In the early years of the 21st century, people seemed to increasingly cling to religion, as the collapse of communism and the Soviet Union left an ideological void that was being filled by Orthodox Christianity in Russia and other post-Soviet countries.
The election of the evangelist Christian George W. Bush - who did not hesitate to reveal his religiosity - showed that evangelical Christianity was emerging as a political force in the United States, and the attacks of September 11 brought international attention to the power of political Islam in the Islamic world.
In his report, published by the American magazine "Foreign Affairs", writer Ronald Engelhart says that 12 years ago, he and his colleague Pippa Norris conducted an analysis of data on religious trends in 49 countries, between 1981 and 2007, and this data did not reveal a global reluctance to Religion despite claims that most high-income countries are becoming less religious.
In contrast, the analysis found that people in 33 out of 49 countries became more religious during those years.
The results of the analysis showed that industrial transformation and the spread of scientific knowledge did not cause the disappearance of religion as some scholars once assumed, but since 2007 things have changed at an amazing speed.
From 2007 to about 2019, the vast majority of the countries studied became less religious, and the weakness of people’s faith in religious beliefs was not limited to high-income countries only, as it appeared in most parts of the world.
The writer noted that more and more people no longer find religion a necessary source for psychological support and a sense of meaning from their lives.
Modern societies are partly less religious, and although some religious conservatives warn that moving away from religion will lead to a breakdown of social cohesion and public morality, the evidence does not support this claim.
Although it may seem unexpected, less religious countries actually tend to be less corrupt and have lower crime rates than more religious countries.
It goes without saying that religion by itself does not encourage corruption and crime, but this phenomenon reflects the fact that as societies develop, survival becomes more assured, as life expectancy increases, homicide rates and other forms of violence decrease, and with this level of security tending to increase People become less religious.
Religions flourish and decline
The author mentioned that his previous study - published in 2011 - compared levels of religious beliefs measured in the early part of 1981 with the results of the most recent surveys available at that time from about 2007 over a period of nearly a quarter of a century.
The majority of countries surveyed showed an increase in their belief in the importance of God, and the largest increases were in former communist countries.
People's belief in religious beliefs also increased in many developing countries outside the former Soviet Union, including Brazil, China, Mexico and South Africa.
On the other hand, belief in religion has declined in most high-income countries.
And the writer showed that since 2007, many poor countries, along with most former communist countries, have become less religious.
In contrast, only 5 countries from 2007 to 2019 became more religious, while the vast majority of the countries surveyed moved in the opposite direction, but India represented the most significant exception to the general pattern of declining belief in religion.
The study period roughly coincides with the return to power of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which seeks to integrate the national identity into the religious identity, and the BJP government has also called for policies of discrimination against believers in other religions, especially the large Muslim minority in India, which leads to polarization Societies and the stirring of religious sentiments.
The biggest American reluctance to religion
According to the author, between 1981 and 2007 the United States was ranked one of the most religious countries in the world, with little change in levels of religiosity, and since then it has shown the highest rates of reluctance to religion compared to any other country.
Towards the end of the first period studied, the average Americans rated the importance of God in their lives was 8.2 on a 10-point scale.
In the most recent survey conducted in the United States in 2017, the number dropped to 4.6, a surprisingly steep drop.
For many years, the United States has been the main argument proving that economic modernization does not necessarily lead to secularism, and by this measure the United States is currently the 11th least religious country for which we have data.
Influential thinkers from Karl Marx to Max Weber and Emile Durkheim predicted that the spread of scientific knowledge would dispel religion around the world, but this did not happen.
For most people religious belief was more emotional than epistemological, and the absolute survival of most of human history was uncertain.
And the writer reported that religion provided an assertion that the world was in the hands of an impeccable supreme authority, which promised that things - if the individual followed the rules - would ultimately go for the better, and in a world in which people often suffer from hunger, religion helped them overcome the state of failure. Certainty and extreme stress.
But with economic and technological development, people are becoming increasingly able to escape hunger, deal with disease and suppress violence, but they are becoming less dependent on religion, and less willing to accept its constraints, as insecurity diminishes and life expectancy increases.
Decline in debt standing
The report says that political factors and scandals in some churches play a big role in the decline of the status of religion in the United States, but the most important force behind secularism is the shift in the rules governing human fertility.
For centuries, most societies assigned women the role of childbearing as many children as possible, and they did not encourage divorce, abortion, contraception, and any sexual behavior not related to reproduction.
In general, the sacred writings of the world's major religions vary greatly, but nearly all of the world's religions have instilled these fertility norms in their adherents.
Religions have emphasized fertility because it is essential, but in a world with high infant mortality and low life expectancy a woman had to have 5 to 8 children in order to simply compensate the population.
The author believes that the major religions of the world presented the rules in favor of fertility as an absolute moral and strongly resisted change, but people are slowly abandoning the familiar beliefs and societal roles that they have known since childhood, in relation to sexuality and sexual behavior.
But when society achieved a high level of economic and physical security, younger generations began to believe that this safety was taken for granted, which led to a decline in fertility standards.
In other words, ideas, practices, and laws regarding gender equality, divorce, abortion, and homosexuality are now changing rapidly.
This change is quantifiable, as data collected by the World Values Association over the years provide a glimpse into a profound shift, and the survey uses a 10-point scale based on how each country tolerates divorce, abortion and homosexuality.
The turning point sits roughly at the middle of the scale, i.e., 5.50, with lower scores indicating that the majority of the population in the country has more conservative views, while higher scores indicate that the majority have more liberal views centered on individual choice.
The writer revealed that even in high-income countries, the ratios ranged from 3.44 for Spain, 3.49 for the United States, 3.50 for Japan, 4.14 for the United Kingdom, and 5.35 for Sweden, but there was a profound change underway.
By 2019, the average score for Spain had risen to 6.74, the United States to 5.86, Japan to 6.17, the United Kingdom to 6.90, and Sweden to 8.49, and all of these countries were below the turning point of 5.50 when they conducted their first survey, and they were all above it by the year 2015. 2019, and although these figures convey the magnitude of the recent acceleration of secularism, they provide a simplified picture of a complex reality.
Islamic exception
This development has spread to the rest of the world with one major exception. The inhabitants of the 18 Muslim-majority countries for which data are available in the World Values Survey Association remained well below the tipping point, and remained deeply religious and committed to preserving traditional norms related to sex and fertility, even in a state of control. Economic development Muslim-majority countries tend to be somewhat more religious and culturally conservative than the average.
Earlier, a 2017 study showed that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world, and religious projections for 2050 by the Pew Research Center indicate that the number of Muslims in the world is expected to grow at a faster rate than the Christian population due to the smallness Their age and high fertility rate, and in contrast, religious conversion does not have a significant impact on the Muslim population, as the poll shows.
Although Islam began in Arabia, by 2002 80% of Muslims lived outside the Arab world.
Cause analysis
For centuries, religion has served as a force for social cohesion, limiting crime and encouraging compliance with the law, so it is understood that religious conservatives fear that the decline of religion will lead to social chaos, with the escalation of corruption and crime, according to the American newspaper.
Since 1993, Transparency International has monitored the relative corruption and the validity of government officials and businessmen around the world, and every year this monitoring group publishes the Corruption Perceptions Index, which ranks public sector corruption in 180 countries and regions, and these data allow testing the actual relationship between religiosity and corruption, and whether Corruption is less prevalent in religious countries than in less religious countries.
The writer emphasized that religious countries tend to be more corrupt than secular countries, and the secular countries of the North have the lowest levels of corruption in the world.
It is clear that religiosity does not cause corruption. Countries with low levels of economic and physical security tend to enjoy high levels of religiosity and corruption alike, and although religion has played a crucial role in supporting public morals, this role diminishes as societies develop economically. People in religious countries condemn corruption less than people in less religious countries, but the effect of religion on behavior ends there.
In early agricultural societies, when most people lived just above the level of survival, religion was the most effective way to maintain order and cohesion, but modernity changed that, and with the decline of traditional religiosity it appears that a strong set of moral standards has begun to emerge to fill the void.
Evidence from the World Values Survey Association indicates that in countries with a high degree of security and secularism, people are giving an increasingly high priority to self-expression, with an increasing emphasis on human rights, environmental protection and gender equality.
Gradually, as societies pass from agriculture to industry and then depend on knowledge, increasing existential security tends to reduce the importance of religion in people's lives, so they become less obedient to traditional religious leaders and institutions, and this trend is likely to continue, but the future always remains uncertain.
Epidemics such as Covid-19 limit people's sense of existential security, and if the epidemic continues for many years or leads to a new great depression, cultural changes can recede and a reversal of the cultural transformations that took place in recent decades.
In conclusion, the author noted that this shift is still uncertain, as it will conflict with the long-term strong trend based on technology, increasing prosperity and a rise in life hope, which helps to distance people from religion.
If this trend continues, the influence that traditional religious authorities have on public morals will continue to diminish, as the growing culture of tolerance becomes stronger than ever.
According to data published by the World Economic Forum for 2019, Christianity dominates the Americas, Europe and the southern half of Africa, while Islam is the most widespread religion in a series of countries stretching from North Africa through the Middle East to Indonesia.
India stands out as a huge Hindu mass, while Buddhism spreads in Southeast Asia and Japan, and China appears as the country with the largest number of "atheists".