However, despite heated academic debates, empirical evidence on the sources of this dramatic social change is scarce. Footnote 1 Furthermore, while it is hard to observe changes in religious beliefs in the historical context, declining religious participation in itself has important societal meaning because of the historical role of the institutionalized church in society at large. Understanding the sources of this seismic religious change is important: by shaping attitudes towards factors such as education and knowledge diffusion, the religious orientation of society may have important repercussions for long-run development (Galor 2011). For example, in our micro-regional German data, participation in Holy Communion per Protestant declined on average by nearly a third of its initial value from 1890 to 1930. Important aspects of this can be observed from the practice of religious participation. Secularization, understood as churches’ loss of importance in society, is a European phenomenon that was particularly strong during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and brought fundamental change to societies. The pattern of results across school types is most consistent with a mechanism of increased critical thinking in general rather than specific knowledge of natural sciences. Dynamic panel models with lagged dependent variables and instrumental-variable models using variation in school supply confirm the results. In panel models with lagged explanatory variables, educational expansion precedes reduced church attendance, while the reverse is not true. By contrast, in panel models where fixed effects account for time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity, education-but not income or urbanization-is negatively related to church attendance.

Our cross-sectional estimates replicate a positive association. We construct a unique panel dataset of advanced-school enrollment and Protestant church attendance in German cities between 18.

Why did substantial parts of Europe abandon the institutionalized churches around 1900? Empirical studies using modern data mostly contradict the traditional view that education was a leading source of the seismic social phenomenon of secularization.

National ordinance 1903a3 value