Deserted Churches And Fewer Believers: Swiss Abandon God

• Share
• facebook
• twitter
• E-mail
• Print
• Copy link

At this rate, non-believers will soon be in the majority in Switzerland. People with no religious affiliation are the group that has grown the most over the past 50 years, reaching almost a third of the population in 2021 – almost as much as the proportion of Catholics, according to the Federal Statistical Office (FSO).

In 1970, virtually everyone in Switzerland was Christian, with half being Protestant and half Catholic. While Catholicism has managed to lose fewer adherents in absolute numbers as a result of immigration, the dwindling trend is similar for both communities, with things speeding up since the 2000s.

The“no religion” population is generally younger, better educated and tends to live in cities, according to the FSO. There are slightly more men than women.

This category encompasses a variety of worldviews and realities, all of which have in common the fact that they are not affiliated to a church and do not follow any religion. There are atheists and agnostics, but also people who believe in a higher power without identifying with a religion.

People who turn their backs on the religious practices they were brought up with, or who embrace an alternative spirituality, are not in the majority, points out religious sociologist Jörg Stolz, director of the Institute for Social Sciences of Religions at the University of Lausanne.

“More often than not, these are people who have not been religiously socialised, and who are indifferent or opposed to religion in general,” he says.

Most developed countries are seeing a decline in religiosity. In France, most people now declare themselves to have no religion; in Australia, the“religionless” are the second-largest group; the United Kingdom no longer has a Christian majority; less than half the population in Germany belong to a church, while in the United States and South Korea the importance of faith is steadily declining.

International surveys of people's valuesExternal link show a decline in the sense of religious belonging, religious practice and belief in God in several dozen countries since the 1980s.

However, the situation varies greatly from one region of the world to another. According to international data from the American thinktank Pew Research Center, Europe, Asia-Pacific and North America are the most secularised regions, with around 20% of people declaring themselves to have no religion, compared with a global average of around 16%.

On a European scale, Switzerland has an average level of secularisation, Stolz says. The United Kingdom and France are more secular, while other countries, such as Italy and Poland, are still much more religious.

“We believe that the countries of Europe are all engaged in the same process of secularisation, but they did not enter it at the same time and are therefore at different stages,” he says.

In a book entitled Beyond Doubt*, published in May, an American team of sociologists of religion also maintains that secularisation is an underlying global trend. They believe that the results of surveys on religious affiliation are biased in certain countries, particularly Muslim ones, where declaring oneself to be not religious would be risky.

The authors of the book acknowledge, however, that many countries are still extremely religious, and that some, including in Europe, are witnessing a resurgence of religiosity.

However, experts are not unanimous on this“secularisation thesis”, according to which the world is necessarily moving towards less religion.

In a book published in 2015, The Triumph of Faith**, another American sociologist of religion, Rodney Stark, defends the opposite thesis. He insists not only that the world is not becoming more secular, but that it is even more intensely religious than before.

In its projections, the Pew Research Center expects the religious share of the world's population to increase between now and 2050, as a result of demographic dynamics. While the“no religion” proportion should continue to rise in North America and Europe (areas in demographic decline), it should remain stable or even fall in the other regions of the world, where population growth is expected to be strong.

In 30 years, Christianity should still be the largest religious group, but with Islam developing faster than the other religions, the Muslim community should be close on the heels of the Christian community.

According to Stolz, modernity is the main reason for the decline in religiosity in the West, and the main threat to religions in the long term.“We're turning away from religions because we no longer see their usefulness. Many secular techniques solve problems that used to be dealt with by religion,” he says.

“Biomedicine heals us, we have access to psychologists or coaches to talk about our personal problems, and insurance and the welfare state offer us a sense of security. We have less need to pray or talk to a priest or a pastor.”

Rita Famos, president of the Evangelical Reformed Church in Switzerland, disagrees.“Benjamin Franklin didn't stop praying after the invention of the lightning rod,” she says.“Nor has religion become superfluous for human beings.” She is convinced that human beings need faith.

In any case, the decline of religion is not synonymous with the disappearance of values, says Stolz, citing the example of Sweden, a highly secularised country.“Swedish democracy works very well, and it has no fewer pro-social values,” such as altruism, civic-mindedness, not committing crimes, and so on.

On the front line of the decline of religious belief in Western countries are the churches, which are seeing their congregations disappear. In Switzerland, according to the Institute for Pastoral Sociology, in 2021 more than 34,000 people left the Catholic Church and more than 28,000 left the Protestant Church.

MENAFN16102023000210011054ID1107250414