Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment
By Phil Zuckerman
Précis by Elaine Lynn for SHSNY Book Club discussion
In a field with relatively little high-caliber research, this book brings together relevant studies on the international level, establishing a general pattern of correlation between low levels of religiosity and high levels of general well-being, as well as the similar outcome of the author’s own researchin Denmark and Sweden-- andCalifornia. He lived for a year in Denmark with extended trips to Sweden attempting to interview people about their religious beliefs and getting sincere answers mostly like, "umm . . . I never really think about it . . .it just doesn’t come up . . ." He compared it to his experience growing up Jewish in California where, like the Danes and Swedes, the Jews remain committed to a culture, celebrate religious holidays and don't believe in God.
Zuckerman believes that studies of religiosity often underestimate its influence by concentrating on supernatural beliefs. He calls for a broader definition of religion and specifically what he calls cultural religion, “the phenomenon of people identifying with historically religious traditions, and engaging in ostensibly religious practices, without truly believing in the supernatural content thereof.” Denmark and Sweden provide important case studies of this.
Zuckerman is looking at religiosity as a sociologist, one reason why he begins with discussing the weaknesses of most studies, including his own. But he successfully demonstrates the convergence of different approaches toward the same conclusion.
He does not confuse correlation with causation. He mentions a few prominent causal theories, but doesn’t elaborate on them. Nevertheless, the footnotes alone are worth time spent with this book. It provides sources and references which we normally don’t have at hand, a legitimate framework to view them, and extended, charming interviews.
Both Denmark and Sweden have national churches and most people ignore them. On the other hand, most pay a voluntary tax for the church (this practice has recently ended in Sweden). This allows them to have marriages and other ceremonies in the church but also seems to have an element of maintaining public monuments. Churches are considered architecturally important and evocative of national history. Attendance at church services are rare, baptisms are declining and, significantly, many people describe church ceremonies as traditional or romantic or just “what everyone does;” that is, a custom without most of the religious content.
In the United States, various surveys put the number of people who “believe in God” at about 90%, though viewing them by age groups gives a different perspective, the level being significantly lower among younger Americans. Similarly, many of those who comprise that 90% don’t identify with a particular denomination or religion. Recent surveys have even told us that many within that 90% believe others can get to heaven without accepting the teachings of a particular religion, raising considerable doubt about the specific nature of their beliefs.
This still varies greatly from the beliefs in many other Western countries such as Denmark and Sweden. Depending on the definition of “God,” surveys for Denmark find only between a quarter to a half of those surveyed say they believe in God. Among Swedes, the numbers run 16-26% professing a belief in God.
Most Danes and Swedes say they don’t believe in God, though some say they believe in something but don’t know what it is. Fewer say that it is important in their lives. The proportions get lower and lower as they are asked about specific doctrines, the existence of heaven and the Bible being the word of God, for example. The numbers get smaller still when it comes to attendance at religious services and prayer. The statistics are mirrored in his interviews.
Very few expressed hostility toward religion. They are happy to be identified as Christian – it’s a cultural rather than a religious concept, they will explain. It’s custom. The author seems to have devoted countless interview hours trying to draw out their religious beliefs but has found himself insteadwith hours of recorded voices going, mmm . . . uh . . . well, it never comes up. . . . I don’t really think about it. . . . ummm . . .
Belief in God, as such, has come to have a stigma associated with it, and even invites ridicule, according to some of his subjects, including at least one pastor.
This seems to be a very recent development.Throughout the interviews excerpted in this book, people describe their grandparents as religious, their parents as ambivalent, and themselves as atheist. This trend can be seen continuing as a Danish study found when asking for the qualities that should be fostered in children. 80% chose “tolerance/respect,” 80% chose “independence,” 72% chose “good manners,” 56% chose “to think of others,” 37% chose “imagination,” and 8% chose “Christian faith.”
Belief in the supernatural claims of Christianity seems to have just petered out. Even though it was common to be taught some religious ideas during childhood, few people can identify when they stopped believing them or the circumstances under which that occurred. Christian principles are about being nice to people, not about supernatural ideas, they explain.
The author identifies nations that are similarly irreligious, including the Czech Republic, South Korea, Estonia, France, Japan, Bulgaria, Norway, England, Scotland, Wales, Hungary, Belgium and the Netherlands.
To address the quality of life, which is even harder to assess than the degree of religiosity, he uses, among other sources, the annual Human Development Report published by the United Nations. Health, life expectancy, education and standard of living are covered, and the relatively high correlation between the “human development” factors anda lowdegree of religiosity is stark. The United States is an exception.
Homicide rates, for example,are correlated with religiosity. In one unsuccessful attempt to show readers his lack of bias, he gives anecdotes from his own experience in Scandinavia that contradict his general conclusions – the problem of bicycle theft gets mentioned, for example, but the homicide he heard aboutwhen he was there was profoundly associated with religiosity, an “honor killing” of a Muslim woman by several men from her Pakistani immigrant community for having married someone her family did not approve.
People associate Scandinavia with suicide but,in a World Health Organization study, the rates of male suicides in Denmark and Swedendon’t evenrank in the top 20 of national suicide rates.
In the Economist’s Quality of Life Index, Sweden ranked fifth in the world and Denmark ranked ninth. Most of those in the top twenty, he says, are relatively irreligious societies.
Zuckerman points out that there is a a paucity of studies on secular life, as such. There are published polemics, there are histories, etc., but not explicit study of secular life as it is lived. “Whenreligion becomes a non-topic for significant segments of a modern society, we are dealing with an extraordinary social reality: secularity, par excellence.”
He takes a look at reasons that have been suggested for the irreligiosity inDenmark, Sweden, and other societies which share that characteristic. Among the relatively rigorous studies he citesare those of Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, who have analyzed one of the usual suspects, personal security. Zuckerman finds they have made a persuasive case for lack of security leading to more religiosity. By the same token, religion erodes among people living in a safer and more predictable society. Compared to life a few generations ago, and to life in most countries today, Danes and Swedes have little poverty, more access to medical care, lower rates of violent crime and other factors.
Another possible explanation associates irreligiosity with the percentage of women in the workforce. The link is said to be based on the finding that in every society women are more religious than men, and women who don’t work outside of their homes are more religious than women in the general labor force. In the last two generations, the rate of Danish and Swedish women in the workforce has grown dramatically, and the level of women in the workforce is about to overtake that of men.
He also includes a theory that, as the established church, the Evangelical (!) Lutherans have no competition or need to recruit their congregations, also known as the Lazy Clergy theory. (The Danish government has recognized Asatru as an official religion. It involves worship of the ancient Scandinavian gods like Thor, but it only includes about 1% of the population. Not much of a threat yet.)
Another, more impressive, theory is that religiosity is strengthened in countries where people feel threatened by outside cultures. This brings up the increasing impact of immigrant Muslim communities in countries like Denmark and Sweden: will they resort to re-emphasizing their Christianity or see the culture they must protect as one of rational democratic secularism?
There is yet another correlation between religiosity and education, which might well reflect a cause for the erosion of religiosity in some countries, cited inaUNICEF report that “of the top ten nations ranked highest in terms of their teenage students’ abilities in reading, mathematics and science, all—with the exception of Ireland—are relatively irreligious nations.”
Another proposal has been made that Danish and Swedish society bear the features imprinted on them directly by the Social Democratic parties. The secular and oftenanti-religious agenda of the Social Democrats in those two countries might be a factor in their irreligiosity.
He concludes that the overdue theory of cultural religion, as cited above, is beginning to address this subject successfully.
He does admits his bias, but it’s hard to find fault with his general conclusions: many factors are involved in a society’s success but religion is not one of them. He goes on to assert, “[i]t is a great socio-religious irony – for lack of a better term—that when we consider the fundamental values and moral imperatives contained within the world’s great religions, such as caring for the sick, the infirm, the elderly, the poor, the orphaned, the vulnerable; practicing mercy, charity, and good will toward one’s fellow human beings; and fostering generosity, humility, honesty, and communal concern over individual egotism—these traditionally religious values are most successfully established, institutionalized, and put into practice at the societal level in the most irreligious nations in the world today”. His short book does not prove this, but it is more than suggestive. It begins to make the case and to draw attention to important facts about the statistical correlations between religious practices and the human values most of us cherish.
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