Transformations in the Religious and Moral Landscape in Europe?

Abstract

In this chapter, we investigate the claim of secularisation theory that the impact of religion on end-of-life moral issues such as abortion, euthanasia, and suicide in various regions in Europe has declined. We distinguish between five regions in Europe based on important historical and contemporary religious and secular characteristics: Northern, Western, Southern, and Eastern European countries and ex-Soviet countries. We further elaborate on the idea that religious beliefs and religious practices are separate aspects of religion. The analyses yield evidence for the relationship between both religious beliefs and end-of-life morality on the one hand and religious practices and end-of-life morality on the other. As expected, religious beliefs appear less strongly associated with this kind of morality than does religious attendance. Those who frequently attend religious services are clearly stricter than individuals who attend religious services less frequently or never. However, it must be acknowledged that the impact of religion on morality is not as strong as might have been anticipated; nor do the analyses provide strong evidence of declining levels in the impact of religion on morality. Moreover, we observe very heterogeneous patterns of change in both secularisation and end-of-life morality between regions and, within regions, between countries.

1 Introduction

European unification is a unique experiment of economic and political collaboration and cooperation in Europe. It started in the aftermath of the Second World War with the intention of strengthening security cooperation between the European countries, and for a long time it has been a mainly technocratic enterprise. At the same time, Europe was considered to always have been a cultural identity with common spiritual and moral values (see Weymans, Chap. 3, this volume). ‘Distinct European cultures share the same root and together they form the European civilization’ (Camia 2010: 112), in which Christianity and Enlightenment are seen as ‘the two core pillars that have framed visions of why and how to unify Europe’ (Triandafyllidou and Gropas 2015: 66).

These common moral values seem to be of key importance for the European project. As a mainly elite project focused on economic and political collaboration, European unification could be seriously hampered if it were not accepted and supported by the sharing of common values by the people. Empirical research, for example that based on data from the European Values Study (EVS), has indeed shown that there are coherent patterns in values in various life domains as well as coherent patterns in the importance of values in the various countries (Dorenbos et al. 1987), but also that Europe is far from homogeneous as far as values in important life domains are concerned. In addition, trend analyses show no evidence for a convergence of cultural values (van Houwelingen 2019), although Akaliyski (2019: 388) found that ‘the longer a country has been part of the EU, the more closely its values approximate those of the EU founding countries, which in turn are the most homogenous’. In general, the observed value differences and patterns of value change in European countries seem to confirm the main modernisation hypothesis of Ronald Inglehart (1997, 2018) that links structural modernisation with secularisation, individualisation, and cultural modernisation (Marsh 2014), although path dependency, reflecting the importance of a country’s historical, political, and social heritage and religious traditions, also needs to be taken into account to understand the particular trajectories of countries in value change (Inglehart and Baker 2000).

In this chapter, we focus on one of value domains that attracts special attention because of the strong links with both politics and religion: end-of-life morality. First of all, morality on abortion, euthanasia, and suicide enters the political domain because laws and regulations indicate what actions are legal, and for whom and under which circumstances they are legal. This politicalisation of end-of-life morality is even more pronounced in countries where there is conflict between religious and secular political parties (Green-Pedersen 2007). After all, it concerns issues that involve ‘judgments of desirable policies based on beliefs about right and wrong, which can trace their origins back to religious precepts’ (Studlar et al. 2013: 354). Privatisation and pluralisation have made such ethical issues increasingly personal concerns leading to a decreasing influence of religiosity. In general, end-of-life morality is linked to conservative values in other domains of life, such as family, gender roles, and homosexuality, as is shown in one of the key dimensions of Inglehart’s (1997, 2018) cultural map of the world. This map also shows the strong linkage between religion and morality. In religious societies, the acceptance of abortion, euthanasia, and suicide is low, while in more secular contexts, people appear more lenient regarding such end-of-life issues. When exploring the basic values map in Europe, Hagenaars et al. (2003) also demonstrated the consistent links between religion and such end-of-life issues, not only at context level, but also at individual level and in various distinct age groups (Arts and Halman 2011). It is this linkage between end-of-life morality and religion that we want to explore further in this chapter. We will look at both the context level (countries in different regions in Europe based on important historical and contemporary religious and secular characteristics) and the individual level and address the question as to whether it is religious practices or religious beliefs that affect people’s moral views regarding these life and death issues. Before we elaborate on the underlying theoretical mechanisms, we first describe briefly the link between religion and morality in general.

2 The Link Between Religion and Morality

That religion and morality are linked may not come as a big surprise, since for most people they are obviously connected. The Pew 2017 survey in Europe reveals not only that many Europeans say that ‘churches have positive impacts on society’, but also that ‘in several countries surveyed, roughly half or more of respondents say they agree churches and other religious organizations “protect and strengthen morality in society”’(Pew Research Center 2018: 145). Although it may be more or less common knowledge that religion and morality are connected, how exactly the association works is less clear. Does religion make individuals moral or does morality need religious justification? The Pew Research Center (2020) informs us that the notion that one must believe in God in order to be moral is widespread in most parts of the world, including the United States. In Europe, this idea is less popular, begging the question as to why this is the case. Of course, many parts of Europe are far more secular than other regions of the world, and if religion and morality were closely linked, this religious decline would be accompanied by a moral decline in Europe, as conservative politicians and traditional Christian believers sometimes proclaim (Rubin 2015). The evidence for such a moral decline, however, is not strong, as it seems that secularisation does not imply an increase in self-interested values or anti-social behaviour (Storm 2016). Indeed, as Bork has stated, we ‘all know persons without religious beliefs who nevertheless display all the virtues we associate with religious teaching’ (Bork quoted by Beit-Hallahmi 2010: 119).

Therefore, it seems rather unlikely that secular people and convinced atheists are morally ignorant or indifferent. The evidence seems to point in the opposite direction, for if one thing is clear in many parts of secular Europe, it is that people are better off in terms of (for example) solidarity, social capital, levels of trust, and tolerance (Norenzayan 2014). Religious individuals, but also atheists and agnostics, appear to have moral knowledge, although the latter will deny that it is ordained by God or a supernatural force. Of course, for some belief in God may help bolster motivation but it is quite well possible that alternative social and psychological mechanisms are available that would serve just as well as religion (Joyce 2007). This seems to indicate that the strong connection between religion and moral views that was once so obvious has diminished or vanished. So, what is the nature of the relationship between religion and morality in contemporary Europe?

This question was empirically addressed by, for example, Ingrid Storm (2016) in her article in Politics and Religion in which she investigated the associations between changes with regard to religiosity and changes in two moral dimensions, one referring to issues of personal autonomy and the other related to issues of self-interest. It appears that the religious decline in European countries was accompanied by an increase of personal autonomy issues, but not so much with an increase in self-interest morality. Over time, self-interest morality, which is defined and measured as being opposite to social norms, hardly changed in Europe and appears to remain at a very low level. Indeed, there appears to be great consensus among religious and non-religious individuals about moral issues that involve harm and injustice. This lack of variation, both at societal and individual level, makes it difficult, if not impossible, to investigate the associations between religion and this kind of morality. We therefore confine our study in this chapter to the second dimension of morality. This dimension can be labelled as personal autonomy morality, or private morality. Here we follow Halman and van Ingen (2015), who investigated whether or not the religious decline in Europe was accompanied by shifts in moral values. They focused on personal issues and individual rights such as divorce, homosexuality, abortion, and euthanasia, and their analyses revealed that ‘in Western Europe declining levels of church attendance have indeed led to increasing permissiveness towards abortion, divorce and euthanasia’, but that with regard to homosexuality ‘there is little evidence for such a conclusion’ (Halman and van Ingen 2015: 624). This may not come as a big surprise, because issues like abortion and euthanasia are of a different order than homosexuality. Although all such issues concern personal matters, the first two deal with end-of-life issues, while homosexuality is a matter of sexual orientation. Moreover, the first issues are driven by choice more than the latter. To consider these very diverse issues as being part of one dimension of morality, as do, for example, Storm (2016) and Draulans and Halman (2003), does not do much justice to the likely different attributes that may impact these aspects of morality. We therefore confine our analyses to end-of-life issues only: individuals’ justification of abortion, euthanasia, and suicide. These controversial issues are prominent in European morality politics (Engeli et al. 2012), disputed among pro-life and pro-choice adherents, and linked to religion (Halman and van Ingen 2015). To understand the role of religion in these matters, we address the question as to whether it is religious practices or religious beliefs that affect people’s moral views regarding these issues.

Distinguishing between beliefs and practices in connection with morality is an issue that is less often investigated. Storm (2016), for example, combined religious practices and beliefs, leaving undecided the matter of which religious aspect impacts morality. Following McKay and Whitehouse (2015), we therefore ask ourselves what it is in religion that affects morality: religious practices such as attendance of religious services, or religious beliefs. The few studies that make the distinction between religious beliefs and attendance conclude that it is not so much people’s belief that is key as it is attendance at religious services. For example, Galen (2012) argued that it is religious belonging and not so much an individual’s personal religious beliefs that is important when it comes to morality. According to Bloom (2012), this is because it is a matter of binding more than believing. In the next section, we will elaborate on these relationships theoretically. We conclude here by saying that we investigate the claim that religious involvement is a more important attribute of people’s moral views than their religious beliefs. As such, we add to the understanding of the relationship between religion and morality.

3 Religion as a Source of End-of-Life Morality

From the above we can conclude that many people link morality to religion because religion would provide a moral compass. All religious institutions have moral messages, and ‘many, perhaps most, of our moral standards come from religious guidance’ (Uslaner 1999: 217). Some claim that religions:

(...) make explicit moral claims that their followers accept. Through holy texts and the proclamations of authority figures, religions make moral claims about abortion, homosexuality, duties to the poor, charity, masturbation, just war, and so on. People believe these claims because, implicitly or explicitly, they trust the sources. They accept them on faith. (Bloom 2012: 184)¹

For many people, religion is thus one of, if not the only, legitimate moral authority, and the normative framework it provides makes its adherents likely to be less permissive in their moral outlooks. It is consistently found that pious, devout, and religious individuals are more rigorous and less flexible in their moral outlooks (Jagodzinski and Dobbelaere 1995; Scheepers et al. 2002; Stark 2001; Finke and Adamczyk 2008; Adamczyk and Pitt 2009). Rodney Stark (2001) concluded that religious beliefs are powerful attributes of conformity to the moral order, while Letki (2006) and Parboteeah et al. (2008) found religious participation to be a significant factor in determining people’s moral views.

Religion thus still appears to be a strong foundation upon which individuals base their moral positions. Most religions provide moral standards with regard to end-of-life issues. Religious individuals are likely to be more receptive to these standards and comply with the rules, whereas secular individuals ‘may either completely reject these moral norms, or, at least, treat them more flexible’ (Jagodzinski and Dobbelaere 1995: 220). Hence, it can be expected that religious individuals are less likely to accept euthanasia, abortion, and suicide than are secular individuals. The recent study by Storm (2016) convincingly substantiated this claim. In particular, the non-religious ‘think behaviors such as abortion and divorce can be justified in some, if not all situations’ (Storm 2016: 121).

It seems, however, that religious attendance rather than an individual’s religious beliefs is the more important factor in explaining moral views. But why would that be the case? To answer this question, we employ a sociological perspective, focusing on the role of religious institutions, authorities and communities. Durkheim was right when he claimed that the degree of integration in a religious community is the determining factor for people’s behaviours (Graham and Haidt 2010; Galen 2012; Bloom 2012). In his seminal work on suicide, Durkheim (1951) attributed the lower suicide rates among Catholics (compared to Protestants) to the degree of integration into their religious communities. The key to understanding how religions provide meaning is ‘the creation of moral communities bound together by shared group-level moral concerns’ (Graham and Haidt 2010: 145). Uslaner (1999: 217) argued similarly that ‘shared ties are the basis of a communal language of morals’. People who do not – or do not frequently – attend religious services are not very receptive to the moral messages of religion as they are not (fully) part of their religious community. In particular, those who have become dissociated from religious institutions like the church are not very likely to adhere to the moral message of these institutions. Not being tied to and integrated into institutional religious life makes it easier to disagree with its message and easier to depart from the norms set by religious institutions on moral judgements. In contrast, individuals who are closely tied to these institutions and take part in religious life will be more likely to echo the moral views voiced by those institutions. Religious institutions appear as compelling forces constantly reminding their members to act in a certain way (Shariff 2015). As Baumeister et al. (2010: 76) noted, ‘religious communities represent moralistic audiences that can increase self-awareness and self-monitoring, thereby ensuring that people do not deviate from religiously prescribed norms, or that they promptly return on the right track when they do’. Hence, religious institutions may constrain people’s choices and require their adherents to comply with their message. It is in this way that they form moral communities.

These moral communities also work beyond the individual level. When more individuals in a given context attend religious services, there is a larger pool of devout people in a society, which increases potential social interaction of all individuals, both religious and non-religious, with religious people in a variety of social structures, such as work, neighbourhoods, and voluntary organisations (Moore and Vanneman 2003). For those who regularly attend religious services, interaction with like-minded others will reinforce the moral messages of religious institutions, whereas for non-attenders such forms of interaction could enhance their willingness to conform to these moral values, as they would like to conform to leading social norms. In addition, in societies where many people attend religious services, religious institutions play an important role in the public debate about moral issues, since they spread their messages through major institutional vehicles like the media, education, and politics (Moore and Vanneman 2003). For all these reasons, we can assume that there will be a strong relation between attending religious services and the acceptance of end-of-life issues.

It should be noted that although attendance and religious beliefs will be associated, being religious does not necessarily imply that people also attend religious services. Not all religious individuals will attend religious services regularly, and therefore they will not be very receptive to following the strict moral guidelines and prescriptions of the institutions. Furthermore, it is very likely that the religious individuals who attended religious services in the past but no longer do so have often made this choice because they do not agree with the moral rules and guidelines of the religious institutions. Thus, considering yourself a religious person does not necessarily imply that you also attend religious services and that you want to adhere to the rules and prescriptions of the religious institution. Where individuals define themselves as religious and do attend religious services, it is likely that they will act accordingly; for them religious beliefs may be part of their cognitive structure and hence a determining factor for their moral views.

However, it is less obvious that religious beliefs as a stand-alone – that is, not in combination with attendance – will be a determining factor in predicting moral values. Why would religious individuals, especially those religious individuals who do not attend religious services, be morally stricter with regard to abortion, euthanasia, and suicide? There are no compelling arguments to assume that personal devotion would lead to a rejection of euthanasia without referring to the moral message of the religious institution. Of course, arguments for religious beliefs as a determinant of moral views could be found in the Divine Command Theory. The classic idea of this theory is the ‘humble submission to God’s will’ and that ‘God’s revealed will is the proper measure or standard of human conduct (...) [and] rebellion or disobedience is the essence of sin’ (Wainwright 2005: 75). If being religious means belief in a supernatural agent or God who commands, then God’s rules and commandments have to be obeyed. However, it also means that behaviour should be in line with the religious duties, rules, and prescriptions of the system (Baumeister et al. 2010). Thus, fear of God and threats of punishment appear to influence people’s judgements about moral transgressions (Atkinson and Bouerrat 2011; Pyysiäinen 2017).

Adherents of the Divine Command Theory regard religion as the traditional source of moral authority. According to them, moral values originate from God’s will. Only God ordains what is good and bad, right and wrong, or allowed and forbidden. ‘Divine command theories (...) assert that moral values are real and binding because God wills them so and consequently that it is God’s will that make an action morally right or wrong’ (Widdows 2004: 198). Even though it seems a plausible argument for many believers and pious people, it would imply that people who do not believe in God have no moral source and hence no moral values (Widdows 2004). This is, of course, very unlikely and can easily be disproved. As mentioned before, it is not only religious individuals who have moral knowledge; atheists and agnostics do as well, although the latter will deny that it is ordained by God or a supernatural force. It is quite possible that alternative social and psychological mechanisms are available that would serve just as well as religion (Joyce 2007). Humans seem perfectly capable of distinguishing right from wrong without knowing what God commands (Adams quoted by Widdows 2004). Haidt’s (2012) Moral Foundations Theory argues that humans intuitively know what is right and wrong, which according to de Waal could not be the case without the prior development of some kind of empathy and social cognition in our ancestors (Pyysiäinen 2017; de Waal 2006). In addition, there is empirical evidence that religious beliefs as a stand-alone does not make people more prosocially motivated; rather it is religious groups that ‘exert strong pressure on group members to conform to the requirements and moral ideals of the community’ (Shariff et al. 2014: 439). For example, Campbell and Putnam (2010) found no evidence of an impact of religious faith on volunteering and charitable behaviour when religious attendance was taken into account, which led Bloom (2012) to draw the conclusion that belonging to a religious community is the determining factor, not religious beliefs. Religious belief content appears not to be the causal mechanism of prosociality, according to Galen (2012), who summarised numerous studies on the relationship between religion and prosocial behaviour. Integration in a group of like-minded individuals appears to make the difference, not ‘cognitive conviction regarding metaphysical entities’ (Galen 2012: 893; Graham and Haidt 2010). As de Waal (2006: 174) noted:

Moral norms and values are not argued from independently derived maxims (...) but born from internalized interactions with others. A human being growing up in isolation would never arrive at moral reasoning (...) [;] social interaction must be at the root of moral reasoning.

To conclude, it is not so much because of their religious beliefs, but because religious individuals are integrated in a religious community or group with rather conservative and strict rules that people think and act is a certain way, making them reluctant to approve of artificial life-ending activities. It is the binding factor of moral communities that appears to be the crucial aspect of religion rather than individuals’ religious beliefs. We therefore assume that associations between religious beliefs and end-of-life morality are weaker than associations between attendance at religious services and the acceptance of the artificial ending of life.

4 Declining Impact and Shifting Moral Sources?

Since religion, and more precisely the moral communities of religious institutions, provide a normative framework for opinions on moral issues, modernisation may have far-reaching consequences for the moral order within societies. The rather evident relationship between religion and morality has been seriously challenged by modernisation, secularisation, and individualisation.

The core idea of what is called the secularisation paradigm is that modernity is very problematic for religion (Bruce 2002). A range of societal developments such as rationalisation, increasing existential security, and secular completion have caused religion to lose its central position in society and reduced religion to one of the many meaning systems in society that people can select from. For Casanova (1994), the core of secularisation is the differentiation and emancipation of the secular spheres from religious institutions and norms. Indeed, modernisation ‘undermines the power, popularity, and prestige of religious beliefs, behavior, and institutions’ (Bruce 2011: 24). This appears clearly in the declining numbers of individuals in Europe who attend religious services, but also in people losing their religious beliefs. As such, Davie’s (1990) famous qualification of Europe in terms of believing without belonging is not supported empirically. Voas (2009) therefore concluded that Davie’s idea of believing without belonging was interesting, but that we had better forget it because, in addition to attendance at religious services being on the decline, all religious indicators show serious decline over time in large parts of Europe (see S. Pickel and G. Pickel, Chap. 5, this volume).

The loss of influence of religion not only appears in declining levels of religious attendance and beliefs, but is also visible regarding moral views on the approval of end-of-life issues. As we saw above, abortion, euthanasia, and suicide cannot be justified according to most religions, and religious individuals will therefore be stricter than non-religious individuals. The declining numbers of religious individuals is therefore likely to be accompanied by an increase in permissiveness towards these end-of-life issues. Particularly with respect to such sensitive topics as abortion, euthanasia, and suicide, a decreasing number of individuals are likely to accept the moral standards of the religious institutions. Instead, they want to decide for themselves. The decreasing importance of the religious institutions delineates a more general process of decline of authority and a growing anti-institutional mood due to the individualisation of society. People in an individualised society are considered to be free, independent from traditional constraints, and autonomous in their decisions. The ‘role of subjectivity has greatly increased in contemporary society’ (Cortois and Laermans 2018: 61). The individualisation paradigm states that individuals are increasingly writing their own script; it is up to the individual what to choose. Society demands that people make choices of their own. As such, people are condemned to individualisation; it is not something individuals arrive at by a free decision (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002). As Giddens (1991) once proclaimed, people have no choice but to choose, and these choices are less and less determined by prescription from religious institutions. This implies that an anti-authority mood has developed (Inglehart 1997) and individualisation has encouraged an unrestrained endeavour to pursue private needs and aspirations, resulting in the assigning of top priority to personal need fulfilment (see Bréchon, Chap. 8, this volume). Self-development and personal happiness have become the ultimate criteria for individuals’ actions and attitudes. Individualisation thus entails a process in which opinions, beliefs, attitudes, and values are becoming matters of personal choice. Personal autonomy is highly valued, and this is reflected in people’s attitudes, ideas, and behaviours, which are increasingly dependent upon personal considerations and convictions. In other words, individualisation can be regarded as a process by which the individual gradually becomes liberated from structural constraints (Beck 1992). The liberation and emancipation from traditional collective bonds imply a reduction in the power of traditions. The traditional options become less self-evident, which eventuates in what Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002: 1) have described as ‘losing the traditional’. As a result, a decline in traditional options can be expected and thus also an increase in non-traditional views about end-of-life issues.

Regarding the impact of religion on moral views concerning such life-ending issues, a decline is to be expected. Structural differentiation and specialisation led to societal spheres being disconnected from each other, making them autonomous domains. The various subsystems of modern societies developed their own values, and therefore individuals in modern societies do not necessarily have coherent value patterns. Hence, there is a decreasing tendency for various opinions, views, ideas, etc., to be clustered into recognisable coherent patterns. Because of this development, we can expect a gradual decline in the associations between religious attendance and beliefs on the one hand and moral views on the other.

5 What the Data Reveal

In order to investigate the secularisation of European society and the assumption that it coincides with increasing levels of permissiveness in end-of-life morality, we rely on the survey data from the EVS. We selected data from the last four data collections (waves 1990, 1999, 2008, and 2017) and included all countries surveyed in the latest 2017 wave. Please note that not all countries were involved in all four waves (for example, some former Soviet Union states in the Caucasus were not included in the EVS in the 1990s). Table 4.1 displays an overview of the countries included and numbers of cases in each country and wave.

Table 4.1 Overview of countries in the analyses, country codes (ISO 3166-1 alpha-2), region, and numbers of cases in each wave

In order to investigate the associations between religion and moral views, we focus on two dimensions of religiosity. One refers to the institutional religious practice, testing the idea, based mainly on the arguments from Sociological Integration Theory, that religious engagement explains the connections between religion and morality. The indicator used in tapping this religious involvement is religious attendance. Respondents in the EVS were questioned about the frequency of their attendance at religious services apart from weddings, funerals, and christenings. The answer categories range from more than once a week, once a week, once a month, only on specific holy days, once a year, less often to never, and practically never. Country means are calculated and high scores thus indicate higher levels of secularity in a country. For the analyses at the individual level, we distinguish between individuals who attend religious services regularly (once a month or more) and individuals who rarely or never attend religious services.

The second religious dimension refers to a more general idea of religious beliefs: whether individuals consider themselves religious. Such a subjective notion does not necessarily imply an institutional connection, but can be an emotional feeling of an individual without being tied to an institution or a religion. Such emotions may be rooted in people’s personality, but are of course also dependent upon what the community believes, the level of social control, and the religious practices of the community (Halman and de Moor 1994). This subjective religiosity is measured by the question: ‘Independently whether you go to church, would you say you are a religious person, not a religious person, or a convinced atheist?’. We dichotomised this item with 1 = a religious person and 2 = not religious or convinced atheist. The percentages of citizens in a country declaring themselves not religious or a convinced atheist are calculated, and again high percentages indicate higher levels of secularity in a country.

In this chapter, we focus on end-of-life morality, which refers to the acceptance of abortion, euthanasia, and suicide. In the EVS, these three issues were part of a longer list of moral issues that were presented to respondents. People were asked whether these actions could be justified or not. The response categories ranged from 1 = never justified to 10 = always justified. All are personal matters involving individual choice to voluntarily end life. Because of the consistency in acceptance or rejection of these voluntary end-of-life issues, they are referred to as ‘the consistent life ethic’ (Trahan 2017: 29). The consistency appears clearly from the associations between people’s opinions on these issues: factor analyses revealed a one-factor solution and the internal consistency of the scale appeared very high. We use the mean scores on these three end-of-life issues to indicate end-of-life morality. Again, country means are calculated, and a high score means that there is a high level of permissiveness for end-of-life issues in a country.

The secularisation trends and assumed increases in permissiveness concerning end-of-life issues will be displayed for different regions in Europe, as we may expect variations in the link between religion and morality. We distinguish five regions based on important historical and contemporary religious and secular characteristics: Northern Europe, Western Europe, Southern Europe, and two Eastern European regions.

First, the Northern region (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden) is characterised by a mainly Protestant religious heritage and, compared to other parts of Europe, is quite secular nowadays. Countries in the Western region (Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland) are also very secular, but have a rather mixed religious denominational make-up because of historical events. The Southern part of Europe (Italy, Spain) is less secular and hence more religious, and overall Catholic. The Eastern European countries are distinctive from the rest of Europe, because they are characterised by ex-communist rule. As is known, communist doctrine in general was secular. This special heritage is thought to still have an impact on individuals’ religiosity in this part of Europe today (Pollack et al. 2012). Since the communist doctrine may have been stronger in ex-Soviet states than in the so-called satellite states which were under the influence of the Soviet Union, we further distinguish ex-Soviet states (Armenia, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Russia) from ex-communist states (Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Hungary, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia).

At the individual level, the relationships between religious practice and religious beliefs on the one hand and end-of-life morality on the other are explored, comparing the mean scores on end-of-life morality for individuals who regularly attend religious services with the mean scores of those who do not attend religious services. This comparison is also made for individuals who say they consider themselves religious persons and those who do not. Figures 4.1 and 4.2 display the mean scores for these groups in the five regions.

Fig. 4.1

Attending religious services and end-of-life morality in five European regions (EVS 1990–2017)

Fig. 4.2

Religiousness and end-of-life morality in five regions (EVS 1990–2017)

For both religious indicators, it is clear that there is an association between religiosity and end-of-life morality. Figure 4.1 shows that in all five regions individuals who attend religious services are less permissive in accepting these end-of-life activities compared to individuals who rarely or never attend religious services. The differences between religious attenders and non-attenders appear to be larger in the Western part of Europe (the Northern, Western, and Southern regions) than in the Eastern part. What the regions all over Western Europe have in common is that the acceptance of abortion, euthanasia, and suicide steadily increases over time, not only for those who do not frequently attend a religious ceremony, but also for frequent attenders. The story in Eastern Europe appears to be different, since steady increases cannot be observed in that part of Europe. However, the trends over time among individuals who attend religious services and those who rarely or never do are remarkably similar too.

The same developments can be reported with regard to the associations between religious beliefs and end-of-life moral permissiveness. Figure 4.2 shows that again in the Western part of Europe steady increases in permissiveness can be found both for individuals who consider themselves religious and for those who do not. The trends in Eastern Europe again are less clear, but rather similar among religious and non-religious individuals. In this part of Europe, the level of permissiveness is not as strong as in Western European societies either.

All over Europe, the differences between individuals who attend religious services and those who rarely or never do appear larger than between religious and non-religious Europeans, and such differences have remained more or less the same since the wave of surveys in 1990. As such, the idea from integration theories that institutional engagement is a stronger predictor of morality than religious beliefs seems to be confirmed, although ‘strong’ needs to be qualified. The association parameters (correlation coefficients and eta’s) between the two religious indicators on the one hand and end-of-life morality on the other, which are displayed in Table 4.2 yield rather modest associations. Thus, religion and moral views with regard to abortion, euthanasia, and suicide are related, but not as strongly as many may have thought.

Table 4.2 Association parameters between end-of-life morality and church attendance (Pearson correlation coefficient r) and religiousness (η) in five regions (EVS 1990–2017)

Table 4.2 also shows that the associations between religion and end-of-life morality do not decrease over time as is expected from secularisation theory. In all regions, the associations remain more or less the same across the four EVS waves. We did not check for composition effects, which will likely affect the slight differences over the years and the regions. In general, it seems that not much is changing in the relationship between individuals’ religious attendance and beliefs on the one hand and their moral views about end-of-life issues on the other.

6 Path Dependency

The regional analyses described above clearly demonstrate that religion and morality are still linked in modern societies, even though the relationships are rather modest. However, societal changes are usually found to be nation specific, and Inglehart and Baker (2000) among others have convincingly shown the path-dependent trajectory of modernisation. Regional analyses mask such unique trajectories and do not do justice to the far from uniform developments that may take place in the distinctive societies within the regions. In order to address these nation-specific trajectories, we plotted for each region the country means on both religious indicators and end-of-life morality.

6.1 The Nordic Countries

Figures 4.3 and 4.4 show that the trends in the Nordic countries are far from linear, either regarding the levels of secularisation or with regard to increasing levels of end-of-life morality. In fact, the trajectories are difficult to interpret, and this holds for both religious attendance and beliefs. Both figures do reveal some differences between the Nordic countries. Not only do the trajectories appear to be country specific, but the countries also appear to be far from similar in their levels of secularity and permissiveness. Sweden ranks highest in secularity in 2017 and its population is as permissive towards end-of-life morality as the population of Denmark, which is less secular compared to Sweden. The Swedes became more permissive towards end-of-life morality between 1990 and 1999, but there was no clear trend in secularisation in Sweden in the same period. From 1999 to 2008, there was a decrease in attendance at religious services and feelings of religiousness in Sweden, making Sweden the most secular country in Northern Europe. The Finnish trajectory of initial declining degrees of secularisation and permissiveness towards end-of life morality between 1990 and 1999 is followed by an increase in religious attendance, beliefs, and end-of-life permissiveness up to 2008. During the last decade, we observe an increase in permissiveness towards end-of-life morality, but at the same time we see declining levels of secularisation, making the picture rather confusing. In Norway the level of secularisation remained more or less the same over the years, but permissiveness towards end-of-life morality steadily increased between 1990 and 2017. The Danish trend connects a more or less steadily increasing level of permissiveness with an only recently (2008–2017) increasing level of secularisation.

Fig. 4.3

Attending religious services and end-of-life morality in Northern Europe (r = .422; p = .072)

Fig. 4.4

Religiousness and end-of-life morality in Northern Europe (r = .437; p = .041)

6.2 Western Europe

Although not linear and far from similar in all countries, the trajectories in the Western European countries more or less confirm modernisation trends of increasing levels of secularity and increasing levels of permissiveness towards end-of-life morality (see Figs. 4.5 and 4.6). However, the timing of these trends is different in the countries, although the largest shift towards more permissiveness took place in the last decade in all countries. In France, there is more or less a steady increase in both secularisation and permissiveness since 1990; in the Netherlands, the largest increase in secularisation and permissiveness took place in the last decade, whereas in Great Britain the secularisation that took place between 1990 and 1999 was not accompanied by increasing levels of permissiveness towards end-of-life morality. The Austrian trajectory appears unique. From 1990 to 1999, Austrians became more permissive towards abortion, euthanasia, and suicide, but not more secular. Between 1999 and 2009, Austrians did become more secular, but during that decade the level of permissiveness towards end-of-life morality hardly changed. From 2008 to 2017, the level of religious attendance remained the same, but Austrians again showed more permissiveness towards abortion, euthanasia, and suicide. The figures also show that the Dutch are not the most secular (in Western Europe the Britons and French are more secular), but they appear to be the most permissive of all Europeans towards end-of-life morality.

Fig. 4.5

Attending religious services and end-of-life morality in Western Europe (r = .638; p < .001)

Fig. 4.6

Religiousness and end-of-life morality in Western Europe (r = .549; p = .008)

6.3 Southern Europe

A strong association between religious attendance and end-of-life morality appears to exist in the two Southern European countries (r = .810; p = .015), but it is clear that there are differences in the trajectories between Spain and Italy. Figures 4.7 and 4.8 show that people in Spain are more secular and more permissive towards end-of-life morality than Italians. After a more or less steady secularisation of Spanish society from 1990 to 2008, secularisation did not continue in terms of declining religious attendance, but feelings of religiousness declined further. Spain’s population gradually became more permissive towards end-of-life issues. In Italy, there were hardly any changes in either secularisation or end-of-life morality in the period from 1990 to 2008, but a shift took place in the last decade. Italians have become more secular and more permissive towards end-of-life morality since 2008.

Fig. 4.7

Attending religious services and end-of-life morality in Southern Europe (r = .810; p = .015)

Fig. 4.8

Religiousness and end-of-life morality in Southern Europe (r = .714; p = .047)

6.4 Eastern Europe (Ex-Communist Countries)

Figures 4.9 and 4.10 show that the trends over time appear rather modest and very diverse in the Eastern European ex-communist countries. More or less steadily increasing levels of permissiveness towards end-of-life morality can be found in Slovenia, Slovakia, and Czechia, but secularisation has not increased substantially in these countries. The latter society was already highly secular in 1990 and that remained the case, but the Czech people became steadily more permissive towards abortion, euthanasia, and suicide over the years. A reversed picture applies to Bulgaria, whose population became less secular during the past 30 years: both the level of those attending religious services and the level of feelings of religiousness declined. Although Polish people became more secular and more permissive towards end-of-life morality, they remain among the most religious people in the Eastern part of Europe. People in Bosnia-Herzegovina and North Macedonia are rather religious too, particularly regarding levels of subjective religiousness. The trends in the other Eastern European countries do not demonstrate large shifts, either in the levels of religious attendance and beliefs or in permissiveness towards end-of-life morality. In fact, the populations of these countries show low levels of acceptance of abortion, euthanasia, and suicide.

Fig. 4.9

Attending religious services and end-of-life morality in Eastern Europe/ex-communist countries (r = .496; p = .001)

Fig. 4.10

Religiousness and end-of-life morality in Eastern Europe/ex-communist countries (r = .638; p < .001)

6.5 Ex-Soviet Union

Figures 4.11 and 4.12 show that the trajectories of the two Caucasian countries (Armenia and Georgia) clearly deviate from the other ex-Soviet countries. The populations of these two countries show lower levels of secularisation and permissiveness towards end-of-life morality than the populations of other ex-Soviet countries. In addition, there are no clear trends over time in these two countries. Trends in the other ex-Soviet countries are rather mixed. Estonian people seem to have become somewhat more secular and more permissive towards end-of-life morality, especially in the last decade, whereas the population of Belarus showed declining levels of permissiveness. Russia and Latvia are more secular than the other ex-Soviet countries, but more or less similar when it comes to end-of life morality.

Fig. 4.11

Attending religious services and end-of-life morality in ex-Soviet countries (r = .719; p = .002)

Fig. 4.12

Religiousness and end-of-life morality in ex-Soviet countries (r = .682; p = .002)

A conclusion that can be drawn from Figs. 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, 4.8, 4.9, 4.10, 4.11, and 4.12 is that the associations at the country level between secularisation and end-of-life morality (measured by correlation coefficients) are clearly positive in all five regions in Europe, indicating that higher levels of secularisation go hand in hand with more permissiveness towards abortion, euthanasia, and suicide. This is in line with the ideas of modernisation theories. In addition, the assumption of the integration perspective that religious practice as an indicator of this secularisation is more salient for a population’s end-of-life morality than religious beliefs is confirmed for three out of five regions: in Western Europe, Southern Europe, and ex-Soviet countries, the macro-level correlation coefficients between levels of religious attendance and end-of-life morality are higher than the correlation coefficients between levels of subjective religiousness and end-of-life morality. In the Northern region, the two correlation coefficients are about equal and rather modest, while in the ex-communist countries the correlation between the levels of religiousness and end-of-life morality (r = .638; p < .001) is higher than the correlation between the levels of religious attendance and end-of-life morality (r = .496; p = .001).

7 Conclusion and Discussion

For many Europeans, religion provides moral rules and regulations concerning end-of-life issues. These religious guidelines are often reflected in politics to justify moral policies, that is, policies on basic human issues such as the end-of-life actions we studied in this chapter (abortion, euthanasia, and suicide). Such moral policies are more prominent on the political (and judicial) agenda in societies with a stronger religiously based party system (Studlar et al. 2013). However, modernisation processes such as differentiation, specialisation, and individualisation resulted in a secularisation of society with a consequently declining impact of religion on moral issues as well as a more secular political party system. Wilson (1982) summarised the secularisation process concisely when he stated that the social significance of religion declined. Although debated especially by American sociologists of religion, secularisation appears to be a general trend in Europe, but it is not very likely that it will be a process that will take place all over Europe in the same way and to the same extent. The secularisation process remains a complex phenomenon and may be country or region specific, as will its implications.

In this chapter, we elaborated on such issues and argued that secularisation will have resulted in a declining impact of religion on moral issues such as abortion, euthanasia, and suicide in the various regions in Europe. We distinguished between five regions in Europe based on important historical and contemporary religious and secular characteristics: Northern, Western, and Southern European countries, Eastern European ex-communist countries and ex-Soviet countries. We further elaborated on the idea that religious beliefs and religious practices are separate aspects of religion. Subjectively identifying as religious does not imply that people are also integrated in their religion (which manifests itself in attending religious services on a regular basis). We hypothesised that integration in religion in particular would remain a strong determinant for permissiveness regarding life and death issues, whereas religious beliefs would be decreasingly important for such moral issues.

The analyses yield evidence that there does indeed appear to be a relationship between both religious beliefs and religious participation on the one hand and end-of-life morality on the other. As expected, religious beliefs appear less strongly associated with this kind of morality than religious attendance. Those who frequently attend religious services are clearly stricter than individuals who attend religious services less frequently or never. However, it must be acknowledged that the impact of religion on morality is not as strong as might have been anticipated, nor do the analyses provide strong evidence of declining levels of the impact of religion on morality. As such, the further secularisation of European society cannot be demonstrated convincingly in Europe when it comes to the significance of religion for morality concerning life and death issues. After all, the relationship between both indicators of religion and end-of-life morality was already modest in 1990 in all five regions in Europe and remained modest. In addition, many parts of Europe were already highly secularised at the end of the last century and did not secularise much further. This may hint at a ceiling effect in the association between religion and morality.

In addition, our analyses made clear that throughout Europe the acceptance of abortion, euthanasia, and suicide increased, not only among non-religious people and people who rarely or never attend religious services, but also among frequent religious attenders and believers. Although the levels of permissiveness towards end-of-life morality are lower in Eastern Europe than in Western Europe, the trend among religious and non-religious people is similar. Europe becomes gradually more permissive, but there is not much evidence that the impact of religion has declined. The association between religion and morality barely changed over time, and as expected, attending religious services indeed appears to be more strongly linked to such life-ending morality than religiousness. This substantiates the ideas of the integration perspective.

It should be noted, however, that religious participation is not as strong a predictor of morality as subjective religiousness in Eastern European countries. The interplay between religion and morality is different in these countries compared to the rest of Europe. This may be the result of Soviet rule, when ‘religious organizations were strongly constrained or persecuted’ (Norris and Inglehart 2004: 115). However, this breakdown of religious institutions did not destroy personal religious beliefs. Further, as Ančić and Zrinščak (2012) note, the competencies of the church as a religious institution concerned social issues in the main, and not so much questions of personal morality. It implied that differences between individuals who regularly attend religious services and those who rarely or never do so are less pronounced (Ančić and Zrinščak 2012; Halman and van Ingen 2015).

The analyses do support the idea of path dependency, however. In each region and within each region, each country appears to follow its own trajectory of secularisation, with its own consequences regarding end-of-life morality. Inglehart and co-authors convincingly demonstrated that although countries develop in a similar direction they do not converge. The trajectories of change in religion and moral views they follow are country specific and determined by historical, economic, and political legacies. Such legacies cannot be denied and determine a country’s position on the global cultural map (Inglehart 1997, 2018; Inglehart and Welzel 2005). Country-specific in-depth analyses are required to address that issue.

To conclude, our study reveals that morality is still connected to religious practice and religious beliefs in a secularised Europe. However, the associations are not very strong and there are hardly any changes over time, which means that in Europe end-of-life morality is no longer strongly dependent upon religion. One could argue that religious institutions, being closely connected to religious practice, and religious belief systems such as subjective religiousness, are not the main drivers of end-of-life morality in Europe nowadays. This begs the question as to what the drivers of morality are.

Previous research explored whether there is some evidence that post-materialism replaces religion as a moral source (Halman and Pettersson 1996). According to Inglehart’s (1977, 1997, 2018) well-known theory on cultural change, societies are gradually shifting from materialist to post-materialist values. One of the consequences is that the ‘old politics of class conflict and, to some extent, religious conflict is being overlain, and will be steadily displaced, by a “new” politics centered on the conflict between materialist and post-materialist value orientations’ (Deth 1995: 9–10). However, the conclusion of their exploration was that although post-materialism appears to be an important source of division, the role of religion in morality has not disappeared. As such, post-materialism has apparently not taken over the role of religion. The changes in moral outlook cannot therefore be attributed to either the declining levels of traditional religiosity or increasing levels of post-materialism. Changes in religiosity and moral orientation may be seen as part of an encompassing and more general development which is labelled individualisation. Increasingly, moral convictions and beliefs will be based on personal convictions and considerations. Such an individualisation process is not limited to one specific life domain, but embraces all sectors of human life. A consequence of this development may be that increasingly the sources of people’s choices become varied and unknown, and hence people’s actual choices become increasingly unpredictable. For some, religion may be important in certain circumstances, while others are guided in their moral choices by other sources.

Research shows, however, that many people use both moral and rational-instrumental arguments to justify their personal stances regarding end-of-life issues (Burlone and Richmond 2018). For example, religious individuals may refer to the sanctity of life or the alleged danger of a slippery slope and potential abuse. However, more secular individuals, who value individual autonomy highly, may use the same rational slippery slope argument as a warning against the artificial prolongation of life. This implies that it is not easy to predict how exactly a rational institution like science would act as a source of morality.

The rather low associations between religion and end-of-life morality in Europe seem to reflect the idea that value priorities are dependent upon the degree to which people experience security and that religion is no longer necessary to provide such certainties. Throughout Europe, these certainties are increasingly provided by the modern (welfare) state, and under such circumstance, the importance of religion declines. Conditions of growing security reduce ‘the need for religious reassurance’ (Norris and Inglehart 2004: 18). It is thus likely that country differences in acceptance of abortion, euthanasia, and suicide and the variations in the impact of religion on such issues are a consequence of the differences in the degree to which security is provided by the countries’ welfare state.