FLASH
Shkruar nga Eduard Zaloshnja
The older generation (65 years and older), who experienced the period before religion was banned, has the highest percentage of those who go to church/mosque/temple/etc. at least once a month...
In collaboration with the well-known writer/researcher Bashkim Shehu, we conducted the most in-depth study on the level of religious belief in Albania last year, supported by the German Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS).
The study was based on a survey of 820 residents aged 18 and over, interviewed by 30 professional pollsters distributed proportionally throughout the country (you can read the study in full by clicking this link: https://www.kas.de/sq/web/albanien/titujt/-/content/studim-statistikor-mbi-besimin-fetar-ne-shqiperi-1)
Main results of the study:
59% of respondents stated that, based on personal beliefs (regardless of family background), they fully believe in a particular religion. Meanwhile, 56% of respondents believe in the religion of family origin (see the table below for percentages for each religion).
21.7% of respondents stated that they go to church/mosque/temple/etc. at least once a month; of these, 12% are Muslims of various sects.
Only 6.8% of respondents can be considered deeply religious, declaring that they believe, as determined by positive answers to all of the following questions: they go to church/mosque/temple/etc. at least once a week; they think that things in the world happen by God's will; they think that man is a creation of God; they think that, upon death, his soul continues to live in the afterlife; they think that, depending on the good or bad deeds a person does in life, his soul can go to Heaven or Hell.
Respondents who regularly fast/observe Lent constitute 22.2% of the total number.
The older generation (65 years and older), which experienced the period before religion was banned, has the highest percentage of those who go to church/mosque/temple/etc. at least once a month (23.5%), while the middle generation (40-64 years old), which was formed during that period, has the lowest percentage (19%).
Almost half of those who do not believe in any particular religion go, however, to church/mosque/temple/etc. in the hope that such a thing can help them with their life/health problems, and over half of the non-religious who go to church/mosque/temple/etc. declare that there are cases when this has helped them or their acquaintances.
Almost 40% of respondents have performed or know that their parents or grandparents continued to perform religious rites secretly during the period when this was criminally punishable.
79% of respondents stated that they have no problem with a family member (including themselves) marrying or cohabiting with someone from a family with a different religious background; 21.6% of married/cohabiting respondents actually have such a marriage/cohabitation.
Only 75% of respondents believe in the same religion (or, respectively, do not believe in any religion) as their fathers and 72% believe in the same religion as their mothers. Among married/cohabiting couples, only 69% believe in the same religion (or, respectively, do not believe in any religion) as their spouses/cohabiting partners.
The odds of someone with a mother who believes in a particular religion are 6.27 times greater than those of someone with a mother who does not believe in any particular religion, all other characteristics being the same. In the case of the father, this coefficient is lower: 4.2.
Main conclusions of the study:
Religious belief continues to be quite widespread in Albania, with a percentage of believers approximately the same as that of Western Europe.
The number of those who can be considered deeply religious is relatively small, compared to the total number of believers, which is noticeable today even in some European countries with diametrically opposed histories in the relationship between the state and religion.
State atheism not only failed to achieve the goal of eradicating religion, but also did not bring about any major change in this direction. Religious belief, apparently, is one of the most refractory layers of the human inner world in the face of political violence.
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