The researchers of the project "The transmission of religion across generations: a comparative international study of continuities and discontinuities in family socialization", directed by Prof. Christel Gärtner and funded by the John Templeton Foundation, met from March 31 to April 4 in Fuengirola near Málaga to exchange the results of the analyses of their data.

They dedicated the four-day meeting to preparing for a large conference on the project's key findings, scheduled for June 2022 in Germany. All teams had written texts accordingly and shared them in advance. On Thursday afternoon and Friday, they intensively discussed the quantitative and qualitative research results on the transmission of religiosity across generations from Germany, Finland, Italy, Canada, and Hungary, and found - with regard to the general trend toward secularization - expected commonalities across countries. With regard to the comparative approach of the project, the different project teams conducting qualitative and quantitative research discussed specific aspects on Saturday. For example, the quantitative team dealt at length with the following question: What is a "successful transmission" and what dependent variable can be used to measure it? The qualitative team focused on the transformation always inherent in transmission that arises from the interplay of family and changing society. Instead of a set of facilitating and hindering factors of transmission, the researchers emphasized the added value of meta-themes and concepts such as "continuity/discontinuity" and "religion as a shared/private matter" to adequately map the dynamics of transmission of individual families and systematize the findings. On Sunday, the project researchers developed ideas for further analyses that they would like to pursue in the subprojects across countries in the coming months. In addition, a content-related structuring of the contributions for the conference in June was defined.

See longer version in German.