Jörg Stolz, at Lausanne University, has put forward a model that
integrates most of the major strands of thought regarding how
culture creates individual religiosity. Essentially, what the
model assumes is that a person's environment - the society they
live in, as well as their more immediate environment (the
attitudes of their parents, for example) - create individual
situations, which in turn generate an individuals actions. This
is a broad model, and all of the factors that are conventionally
used to explain differences in religiosity can be incorporated
within it. So how well does it work? Stolz tested it by looking
at the relationship between macro and individual factors across
Swiss cantons. What he found broadly supported the role of
individual factors in generating religiosity. Having a religious
upbringing had the strongest effect, perhaps unsurprisingly.
This was based on parent church going, whether both parents were
of the same denomination, whether the individual had undergone
the rite of confirm