The phrase believing without belonging can actually be applied to the Irish context with a growing trend towards this form of religiosity, however there are still those who believe and belong and some do not even believe nor belong. Religion has always been at the forefront of Irish society. Fogarty (1984:8), studying the 1981 European Values ​​Survey (EVS), found that "every indicator of belief, informal and formal practice, and attitudes towards the church or churches, shows that the Irish... . are much more religiously inclined than those of other European countries." However, in the 2008 EVS survey, the number of people attending church weekly fell from 82.4% in 1981 to 44.2%, with a similar drop in monthly attendance to 65% and 14% who did not never attends church. Yet belief in God has declined at a much slower rate with 91.8% believing in 2008 compared to 97.1% in 1981. These figures seem to suggest that Irish people are breaking away from formalized and institutionalized religious practice, but nevertheless maintain their beliefs. Davie's concept of Believing Without Belonging (1994) is used to describe people who no longer conform to religious practice but still maintain religious belief systems. The Irish data on EVS certainly seems to suggest a trend towards this type of religiosity. Church attendance and other outward forms of religiosity have declined, but the Irish "have not abandoned many of their deeply held religious aspirations" (Davie 2000:8). There are still high levels of acceptance of key religious beliefs, despite growing numbers of unaffiliated and marginally attached members of religious institutions (Fahey,2005). In fact, in the 2000 EVS survey, 50% of the unaffiliated believed in G...... middle of paper ......opean Values ​​​​Study.Dublin: Dominican Publications.Gill, R., (2007 ) “The Cultural Paradigm: Declines into Belonging and Then Believing,” in Pollack, D., Olson, D.V.A. (ed.) The Role of Religion in Modern Societies, London: Routledge.Glock, C Y., Stark, R., (1965) Religion and society in tension. Chicago: Rand McNally.Inglis, T., (2007) 'Catholic Identity in Contemporary Ireland: Belief and Belonging to Tradition', Journal of Contemporary Religion, vol.22, no.2, May, pp. 205-220.Macionis, J., Plummer,K., (2012) Sociology a global introduction, fifth edition, Essex: PearsonEducation.Storm, I., (2009) 'Halfway to Heaven: Four Types of Fuzzy Fidelity in Europe' , Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, vol.48, n.4, pp. 702-718.Voas, D., (2009) 'The rise and fall of fuzzy fidelity in Europe', European Sociological Review, vol.25, n.2, pp.155–68.