What would you do if the end of the world was announced tomorrow? For millions of people in the world, the only reasonable answer would be to pray. In times of distress and when everything material no longer matters, clinging to spirituality, to faith, seems a more reasonable way out. Or so the theory goes. The coronavirus has put the steadfastness of religion into practice during an often incomprehensible global crisis.
How have you been?
It depends. If you look at Germany, wrong. A study published a few days ago has analyzed the religious beliefs of more than 4,600 people across the country. Their profile is varied (Protestants and Catholics, the two largest congregations in the country) and mostly female. The work spans a long period of time. The first surveys were conducted during the first wave and the last in November of last year, in full escalation of infections during the fourth.
The results. A loss of faith. At least in the long run. During the first months of the pandemic, the decline in religion was modest (around 4%), a dynamic relatively consistent with the expected strengthening of faith. The problem did not come in March 2020 but later. Successive waves of infections have undermined the spirituality of Germans, bringing the percentage of disaffected to 15% and the recent 22%. Prayer has also fallen, as well as mass attendance.
The setback is cross-cutting and outweighs any gains that could offset it, both among Christians and among the “unaffiliated.” Significantly, they too manifested a loss of faith, interpreted as a belief in a “higher power.” The correlation is powerful across all social groups: the greater “stress” related to the pandemic in each wave, the greater the drop in spirituality.
The motives. How do the authors argue the decline of faith? Based on other studies and surveys carried out during the pandemic, they point to the powerful role played by local congregations and communities. The pandemic has weakened social ties so critical to religion, whether through restrictions, fear or confinement. Without their community bond and after long months of pandemic anxiety, the faith of many people has been weakened. This is consistent with their declining levels of “satisfaction” with the “support” of their religious community.
All the same? Other studies point in the other direction. In Poland and Italy, for example, the faith of those surveyed increased during the early days of the pandemic, underlining the important role of religion as a psychological-emotional pillar. A year ago, a Pew poll found faith strengthening in fourteen different countries, reaching 28% of respondents in the United States. At the same time, family ties were also rising in countries such as Spain or Italy.
And here? In general, however, the developed world is less religious today than it was two years ago. In December, the percentage of “non-religious” people in the US reached an all-time high (29%). And in Spain, the CIS surveys point in the same direction: if in November 2019 67% of Spaniards declared themselves Catholic in one way or another, two years later that percentage had fallen to 56%. In parallel, the volume of “agnostics / indifferent / atheists” had gone from 29% to 39%.
This is consistent with the historical dynamics of the West: Christians are the future minority of Europe and North America, and religious people are increasingly restricted to the oldest layers of the population. Whether the coronavirus has played a key role or not, there is something unavoidable: fewer believers will emerge from the pandemic.
Image: Imad Alassiry