Societalisation and Religiosity indicators in Europe: a multilevel analysis
The main goal of the paper is to explore whether the process of societalisation (Bryan Wilson) has a real impact on the secularisation, i.e. on the decline of various dimensions of religion/religiosity in Europe. The paper comprises three research aims: (1) to explore whether indicators of societalisation (decline of family and rural communities on one side, and the rise of rational voluntary organisations and political activity on the other) exert impact on the possible decline of religiosity, (2) to explore whether other indicators of modernisation, such as individual and societal wealth exert impact on the possible decline of religiosity, and (3) to explore whether societalization has stronger impact on indicators of church-oriented religiosity (religious services' attendance) or on selected indicators of non-church religiosity (prayer outside religious services, personal importance of god), thus tentatively testing the hypothesis of religious individualisation. The study uses the survey data from the 2017 wave of European Values Study as well as other external country-level data (GDP per capita). The data are analysed by using sequential multilevel analyses of cross-sectional data. The results of the study show that almost all indicators of societalisation are inversely correlated with religiosity, and the same goes for personal and societal economic wealth, thus confirming the importance of societalisation as an inherent part of the process of modernisation. Additionally, the results do not provide support for the thesis of religious individualization