Recent years have seen an increased interest in the role of voluntary engagement for the workings of democracy and the social integration of modern societies. Much research suggests that next to education, religious involvement is the most powerful predictor for active engagement in voluntary organizations on the individual level. This contribution examines the dynamics of church attendance and voluntary engagement in a longitudinal perspective relying on panel data from the GSOEP. Preliminary results suggest that although contested in the literature, the linkage between religion and voluntary engagement is no observational artifact but indeed a cause of the latter.
