Showing papers by "Manfred te Grotenhuis published in 2001"

Churches in Dutch: Causes of Religious Disaffiliation in The Netherlands, 1937–1995

Abstract: The Netherlands has become one of the most secular countries in the world. A vast majority of the Dutch people does not attend church regularly and more than half its population is not affiliated with any church at all. In this study we set out to test which individual and contextual characteristics affect religious disaffiliation. We deduced several hypotheses from theories on social integration and rationalization. To test these hypotheses we used retrospective data containing information on events that took place in the lives of our respondents since adolescence. These data were analysed using a discrete-time event history model. We found that the higher the level of rationalization in a certain year, the more likely people were to disaffiliate. This effect was particularly strong for young people. Moreover, by introducing rationalization in the model we found a number of spurious relationships that at first glance seemed to be causal. Not surprisingly, respondents were more likely to disaffiliate in cases where their partners were nonreligious. However, as respondents and their partners presumably are effected equally by rationalization, we cannot but conclude that the process of rationalization is mainly responsible for the process of religious disaffiliation that takes place in The Netherlands.

De invloed van religie en godsdienstige samenstelling van gemeenten op de kans op zelfmoord in Nederland

Abstract: Summary Top Summary Volgende The influence of denomination and religious composition of municipalities on suicide in the Netherlands Durkheims Suicide has been criticised on theoretical, methodological and empirical grounds. While some argued that Durkheim made macro- instead of micro-propositions, others maintained that he formulated micro-propositions but failed to test them with micro-data. Pescosolido (1990) proposed an alternative hypothesis that was supported empirically. In this article, we show that this hypothesis can be deduced from a general formulation of Durkheims theory. Building on Durkheims work, we formulate multilevel propositions about the impact of denomination and religious composition of municipalities on suicide in the Netherlands from 1936 until 1973. Using individual level data on suicides, we find that for every denomination in a municipality the likelihood of committing suicide decreases with the proportion of religious persons in that municipality. Furthermore, in accordance with the decline of denominational segregation in Dutch society from the 1950's, we find that the impact of religious composition of the municipality on the likelihood of committing suicide is declining. These results are in accordance with Durkheims general theory of suicide.