Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 18, 1993 TAG: 9305180101
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The International Social Survey Program, which polled 19,000 people in more than a dozen countries, found a growing number of young people in Eastern Europe believe in life after death. It also said religious devotion in countries such as the United States, Ireland and Poland may be higher than ever.
"God didn't die, not even under socialism," said the Rev. Andrew Greeley, the study's author.
One authority on world religion said the results seemed to show how the unexpected events in Eastern Europe have reversed predictions that there would be an inevitable decline in religious belief in the modern age.
"Everybody thought secularism would keep on undermining religion, and nothing could prevent it," said David Barrett, editor of the World Christian Encyclopedia. "We've all been proved wrong."
The survey program is a consortium of social science research centers in 21 countries. The study on religion involved national samples of at least 1,000 people in 1991 and early 1992 in the United States, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Poland, Italy, Hungary, Holland, New Zealand, western and eastern Germany, Norway, England, Slovenia and Israel.
Tom Smith, director of the General Social Survey, the U.S. participant in the consortium, said the study "has more in-depth information about religious belief . . . in a cross-national perspective than has ever been collected."
Survey coordinators said the margin of error would be different for each country, but in general would not exceed plus or minus 4 percentage points.
With the exception of eastern Germany and the Netherlands, majorities in all of the countries surveyed reported a belief in God and a religious affiliation.
More than 90 percent of respondents in the United States and Ireland and 80 percent in Italy and Poland reported a belief in God, as did more than two-thirds in Israel, England and New Zealand.
Church attendance lags behind belief, but majorities reported attending regularly in Ireland and Poland, and more than 40 percent said they were frequent churchgoers in the United States and Italy.
The highest percentage of people saying they were "extremely close" to God was in the United States, 35 percent.
In Ireland, Poland and the United States, the report says, religious devotion is "arguably higher than it has ever been in human history."
There were also several signs of renewed religious interest in Eastern Europe.
Only a little more than a quarter of Hungarians said they had ever attended church in 1986. In the 1991 survey, two-thirds reported attending church and 19 percent said they were frequent churchgoers, up from 6 percent.
by CNB