Resumen
En marzo de
2022, un 60% de personas en España se identifican como religiosas (creyentes).
Este porcentaje es el más bajo de los datos disponibles en las series
históricas. En el año 2000, era del 80%, 70% en 2019 (casi todas católicas,
97%). La variabilidad de la identificación religiosa puede verse por género,
edad, estudios alcanzados e ideología. Se han fusionado 102 archivos de datos del
Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS) en España y obtenido una muestra
de 340.532 personas entre enero de 2013 y febrero de 2022. Este archivo incluye
información adicional de la ocupación de las personas entrevistadas, de su
situación profesional y de su actividad económica. Con esta información hemos
creado un modelo de clases sociales (muestra de 268.261 personas) siguiendo la
clasificación de Erikson, Goldthorpe y Portocarero (EGP). Los resultados
muestran que la identificación religiosa varía significativamente por clases
sociales: los de clases sociales altas se identifican menos como personas
religiosas (creyentes).
Palabras
clave: identificación religiosa,creyentes, desigualdad social, clases sociales,España
ocial inequality studies are of great
relevance in academic, social, political, and economic debates in OECD
countries. Economic crash and reports of poverty and inequality have breached
the political agenda, placing these analyses and their recommendations at the
forefront of institutional action (Atkinson,
2018). It is the defining
challenge of our time, with a recurring question: if you were born into a low -
income family, what are your chances that you will rise, that your 'luck' will
change? (Mijs, 2021; Marrero
& Servén, 2021; Marqués, 2015). The OECD (2018) points to the existence of a growing perception
in the population that increasingly family advantages, and fortunes play an
important factor in people's lives and social destiny. This translates into the
irruption and, growth, of a certain pessimism in society since personal
situations in terms of education, occupation and income are strongly correlated
with family social background (OECD, 2016, p. 32), thus undermining social cohesion and
favouring political and ideological extremisms (Kelley
& Evans, 2017).
Spain, for example, is among
the nations where inequality continues to grow (Cabrera,
Marrero, Rodríguez & Salas, 2021; OECD, 2017; Carabaña, 2016; Requena & Stanek, 2015).
Where does religious
identification in Spain stand in this context of ongoing crisis? Can it be said
that social inequality has weakened religious identification in Spain? Is there
variability in the religious identification of citizens by social class? This
article studies the variability of religious believers and, by the opposition,
non-believers, with respect to their social class in Spain in the last ten
years, from January 2013 to February 2022. This period includes critical and
convulsive moments in Spanish society, mainly generated by the covid pandemic,
falling employment and incomes, and the loss of purchasing power due to the
rise in inflation, according to the data provided by Institute National of
Statistics (INE, 2022a, 2022b, 2022c), without computing the effects derived
from the Russian invasion of
Ukraine.
A variable, social class, has
been constructed to categorize the Spaniards interviewed by the CIS, following
the social class model EGP (Erikson, Goldthorpe &
Portocarero (1979, 1982, 2010).
It has been verified, in parallel, that the identifying variables of gender,
age, educational attainment, and ideology, nuance the religious identification
of Spaniards in the different class positions, again modulated by the effect of
the passage of time, the evolution of the social behaviour and citizen
attitudes (annual comparisons over a decade). The information obtained from
unification of 102 CIS barometers adds up to a total of 340,532 respondents.
This sample size allows a multidimensional analysis, and supports the results
and conclusions found. Namely, in advance: a general decrease in religious
identification over time, which, in turn, is polarized with less religious
identification in the highest social classes (60%), and a greater religious
identification in the lowest (79%). Within each social group, disaggregation by
gender, age, studies, and ideology introduces a further separation in religious
identification by class.
Thus, the lower classes vary
their religious believers by gender, age, education, and ideology: older, less
educated, and ideologically right-wing women make up the most religious group.
At the other extreme, upper classes, the group formed by younger, less educated,
and ideologically left-wing men is the least religious group. Between the two
groups, religious identification (believers) ranges between 100% and 16%,
respectively.
A starting point is that
religious identification in Spain (which varies between 60% and 80%, depending
on the year considered) is, by itself, heterogeneous by social class: the
popular classes identify themselves more as religious (believers) than the
upper classes, made up of managers, professionals, and high-level technicians.
It is also assumed that, within them, there is heterogeneity in religious
identification by gender, age, education, and ideology, in addition to the
effect of the passage of time. In short, a priori, a stereotype of less
religious 'rich upper-class' versus more religious ‘poor lower class’ more
religious is detected, an image of religiosity more associated with people with
less economic means, poorer and more distant from society and the material
goods that are alien to them, and, secondly, it is observed how the passage of
time weakens and undermines the religious identification of all Spaniards as a
whole, regardless of their social class.
Measuring
Religious Identification: The State of the Art
Religious identification has been
constructed from the dichotomization of the categories of the question asked by
the CIS in the different barometers from January 2013 to February 2022: How
do you define yourself in religious matters: practicing Catholic,
non-practicing Catholic, believer in another religion, agnostic, indifferent or
non-believer, or atheist. This polytomous categorical variable has been
dichotomized: believers (identified as religious Catholics, practicing
or non-practicing, or as believers of another religion); and non-believers
(agnostics, non-believers, atheists).
This dichotomization, which
may correspond to the religious-secular binomial (Catholics and believers of
another religion and not believers, atheists and agnostics) is common in
religious research (Panadero, Gilart
& Ortí, 2022; Ruiz, 2022, 2017; Voas & Chaves,
2016;
González-Anleo, 2016; Pérez-Agote,
2014, 2012, 2007; Martín-Huete,
2015; Casanova, 2012; Brañas-Garza, García-Muñoz & Neuman, 2011; Inglehart & Foa, 2010; Pérez-Agote & Santiago-García, 2005). At the same time, it favours the
creation of multidimensional explanatory models, which allow the generation of
cross tabulations with descriptive information for numerous groups and allows
the expression of a very powerful binomial logistic model, a proposal included
in this work. It is not intended, with this, to reduce the meaning of the
religious fact to two exclusive categories, since the objective is not to study
the meaning of the concepts nor their historical contextualization (Beriain, 2015).
In Spain, research on the
relationships between religious identification, measured binary (declaring
oneself religious yes/no), religious-(believer)/secular, and other variables,
such as gender, age, ideology, educational attainment of the interviewees or
the effect of time (reference historical years) has been common. These are
mainly descriptive and bivariate analyses (Panadero, Gilart & Ortí, 2022; González-Anleo,
2016; Pérez-Agote, 2014, 2009, 2007; Inglehart & Foa, 2010; Pérez-Agote & Santiago-García, 2005). Multivariate analyses (Pérez-Agote, 2012; Brañas-Garza, García-Muñoz & Neuman, 2011) have been infrequent and conducted with
limited samples (n < 1,500). On the other hand, qualitative research on
religious minorities in Spain carried out with an immigrant population without
Spanish nationality (Díez de Velasco,
2010; Urrutia, 2016; Cornejo, 2012; Estruch, Gómez, Griera & Iglesias, 2007), population not interviewed by the CIS,
has been more frequent.
In summary, the results found
in the researchers conducted in Spain recurrently show that the most religious
people (believers) are women, with a lower educational level, over 65 years of
age, and ideologically situated to the right, as well as the existence of more
religiosity in the past than in the present (Panadero, Gilart & Ortí, 2022; Ruiz, 2022, 2017; González-Anleo, 2016; Pérez-Agote, 2014, 2012, 2009, 2007; Brañas-Garza,
García-Muñoz & Neuman, 2011; Inglehart
& Foa, 2010; Pérez-Agote &
Santiago-García, 2005).
These results for Spain do not differ substantially from those found in other
European countries (Casanova, 2021; Ferrara, 2019; Conway & Spruytt, 2018; Bruce &
Glendinning, 2010; Davie, 2007; Crockett & Voas, 2006).
In Spain, no studies have
been found on religious identification by social classes and that have been so
based on the educational attainment, socioeconomic well-being, and
intergenerational social mobility of the population. The classification of
social classes EGP has been and is one of the main
methodological tools to show the weight and influence of these in our lives.
Religious studies in Spain have not incorporated this analysis methodology in
order to calibrate and scrutinize the variability of religious identification
by social class. This is one of the great contributions of this article.
Another important contribution is the construction of a database, sufficiently
extensive, that allows providing relevant and multidimensional information on
this religious identification by social class and with insights of
sociodemographic variables such as gender, age, and educational attainment, as
well as positional variables such as ideology and time (year of obtaining
responses from the interviewees), as developed below.
Data and Method
The data file used in this work has been
generated from 102 microdata files of the CIS (January 2013 to February 2022
(with sample sizes varying between 2,500 and 4,000 respondents), plus the
addition of some specific macro barometers of electoral consultations in that
period (with sample sizes around 15,000 respondents). Monthly microdata and
macro barometers are freely available on the CIS website (http://www.cis.es).
This combination of files has
generated a database of 340,532 respondents initially, reduced to 333,687 when
they have been identified as religious or not, and finally in 268,261 when
social class is introduced as a variable, which records the information on the
occupations of the respondents and their relationships with the media and the
economic activities of the productive system. Sampling errors are ±2% or lower
for each of the 102 sample files. The created file was weighted considering the
regional sample sizes (Data from the CIS technical files of each barometer) and
their respective population sizes (INE population data, 2022d, from the
population censuses in Spain). All the tables and figures shown in this work
have been made by the authors from the information collected in the indicated
sources.
Dependent Variables
Religious identification (believers) with
two categories: This
variable is available in the 102 CIS barometers that have been merged. First
category will be coded as 1 and included who declares himself as Catholics or
believers of another religion, and second one, coded as 0, means Not believers,
atheists, or agnostics. From now on, and throughout this working document, the
first category will be referred as Believers, and the second one as
non-believers.
Independent Variable
Social class: Main independent variable of this work. It
should be noted that the social position implies a parallel condition of income
(of wealth/well-being). In Spain, the latest INE data for 2019 (and 2013) on
average earnings (in euros) by occupation, year, and gender, as of May 2, 2022
(INE, 2022e) (Table 1).
Directors and Managers
quadruple the incomes of unskilled workers, while Professionals triple it. Both
groups (upper classes) have higher incomes than the rest, almost doubling or
tripling their incomes compared to the rest. Income improvements between 2018
and 2013 show that time widens the differences in their averages for the
indicated groups. In all categories, women's earnings are lower than men's in
both 2013 and 2019, 2020 and 2021 earnings are not yet available, but
everything points to a drop due to the COVID pandemic and the Russia invasion
of Ukraine.
The social class model EGP
has been used to define the categories of variable. This model proposes,
adapts, and updates the social positions of an individual based on his material
wealth, in the form of ownership and control of resources, social prestige and
political power.
Table
1.
Average
annual earning (euros) per worker and gender in Spain: years 2013 and 2019.
Note. Blank cells indicate observations less than 500 and
subject to variability. Source: INE (2022e)
The identification of the
categories of social class model EGP is based on the ownership of the means of
production or companies, the number of employees of these, the distinction of
technicians, qualified or unqualified, manual or non-manual occupations, types
of economic activity and employment relationship (Gil-Hernández, Vidal-Lorda & Torrejón-Pérez, 2022; Clemenceau, Fernández & Rodríguez, 2016, p. 24-28; Carabaña, 1999, 1995; Instituto de
Estadística y Cartografía de Andalucía, IECA,
2018a, 2018b; ILO, 2012; Rose & Harrison, 2010). The Table 2 summarizes the proposed model with two
social class options: 7 categories and 3 categories, identified as EGP7 and
EGP3. First of them, will allow contextualizing the general variability of religious
identification and second one, will do it on religious profiles of social
classes by subgroups created from sociodemographic variables and ideological
and temporal position with respect to the year of response about respondent´s
religious identification.
Table
2.
Categorization (EGP) of social class with seven (EGP7) and three (EGP3)
categories.
Source: Clemenceau,
Fernández & Rodríguez (2016, p. 28), IECA (2018a, 2018b), ILO (2012)
Sociodemographic
Variables
Other independent variables have been considered to
measure religious identification by social class, due to the variability they
provided by sociodemographic perspective and ideological and temporal
positions. Thus, it has been considered, as sociodemographic variables: Gender,
man or woman; Age, from 18 to 98 years, later categorized into six dummy
variables for different cohorts (18-25 years old, 26-35, 36-45, 46-55, 56-65
and 65 and older); Educational attainment, classified with 4 categories,
following the International Standard Classification of Education, ISCED-2011,
UNESCO: ISCED 0-1 (primary education or less), ISCED 2 (lower secondary), ISCED
3-4 (secondary) and ISCED 5-6-7-8 (tertiary education); and as position
variables, one ideological, Ideology, with values from 1 (left) to 10
(right), which later is categorized in three, left, center and right, and a
temporary one, Year, with ten values, one per year, from 2013 to 2022.
Models
The scenarios and models used in this work will be:
A. Multidimensional
descriptive with percentage of frequencies of respondents who identify
themselves as religious (believers):
Dichotomous Religious identification (believers
or non-believers) will be the dependent variable of the model. Social class is the main independent variable and, as additional
independent variables, four of the previously defined sociodemographic
variables will be used, Gender, Age, Education attained
and Ideology. Which together produce a joint model of
visible categories of 432 subgroups with the first three variables (double, 864
subgroups, considering that the dependent variable consists of two categories). The size of the file allows us to always find subgroups with a relevant
sample size with the first three variables and when using the four variables
there are a few subgroups with less than 25 cases that will be not considered.
B. Multiple correspondence
analysis that includes the variable year of the survey in the previous model:
A Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA)
allows to generate a result where the objects of the same category will be
represented closer than those of another category. In this way, there will be
homogeneous subgroups for similar categories, thus allowing them to be
classified. It can be considered like realization of a multifactorial
contingency table.
In this work, this analysis
is carried out, using the previous model with the inclusion of the Year
variable to check if there is a variation of Religiosity over time. The
incorporation of the year variable is intended to verify the effect of the
passage of time. Thus, the suggestions of incorporating temporality ascribed
intrinsically to the evolution of social time, or the social phenomena, that
produce changes in people's attitudes and opinions (Griera,
Martínez-Ariño & Clot-Garrell, 2021) is followed.
C. Logistic regression
model with seven variables:
As dependent variable of the model, dichotomous Religiosity
(Binomial variable) will be used, with a coding where believers category will
be the reference value. The main independent variable will be Social class,
using EGP3 categorizing. Three additional variables are introduced in the
model, one will be Gender, and the other two will be used as
semi–continuous, scalable ordinal variables, Ideology (10 categories on
a scale from 1 to 10) and barometer reference Year (10 categories, from
2013, year by year, to 2022).
Results
Religious believers in Spain, although it
is still the majority, has fallen from 80% at the beginning of the century to
around 60% in 2022. In recent years, this drop has been more pronounced: 73.1%
(2019) to 60.9% (2022), as
shown in Table 3. Significant independence is founded (p < .0001 for χ² test) between Religiosity and Year.
The variability of religious identification
by social class is notorious and reaches up to 28% between Managers & Professionals (classes I and II) and classes Unskilled Workers
and Skilled Agricultural,
Forestry & Fishery Workers (VIIa and VIIb) (Table 4).
Table
3.
Religious Identification (%) by year in Spain.
Source: 102 barometers CIS (January 2013 to February
2022)
Table 4.
Religious Identification (%) by Social class in
Spain
Source: 102 barometers CIS
(January 2013 to February 2022)
The evolution of religious
identification by social class over the years, series from 2013 to 2022, is
shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Religious Identification (Believers: %) by Social
Class (EGP7) and YEAR. Spain, N=268,261
It can be seen how the range
of differences is lower in 2022 than in 2013. Believers are reduced over the
years to 60% in 2022, actually are 54% in the case of employed workers
considering the social classes as an independent variable. The service classes
(Managers and Professionals) are less believers than the other classes and are
located throughout the series always below the total and at a distance of 18%
with respect to the groups of agricultural, forestry and fishing workers and
the unskilled workers. The distance in 2022 of 18% between these groups
decreases from 28% in 2013. The drop in religious identification in recent
times reduces the gap in religious identification by social class. This fall
does not generate a linear regression model, but it ventures two changes of
slopes in the trends.
Models
A. The results for a Multidimensional
Descriptive model used to analyze the percentage of frequencies of
respondents who identify themselves as religious (believers) shows how the
general descriptive study of the percentage variability of people who identify
themselves as religious by Social class is substantially expanded when is
disaggregated by other variables of interest: Educational attainment,
Gender, Age intervals and Ideology of the interviewee
(Table 5). Then, the
percentage variations are more evident, and the religious identification is
extended to the interval that goes from 16-17%.
This model makes it possible to compare the
religious identifications of almost 432 groups (really double if the inverse
categories are counted). This forms a total of 864 groups in which only a few
groups (27 of 432; 54 of 864) do not allow multiple descriptive comparisons.
These results could be summarized in:
1. Religious
identification in Spain (70%) is majority, but significantly different according to social
class: the lower classes identify more as religious (79%) than the upper
classes (61%), while the middle classes reproduce the general trend (70%).
2. The
introduction of the variables Gender, Age, Education attainment,
and Ideology allows observing a significant increase in the precision of
the proportions of religious identification.
3. Young people
are less religious than older ones: religious identification increases with age and the differences in
religiosity between men (less religious) and women (more religious) are
maintained for the different age groups. They only decrease and equalize when
men and women have university studies.
4. In all the groups
compared, the ideological position of the interviewees biases their religious
identification: those who identify with the left are much less religious than
those who identify with the right.
5. Ideologically leftist
groups with higher education have the lowest percentages of religious
identification, both for men and women, and this trend is accentuated when they
are upper class.
6. The upper classes are
less religious than the lower classes and even less the more educated they are,
both for men and women.
7. The effect of social
location is closely related to education. It has not been possible to find
respondents with primary education in the upper class (empty cells with less
than 25 respondents and some with no respondents).
8. Respondents from higher
social class and higher education are clearly the least identified as religious
(believers) when they identify with the left. The proportion of believers
reaches, in this case, the lowest percentages.
9. The proportions of
religious identification, in general, in each of the columns considered
increase by Ideology (Left, Center, Right), Age groups, Educational
attainment, and this is also observed, as one goes from the group of men to
the group of women. On the other hand, decrease by the social classes (Low,
Middle, High).
Table 5.
Religious identification (% of Believers)
by Social Class, Gender, Age, Education attainment and Ideology
Source: 102 barometers CIS
(January 2013 to February 2022)
B. The results for A model, Multidimensional
Descriptive model, when variable Year is adding to it, are
obtained through multiple comparisons by categories of these variables and can
be visualized by a conjoint graph of categories applying a two-dimensional
multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) (Figure 2). The MCA reflects Euclidean
distances projected on a plane, near or far depending on the proximity of the
categories of the variables in their projection on the plane. The inclusion of
the year as a variable in the model provides an MCA with seven variables and
thirty categories.
Figure 2. Multidimensional correspondence model of Religiosity by
Gender, Age, Educational attainment, Social class, Ideology and Year.
Regarding the reference
points given by the categories Believers and Non-believers of the variable Religiosity,
the distances over the dimension 2 do not affect largely. Therefore, for the
exploratory analysis given by this model the disposition on dimension 1, which
corresponds to the abscissa axis, will be taken as a reference. A greater
religiosity corresponds to its right side, while the smaller values of this are
found to the left of this line. Thus, in a first approximation, people with
primary education, over 65 years old, of lower class, right-wing ideology and
woman would present the highest level of religiosity, while the lowest level
would be found for the upper class, with university studies, of left-wing
ideology, age less than 55 years old and men.
Analyzing the graph for each
of the dependent variables, it is observed that women have a higher level of
religiosity than the men, Regarding Age, it is observed that from 56
years a higher level of religiosity is shown, while lower ages tend to approach
positions of low religiosity. The two lower educational levels, primary or less
and lower secondary, as well as the lowest social classes are in the area of
greater religiosity while the other categories are in the left area, which
marks a lower index of religiosity. Of the above is deducible that an increase
in schooling shows a fall, while the decrease in social position, increases the
religiosity of the individual.
The ideological categories
show that, although the left and the right positions are clearly situated on
low and high levels of religiosity, on the other hand the individuals who have
declared themselves centrist present a certain tendency to religiosity but
remaining in a middle term. Graphically, it is observed how the years priors to
2019 are place next to greater religiosity while the subsequent ones, 2020,
2021 and 2022, do it on the side of less religiosity.
As a summary, the graph of
joint categories shows the closeness between the believers of the categories
corresponding to the lower classes, Lower and Middle. Women, older people, with
a low level of education and right-wing ideology, as opposed to non-believers,
who present a density of categories, but who, for example, are not associated
by proximity to the higher social class or of the highest educational level.
This is in line with the idea of looking for an exploratory analysis rather
than the explanatory one provided by the MCA.
C. The results for the Binomial Logistic
Regression model proposed to explain the behavior of percentage of
respondents who identify themselves as religious (believers) are developed
below.
The variables used are the
same that in the Multidimensional Descriptive model developed previously, so
they are introduced in the model taking theirs first category as a reference.
All are significant, and a post hoc Wald forward is performed to check the
final variables in the logit model. The Logistic regression coefficients obtained are on Table 6.
The interpretation of the
logistic model will be done through the odds ratios. Thus, values less than one
found for the Social class indicate that Religious identification
decreases when moving from the lower to the middle class (.797), and to the
upper class (.579). Something similar is observed when the odds ratios of the Educational
attainment variable are analyzed, since all categories, University (.335),
Secondary (.439) and lower secondary (.690) present a lower Religious
identification than the reference studies, primary or less. Alternatively, Religious
identification declines while Educational attainment improves. By
Gender, it is observed that Religious identification also decreases,
which indicates that men are less religious than women (.579; inverse exponent
1.73, almost in a ratio close to 2 to 1).
The passage of time (taken as
an ordinal-scalable variable for the given years), Year variable,
decreases Religious
identification. On the
other hand, a greater Religious
identification with the
ideological right is observed, in this case there is an increase of 50% for
each point of the scale with respect to the previous point, so it can be said
that Religious
identification increase
with variable Ideology, as defined in this work. A similar effect, although of lesser magnitude,
occurs with Age, where each year of those respondent between 18 and 98 years
old increases her religious identification as a believer by 3.6%.
Discussion
Religious identification in Spain continues
to fall over time. The sharp decline in religious identification in the last
three years has led to point to a Spain that is heading towards atheism, and
even in the case of young people (Panadero,
Gilart & Ortí, 2022).
Secularization is gaining ground as the years go by. In parallel, there is a
lack of religious commitment reflected in a lower religious participation in
the acts and ceremonies of believers (Ruiz,
2022; Itçaina, 2019; González-Anleo, 2016; Martín-Huete, 2015; Pérez-Agote, 2012). Something similar occurs in other European
countries (Riccardi, 2022; Casanova, 2021; Ferrara, 2019; Obadia, 2014; Bruce
& Glendinning, 2010).
In what describe as a
trivialization of those who identify themselves as believers, but not
practitioners, since they do not engage in cults or active religious practice (Conway & Spruyt, 2018; Molteni & Ferruccio, 2018). Thus, multiple interpretations of secularizations
appear (Wohlrab-Sahr & Burchardt, 2012), full of singularities due to the
permeable cultural bond that manifest itself in Spain today, where immigration
has meant the presence of slightly more than five million people in the Spanish
territory, which represents 11.3% of the census population, which reaches
forty-seven million in 2021 (INE, 2022d). Something similar occurs in other
European countries with this permeabilization of cultures and religions that
could favor cultural nexus and make the receiving countries more cosmopolitan (Driezen, Verschraegen & Clycq, 2021; Martínez-Ariño
et al., 2011).
The religious decline of the
Spanish population is visible, as in all Western Europe, since the beginning of
the century (Palard, 2002; Arroyo, 2008; Davie, 2007) and continues to spread in the first two
decades (Molteni & Ferruccio, 2018). This fall, throughout the Western world
(Inglehart & Foa,
2010), is linked for some
researchers to the market economic model (Itçaina,
2019; Pollack, 2008), to the individualization of people in
this Western capitalist world (Pollack, 2008; Molénat, 2014), to the debates of religious weakness of Christian
thought (secularization and post-secularization) that fails to maintain and
attract the least believers, although British and American societies can still
give examples of vitality religious (Díaz-Salazar,
2007; Pollack, 2008; Casanova, 2012; Ferrara, 2019; Casanova, 2021). In recent years, a cultured religious approach
proposed by (Astor & Damon, 2020; Obadia,
2014) or egalitarian
multicultural secularism (De Botton &
Pulido, 2012) has also
emerged.
The consequences of societal
diversity in religiosity (the centrality of religion to one's life) for
individuals’ endorsement of conventional personal morality have been neglected
in previous research. In societies where the population exhibits a wide range of
religiosity, social conservatives (religiously devout
or socially traditional) feel that their beliefs and way of life are threatened, even when others in their society (secular or socially liberal) have
no desire to threaten them, or to discriminate against them, or even to
proselytize (Evans & Kelley, 2021).
Social inequality is a source
of uncertainty and social insecurity. To the extent that social inequality is
related to religious identification, these threats felt by the devotees may be
identified more as threats to their class position than from their beliefs.
These distances of religious identification by social class in Spain have been
obtained and it has been verified that the upper classes are considerably less
religious than the lower classes. It is also found that these upper classes
have higher incomes than the lower ones: four or three times more. And that
triple or double the income of the middle classes. There remains, then, a
certain implicit image of religiosity associated with poverty. On the other
hand, the higher earnings of men compared to women, visible in all occupational
groups, may also be implicitly associated with the lower religious
identification of men compared to women. Religious identification suffers,
consequently, with higher incomes and the well-being associated with them, loss
of spirituality and gains in the satisfaction of material consumption.
Seen in this way, believers remain in lower class social positions, the least desirable for the population as a whole. This
can generate religious detachment in the new generations who see through their
families a differential religious behavior by social class. Being religious can
be a stigma of class location, one more to count in social studies of social
inequality where social positions are not only related to income, but also show
changes in attitudes, behaviors, and opinions of different class groups,
modulated by gender, ethnicity, age, educational attainment, occupation, and
social class (Grusky, 2014; Kerbo, 2012). Subsequently, these unequal social positions are permanently
questioned and used in policies and ideological debates (Mijs, 2021). This is where being a believer loses ground since the merits of
access to the best occupations (closely related to education: Goldthorpe, 2010, 2013; Palomino, Marrero
& Rodríguez, 2019),
reflect less religious identification, more secularization.
The weight and passage of
time seem to generate changing patterns of behavior, individual positions, and
actions. Changes in religious identification are perceived in all generations
and seems to be related to class positions in the social structure and to the
ascriptive variables of individuals. A growing secularization is observed in
Spanish society with the decrease in the ability
of religious institutions to influence individuals and groups and the loss of
religious identification and religious practice (Panadero, Gilart & Ortí, 2022; Ruiz, 2022; Riccardi, 2022; Casanova, 2012), reinforcing the idea
of not believing or belonging (Voas
& Crockett, 2005; Wood, 2009; Arroyo, 2008) and of multiple secularizations (Gil Gimeno, 2017) and multiculturalism secularity (De Botton & Pulido, 2013). An intimate Individual, a la carte
religiosity (Griera, Martínez-Ariño &
Clot-Garrell, 2021; Molénat, 2014; Cornejo, 2012; Flanagan & Jupp, 2007), circumscribed to the permanent
exchange between religious and non-religious people that contaminate and blur
the religious clarity of the believer and where religiosity is perhaps not
presented as the refuge and consolation of the lower and helpless classes of
society.
Note also that the gradual
improvement of educational levels in Spain allows, in parallel, to improve with
them the class positions due to access to better labor occupations (Goldthorpe, 2013), the social lift derived from individual educational
achievement not ascribed to inheritance, is having a considerable effect on
religious identification, which clearly decreases with studies, as also occurs
with studies of ideology and acceptance of meritocracy as a means to social advancement
(Mijs, 2021) and social mobility (Cabrera,
Marrero, Rodríguez & Salas-Rojo, 2021).
Conclusions
The religious identification of
believers languishes in Spain with the passage of time, with the increase in
the studies of the population and with the lower religious identification of
the upper social classes. These people are also a reference point for the other
classes that see in them the symbol of social success and socioeconomic well-being.
This article relates the
religious identification of individuals in Spain with their social positions
(model EGP). The data from the CIS have made it possible to generate a database
(268,261 respondents) that allows for detailed and multidimensional analyzes of
religious-secular identification in Spain: believers (mainly Catholics) and
non-believers. This religious/secular binomial is classic in analyzes and
research on the religious evolution of Western societies (Casanova, 2021). Its study continues to be of interest since, at
present, there is a large amount of demoscopic information available that
improves the analyzes and allows showing the religious/secular variability
through multiple channels and with a dynamic analysis of the effect of the
social context on the changes of positions regarding religious identification (Pérez-Agote, 2014). With these variables has been found that religious
identification (believers) is significantly different by social class. Workers
in agriculture, fishing, and ranching (88%), unskilled (76%) and skilled
workers (76%) and small agricultural, livestock and fishing entrepreneurs (77%)
identify themselves as religious. The least religious are mainly those from the
social classes of services, upper classes, managers, and professionals (60%)
and somewhat less administrative support workers, service, and technical
workers (67%). These are the extremes in the comparison of the seven social
classes created according to the EGP7. The range of variability in religious
identification reaches 28% among these social classes. The interval is 18% when
we reduce the social classes to three categories: high (60%). middle (71%) and
low (78%). In the time horizon, religiosity decreases in all groups over time
and the gap in 2022 compared to 2013 is significantly shortened by 10% at the
extremes of social class, remaining at 18%.
The joint descriptive study
of the percentage variability of people who identify themselves as religious by
social class, introducing the variables of gender, studies attained, age in
intervals and ideology deepens the variability in the intervals of religious
identification that are between 16% and 98% depending on the group considered.
The size of the file made it possible to compare 432 groups with differentiated
profiles (double if one considers that when a subgroup identifies itself as
religious, it can be extracted, in parallel, that the other does not). Among
the main conclusions is that religiosity is more present in women from lower
classes, less educated, younger, ideologically center, or center-right. And, on
the contrary, these women, also, declare themselves less religious when they
are from upper class and educated, more so when they are younger, but studies
and class prevent a high religious identification. The passage of time affects
religious identification in all profiles, decreasing more and mainly affecting
the new generations and more in men.
The developed logistic
regression model allows thousands of comparisons to be generated and studied.
In all of them, the increase in religiosity with the lower classes and the
decrease with the upper classes is verified. Class positions complemented by
the ascriptive variables of gender, age, studies, and ideology open up the
distances of religious identification and make social classes a true variable.
The upper classes who identify themselves less as believers do so even more
when they have university studies and are men, as well as more when they
identify themselves as leftists and are younger.
The close association of
social class and income level feeds the idea of greater religiosity (believers)
with low incomes and less religiosity with high incomes, with believers being
closer to the lower classes and incomes and non-believers to the higher ones,
both for class as for rent.
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Leopoldo Cabrera is Professor of
Sociology at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University
of La Laguna (ULL), Canary Islands, Spain.
Felipe Rosa-González is Assistant Professor
Doctor of the Department of Mathematics, Statistics and Operational Research
of the University of La Laguna (ULL), Canary Islands, Spain.
Email: lcabre@ull.edu.es
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