This Week in God

October 27, 2007

First up from The God Machine this week is a fascinating study from the Pew Global Attitudes Project, which drew some interesting correlations between a nation’s wealth and its religiosity.

Global publics are sharply divided over the relationship between religion and morality. In much of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, there is a strong consensus that belief in God is necessary for morality and good values. Throughout much of Europe, however, majorities think morality is achievable without faith. Meanwhile, opinions are more mixed in the Americas, including in the United States, where 57% say that one must believe in God to have good values and be moral, while 41% disagree.

The survey finds a strong relationship between a country’s religiosity and its economic status. In poorer nations, religion remains central to the lives of individuals, while secular perspectives are more common in richer nations. This relationship generally is consistent across regions and countries, although there are some exceptions, including most notably the United States, which is a much more religious country than its level of prosperity would indicate. Other nations deviate from the pattern as well, including the oil-rich, predominantly Muslim — and very religious — kingdom of Kuwait.

You can check out the really interesting accompanying chart, which shows Africa as having a lot of religiosity, but very little money; Eastern Europe having low religiosity but slightly more money, and Western Europe having very low religiosity but quite a bit of money. It’s hard to know exactly what to make of this, though Kevin Drum’s description sounded about right: “As people get less religious, they get wealthier. Or perhaps the other way around. Or perhaps there’s something else behind both trends.”

And then there’s the United States, which is, of course, the outlier, with lots of money and fairly high religiosity rates. As an interesting added twist, Kevin notes another study that shows, within the U.S., states with greater wealth tend to have fewer per capita churches.

What does all of this mean? I’m open to suggestion.

Other items from The God Machine this week:

* Roll Call reports that some conservative Republican lawmakers on the Hill are concerned that the new Capitol Visitor Center isn’t religious enough. “[Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.)] introduced a measure Thursday that would require the Architect of the Capitol to permanently display the Pledge of Allegiance and the motto “In God We Trust” at the Capitol Visitor Center. Musgrave’s legislation is part of her larger effort to ensure that the country’s religious history continues to be recognized at the Capitol, spokesman Aaron Johnson said Friday.”

* The vile Westboro Baptist Church, made up of fundamentalists who protest the funerals of U.S. troops killed in Iraq, is being sued. In March 2006, Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder was being laid to rest when Fred Phelps and his family showed up with signs that read “God Hates You” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers.” Now, Snyder’s family is seeking damages, claiming invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Legal experts expect an interesting showdown over the limits of free speech and protest rights.

* And Alabama became the first state in the country this week to approve a textbook on Biblical literacy for use in public schools. The AP reported, “According to Dr. Anita Buckley Commander, the Alabama Director of Classroom Improvement, there was no opposition to the October 11 vote by the state Board of Education to include The Bible and Its Influence on the state’s list of accepted textbooks. The Board held a hearing on the issue and no-one showed up; the book was approved by a vote of 8-0. The textbook is a product of the Bible Literacy Project, founded and run by Chuck Stetson, a conservative Christian New York-based equity fund executive. Assessing scripture and its subsequent influence on literature, art, philosophy and political culture, it was specifically designed to avoid the Constitution’s church-state barriers. Although the text, which has been on the market for two years, is now taught in 163 schools in 35 states, no state had previously endorsed it.”

although there are some exceptions, including most notably the United States, which is a much more religious country than its level of prosperity would indicate. Other nations deviate from the pattern as well, including the oil-rich, predominantly Muslim — and very religious — kingdom of Kuwait. . .

. . .What does all of this mean? I’m open to suggestion.

It means that the present United States is most comparable to Kuwait, a monarchistic, theocratic state that props up its economy with foreign labor “paid” essentially in indentured servitude, that severely oppresses minorities and women, and where the rich ruling families end up with virtually all of the country’s money.

Other than the fact that they have more oil and (pending a few more years of global warming) we get some snow, it really is getting harder from my description above to tell the two apart.

  • Religion thrives on hopelessness. When people feel powerless to improve their situation in life, they turn to God.

  • I suppose that prosperity and education are closely correlated. So perhaps the cause/effect relationship is between lack of education and religiosity.

  • What does all of this mean? I’m open to suggestion.

    My off-the-cuff thoughts: Some religions (I’m thinking of Christianity and Islam mainly, here) seem to say that all of the suffering you go through on Earth is just a passing phase before you reach paradise in the afterlife. If I were setting up a religion to reassure people that their miserable lives were not meaningless, that’s the approach I’d take. No verification required, only hope. It naturally works better with poorer people. Richer people don’t need as much reassurance; they’re doing okay already.

  • How about looking for a correlation between religiosity and income disparity in a country? The greater the disparity, the greater the need for the rich to use religion to control the poor.

  • Could wealth be a proxy for urbanization or population density? An alternative explanation would be that the more urban the population is on average the less religious the individuals are and measures of wealth and urbanization correlate positively. The US and Kuwait could be anomalous with respect to the latter correlation.

    I would like to see the church data in the US plotted against some measure of urbanization.

  • Eastern Europe having low religiosity but slightly more money, and Western Europe having very low religiosity but quite a bit of money. It’s hard to know exactly what to make of this,

    Maybe if we had less religiosity, we’d be super-awesome, not just awesome.

    Maybe the U.S.’s anomalous religiosity is an anchor that’s keeping us from amazing achievement. At least, it probably plays part in sending us to a quandary of a war in Iraq and squandering our budget surpluses.

  • What I find most fascinating, and frightening, is the ridiculous notion that one must believe in God to be moral. A majority of Americans believe this? What kind of people are they? Do they have no independent conscience, no sense of empathy or sympathy, no internal sense of right and wrong that guides them? Does that mean that without the fear of God they’d have no compunctions about robbing, stealing, killing or being cruel to animals or hurting people’s feelings? I can’t begin to wrap my mind around what goes on inside these people’s heads. I prefer to believe they are simply shallow and thoughtless, like Bush, and haven’t thought through the implications of their knee-jerk responses. The alternative is simply terrifying: more than half the American people behave themselves not because they have any sense of right or wrong of their own, but because they’re afraid of what God will do to them if they don’t behave.

    Or do they think that God just lets non believers run amok, that he instills “values” only in the devout? Then I guess they’d be terrified of going to Europe, where large numbers don’t believe in God.

    By the way, is this the Biblical God we’re talking about, or will any old deity suffice?

  • I just heard that the enrollment at the Catholic school where my sister went for elementary school is way down. I was wondering why, and the only thing I could come up with is, people don’t want their kids around priests so much anymore. By not switching over to a system that would discourage pedophiles in its ranks, the church is probably putting the nails in its own coffin, and contributing to the decrease in religiosity in places like western Europe.

    I hear a lot of old churches in Europe where people don’t attend mass anymore are getting turned into nightclubs and things like that now.

  • Hark says

    I prefer to believe they are simply shallow and thoughtless, like Bush, and haven’t thought through the implications of their knee-jerk responses.

    I think you’re mostly right, but I’d add that it’s not Christian people who are thoughtless, but people in general. You’re just not gonna get well considered answers to these kind of questions in random phone interviews.

  • Need more stats on the supposed correlation between lack of religion and wealth, since all of those exceptions make the claim sound very dubious. Even the churches per capita info seems potentially questionable, when it fails to discuss how long ago the churches were built, the denominations, rural, urban differences and the section of the country. I believe the correlation between an elite advanced education and lack of religiosity may be much more distinct with fewer exceptions. (I say “elite” advanced education, because in the US a college education is too usual to be elitist, but degrees beyond a BA still have that aspect.) Science vs. Superstition. Rationality vs. Irrationality. Wealth only requires practicality. And as we have seen with the Republican Party, it can be very practical to be religious when it gets you elected into office….

  • I’d add that it’s not Christian people who are thoughtless, but people in general. — Dan
    So christians are no better than non-christians, even though 57% of Americans think you have to believe in a god to be good and moral?

  • #1 Paraphrasing my pastor: People who have more tend to put more emphasis on their possesions, which gets in the way of one’s relationship with God. At the core of it, Christians (as commanded by Jesus) should put the most emphasis in 1) loving God and 2) loving fellow humans (love your neighbor as yourself). Not put your trust in your house, your car, your retirement account, etc. No one said it would be easy.

    Humans tend to segregate themselves into classes, think themselves better (or worse) than others. We are all guilty of this. Rich vs middle class vs poor. People of faith vs people without. “Liberal” Christians vs fundamentalists. Democrats vs Republicans. :-p

    I am dismayed by a few of the responses here: the poor people in Africa are ignorant, the poor are gullible and that’s why they’ve turned to religion. It’s ridiculous, and harmful, to boil it down to that. It is true that Jesus Christ related to the poor and those who were stigmatized in society. But the discussion is multi-faceted and in shades of gray.

    #2 NO, you don’t have to be religious to have good values and be moral! This is called your conscience. Where that comes from (the conscience, absent I suppose in people such as Cheney) is up for debate. Maybe our consciouses make us feel guilt if we have a lot and others have little, and that’s why we turn against faith? Just a thought. Yes, I’m conflicted, and I’m just middle class, not wealthy. Though as my pastor put it “If you aren’t worried where your next meal is coming from in the world today, you’re “wealthy””. But you don’t have to give up everything to live your faith either. A complex issue to be sure.

    #3 I’m really happy that someone has finally sued those hateful un-Christian Phelps people.

    Sorry if I sound a bit preachy, but this thread is titled “This Week in God”.

  • You don’t have to insult the religious to understand this. Its the same phenomenon that sharpens the sense of hearing in the blind. When you have nothing but dust, hardship and the sky to look at, you are more likely to think spiritually. When you have an all-pervasive media, trinkets and entertainment, leisure time and a secular humanist education, you are far more prone to self aggrandizing and reveling in material pleasures.

    What makes Kuwait and the US different? Probably a thousand things, income disparity likely one of them, but also the deep roots of religion in the cultures of both countries. The chart doesn’t clearly say, but I would guess that all of the Arab nations score high in ‘religiosity,’ likely due in large part to the pervasiveness of Islam in the socio-political structure of these states. In that light Kuwait may appear as an outlier because of it’s relative wealth, not because of a fundamental difference in mores.

    Another important point to raise is that since GDP was used to make the comparisons, it does not necessarily reflect the average per-capita income of the nations in question. GDP is calculated based on where ‘wealth’ is generated, not where it ends up – foreign firms may actually own a large percentage of the ‘wealth’ in America, but as far as GDP is concerned, it is filed under US production. GDP is directly proportional to government expenditure as well, and as we should all be aware, the US spends a lot more money than it actually has, so again here our GDP is deceptively inflated. Better indicators of average ‘wealth’ in a country are harder to establish and so not as often used. The ‘religiosity’ measure is also open to question for our country; if you recall recent comments indicating that Christianity is something Americans “only do on Sundays” the high score the polls returned may not reflect the actual mien of the populace.

    While I agree there is a relationship and I don’t doubt that the US is farther from the inferred curve than most nations, but i don’t implicitly trust the data as it’s shown. It’s been my experience that one should never put much trust in statistics that give no margin of error, and one should certainly realize that a study such as this certainly has a great number of lurking variables. These outliers may not be proven as far out as the study suggests, if a more comprehensive study were possible.

    As far as what the results indicate, I stand by what I said at the top of this post: people are sheep and entertainment is as much a shepherd as a religious figure is. Africa is not so full of billboards, celebrities and televisions as Europe is, and a shepherd with bells, whistles and streaming video feeds will certainly draw a bigger flock than one demanding introspection and faith. I wouldn’t jump to say that a negative correlation between intelligence and faith is indicated; moreso faith versus secular media immersion. Even that being said, what makes a person believe in something more than what can be bought on E-bay is an incredibly complicated issue and can’t be understood in the simple terms of economic prosperity.

    There are a host of questions and implications here; what do we show about ourselves by using the study to call religious populations “shallow and thoughtless”? The first reaction of so many posters here appears always to be to insult people of faith at every opportunity, something I find to be much more “ignorant” than believing that there is a higher power, which is something that mankind has done long before recorded history. Well, I suppose people have been insulting each other since the dawn of time as well.. so nvm. bleauuch.

    Swan said:
    Maybe the U.S.’s anomalous religiosity is an anchor that’s keeping us from amazing achievement. At least, it probably plays part in sending us to a quandary of a war in Iraq and squandering our budget surpluses.

    While over the course of history there have been two major causes for all wars, Religion and Natural Resources, I think it’s pretty well established that out conquest of Iraq is solidly founded in the latter, at least in intention if not result. It’s not as if the Christian population of the world all has our back on this one.

  • There’s little question that organized religion–as entirely distinct from personal piety or spirituality–is an instrument of social control; this is basically the story of Western Civilization from around 700 until the Enlightenment. I have no argument with people of faith, millions of whom have and continue to make the world a better place through their conscious decisions to live out their creed. I have tremendous difficulty with religious hierarchies at every level, which have proven all too eager to reconcile themselves with temporal authorities.

    When organized religion aligns with corporate and military power, you get Francoite Spain. I’ve always thought that this was the best historic parallel to where the Bush/Cheney/DeLay/Dobson/Norquist clique would like to take the country.

    As for what this means on the sub-national level, I would guess that the centers of wealth in America–the cities–are home to less religious citizens. But even within those communities (where, obviously, one encounters the greatest disparities of wealth) there’s almost certainly an inverse correlation between individual/familial wealth and religiosity. Explanations of this offered earlier in this thread strike me as feasible enough.

  • There are some very good posts here. I haven’t seen anybody address the notion that it ‘seems’ American society has become more religious over the last decade. Looking at some of the economic data and wealth factors, and where advances in research are being made, it looks like America is gradually slipping away from the # 1 spot, in more than one category.

    Would that imply that there is an inverse correlations between a country becoming more ‘conservative’ / ‘religious’ and its society becoming less important on the world stage, in regards to groundbreaking renovations, science, moral standing?

    It sure looks like America isn’t admired like it used to be, but we sure hear a lot more religious bullshit from the so called religious leaders.. No disrespect to religious people in general.; just the ones who’re feeding all the hate mongering bullshit, that has nothing to do with Christianity, or Islam for that matter.

  • Religion in this country is used as a way to control the masses. It is used to divide our country to ensure that those at the top stay at the top. The pol thinks they’re voting for someone who holds their personal ‘moral’ view of the world. But in fact they are voting for someone who takes campaign donations from people that expect a quid pro quo. The ‘morals’ voters are in reality voting against their own interest. Financial and otherwise. They are willing to vote for someone they think will oppress the ‘immoral’ when in fact they are voting for someone who is actually chipping away at their own constitutional rights.

  • Posthuman wrote:

    While over the course of history there have been two major causes for all wars, Religion and Natural Resources, I think it’s pretty well established that out conquest of Iraq is solidly founded in the latter, at least in intention if not result. It’s not as if the Christian population of the world all has our back on this one.

    Look past the single sentence I wrote. My point is actually that Republicans’ rhetorical use of religion in the US contributed to getting them the political support to do the the Iraq war. It did this by: 1) making some religious people believe the Republicans were the more righteous political party from a religious perspective, thereby bolstering the Republicans’ political support generally, and by 2) convincing some prideful religious people who are also intolerant that we were fighting religiously un-righteous people in Iraq, thereby (in their minds) providing extra justification for going to war there.

    I didn’t mean that the US’ role in the war in Iraq was primarily motivated by religion. I just meant that for a contingent of US support, it made their support of the Iraq war (and the Republicans who started it) easier for them.

  • Need more stats on the supposed correlation between lack of religion and wealth, since all of those exceptions make the claim sound very dubious.

    I think it’s not so much that not having religion causes wealth, but that lack of religion and increased wealth are results of other things, like an increase in the standard of living, increase in overall education, and increase in technological advancement.

    So you could be really religious and be really successful, it’s just that that’s because the two only have so much to do with one another. That is, the correlation is actually useful for some purposes, and actually not useful for others. Good as a generalization, not so good as an airtight prescription.

  • Need more stats on the supposed correlation between lack of religion and wealth, since all of those exceptions make the claim sound very dubious.

    Also, I think if you’re looking at this from an anarchist, anti-authority, or anti-hierarchical perspective, it’s easy to see “wealth” as the enemy, and quest for a way to make sense of this as religion as a scam for attaining wealth.

    However, I don’t think the defiinition of “wealth” here is the one that’s used in an anarchist or anti-hierarchical critique. Here, wealth is a good thing, because this kind of study is comparing societies globally, across so broad a spectrum of “wealth” that what they really mean by “wealth” in the study is things like Internet access and running water, not gold-plated jets, plantation houses and boob jobs.

  • That is to say, I think they’re not talking about inequality, but about over-all standard of living. An increase in one (standard of living) does not necessarily have to lead to an increas in another (inequality).

    The real test of an anarchist or non-hierarchical society, by the way, is whether, after outside attacks and attempts at subversion by capitalism, the society is able to provide for its people so that they are happy, healthy, safe, and prosperous. If it can’t do that, It’s not worth a damn.

  • This Westboro Baptist church hates the Gay-Community, African-Americans, Canada, Sweden, the Fire Department of NY, victims of 911, Christian Churches, The Pope, Judaism, America, Our American Troops, and the list goes on and on. Many of the groups they despise are specifically named on their hate propaganda, picket signs, and their many websites. They not only hate, but wish death on all that they abhor.
    This sick, so called church spreads its hate through picketing in our streets, provoking attacks, with abusive vulgar language. With an on going hate FAX’s Worst of all, they endanger their own young children, having them man the front lines in their combative demonstrations – attempting to create a confrontation.
    If a mother has given her son to our country and is putting Him in his grave, this is not the time or the place. This is not about protesters, this is about a group that calls that mother a names on the way into a church to say goodbye to that son. We are not talking about FREEDOM we are talking about human decency. This is not about protesting, this is about a life of hate. If you have not seen this group in action I would ask you to. They are not peaceful. They are not a “church”. They go after any thing that can get them in the news. I am all for protest when there is a reason, I have been in many. This group will protest anything to get its face on TV or in the news. It is about an old man lost in the darkness of hate, but will put his six year old grandson in danger to save himself. Do we have a real need to protest at any funeral? Is that a real Freedom.
    The city of Topeka, the state of Kansas and the U.S. at large, its citizens and their Churches, schools and events are all held hostage by this “hate group” – always at the tax payer’s expense.
    With this group it is just not about Freedom. If they need the freedom to protest, then you take the Freedom of others to MOURN.

  • I see the lawsuit against the Westboro Baptist Church as a win-win situation (unfortunately) for the WRC idiots. If the lawsuit is thrown out, or it goes to court and the judge/jury decides in their favor, then that’s an obvious victory for them. If the suit goes to court and the judge/jury rules against the WRC, then Phelps and his gang can strike the martyr pose, portraying themselves as being victimized for their “faith.”

  • Yeqah, but the parts of America that think God is important to have good values are the places (like the South) that have yet to join the 20th Century, just like those places in Africa, Asia, etc., while the parts that don’t are more like modern countries. That’s the big difference between the United States and JeebusLand, aka America’s Kandahar Province..

  • “As an interesting added twist, Kevin notes another study that shows, within the U.S., states with greater wealth tend to have fewer per capita churches.”

    The top five states in churches per capita are…

    1. North Dakota
    2. West Virginia
    3. South Dakota
    4. Arkansas
    5. Utah

    And the bottom five are…

    47. Massachusetts
    48. Rhode Island
    49. New Jersey
    50. California
    51. Nevada

    Just off the top of my head, it appears the top five states are very rural, so I would expect the typical congregation to be much smaller than the typical congregation in more urban states. There will have to be more congregations to accommodate the same number of people. Remember, the variable is churches per capita, not church membership.

    Also, for what it’s worth, a much higher percentage of people in the bottom five are Catholic; perhaps the typical Catholic parish is much larger than the typical Lutheran (ND and SD), Baptist (WV and AR), or LDS (UT) parish.

  • When driving through some run-down looking neighborhoods, I remember seeing “churches” on nearly every block, many of them just little storefronts with a hand-painted sign, in a larger building or in a strip mall.

    It occurred to me that starting a church would be a decent opportunity for someone with limited education, no money to invest in a business, or other barriers to upward mobility, to create some self-employment for themselves and have a quasi-professional status in the community.

    The hypothesis I’m submitting is that a high per-capita rate of churches in poorer communities reflects an enterprising adaptation to economic stress, not greater religiosity.

  • “When driving through some run-down looking neighborhoods, I remember seeing “churches” on nearly every block, many of them just little storefronts with a hand-painted sign, in a larger building or in a strip mall.

    It occurred to me that starting a church would be a decent opportunity for someone with limited education, no money to invest in a business, or other barriers to upward mobility, to create some self-employment for themselves and have a quasi-professional status in the community.

    The hypothesis I’m submitting is that a high per-capita rate of churches in poorer communities reflects an enterprising adaptation to economic stress, not greater religiosity.”

    But if this were true, wouldn’t we expect a greater number of congregations in more urban states? The data seem to run in the opposite direction.

  • Ordained Ministers are not uneducated. Some un-ordained may be, but at least in the major denominations, I can’t think of many other vocation save archeology that requires one to study Greek, Hebrew and Latin. Every Pastor I know has at least a Masters degree, and most are paid far less than persons at a similar level of education. While there are exceptions to every rule, Ministry is definitely not something that one goes into for economic gain.

    Swan, I agree that religion was used as a tool to get the current administration into power and as such there is some nascent, naive faith in the actions of the Presidency at least in some part of the constituency. It would be undeniably detrimental for the White House to suggest that the war is religiously based, however, as otherwise moderate Islamic groups would quickly ramp up their opposition to the United States. For us in the West, this is a war about Oil, but for the Arabs, it is certainly a Jihad. While there are be subtleties involved, there is good reason for media spin to use the word ‘terrorist” in place of “Jihadist” whatever the truth of the matter may be. This is getting into a broader topic than the life of this thread allows though..

  • “Ordained Ministers are not uneducated. Some un-ordained may be, but at least in the major denominations, I can’t think of many other vocation save archeology that requires one to study Greek, Hebrew and Latin. Every Pastor I know has at least a Masters degree, and most are paid far less than persons at a similar level of education. While there are exceptions to every rule, Ministry is definitely not something that one goes into for economic gain.”

    I’m sure many of those small congregations – both urban and rural – have part-time clergy or clergy who are not seminary graduates.

  • Literacy. Critical thinking. Understanding of history. Experience with the scientific method. A good perspective on human nature.

    These things lead to a secular, worldly perspective, and also to the advance of technology, and to wealth.

  • I’d never thought about religion CAUSING poverty, but the values emphasized by many faiths would cause sincere believers (as opposed to the wealth-as-a-sign-of-God’s-favor posse) to give away what they don’t need and spiral the drain as soon as a crisis came along.

    Tithing, charitable donations, helping those in need, refusing to bilk customers or steal from your employer; none of these lead to higher net worth. Worrying more about your salvation than your net worth is likely to be a hindrance to increasing the latter.

    Perhaps this could explain the US?
    High wealth and high religiosity (is that even a word?) correlate because we measure our religious nature by subjective opinion rather than empirical evidence?
    In short, many US citizens claiming to be religious are full of it?

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