Prof. Dr. Christel Gärtner

The religious field in Germany has changed profoundly during the 20th century, Germany transforming into a predominantly secular society in the second half. Even if non-belief is not a modern phenomenon, certain social conditions are required for a secular habitus to develop, one that neither requires its bearers to justify themselves, nor forces them to accept social disadvantages. We can observe that those born after 1970 position themselves in their phase of adolescence in a primarily secular social context. The secular has become, at the latest in this generation, a form that no longer needs explanation or justification and by which people interpret meanings and shape their own lives.

Nevertheless, church and religion are still part of social reality and people encounter these institutions in certain situations – be it at school through religious education, or (especially in West Germany) through family and friends at religious rituals. This also applies to individuals growing up in families where religion has no relevance either in everyday life or for how they relate to the world.

Using data from family interviews, I will concentrate on secular worldviews and relationships with the world that develop from lived values and their transmission in the family. I will reconstruct in detail how a non-religious habitus develops in socialization over several generations, becomes entrenched in later biographical positioning, and shapes how a person relates to the world, including her view of religion. By using contrasting cases, I hope to gain more precise insights into the structure of secular worldviews, but also into the motives that underlie demarcations between secular and religious spheres; when people use the secular as a marker to distinguish themselves from religion in general or only from specific religions, whether and when it is a matter of material or symbolic demarcations.