Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.01.1990, Page 236

Summary in English
There is no possibility of recapitulating all of the results of our survey in this
summary. Here we will only mention a few main points, focussing upon some
of the common characteristics of the religious life of the Icelanders and their
attitudes toward faith and the church.
Comparison with other Western nadons reveals that the Icelandic nation is
very devout, although this fact is not reflected in statistics on church atten-
dance. Unsurprisingly, religious faith among the Icelanders proves to be a
rather complex phenomenon. Although 93% of the nation belongs to the
Church of Iceland, this indicates very little about Icelandic religious concep-
tions and practices. Icelandic theologians and sociologists, and others dealing
with religion and culture in Iceland, felt the need for a detailed survey of Ice-
landic religious life.
The present survey was conducted under the auspices of the Theological
Institute of the University of Iceland during the fall and winter of 1986-1987.
A sample of one thousand persons between the ages of 18 and 75 was ran-
domly drawn from the National Register, and was sent the questionnaire. 731
responses were subsequently received. Although some of the matters surveyed
had been studied previously, our survey is the most comprehensive conducted
in Iceland to date.
There is no doubt whatever that the Christian and ecclesiastical tradition
sets the tone of religious life in Iceland, despite the fact that the Icelanders
have various and differing attitudes toward the church. This variety is in part
a reflection of contemporary society in which individualism and pluralism are
strong.
A factor analysis of principal variables was carried out. This showed that the
strongest variable is the ecclesiastical/Christian, which explains most of the
variety in the answers to the central questions on the survey list concerning
religious life and attitudes. The next-strongest variable is one which might be
called „faith within daily life“: faith which provides strength and adds to the
enjoyment of life but which is not closely tied to the church or to the sacra-
ments. A third factor reveals attitudes toward the church as a social force with-
out emphasizing either its role as a religious institution or as a purveyor of
Christian doctrine. The fourth and last factor was called „belief in the resur-
rection of the faithful“; it provided unambiguous evidence against the idea
that spiritualism and Christianity go together. As is well known, spiritualism
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