It basically covers the major sociological theories on the decline (or persistence) of religion, and talks a little about the psychology behind the theory that personal insecurity is an important factor in determining whether religion retains its position in society.
It also, of course, takes a look at my own research published last year. Here's a taster:
We’re still a long way away from a universal theory to explain why some parts of the world are more religious than others. But the research linking societal stress and income inequality to high levels of religion at least helps to explain some conundrums that have perplexed sociologists. Why is the USA so religious, despite being the epitome of modernity? Well, largely because of the higher levels of stress faced by its citizens, compared with the relatively worry-free lives led by people living in the bosom of the European welfare state. It also helps to explain the blossoming of religion in Russia and other parts of the old Soviet bloc, which occurred against the backdrop of a sharp decline in living standards and the crumbling of the old certainties provided by the monolithic communist state.
This article by Tom Rees was first published on Epiphenom. It is licensed under Creative Commons.
Nice little survey. How long did it take from sending it in to it being published?
ReplyDeleteDidn't do anything to change my quite negative view of Stark's work. I have to say that I fail to see what's so new about the Norris and Ingelhart work, since it just sounds like Malinowski to me. Had people forgotten about him?
I think that your last paragraph is the kind of thing that every atheist should read before every talk on religion they give. It also makes me think of why the Republican Party with their mix of religious conservatives and free-market (or, to call a spade a spade, pro-rich) neo-cons works as well as it does.
I should have added that Stark's thesis nicely explains why the church was so weak in the Middle Ages when it had a total monopoly.
ReplyDeleteHi Konrad, I sent it at the end of November - so pretty quick although it was pre-arranged, not speculative.
ReplyDeleteForgotten Malinowski and also Marx, of course! I think the thing is that modernisation theory lost its way in the 1980s when the mantra was that increasing GDP benefits everyone, rich and poor alike. That turned out to be too simplistic. The idea that the spread of wealth as well as the average is important brings it back on track.
Stark has convinced himself that people weren't very religious in the middle ages. Easy to do if you choose a very careful definition of religion...
To me, the last paragraph is an important reason why I keep plugging away at this blog. In some small way I hope it's helping to make the world a little better.
Regards free-market and religion issue bundling, you might be interested in this post from 2008 on why religion makes the poor vote right wing.
If it were true that higher levels of stress explained the USA's higher scores on measures of religiosity, would we not expect values on the latter to have been rising over the last few years? In fact they appear to have been falling.
ReplyDeleteAll other things being equal, then yes. However, three things to bear in mind.
ReplyDeleteFirst, there's a lag phase. Religious attitudes are set in early adulthood. My analysis actually used average inequality over the past 30 years vs current religiosity.
Second, all other things aren't equal. Wealth, the mixture of different religions (due to immigration), and urbanization have all changed in directions the would reduce religiosity.
Third, there's a lot of other factors going on in any one individual country that can affect these stats. The association between inequality and religion is a broad one observed across many countries, but any given country will deviate somewhat from the general trend.