Secular Transition and Religious Transmission in Canada, Australia, the United States and Europe: A Quantitative Analysis of Migration and Family Religious Socialization

Abstract

This dissertation examines how intergenerational religious transmission within the family and immigration shape the process of secularization across Western societies. Grounded in secular transition theory, it seeks to identify the mechanisms through which religion is either transmitted or not transmitted across generations, and how these processes contribute to broader patterns of religious decline in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Italy, Finland, Germany and Hungary. The empirical analysis is based on three quantitative studies drawing on original cross-national survey data. The first and second articles use data from the Transmission of Religion Across Generations survey (2021), while the third article relies on the Cultural and Social Values Survey (2023). Across these studies, the dissertation employs a range of statistical techniques, including ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, ordinal logistic regression, and hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), to assess the effects of family socialization and migration-related factors on levels of religiosity. The first article analyzes intergenerational religious transmission in Canada, focusing on the role of parental socialization and cohort replacement. The findings show a clear intergenerational decline in both religious affiliation and levels of religiosity across all major religious groups. While certain aspects of family socialization, such as talking about religion with certain family members and the presence of religion in the household during childhood, have a positive effect on adult religiosity, these effects remain modest. Overall, family socialization does not appear strong enough to counteract the broader trend of secularization, as younger generations exhibit, in average, lower levels of religiosity than their parents. The second article adopts a comparative perspective to examine how family religious socialization influences adult religiosity within the context of secular transition across five countries (Canada, Italy, Hungary, Finland, and Germany). It shows that key dimensions of socialization such as religious tradition, childhood religious practices, and family attitudes toward religion significantly predict adult religiosity, but their effects vary across national contexts. In more secularized countries such as Canada, Finland, and Germany, religious socialization more frequently results in intermediate forms of religiosity (“fuzzy fidelity”), rather than strong religious commitment. In contrast, in less secularized contexts such as Italy, socialization remains more effective in sustaining higher levels of religiosity. These findings highlight the importance of national context and family religious socialization in understanding the process of secular transition. The third article investigates religious change among immigrants across four countries (Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia), focusing on differences between first- and second-generation immigrants and the role of time spent in the host country. The results indicate that first-generation immigrants are generally more religious than second-generation immigrants, although this pattern varies by region. The analysis also shows that the level of secularization in the host society affects religiosity among later generations but has limited impact on first-generation immigrants. Moreover, while time spent in the host country has some effect on religiosity, long-term religious decline among immigrant populations appears to be driven primarily by cohort replacement rather than prolonged exposure to the host society. Importantly, immigrants tend to remain more religious than non-immigrant populations even in highly secular contexts. Taken together, the findings of this dissertation provide a nuanced understanding of the mechanisms underlying secular transition. They demonstrate that while family religious socialization continues to play a role in shaping individual religiosity, its influence is generally insufficient to offset the broader forces driving secularization. At the same time, immigration introduces higher levels of religiosity into Western societies, but this effect diminishes across generations, ultimately aligning with the same patterns of intergenerational decline observed in the general population. This dissertation makes key contributions to the sociology of religion, both empirically and theoretically. Empirically, it draws on novel and underutilized cross-national survey data to construct original measures of family religious socialization and immigrant religiosity, including indicators that are typically absent from major international surveys (e.g., intra-family religious communication, the presence of religion in the household during childhood, attitudes towards religion, and the level of religiosity for different generations of immigrants). By doing so, it provides a more thorough assessment of the mechanisms underlying intergenerational religious (non)transmission across a range of understudied national contexts, including Canada, Australia Hungary and Finland. The dissertation also extends existing research by incorporating a broader set of family actors such as grand-parents and siblings, thereby offering a more comprehensive account of family-based religious socialization dynamics. Theoretically, this research advances secular transition theory by specifying and empirically testing mechanisms through which religious decline is reproduced, or not, across generations. In particular, it demonstrates how variations in family socialization practices, combined with the effects of cohort replacement, contribute to the gradual erosion of religiosity over time. It also refines existing understandings of the role of immigration by showing that, while immigrants contribute to the diversification and partial renewal of religious life, their religiosity converges across generations toward the secular trajectories of host societies. More broadly, the findings demonstrate that secularization needs to be understood in light of national context, religious group differences, and migration-related dynamics in shaping its pace and expression.