A New Approach to Secularisation on the Individual Level

Abstract

The article tests a novel approach to secularisation, using Denmark as a test case. Secularisation is defined as the declining social significance of religion. Data from all four waves of the European Values Study is used. The analysis shows that there was a significant decline in the social significance of religion in Denmark from 1981 to 2008, even though there was no overall decline in religiosity. This suggests that the analysis of secularisation is improved by using a more precise operationalisation of the concept. It also suggests that secularisation is not necessarily related to declining religiosity.