Non-religious people fall into many different social categories

Sivert Skålvoll Urstad is defending his doctoral thesis titled "Ikke religiøse i Norge. Sosiologiske analyser av individer uten religion" (Non-religious Norwegians. Sociologic analyses of individuals with no religion) on Monday, 4 June 2018. For his thesis, he has looked at social driving forces for the high increase in people without faith or affiliation to religious groups or faith communities.

Through quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews, he shows that young people with higher education make up a large part of the high increase in secular people in the population. In a couple of decades, the non-religious group of the population grew from 5 to 17 percent.

There is a difference in how women and men practice their non-religiousness, but there is not a difference in gender regarding who are non-religious. Social conventions, expectations and traditions lead to some non-religious people choosing to mark religious rites such as funeral and baptism, but also here there is an ongoing secularisation of the markings.

Sivert Skålvoll Urstad has followed the PhD programme at the Faculty of Humanities and Education, specialising in religion, ethics, history and society.

The candidate's own description of the thesis' essence:

Without religion in Norway

One of the pronounced development traits in Norwegian religiousness is a severe decline in religious beliefs and religious practices in the last decades. Regardless of whether you look at traditional religions or newer and more individual forms of religion, not having a religion or religious beliefs is becoming increasingly common.

The questions that appear after such a change process are: Who are those not following a religion in Norway, and what social mechanisms can help explain this trend?

Through an article-based doctoral thesis consisting of three articles, I have tried to answer these questions.

A high increase in non-members

The first article "The religiously unaffiliated in Norway", published in the Nordic Journal for the Scientific study of religion, contains an analysis of surveys of those who are not a member of any belief or faith communities in Norway.

From the beginning of the 90s to today, this category has increased from below 5 to almost 17 percent of the population. That is a substantial change in such a short amount of time.

What also makes exploring this category interesting, is that there exists an established secular alternative in Norway: The Norwegian Humanist Association (HEF).

Young people with higher education

The analyses provide some interesting results. Those who are not a part of any belief or faith communities, are often young people with higher education. This indicates a generational change regarding membership.

Surprisingly, there is no difference in gender among those who are not a member of any belief or faith communities. This is very different from international studies where the ones who are not members of any belief or faith community are mostly men.

The analyses also show that many of those who are not a member of any belief or faith communities have never been members at all, and most of them have no religious beliefs. This may indicate that secular socialising in addition to general secularisation trends plays a part.

Nevertheless, those who are not member of any belief or faith communities fall into many categories, regarding both faith and social characteristics.

Gender differences despite secular childhood

In the second article "Tro og tilhørighet: Tilnærminger til religion blant sekulære unge voksne" (Faith and belonging: Religion among secular young adults) published in the anthology Ung Religion (Ida Marie Høeg ed.) survey data is also analysed to see how the secular young adults are different from the believers, as well as how they relate to religion.

The results show that secular young adults are primarily men, individuals with higher education and not married or having children. This may be the cause of generational change. "Secular socialising" may also partially explain the results.

Another interesting finding is that the consequences of a secular childhood are different for men and women. Of the people who come from homes where religion had not been important, more women than men have some form of personal faith.

Marking religious traditions

In addition, I point out that despite secular people having no religion, many of them hold on to a desire to mark religious rites of passage. In this article, I discuss the significance of tradition and how religious traditions can be "secularised".

In the third article, I show results and analyses from a qualitative interview-based survey of 21 non-religious Norwegians. Here, I show how non-religious people relate to religion.

Do non-religious people have no contact with religion? Do they oppose everything related to religion? No, there are in fact several different ways which non-religious people relate to religion: They can be negative, neutral or show great interest in religion.

Two main reasons for non-religious people still wanting to have religious markings such as baptism and funeral are then presented.

The first is about social conventions, i.e. using religious markings at the request of your family or partner.

The second is how non-religious people sediment religion from religious rituals. In this manner, the traditional aspect and connecting with family and friends become important, not the fact that the ceremony is taking place in a religious building through a religious ritual.

Non-religious people is a complex category

As a whole, the thesis show that non-religious people is a complex category that must be viewed as an extension of an ongoing secularisation process.

In particular, socialisation and the importance of friends, education, gender and the significance of traditions can be pointed out as important elements in understanding the social processes that play a part in this process.