The Decline of Religiosity in the Face of Secularism's Rise

Phil Zuckerman, a professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College in California, demonstrates in an article in the Huffington Post, using statistics, that for the first time in world history, the number of societies becoming secular is surpassing the number of societies becoming religious. Nevertheless, Islam is expanding and will become the world's largest religion by 2050.

The growing wave of recent studies monitoring the state of countries around the world all conclude that religiosity is in decline and fading. The entire world, from Scandinavia to South America, and from Vancouver to Seoul, is experiencing an unprecedented wave of secularism. In fact, as a recent National Geographic report confirms, the world's newest religion is "non-religion."

Examining the Statistics and Facts — For the first time in Norway's history, the number of atheists and agnostics has surpassed the number of believers. — For the first time in Britain's history as well, the number of these individuals has exceeded the number of believers and theists. Furthermore, church attendance and participation is at its lowest level, with less than 2% of British men and women attending church every Sunday. — A recent poll shows that 0% of Icelanders believe God created the earth; yes, completely zero percent. This is while 20 years ago, 90% of Icelanders claimed to be religious, and now less than 50% consider themselves religious. — Nearly 70% of the Dutch adhere to no religion, and it is predicted that close to 700 Protestant churches and 1000 Catholic churches in the Netherlands will close in the coming years due to low public participation. — According to the latest Eurobarometer poll, 19% of Spaniards, 24% of Danes, 26% of Slovenians, 27% of Germans and Belgians, 34% of Swedes, and 40% of the French have said they do not believe in any concept of spirit, God, or life force. — In the United States of America, about 23 to 28% of American adults feel no religious affiliation. This group, called "nones," is not only becoming increasingly secular in their beliefs and behaviors, but their numbers are also growing day by day. — Among American Millennials (Generation Y) who are in their third decade of life, 35% are non-religious, constituting the largest secular group of men and women in the history of the United States. — In Canada, 12% of adults identified as "nones" in 1991, a number that has reached 24% today. — 15% of Australia's population in 2001 said they had no religion, a figure that reaches at least 22% today. — 30% of New Zealand's population identified as non-religious in 2001, a group that reached 42% in 2013. — Among South American countries, 7% of Mexican men and women, 8% of Brazilians, 11% of Argentinians, 12% of Salvadorans, 16% of Chileans, 18% of citizens of the Dominican Republic, and 37% of Uruguayans are non-religious. This number is the highest recorded rate of non-religiosity in Latin American countries. — In Japan, 70% of adults 60 years ago claimed to have personal religious beliefs. But today, this figure has decreased to 20%. In 1970, 96,000 Buddhist temples could be found throughout Japan, of which 75,866 remained in 2007. 20,000 of the remaining temples were without staff and clergy. 75% of Japanese families in the 1950s had a kamidana (Shinto altar) in their home, a figure that decreased to 44% nationwide and only 26% in major cities by 2006. — While 11% of South Korean citizens were atheists in 2005, a figure that reached at least 15% by the end of the year, the number of people calling themselves religious also fell from 58% to 52% in the past decade. — More than 50% of Chinese adults are secular. Since religiosity was opposed during the dictatorship era, obtaining reliable information about people's religious tendencies during that period is always fraught with difficulty. — Although religious fervor in Africa remains at a high level, non-religiosity is nonetheless gaining ground. More than 5% of the inhabitants of Ghana, 9% of the citizens of Madagascar and Tanzania, and 11% of the people in Gabon and Swaziland are non-religious. — Nearly 20% of Botswana's citizens today claim not to be religious. — More than 20% of the inhabitants of Jamaica are non-religious. Many other nationalities, such as Slovenia, Israel, Finland, Hungary, Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, etc., contain significant populations of non-religious people, which there is no opportunity to examine one by one here. It suffices to say that most countries have witnessed the significant progress of secularism in the past century, and for the first time in world history, the secularization of societies has become far more common than their inclination toward religiosity. Although openly supporting non-religiosity is sometimes punishable in some Muslim-majority countries — in fact, atheism and non-religiosity are considered crimes in 13 Islamic countries, carrying the death penalty — there are nonetheless abundant signs that secularism is growing and spreading among the world's Muslims.

اما نمی‌توان رقم قابل اعتمادی به دست داد. کوتاه سخن آن که تعداد فراوان مردان و زنان سکولار بر روی سیاره زمین، بی‌سابقه است و طبق ‌آخرین برآورد مرکز تحقیقات پیو، تعداد 1/1 میلیارد از مردم جهان در سال 2010 بی‌دین بودند که انتظار می‌رود این تعداد به بالاتر از 2/1 میلیارد در سال 2020 برسد.

Will the wave of secularism continue to wash over the world? A definitive answer to this question is difficult. On the one hand, we know that socialization is the tool and engine that helps foster religious prejudice in individuals. Children in religious families are given a religious upbringing by faithful parents, and therefore, the more people turn away from religiosity, the more children will grow up without religious upbringing, and in this way, the intergenerational transmission of religion will gradually weaken over the coming decades. Furthermore, the development of secularism is deeply connected to the level of internet access and usage. Hence, the more prominent the internet's presence in people's lives, the more secularism will grow. But on the other hand, religious people have more children than secular people, and the nations that have the highest birth rates today are also more religious. This is while secular nations have the lowest birth rates. In other words, demographically, the religious have a higher reproductive advantage. It is for this reason that, according to the latest forecast by the Pew Research Center, the trend of secularism's development will halt in the coming decades, while Islam will continue to grow and become the world's largest religion by 2050. But at present, churches around the world are closing, the role of faith in life is diminishing, and the number of men and women who live by secular values and humanistic principles is growing and increasing.

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The Decline of Religiosity in the Face of Secularism's Rise

Translation: Mohammad Javad Ma'mouri

Source: DinOnline

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