Using data from the first two cycles of ICCS in 2009 and 2016, this paper analyses the relationship between expected political engagement and affiliation and engagement with religion as well as attitudes toward the influence of religion in society among lower-secondary students in 10 European countries. It reviews changes over time as well as of associations between indicators of religious attachment among young people with indicators of intended political engagement in the future. The databases provided by ICCS provide an excellent opportunity to investigate the links between religious affiliation and beliefs among young people as motivating factors driving expected individual engagement in society.

Religion has been identified as an important influence on civic participation and engagement (see Pancer, 2015; Putnam, & Campbell, 2010; Verba, Schlozman, & Brady, 1995) and research findings suggest that religious affiliation has an impact on political and social engagement among adults (see Ekström & Kvalem, 2013; Guo, Webb, Abzug, & Peck, 2013; Perks, & Haan, 2011; Verba et al., 1995). Similar observations have also been recently reported based on comparative international surveys across different countries (Pew Research Center, 2019a).  It has been argued that religious organizations provide networks focused on political recruitment and motivation while participation in religion encourages adherents to consider features of society (a world view) that they see as desirable (Campbell, 2001; Jones-Correa & Leal, 2001; Putman & Campbell, 2010).

Pancer (2015) presented some evidence that schools and neighborhoods may contribute to both civic engagement and religious formation among adolescents. Vermeer (2010) viewed religious education at schools as a contributor to socializing young people in ways that had civic value while Francis et al. (2015) regarded church attendance and education about religion at school as factors that nurture tolerance in a religiously diverse society. In this sense engagement with religion could also be viewed as an important part of a broader civic engagement.

Research also suggested that, even after controlling for other variables, religious tradition and attendance of religious services tend to be related to indicators of civil participation (Smidt, 1999; Storm, 2015). However, other studies have also reported negative effects of religious affiliation on democratic citizenship as manifested in lower levels of political knowledge and lack of political efficacy among strongly religious people (Scheufele, Nisbet, & Brossard, 2003). Research among US adolescents (Porter, 2013) indicates that moral identity may be positively associated with voluntary service and expressive-political involvement but negatively related to traditional-political involvement. Findings from ICCS showed that lower-secondary students with higher levels of civic knowledge were less likely to endorse religious influence in society (Schulz & Ainley, 2017; Schulz et al., 2018). Results also showed that in most countries students who attended religious services held more positive attitudes towards the desirability of religious influence on society (Schulz et al., 2010 & 2018; Schulz & Ainley, 2017).

The relationship between religious attachment and civic engagement is a phenomenon, which has frequently been highlighted in other studies. This paper provides evidence about changes in religious affiliation and attitudes toward the importance of religion for society between 2009 and 2016. Further, the paper explores how these variables relate to expected participation in the future while considering also the context of the general status of religion in each participating country. Using data from an optional component of the ICCS student questionnaire, this paper investigates the extent to which lower-secondary students from 10 European countries in 2009 and 2016 were attached to a religion, endorsed its influence on society and the extent to which their engagement with religion was related to their expected future participation.

The first two cycles of the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS 2009 and 2016) have provided a data set with unique possibilities for comparative analyses of civic-related learning outcomes (Schulz et al, 2010 & 2018). In both cycles the student questionnaire included an international option on religious affiliation and engagement, as well as on attitudes toward the influence of religion in society that was administered in a majority of participating countries. Data from 10 European countries that participated in ICCS 2016, met IEA sampling participation standards and implemented the international option regarding religion, are included in the analyses undertaken for this paper. Further, five of these countries also participated in the corresponding option in ICCS 2009 and provide data for reviewing changes over time. As ICCS employed two-stage cluster sampling procedures, the jackknife repeated replication technique (JRR) was used for all analyses to obtain appropriate sampling errors for population means, percentages, regression coefficients, and any other population estimates. This paper will include a descriptive analysis of the extent in the religious attachment and their attitudes toward religious influence as well as changes between 2009 and 2016. Further, it will present results from path models that predict two forms of expected political engagement in the future: electoral (e.g. becoming informed and voting in elections) and active political participation (e.g. joining political organisations, campaigning and being a candidate). The model will include as predictor variables student characteristics (gender, religious affiliation), context variables (socioeconomic background, community size, students’ attendance of religious services), student attitudes (trust in civic institutions, citizenship self-efficacy) as well as school-related variables (student’s civic participation at school, civic knowledge). In this model, endorsement of religious influence in society will be both treated as a dependent variable as well as a predictor variable for intended political participation. To reduce the complexity of estimating this model across many countries, the path model is based mainly on manifest indicators. As civic knowledge is represented by five plausible values and a multiple-imputation procedure is applied to consider its measurement error. In the case of variables that represent latent variables, we used the IRT scales without incorporating the measurement model for each latent factor in this model. Models were estimated for each national sample separately and average results with their corresponding standard errors were also computed to provide findings at the level of the combined study.

When looking at the extent of religious affiliation, engagement and endorsement of religious influence in society as well as at change between the two first cycles of ICCS in 2009 and 2016, there were considerable differences across participating countries. In some national contexts, majorities of students saw themselves as part of a religion and reported attendance at least once a month in religious services while in other countries less than half of their young people identified with a religion. Results from comparisons across the first two cycles suggest slight decreases in religious affiliation and endorsement of religious influence across countries that participated in both cycles. The results show that, after controlling for other factors, endorsement of religious influence in society was strongly related to religious affiliation, as well as to religious service attendance, and reported participation in a religious group. Endorsement of religious influence on society was associated with religious background and also appeared to be higher in countries with greater religiosity. However, knowledge and understanding of civic principles and practices was negatively related to endorsement of religious influence on society. There were no consistent associations between expected electoral participation and religiosity. However, expected active political participation appeared to be related to religious affiliation in almost half of the European countries that participated in ICCS 2016. In some countries, there were also weak but significant associations between religious group participation and expected active political participation. Results also show that endorsement of religious influence in society was related to expected active political participation to a small but consistent extent. This suggests a transmitted influence of religious background on endorsement of the influence of religion in society through to expected active political participation. However, there was no evidence that endorsement of religious influence in society was related to expected electoral participation.

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