Når fårene forlader flokken: En religionssociologisk analyse af udmeldelser fra folkekirken

Membership of the Danish National Church has declined steadily but has not until now been the subject of sociological analysis. Using data from gov-ernmental databases housed at Statistics Denmark the article analyze individuals who disaffiliated from the Danish National Church from 2003 to 2007. Secularization the-ory is used as the starting point for the analysis. Individuals who disaffiliated were generally younger, more affluent, more educated, more urbanized and more often liv-ing with non-members than the rest of the population. Age differences between the disaffiliated and the rest of the population suggested that disaffiliation was the result of a life-cycle effect rather than a generational effect. It was also shown that non-members tended not to baptize their children while members did. Therefore it must be concluded that the declining membership of the Danish National Church is the result of a general societal development.