Generation Z and Religion

The maps on this page, though from different sources, seem to be based on the same data, showing the religious affiliations of Generation Z in Europe.

Two things struck me about them immediately:

First, that while the current map shows that secularism prevails in Western Europe, Eastern Europe is predominantly Christian. I suspect that a similar map produced 40 years ago would have shown precisely the reverse: the East would have been secular, the West Christian. Back then people in the West regarded people in the East as “godless commies”; now, it seems, the people in the West are godless capitalists.

Secondly, it has often been said by some of the more militant atheist embracers of secularism that religion has been the main cause of wars throughout history, and that if religion were abolished, wars would cease. Yet among the counties marked on the map as secularist are those that are most supportive of the current genocide being perpetrated by Israel in Gaza, especially Germany, France and the UK, and whenever there seems to be the possibility of peace in the Russia-Ukraine War, those same countries are the ones most rigidly opposed to peace, and urge Ukraine to fight on.

There are also some things of deeper significance, among which are what Samuel Huntington got wrong.

I thought Samuel Huntington's book, The Clash of Civilizations, got a lot of things right about the post-Cold War world -- that the "three-worlds" model would be exchanged for a "nine civilizations" one. But he made the mistake of thinking that Western Civilization was fundamentally Christian. As this map shows, Secularism is the established religion of the West. It doesn't matter whether you are called atheist, agnostic, or "none", it's secularism all the way down.

What do I mean by "secularism"?

Going back not 40 years, but 60 years, Western Christian theologians were concerned about the secular meaning of the gospel. There was even a book with that title -- see here. An American theologian, Harvey Cox, wrote The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective in which he explained the important distinction between "secularization" and "secularism".

"Secular" means pertaining to this age, and Christian theology makes a distinction between "this age" and "the age to come", between what is temporal and what is eternal. Civil government, for example, is concerned with the things of this age, not with the age to come, so we speak of "secular governments".  An English monarch once ordered clergy of the Church of England to keep registers of baptisms, marriage and burials, because he wanted statisstics of citizens. Now it is good that the church should keep records of its members, but its purposes are differen It is related to the concept of separation of cht from those of the state, so in 1837 the English government began secular registration of births, marriages and deaths, for its own secular purposes. This process is called secularization. It is related to the concept of the separation of Church and State, and Harvey Cox in his book explains why he thinks it is a good thing. 

Secularism, on the  other hand, is something else. It is an ideology in which people believe that there is only this age, and no age to come. And of secularism, Harvey Cox (1965:21) says:

While secularization finds its roots in the biblical faith itself and is to some extent an authentic outcome of the impact of biblical faith on Western history, this is not the case with secularism. Like any other ism, it menaces the openness and freedom secularization has produced; it must therefore be watched carefully to prevent its becoming the ideology of a new establishment. It must be especially checked where it pretends not to be a world-view but nonetheless seeks to impose its ideology through the organs of the state.

The word "atheist" means "godless", and, in demographic terms, "none" also means "godless". If there is a difference, the main difference that one can find in English is that atheists are self-consciously godless; "nones" are equally godless, just less self-consciously so. Secularism describes the worldview of both. 

Forty years ago the equivalent of Generation Z would be the age-cohort born between 1957 and 1972,  and it was probably these that Samuel Huntington had in mind when he wrote The Clash of Civilizations. He wrote before any of the current Generation Z were even born, and so probably did not foresee the secularization of the worldview of Western Europe.

I don't think, however, that that change invalidates the main thrust of Huntington's thesis: that after the end of the Cold War conflict would not be so much between ideological blocs wedded to capitalism or communism as between civilizations clustered around a common religion. If you don't regard atheism or secularism as fitting the definition of a "religion" you can substitute "worldview" if you like.

To see the change, you can regard the area coloured yellow in the map on the left as Huntington's conception of Western Civilization, while that coloured grey on the map was the bit he didn't foresee,

Huntington believed that conflicts within civilizations would tent to remain local, while those between different civilizations would tend to become wider. 

And the question arises: how do the changes reflected in these maps affect present conflicts, and how might they lead to future conflicts? And how do these changes affect our understanding of the world we live in?

I have discussed Generation Z and religion before, and especially how some of those members of Generation Z who are turning to God also seem to be attracted to right-wing politics. If you are interested you can find more on that here.