Reflections on European Values Survey: Interview with professor David Voas

Jun 3, 2021 by

by Jo Appleton, Evangelical Focus:

There is increasing cultural diversity that works against the traditional beliefs. The critical factor is the extent to which religious involvement is transmitted to the younger generation.

Professor David Voas is Professor of Social Science at the University College London Institute for Social Research, where much of his work concerns religious change in contemporary societies.

He was Chair of the European Values Survey Theory Group, who are responsible for developing the questionnaires, and a member of their Executive Committee. Until recently he was also EVS’s National Programme Director for Great Britain.

We spoke to Prof. Voas about his work with EVS and asked him to reflect on our analysis of the 2017-2020 data.

JA: Over the past ten years there have been a lot of changes in Europe, such as the migrant crisis and Brexit. In your opinion, how have these changes influenced secularisation and religious practice?

DV: The factors at work are very similar to those that have been operating for several decades. There’s continuing growth in competition for people’s time and attention from secular sources, but of course things like social media have really taken off to tremendous extent.

There is increasing cultural diversity that works against the maintenance of the traditional beliefs and practices; the continuing growth of individualism and personal freedom as well as decline in traditional authority.

Alongside this, I think there’s been a continuing shift towards goals, objectives or arguably values that seem secular rather than religious, so the church is perceived by some people as being out of date on gender equality, sexual orientation and reproductive freedom.

It’s been ineffective, in some people’s view, on priorities like protecting the environment or promoting social justice. Pronouncements on morality are unwelcome generally and the church lacks legitimacy because of scandals of various kinds. All of these things have tended to work in the secularising direction.

It’s helpful to note that secularisation is essentially a generational process, so it’s not about people in adult life deciding that they are no longer interested in going to church, although that does happen.

The critical factor is the extent to which religious involvement is transmitted to the younger generation. There is a very slow but somewhat inexorable process of generational replacement where the older more Christian segments of the population die off and are replaced by younger, less religious people.

Although it’s interesting and important to look at the recent past, this is a very long-term trend, reflecting how society has changed during time spans measured literally in generations.

Read  here

Please right-click links to open in a new window.

Related Posts

Tags

Share This