Follower Count
Invisible secularity: American theism beyond belief
David Voas
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
It is often asserted that religion is changing rather than declining and that the usual indicators give a misleading impression of growing secularity. The evidence presented here suggests that on the contrary, social measures like affiliation and attendance may understate the weakening of personal religiosity. The apparent persistence of belief in God conceals erosion in its substance, strength, salience, and stability. The levels of religiosity and spirituality among the religiously unaffiliated are declining, notwithstanding the rapid expansion in their numbers. Moreover, belief has not just diminished among Americans who no longer belong to religious organizations: it is fading from one generation to the next among people who continue to belong. Americans are becoming less confident in the existence of God, less persuaded that God is active and judgmental, less inclined to see God as important, and less likely to express consistent conviction. Contrary to claims that apparent secularization masks enduring (if unorthodox) invisible religion, implicit religion, diffused religion, lived religion, and so on, the evidence shows that continuing religious involvement disguises waning religiosity. The research is based on six waves of the Baylor Religion Survey (2005-2021) in conjunction with the General Social Survey (1972-2022).
Fuel on the Fire: Has the Politics of COVID-19 Accelerated Secularization in America?
David Campbell, Geoffrey Layman & John Green
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Politics increasingly shapes Americans' social orientations, including their religious affiliations and levels of religiosity. Less is known about whether politics affects secularism-an affirmative embrace of secular worldviews and identities. Drawing on an original panel survey from 2017 to 2021 plus two survey experiments, this paper investigates whether the political debate over public health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically vaccines, has driven greater secularization in the United States. Specifically, has exposure to the public debate over COVID-19 vaccines led more Americans to embrace a secular worldview? Both observational and experimental data suggest that the debate over pandemic policies and attitudes about that debate have increased individuals' secularism. This effect is greatest among Democrats, which we show is related to their greater embrace of pro-science attitudes.
Religiosity and crime: Evidence from a city-wide shock
David Johnston et al.
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, April 2025
Abstract:
This paper estimates the impacts of religiosity on criminal activity using a city-wide shock to religious sentiment from a 2015 Papal visit. Using daily data on all reported offenses between 2010 and 2015 in Philadelphia at the census tract level and a difference-in-differences approach, we demonstrate significant reductions in less serious crimes in the week of the visit and for several weeks following. Reductions are particularly pronounced for drug offenses and in historically Christian areas. Notably, similar crime effects are not found for President Obama's 2015 visit, suggesting changes in police deployment do not drive results.
Religiously inspired baby boom: Evidence from Georgia
Seung-Hun Chung et al.
Journal of Population Economics, February 2025
Abstract:
This study investigates the Georgian Orthodox Church's response to declining fertility rates through a 2007 intervention, wherein the Patriarch personally baptized 3
and higher-parity children. Employing synthetic control and interrupted time series methods using macro data, we find suggestive evidence of increased fertility rates. Validating these findings with micro data from a representative sample of Georgian women, we use quasi-experimental variation generated by religion, ethnicity, and marital status of the women and the timing of the announcement to estimate the causal impact using the difference-in-differences estimator. We find a 17% increase (0.3 children per woman) in the national total fertility rate, a 42% increase in Georgian Orthodox women's birth rate within marriage (an increase in annual hazard rate of 3.5 percentage points), and a 100% increase in their 3 and higher-order birth rate within marriage (1.3 percentage points higher annual hazard rate). The impact of the intervention also correlates with higher marriage rates and reduced reported abortions, aligning with the church's goals. This research emphasizes the potential impact of non-economic factors such as religion and the influence of traditional authority figures on shifting fertility patterns in industrialized, educated, and low-fertility societies.
The sacred gun: The religious and magical elements of America's gun culture
Paul Froese, Ruiqian Li & Carson Mencken
Politics and Religion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Gun culture is properly measured by a population's emotional and symbolic attachment to guns and not by rates of gun ownership. Using data from the Baylor Religion Survey (wave 6), we find that nearly all gun owners feel that guns provide them with a physical sense of security (Gun Security), but a distinct and crucial sub-set of owners express an additional and strong attachment to their weapons (Gun Sanctity). Gun Sanctity measures the extent to which owners think their guns make them more patriotic, respected, in control, and valued by their family and community. We propose that Gun Sanctity is a form of quasi-religious or magical thinking in which an object is imbued with unseen powers. To assess this proposal, we look at the extent to which gun ownership, Gun Security, and Gun Sanctity are related to traditional religion and various forms of magical thinking, namely, (a) conspiratorialism, (b) the belief that prayer can fix financial and health problems, and (c) support for Christian Statism, a form of American theocracy. We find that Gun Sanctity is highly predictive of different forms of magical thinking but is often unrelated to more traditional religious practices and beliefs.
Religion and persecution
Umair Khalil & Laura Panza
Journal of Economic Growth, March 2025, Pages 87-159
Abstract:
This paper investigates the relationship between local religiosity and episodes of persecutions in Europe between 1100 and 1850. We introduce a novel proxy for measuring local religion: the cult of saints in early Western Christianity. Our findings show that cities with an established cult of a saint are 11% points more likely to engage in Jewish persecutions and witch trials. However, cities with more progressive gender norms, measured by the presence of a female saint cult, are less likely to persecute witches compared to male-only saint cities. Our baseline relationship persists after controlling for a range of city-level economic, geographic and institutional characteristics and after accounting for other major confounders. Suggestive evidence points towards two mechanisms behind the saints-persecution relationship: (i) changes in norms induced by longer exposure to Christianity; and (ii) proximity of religious groups due to congruence of religious festivities.
Intelligence and individual differences in astrological belief
Tobias Edwards et al.
Journal of Individual Differences, February 2025, Pages 50-57
Abstract:
Astrology is a theory of individual differences. Owing substantially to the influence of Hans Eysenck, it has been taken seriously and tested scientifically by psychologists, but has nevertheless been found wanting of any predictive validity. Despite its appearance of being a pseudoscientific account of individual differences, astrology has millions of believers; who are they, and why do they believe it? In a sample of 8,553 Americans from the General Social Survey, we undertake a high-powered study of the correlates of astrological belief. Of our psychological measures we find intelligence, as measured with Wordsum, to have the largest effect size, negatively predicting belief in astrology. Education also predicts disbelief, supporting the "superficial knowledge" hypothesis. Measures of religiosity and spirituality had null effects, in contradiction of the "metaphysical uncertainty" hypothesis that a need for metaphysical beliefs causes one to believe in astrology. We find that right-wing individuals are less likely to believe in astrology, in contradiction to Theodore W. Adorno's "authoritarian" of astrology. We also find no effect of scientific trust on astrological belief. Our research highlights how prior hypotheses poorly account for individual differences in astrological belief.
How Karma Harms and Helps Generosity Toward Those in Need
Cindel White & Aiyana Willard
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Three preregistered cross-cultural studies (N = 6,049 across India, Singapore, and the United States) tested how belief in karma shapes victim blaming and helping. Study 1 found that belief in karmic causality positively predicts a variety of system-justifying beliefs that legitimate social inequalities, but experimental reminders of karma also encouraged generosity toward others experiencing financial hardship. Studies 2 and 3 tested whether karma framing had different effects on generosity toward different recipients, who varied in their level of need and reason for need. Thinking about karma changed the importance of recipient characteristics, with need being less predictive and external attributions more predictive of giving when thinking about karma. Overall, experimental reminders of karma only reliably increased generosity toward recipients whose financial need was no fault of their own, showing that karmic beliefs draw attention to the reasons for people's bad fortune, and evoke responses to misfortune that are sensitive to naturalistic explanations.