Europe and the United States in Comparison – Explanations for their Religious Differences
(4. bis 5. Mai 2012)

In debates on secularization theory, explaining religious differences between the United States and Europe is a crucial battle ground. As many empirical studies have documented, Americans are more likely to go to church than their European counterparts; they tend to believe in God more often than Europeans; and despite the strict separation between church and state religious arguments and identities play a greater role in American politics as compared to Europe.

In our workshop we want to discuss explanations for religious differences between the US and Europe taking into account factors such as religious pluralism, the degree of competition between various religious organizations, state regulations of the religious field, social inequality and existential insecurity, processes of migration and the social functions of religion for immigrants and others. By this we hope to explore new directions for studying religious differences in transatlantic comparison.

Keynote lecture
“American Fundamentalists and European Atheists? Explaining Religious Differences between America and Europe”
Peter Berger (Boston University)
Europeans favor the stereotype of an American steeped in reactionary fundamentalism; Americans return the compliment by seeing Europe dominated by pervasive atheism. The empirical situation is more complicated. Still, Europe is indeed more secular than America by any reasonable criteria. The explanation of this difference is one of the most interesting issues in the sociology of contemporary religion.

The workshop was initiated by Prof. Dr. Detlef Pollack (Fellow 2011/2012) and Prof. Dr. Matthias Koenig (Institute for Sociology, Göttingen).