Author: Eva M. Hamberg (Lund University)

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ABSTRACT

In recent decades, the effects of religious pluralism on religious participation has been a much debated topic among sociologists of religion. During most of the 20th century, the traditional view among sociologists was that pluralism undermines religion because competition between religious organizations was assumed to impair the credibility of religion as such. In the 1980s, however, this view was challenged by Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, and since then, the debate about the effects of religious pluralism has been lively. A central point of the discussion has been the relationship between religious pluralism and religious participation in Europe and whether or not Europe should be described as secularized. In this article, some points in the debates about the relationship between religious pluralism and religious participation and about the religious situation in Europe are discussed from a theoretical perspective and illustrated by empirical data from Sweden.