

7. It is important to note here that, since two Christian belief scales were generated based on questions in two separate samples and surveys (US and GB), the average values of these scales may not be directly comparable. Trends, however, are more comparable.

8. These monthly attendance, weekly prayer, and Christian belief trends are all similar if the samples are restricted to native born and ethnic whites only (results not shown here).

9. The results in this section on monthly attendance, weekly prayer and Christian belief are all similar if the samples are restricted to native born and ethnic whites only (results not shown here).

10. Proportions taken from the 1965 Canadian Election Study (Converse et al.).

11. Proportions taken from Cycle 26 of the CAN GSS (Statistics Canada).

12. Based on results from the 1985–2012 BSAs (results not shown here).