Abstract
The question of whether religion and religiosity is positively or negatively related to social trust has been widely debated. In this chapter we will, using data from a local level survey on trust in Sweden, test whether religiosity as belief and religion as social organization correlate in any way with social trust in the specific case of a highly secular society. We are applying a multilevel approach in which we introduce both individual and contextual level data (church attendance and church membership) and where our focus will be on the local or community level. We conclude that while general surveys on trust suggest, if anything, a negative relationship between religiosity and social trust, one can, even in a highly secular country like Sweden, identify a modest positive correlation between trust and religion, which, however, is limited to religion as social organization.
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Notes
- 1.
Although social trust is a complex theoretical concept, it has very often been measured through a single survey item, and it has been discussed whether this single item accurately picks up the complexity (Van Deth 2003). In this chapter we will rely upon several different items that measure trust as a moral imperative.
- 2.
See note 1 on the problems associated with the classical single trust question first used by Rosenberg.
- 3.
This is mainly due to the already mentioned history of Sweden having had a state church with the citizens being members of the church until they explicitly left it.
- 4.
With the addition of the municipality of Malmö.
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Lundåsen, S.W., Trägårdh, L. (2013). Social Trust and Religion in Sweden: Theological Belief Versus Social Organization. In: de Hart, J., Dekker, P., Halman, L. (eds) Religion and Civil Society in Europe. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6815-4_6
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