Abstract
The national churches of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden have all witnessed a steady decline in membership over the past 10-20 years. While there are several studies of disaffiliation from the Lutheran national churches in Finland, Norway and Sweden there are no such studies for Denmark. Using hitherto unseen data from Danish governmental databases, this paper analyses statistics relating to individuals who disaffiliated from the Danish national church from 2002 to 2007. These disaffiliates are compared to members of the Danish national church on socioeconomic variables such as age, urbanisation, education, gender and income. The disaffiliates tended to be younger, urban, well-educated, male and fairly well-off. This fits well with theories of secularization. It also shows that the socio-economic variables determining the tendency to disaffiliate from a national church are the same in Denmark as in Finland, Sweden and Norway.
| Original language | Danish |
|---|---|
| Journal | Nordic Journal of Religion and Society |
| Volume | 25 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Pages (from-to) | 27-45 |
| Number of pages | 19 |
| ISSN | 0809-7291 |
| Publication status | Published - 2012 |
Keywords
- Faculty of Humanities
- disaffiliation
- Nordic Church
- secularization
- membership
- Denmark
