Ireland has third highest number of church-goers in western Europe
‘Alienated by scandals’
IRELAND has one of the highest rates of church attendance in western Europe, research has shown.
The Republic also has the second highest level of people who identify as Christian, according to a poll by the Pew Research Centre, a US-based nonpartisan organisation.
A massive 80% of Irish people say they are Christian, just behind Portugal at 83% and level with Italy and Austria.
Some 34% of Irish people say they go to church at least once a month – a figure lower only than Italy, on 40%, and Portugal, on 35%.
Britain and France are at 18% and the lowest attendance is in Finland and Sweden at 9%.
Combining those who go to church and those who simply identify as Christian, the western European country with the lowest overall number of Christians is Holland at 41%.
Although seen by many as strong Christian countries, the proportion in Spain and France is 66% and 64%, but in the UK and Germany, which have large Muslim populations, the figure is 73% and 71%.
‘Western Europe, where Protestant Christianity originated and Catholicism has been based for most of its history, has become one of the world’s most secular regions,’ the report said, after 24,000 phone interviews with randomly selected adults in western Europe.
The vast majority of non-practising Christians, like the vast majority of the unaffiliated, favour legal abortion and same-sex marriage.
Ireland had the second lowest level of support for legal abortion among church-goers, at 42%, and one of the lowest levels of support for gay-marriage at 43%. But among
the total population, the figure was 66% pro-abortion and pro-gay marriage. Church-attending Christians are more conservative on these issues, but even in this group there is substantial support for legal abortion and same-sex marriage.
‘Although the vast majority of adults say they were baptised, today many do not describe themselves as Christians. Some say they gradually drifted away from religion, stopped believing in religious teachings, or were alienated by scandals or church positions on social issues,’ the report found.
‘Yet most adults surveyed still do consider themselves Christians, even if they seldom go to church. The survey shows that non-practising Christians, those who say they are Christian but attend church services no more than a few times a year, make up the biggest share of the population across the region.’
Across Europe, 91% were baptised, 81% were raised Christian, 71% are currently Christian and 22% attend services at least once a month.
The report said: ‘These figures raise some obvious questions: what is the meaning of Christian identity in western Europe today? And how different are non-practising Christians from religiously unaffiliated Europeans? Although many nonpractising Christians say they do not believe in God “as described in the Bible”, they do tend to believe in some other higher power or spiritual force.’
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