Churching Alone

339 Pages·2017·4.98 MB·English

CHURCHING ALONE

A STUDY OF THE DANISH FOLK CHURCH
AT ORGANISATIONAL, INDIVIDUAL, AND SOCIETAL LEVELS
Date of defense 9 May 2018.
Churching Alone

A Study of the Danish Folk Church
at Organisational, Individual, and Societal Levels

Cand. Theol. Karen Marie Leth-Nissen

Under the supervision of

Associate Professor and Director of Centre for Church Research,
Hans Raun Iversen

PhD-dissertation, Systematic Theology Section
Faculty of Theology,
University of Copenhagen
January 2018
Churching Alone.
A Study of the Danish Folk Church
at Organisational, Individual, and Societal Levels
Publikationer fra Det Teologiske Fakultet nr. 79
© Karen Marie Leth-Nissen 2018

ISBN: 978-93361-44-7

Printing and binding by:
Publikom
Karen Blixens Plads 8
2300 København S.

Published by:
The Faculty of Theology
University of Copenhagen
Karen Blixens Plads 16
2300 København S, Denmark
www.teol.ku.dk
v

Acknowledgements
On 1 September 2014, the project group of What Money Can’t Buy
commenced its research into “the Danish folk church as a cultural
institution”, set between the dynamics of marketisation, individualisation
and social capital. The project was generously funded by the Danish Council
for Independent Research/Humanities (FKK). Embedded within this
research project, my PhD project has benefitted greatly from the inspiring
and stimulating professional discussions throughout our seminars and
conferences.
During my work on Churching Alone, I have undergone a transition from
being a parish minister to being a researcher in the field of empirically based
practical theology. This transition would never have been possible without
the trusting support of my supervisor, director of Centre for Church Research
at the Faculty of Theology, Hans Raun Iversen. Iversen’s kind and
sometimes probing approach to my many ideas and “aha” moments have
provided an indispensable sounding board for developing the ideas presented
throughout this project.
Starting out, I conducted a research project called: “Baptism or not”
(2014-2015) with sociologist of religion, now a PhD student, Astrid Krabbe
Trolle. Trolle took me through a crash course in the sociology of religion and
gave me invaluable peer-to-peer training.
As part of the What Money Can’t Buy project group, I have had the
advantage of gaining research insights from the perspectives of practical
theology, church law, economics, and sociology of religion. I have been
grateful for encouraging sparring with legal scholar, Professor Lisbet
Christoffersen; economist, Professor Niels Kærgård; sociologist of religion,
Professor Margit Warburg; as well, of course, with Iversen. For great
companionship, I thank all four, and also my two colleagues, PhD student
and economist Sidsel Kjems; and PhD student and sociologist of religion,
Jes Heise Rasmussen. I would like to thank them all for comments on my
work throughout the whole project period. I owe much to them in terms of
cross-disciplinary understanding; however, I remain solely responsible for
any shortcomings in the work.
I have included a variety of research methods in my work. For special
issues of the quantitative and qualitative work, I have received gracious help
from sociologist of religion, Associate Professor Peter B. Andersen; and
theologian and sociologist Professor Eva Skærbæk. For generous proof-
reading of my manuscript, I thank theologian, Dr. Harris Wiseman.
Among my colleagues at the Section of Systematic Theology and the
Faculty of Theology, I have felt part of a theological community, one which
vi

has been, at the same time, both challenging and encouraging, in solidarity,
which I highly appreciate.
My sincere thanks go to the consultants of the What Money Can’t Buy-
project, especially theologian and sociologist of religion, Professor Linda
Woodhead.
It has been my privilege to meet and discuss these matters with a multitude
of knowing and inspiring researchers during my project at conferences,
courses, seminars, and during enjoyable sessions on project proposals. My
thanks go to all, just as to my two sisters and my friends who believed in my
project. Special thanks and thoughts go to my mother, pastor emerita Eva
Degn Thomsen, and her late husband, pastor emeritus Erling Stougård
Thomsen. Thank you all for listening to me through all this time.
For me, the last three and a half years have been exciting. I have enjoyed
myself, more than I thought was ever possible. Who knew research was so
much fun? However, I acknowledge that I had not been able to immerse
myself in studies of the folk church without the loving support of my family:
Søren, Isaac, Rosalina and Erik. Without you, none of this would be worth
doing.

Karen Marie Sø Leth-Nissen
30 January 2018, Copenhagen
vii

Contents

List of tables ............................................................................................................. xii
List of figures ........................................................................................................... xiii
Chapter 1. Churching alone. A concept and its contexts ........................ 1
Introduction. The concept of churching alone ........................................................ 1
Research questions for the concept of churching alone ............................................... 4
Church and people as mirrored in recent data and research ........................................ 4
Changes in membership rates ...................................................................................... 5
General conditions for all rites of passage ................................................................... 7
Changes in use of services, target-oriented activities and voluntary work ................ 12
The Danish folk church as a societal church ............................................................. 14
“What Money Can’t Buy” in the folk church? .......................................................... 15
All this and churching alone ...................................................................................... 16
Theory: Explanations of religious change ............................................................. 16
Dobbelaere: Secularisation at three levels of society ................................................ 17
Changes at the individual level. From obligation to consumption ...................... 20
Consumption of religion and the meaning of life ...................................................... 25
Changes in state governance drive organisational changes in churches ............ 29
New Public Management as an indicator of changes ................................................ 30
Churching alone as a scholarly concept ..................................................................... 31
Consequences for Danish society of churching alone: Social capital and folk
church use ................................................................................................................. 32
Critiques of Putnam’s concept of social capital ......................................................... 34
Decline in folk church use and consequences for Danish society? ...................... 36
Testing the concept of churching alone through empirical studies ........................... 38
Operationalisation of changes in religion .............................................................. 38
Structure of the dissertation ................................................................................... 40
My contribution to the research field of sociology of religion and church sociology 41
A theological perspective ......................................................................................... 41
The ecclesiological model ......................................................................................... 43
Delimitations .............................................................................................................. 44
Chapter 2. Epistemology and methodology ............................................ 45
Introduction of data ................................................................................................. 45
Epistemology ............................................................................................................ 45
Epistemologies of quantitative and qualitative methods ........................................... 45
Participation and distanciation ................................................................................... 46
Research overview of empirically based practical theology ................................ 47
The empirical turn ...................................................................................................... 48
Newer empirical theology .......................................................................................... 48
An empirical turn in Denmark? ................................................................................. 50
The participatory turn ................................................................................................ 51
Empirical studies in Danish practical theology ......................................................... 52
Ecclesiology and Ethnography – a research network ................................................ 53
My research position. Particularity, diversity, or universality? ................................. 54
viii

Methods and research questions ............................................................................ 59
The research methods of the study ............................................................................ 59
Contents of Chapter 3. Study of the organisational changes in the folk church: a
combined approach .................................................................................................. 60
Selecting my interview approach ............................................................................... 60
Methodologies of life history research ...................................................................... 61
Contents of Chapter 4. Study of parents and baptism. The individual level of the
folk church ................................................................................................................ 62
Contents of Chapter 5. Study of the consequences of churching alone for Danish
society. Social capital and folk church use ............................................................ 63
Research strategy ..................................................................................................... 63
Research ethics ......................................................................................................... 65
Research integrity – honesty, transparency and responsibility .................................. 65
Anonymisation ........................................................................................................... 66
The challenge of experience ...................................................................................... 67
The challenge of representation ................................................................................. 70
The creation of valid data .......................................................................................... 71
Chapter 3. Cleansing the Temple? Deans between New Public
Management and Theology ...................................................................... 73
Introduction .............................................................................................................. 73
Theory: Changes in state governance change the national churches ................. 75
Methodological framework ..................................................................................... 77
My contribution to the research field ......................................................................... 81
Analysis: Historical periodisation .......................................................................... 81
Policy changes ........................................................................................................... 83
The competition state ................................................................................................. 84
Committees as tools for introducing reforms ............................................................ 85
Criticism of New Public Management ....................................................................... 86
The current waves of reform in Ministry of Church Affairs and the folk church
................................................................................................................................... 89
Structure. Relationship between state and church ..................................................... 89
Structure: The constitutional wave and democratisation ........................................... 91
Structure: The wave of changes by 1922 ................................................................... 94
Structure: Stability and adaptation to the state reforms 1949 to 2002 ....................... 96
Structure: The wave of changes from 1995 ............................................................... 98
Agency: Strengthening the dean as manager ........................................................... 100
Agency: Strengthening the deanery council ............................................................ 103
Agency: Weakening the parish council ................................................................... 104
The other actors ....................................................................................................... 107
Analysis at the dean (meso) level - how the policy is translated into institutional
cultures of the group of deans ............................................................................... 108
Dean appointments as a tool for change .................................................................. 109
Dean training as a tool of change ............................................................................. 109
The relationship between bishop and dean .............................................................. 111
Consequences: Changes in the composition of the group of deans ......................... 113
Analysis at the individual (micro) level – how policy is translated into the
individual life stories of deans............................................................................... 114
ix

Becoming appointed as a dean ................................................................................. 117
Deans and the dean training ..................................................................................... 118
The changed relationship to the bishop ................................................................... 120
Cooperating with the parish councils. Development and dialogue ......................... 120
Management and cooperation with the parish ministers ......................................... 125
Target-oriented activities and the service church .................................................... 130
Theologies and challenges ....................................................................................... 133
Different demands for female deans? ...................................................................... 145
Long marriages and long hours ............................................................................... 147
The impact of background ....................................................................................... 147
The loss of tradition and volunteers ......................................................................... 148
Top-down New Public Management changes ......................................................... 149
Findings of Chapter 3 ............................................................................................ 151
Chapter 4: Getting to “yes”. Parents making meaning of their choice of
infant baptism. ......................................................................................... 155
Introduction ............................................................................................................ 155
Context for the interviews ........................................................................................ 156
Earlier studies ........................................................................................................ 162
Data; interviews and survey data ......................................................................... 163
Method .................................................................................................................... 166
Analysing life histories – parents choosing baptism ........................................... 167
Lasse and Pia: Feeling at home ................................................................................ 167
Louise and Derek: Changing your family story ....................................................... 169
Marianne (and Simon): Being in, not out ................................................................ 172
Annette: Motherhood as a healing activity .............................................................. 174
Lars and Mette: Negotiating a common life story for a happy ending .................... 176
Analysing life histories – parents rejecting baptism ........................................... 179
Lærke: Independent together ................................................................................... 179
Berit: Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans ............ 181
Heidi and Bo: Looking for our own way ................................................................. 182
Kristina and Peter: Religion is difficult ................................................................... 184
Helene and Carlotta: Religion is dangerous ............................................................ 185
Findings in Chapter 4 ............................................................................................ 187
The shift from obligation to choice .......................................................................... 188
The shift from long-term to short-term consumption .............................................. 192
Social capital and use of the folk church ................................................................. 194
Chapter 5: Consequences of churching alone. Collective social capital
and use of church. .................................................................................... 197
Introduction ............................................................................................................ 197
Previous empirical research on social capital and religion ................................ 198
Quantitative studies on religion and social capital .................................................. 199
Qualitative studies .................................................................................................... 203
My contribution ....................................................................................................... 204
Operationalisation of social capital and religion ................................................ 204
Operationalisation for this study. Putnam, Berger-Schmitt and Noll ...................... 208
x

Method .................................................................................................................... 210
Data collection ........................................................................................................ 211
Analytical methods ................................................................................................ 212
Analyses of folk church use and collective social capital ................................... 215
Validation of data with European Values Study, ISSP, and Danish surveys .......... 215
Social network variables and participation in rites of passage ......................... 217
Bivariate analyses .................................................................................................... 217
Building combined variables ................................................................................... 219
Participation in rites of passage and social capital .................................................. 221
Participation in rites of passage and associational engagement .............................. 223
Findings of Chapter 5 ............................................................................................ 225
Bonding or bridging social capital? ......................................................................... 230
Chapter 6. Conclusions ........................................................................... 233
Changes at organisational level of the folk church (Chapter 3) ........................ 233
Changes in the use of the folk church (Chapter 4) ............................................. 235
The shift from obligation to choice .......................................................................... 236
The shift from long-term to short-term consumption .............................................. 237
Social capital and the folk church ........................................................................ 238
Building bonding social capital ............................................................................... 239
Building bridging social capital ............................................................................... 241
Does the folk church build more bonding than bridging social capital? ................. 242
The interplay of the change processes at meso and micro level ........................ 244
Establishing an empirical foundation for the concept of churching alone ....... 245
Final methodological reflections ........................................................................... 246
Resumé på dansk ..................................................................................... 247
Abstract .................................................................................................... 249
Sources ...................................................................................................... 251
European Values study and International Social Survey Programme dataset 251
YouGov surveys ..................................................................................................... 251
Danish legislation and other acts .......................................................................... 251
Committee reports from Ministry of Church Affairs ........................................ 252
Other official acts ................................................................................................... 252
Folk church statistics and demographics ............................................................. 252
United Kingdom statistics ..................................................................................... 253
Literature ................................................................................................. 255
Appendix A. Interview methods and interview protocol .................... 269
Methods for interviews .......................................................................................... 269
Interview protocol for dean interviews ................................................. 272
Appendix B. Overview of all parents in interviews ............................. 277
Appendix C. Documentation for composition of YouGov “Social
capital” and church use survey .............................................................. 279