기독교 교세의 위축 원인

Causes of Christian Churches’ Declining Popularity in Some Countries

본고에서는 기독교 교세가 위축되는 현상을 설명하기 위해 ‘개인편익-우선주의’, ‘사회적 선호변화’, ‘종교성’과 관련된 변수들을 투입하여 회귀분석과 비모수추정을 하였다. 추정결과 ‘교회신뢰도’나 ‘타종교에 대한 입장’과 같은 사회적 선호변화가 종교활동에 미치는 영향을 확인할 수 있었으나 Inglehart의 생육의무가설은 6개 회귀분석 표본 중 한 개의 표본(48개국 표본)에서만 기각되지 않았다. 비모수추정에서도 생육의무가설은 지지도가 높지 않았다.

In this paper, we have attempted to explain the decline of religiosity among people in economically advanced and stable countries. To that end, we have estimated the relationship between a decline in religion (represented by ‘church membership’ or ‘religious zeal’) and a set of explanatory variables (such as ‘a change in social preference’, ‘self-reliance’, and ‘religiosity’) relying on both parametric and non-parametric methods (in particular, ‘multinomial logistic regression’ for the former and ‘decision tree’ analysis for the latter). Our findings show that a change in social preferences such as ‘trust in churches’ and ‘religious tolerance’ is instrumental in explaining a decline in Christianity in Korea, the U.S. and the world. The Inglehart hypothesis is not upheld in most of the samples used in estimation that the shift from pro-fertility norms to individual-choice norms is responsible for religion’s sudden decline