Abstract
I argue that the social implications of religious non-affiliation vary across cultural contexts, leading to differences across nations in both who is likely to be unaffiliated and the religious consequences of such non-affiliation. I test these propositions by examining cross-national variation in associations with non-affiliation using multilevel models and cross-sectional survey data from almost 70,000 respondents in 52 nations. The results indicate that: 1) both individual characteristics (gender, age, and marital status) and nation-level attributes (GDP, communism, and regulation of religion) strongly predict religious non-affiliation; 2) differences in non-affiliation by individual-level attributes—women vs. men, old vs. young, and married vs. single—are greatest in nations with low levels of religious regulation and high levels of economic development; and 3) the effect of religious non-affiliation on religiosity varies considerably by the political and religious context, and to a lesser extent by the level of economic development in each nation. These results highlight cultural variation in what it means to be religiously unaffiliated.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 254-270 |
Number of pages | 17 |
Journal | Social Science Research |
Volume | 70 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Feb 2018 |
Keywords
- International
- Multilevel analysis
- Religion
- Secular
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Education
- Sociology and Political Science