La Suisse compte actuellement plus de 5000 groupements religieux locaux (paroisses, communautés ou lieux de rencontre). Jusqu'à présent, la recherche quantitative sur la religion et la religiosité en Suisse s'était limitée à l'analyse de la religiosité chrétienne individuelle. Aucune étude représentative globale, toutes religions confondues, n'avait encore eu lieu en Suisse. Ce projet, qui ne se limite pas à la religion chrétienne mais s'intéresse également aux groupements juifs, islamiques, bouddhistes et à bien d'autres, permettra d'une part d'obtenir de nouvelles informations et, d'autre part, de comparer le paysage suisse des communautés religieuses locales avec celui des Etats-Unis, où une étude similaire est actuellement en cours. La question de savoir pourquoi les Etats-Unis sont beaucoup plus "religieux" que les pays européens pourra ainsi être abordée à la lumière de données complètement nouvelles.

Religion is to an important degree a social phenomenon. Individuals interact in order to worship, meditate, teach and learn, socialize and engage in a host of other activities. While these interactions may take different social forms, the most important form - at least in Western societies - may well be the congregation (or local community). While there has been a great deal of quantitative research on individual religiosity in Switzerland, there has been no representative study on religious congregations or local communities to this date. One of the main strengths of the proposed project is therefore its descriptive potential. It will give us answers to very basic - and very important - questions that remain unanswered. How large are the communities and how much staff do they employ? How many congregations are led by women and do we find any differences to congregations led by men? What do congregations offer to their members and with how much success? How do Muslim or Jewish con-gregations differ in these respects from Reformed or Catholic communities? On the other hand, the present study will also answer important theoretical questions. For a long time researchers have wondered just why religion seems to be more important in the USA than in European countries like Switzerland. Some have argued that the reason lies in a different "market structure", leading US congregations to be more "competitive". This theory has, however, never been addressed with an empirical study comparing congregations on both sides of the Atlantic with a similar methodology. With the present project, we set out to do just this. Congregational religion in Switzerland is a largely uncharted field, because the methodological tools and a comprehensive list of congregations have been hitherto unavailable. With a new methodology and a comprehensive list of communities, we will conduct the first such study in Switzerland (and, to the best of our knowledge, in Europe), thereby drawing on experiences of and largely replicating a similar study in the USA by one of the applicants (Mark Chaves). Central question The central question of our research is as follows: What do congregations in Switzerland offer concerning worship, social, political and cultural activities; what are the structural and cultural determinants of congregations' activity focus and vitality and how do activities and determinants differ between congregations in Switzerland and the USA? Method Concerning methods, this project carries out a representative survey on religious congregations in Switzerland and compares findings systematically with those that have been produced with a similar methodology in the USA. A complete list of religious congregations in Switzerland will be produced, building on existing lists and our own research. A stratified, representative sample of approximately 1,500 Swiss congregations will be drawn and one key informant for every congregation will be interviewed by telephone (CATI) with a standardized questionnaire on structure, activities, social composition, cultural focus and other attributes of the congregation. Utmost importance will be given to quality of the data and our goal is to reach an 80% response rate, as was the case in the first such study by Mark Chaves in the US. Data analysis will be done with common statistical packages (e.g. SPSS, STATA). Expected results The study will produce a wealth of vital and unprecedented information on religion and religious plurality in Switzerland. It will enable us for the first time to compare, for example, various Christian, Jewish, Muslim and other communities in Switzerland, as well as between Switzerland and the USA. Furthermore, this new type of comparative data (we will be able to compare across cantons, countries, religious traditions) will be used to revisit important theoretical questions, e.g. 1. the famous theory of the religious market, which argues that state regulation dampens religious congregations’ activities, 2. the longstanding theoretical enigma of the large difference in religiosity between European countries and the US. Scientific and societal importance The project is highly significant for the scientific community in that it produces new and interesting data on congregations in Switzerland which was hitherto lacking and in that it addresses important theoretical debates with an original comparative design (CH - US) and a new type of data. The project is also important for Swiss society, as its results will be highly interesting for the state, the media, information centers, and last but not least the religious communities themselves.