Morality is not rooted in religion and religion matters less for moral values now than it did thirty years ago, says a University of Manchester researcher.
Dr Ingrid Storm’s findings, based on her analysis of European survey data, found that religious decline does not equal moral decline.
According to Dr Storm, whose research is published in Politics and Religion, involvement in religion makes most difference to morality in the most religious countries, and matters less for moral values now than it did in the 1980s.
“Religion has been in sharp decline in many European countries. Each new generation is less religious than the one before, so I was interested to find out if there is any reason to expect moral decline” she said.