Customer Reviews

Religion in Europe at the End of the Second Millenium: A Sociological Profile

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This book provides a nice summary of religious statistics across European countries at the end of the century. I gained much from reading this book but also have some critical thoughts. One of the most annoying things was the proliferation of typos throughout the book. Why didn't Greeley or his editors didn't take the time to proof-read this book? Perhaps it is a reflection of the authors drudgery in writing the book in the first place.

Some things I liked: 1) I found his charts showing how magic becomes more salient for those in the middle of the scale on their belief in God quite fascinating (pp.41-42). 2) I liked his discussion about increasing religiosity with age. Even though his data can't resolve this debate, it is nice to see this view presented. 3) I like his efforts to show more nuanced insights than a simple conclusion that religion is declining uniformly throughout Europe. He gives specific examples of Ireland, Norway, Russia, and other countries and unique ways in which their religious devotions are evolving.

At first I was interested to see how Eastern European communist countries were becoming more religious, but when looking at his data realized this was very misleading. What seems to be happening is that Eastern Europe is going from an anti-religious view to a neutral or mostly non-salient view of religion. They are not becoming religious but rather becoming less anti-religious. I think this is one of the biggest problems with Greeley's approach. He represents secularization as the "death of religion", whereas secularization scholars no longer make this claim. Instead they claim religion is loosing its salience, moderating its authority, which is precisely what his data seem to be showing.

I recommend readers of this book take his commentary with a critical eye as the author definitely seems to have a strong agenda he is pushing, but at the same time not to dismiss this book as the charts and statistical data are quite fascinating and useful. I think after reading this book, I am even more convinced of secularization theory - in its more recent iterations (Bruce, 2002). This book seems to clearly show that religion throughout Europe is converging towards the middle of the scale and becoming increasingly less pro- or anti- religion. Increasing religiosity in Eastern Europe and among the youngest cohorts only seem to show that the balance is moving from anti-religiosity to indifference or neutrality, not towards pro-religion. The data tell a different story than the sociological commentary of the author.

Priest-sociologist Andrew Greeley is a born and self-cultivated contrarian, and he here takes on the conventional wisdom that religion-meaning Christianity and Catholicism in particular-is dead or dying in Europe. Greeley asks: Compared to what or when? At the end of the first millennium, he says, the smart money would have bet that Europe would become Muslim or Nordic or Slavic pagan, or maybe Byzantine Christian. That didn't happen then, and those who are now putting their money on the inexorable force of "secularization" will probably turn out to be wrong as well, Greeley argues. Sometimes his argument requires a very broad definition of religion, meaning little more than a comprehensive belief system that tries to make sense of reality. And he grants that the secularization thesis gets strong support from Britain, France, and the Netherlands. But in Europe more generally, the picture he offers on the basis of the findings of survey research is much more mixed. In some of the post-Communist countries, notably Poland, Catholicism is flourishing, and almost everywhere young people are more sympathetic than their parents to elements of Christian belief such as the promise of eternal life. Greeley acknowledges that the arguments and evidences he musters are not definitive, but he thinks they are strong enough to pose a serious challenge to the secularization theories of many of his fellow social scientists. He is right on both scores. From a First THings review.

When Father Greeley first turned from his scholarly field of sociology to the writing of salacious fiction I wondered why he had done so. Now he has returned, if only for a moment, to sociology and I ask why he doesn't rush back to writing novels. At least his novels have a certain wisdom about human nature, the Catholic milieu, and the dilemmas of human relationship to the unseen, unknowable Divine.

In this book he has used the polling techniques pioneered by French religious sociology to discount the many claims that religion in general and Christianity in particular is dead in modern Europe. His conclusion is that only in Britain, the Netherlands, and France (one Protestant, one mixed, and one Catholic) has the secularization model been found true, that is the theory that with educational, economic, and social advancement men and women will find less need for a religion which was most suitable for peasants, the ignorant, and the poor.

Father Greeley finds much religious vitality in Eastern and Western Europe outside of France, Britain, the Netherlands, and East Germany. I am not persuaded. He holds to the theory that religion can be many things apart from orthodox doctrine and liturgy, as it indeed can, but he seems to be a special pleader. Like the historians of the de-Christianization of Europe in the 18th Century he tries to turn everything upside down by claiming that even in the 13th Century Europe was hardly Christian. This is a way of turning religious decline into progress and I have never been convinced of it. Nor am I here. Greeley believes that men and women remain religious in their needs, hopes, and fears. He is probably right. But the people who count, exemplified by the modern countries of Britain, France, and the Netherlands, are the pace setters , not the people of Russia, Slovakia, and Ireland whom he celebrates.

Also, his analysis concentrates on Catholicism and Russian Orthodoxy, forgetting Protestants in such places as Hungary and Scandinavia. He also fails at times to understand historical trends accurately. For example, he is wrong to say that Slovaks mistrust Czechs because the Czechs represented Hapsburg repression of Slovak culture. Actually the Slovaks until 1918 were ruled by Hungarians, never by Czechs, although probably the more secular culture of the Czechs frightened the backward Slovaks after 1918, leading them to embrace Fascism then and independence more recently.

All in all, Greeley ought to stick to writing about the adulteries and other sexual missteps of his fictional characters, which better illustrate his mind than this dry, sociological study whose conclusions are not particularly convincing, at least not to this student of French Catholicism.