Religious practice versus subjective religiosity: Catholics and those with ‘no religion’ in the French 2017 presidential election

Abstract

Since the 1930s, the frequency of mass attendance has been the most widely used indicator of involvement in Catholicism in France. Yet its validity is sometimes debated: to what extent can subjective religiosity constitute an alternative measure? Both indicators seem closely related. However, the social distributions they perform diverge at the margin. And the large sample on which this research is based reveals changes in contemporary Catholicism – particularly with regard to the urban rather than rural character of today’s practitioners. Electoral behaviour is also used in this article as a touchstone for the comparison of the two indicators. Previous research has established the strong link between Catholic religious practice and right-wing – but not far-right – voting. Despite the singularity of the 2017 election, the analysis establishes that this still holds true – and that the combination of these two indicators allows for subtler insight into this link.