USA: Religious folks are less tolerant but more neighbourly
Interesting study reported in USA Today confirming that religious folks are less tolerant but more neighbourly. Hat-tip Biblical Paths:
….However, on the other side of the ledger, religious people are also “better neighbors” than their secular counterparts. No matter the civic activity, being more religious means being more involved. Take, for example, volunteer work. Compared with people who never attend worship services, those who attend weekly are more likely to volunteer in religious activities (no surprise there), but also for secular causes. The differences between religious and secular Americans can be dramatic. Forty percent of worship-attending Americans volunteer regularly to help the poor and elderly, compared with 15% of Americans who never attend services. Frequent-attenders are also more likely than the never-attenders to volunteer for school and youth programs (36% vs. 15%), a neighborhood or civic group (26% vs. 13%), and for health care (21% vs. 13%). The same is true for philanthropic giving; religious Americans give more money to secular causes than do secular Americans. And the list goes on, as it is true for good deeds such as helping someone find a job, donating blood, and spending time with someone who is feeling blue.
Furthermore, the “religious edge” holds up for organized forms of community involvement: membership in organizations, working to solve community problems, attending local meetings, voting in local elections, and working for social or political reform. On this last point, it is not just that religious people are advocating for right-leaning causes, although many are. Religious liberals are actually more likely to be community activists than are religious conservatives.
As with tolerance, we wondered whether religious people’s do-gooderism is owing to something else about them. Maybe it is because women are more religious than men, and women are better neighbors. Or maybe it is because religious people are older — and so on. Again, the results hold steady even when we account for these potential counter-explanations. In fact, the numbers we report above already adjust for the demographic differences between religious and secular Americans.
Interestingly, one’s particular flavor of religion — being a Baptist, a Buddhist, or anything else — makes no difference in these results. In fact, even people who claim no religious affiliation but still attend worship services occasionally are more civically involved than those who never attend at all.
One might think, as did we, that religious people do good because of what they hear from the pulpit. After all, the world’s religions all teach a version of the Golden Rule: Treat others as you would be treated. Perhaps stories like the Good Samaritan inspire good citizens. Or perhaps good deeds are motivated by a desire to go to heaven. Or maybe people want to avoid the punishment of God’s judgment for not being nice.
However, it turns out that religious beliefs — of any kind — do not affect any form of civicness. We examined the possible impact of 25 different religious beliefs on civic behavior, and none explains religious Americans’ good neighborliness.
Tags: Religion Society
November 16th, 2010 at 6:31 pm
This is very interesting, webmaster. I read somewhere that one reason for American religiosity is that the average American moves house – and state – very much more than most nationalities. And it’s such a huge country. It would be like us zooming about all over Europe, though without the language issues. Lots of big change.
Joining a church gives a family not only a faith resource but also a whole ready made community and loads of things to do and join. Just what you need in a strange new place.