Why should this be? There are a number of theories. One is that unequal societies also tend to have a lot of other problems, and the stresses that these cause may turn people to religion.
Frederick Solt and colleagues from Southern Illinois University wanted to test an alternative theory - that the rich and powerful use religion as a tool for social control to keep the poor in their place. They call this the 'Relative Power' theory. Not a new idea, of course, but they came up with a couple of novel ways to test it.
Firstly they looked at data from the World Values Survey, which allowed them to examine how religiosity varied with wealth in different countries.
What they found (after adjusting for a bunch of other factors) was that, in the most unequal countries, both the rich and the poor were more likely to be religious. In fact, and rather remarkably, inequality seemed to have a bigger effect on the rich than on the poor.
So, for critical measures like whether a person considers themselves to be religious, or whether they believe in an afterlife, the rich in equal countries are less religious than the poor - as you would expect.
But in highly unequal countries the rich are actually more religious than the poor!
Then they went on to look at how religion, overall wealth, and inequality have changed in the USA since the mid 1950s. The USA is one of the few countries in the world with enough data to do this, but even so the religion data they had to use were a bit cobbled-together. Still, they used a sophisticated statistical tool called vector autoregression, which allows you to see how the variables seem to influence each other over time without making any underlying assumptions about cause and effect. It can even help uncover whether the relationship is circular.
Now, the USA over the past 50 years has been characterised by increasing wealth, increasing inequality, and decreasing religion. What Solt found was that a rise in inequality one year tended to lead to a increase in religion the next. This was offset by the fact that rising wealth tended to lead to less religion.
However, the opposite did not happen. Changes in religion did not have any effect on later levels of either inequality or wealth.
Solt and colleagues interpret this as more evidence for their 'Relative Power' theory. They point out that high levels of inequality in a democracy are difficult to understand using ideas based on rational self interest (the so-called 'median-voter' models of democracy) and conclude that:
...many wealthy individuals, rather than simply allowing redistribution to be decided through the democratic process as such median-voter models assume, respond to higher levels of inequality by adopting religious beliefs and spreading them among their poorer fellow citizens. Religion then works to discourage interest in mere material well-being in favor of eternal spiritual rewards, preserving the privileges of the rich and allowing unequal conditions to continue.
Strong stuff, but I'm not sure I'm entirely convinced. After all, doesn't the fact that changes in income inequality precede changes in religion suggest that it's the stress and anxiety that are causing religion - rather than religion causing inequality?
But the increased religiosity among the rich certainly is food for thought. Even that is not proof, however. As the epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett point out in their book The Spirit Level, in highly unequal societies everyone suffers - rich as well as poor.
Still this is the first really solid, empirical evidence that the rich use religion as a tool to keep the poor in their place. Tea Party, anyone?
Solt, F., Habel, P., & Grant, J. (2011). Economic Inequality, Relative Power, and Religiosity* Social Science Quarterly, 92 (2), 447-465 DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6237.2011.00777.x
This article by Tom Rees was first published on Epiphenom. It is licensed under Creative Commons.
For a much more sophisticated theory, you should really read this article:
ReplyDeleteBourdieu, Pierre. “Legitimation and Structured Interests in Weber’s Sociology of Religion.” In Max Weber, Rationality and Modernity, edited by Scott Lash and Sam Whimster, 119-136. London: Allen & Unwin, 1987. (You can download a copy here.)
Simplifying a bit, the a idea is that the rich and the poor make different sorts of demands on producers of religious ideas (such as priests, TV evangelists, etc). The rich tend to demand legitimation (which tells them that they're rich because God wants them to be rich), while the poor tend to demand salvation (which tells them that things will get better for them, either in this life or in the next). This of course tends to benefit the rich, but this hypothesis doesn't assume that the rich consciously intend to use religion to keep the poor in their place.
A fuller understanding of the relationship between religion and inequality also needs to take into account the specific interests of producers of religious ideas. Bourdieu's article also discusses this.
Wait, changes in inequality are followed by changes in religiosity... and this is interpreted by the authors as "religiosity drives inequality"?!
ReplyDeleteI'm not entirely convinced too. In fact, I'm not convinced at all that their hypothesis is in any way supported by their data. The supporting assertion is that the rich respond to getting richer by actively spreading religion, and that they do it intentionally, although the latter might be omitted without wrecking the hypothesis.
This is some ass-backward reasoning, IMO. The data supports the hypothesis that's opposite of the authors, but they somehow twist it around with the insertion of a new, untested variable and suddenly it made sense all along?
Oy.
"The rich tend to demand legitimation"
ReplyDeleteI have speculated as much, but I didn't get that far that I realized there was a stratification. I guess being halfway sophistimacated is better than nuttin'.
Now this is to my knowledge even less tested than the seemingly failed theory here. But it would at least have the causality correctly.
I'm kind of with KW on this one. What would the conclusion have been if the effect had been the other way around, i.e. rises in religiosity immediately preceded rises in inequality? Would they have folded, or would they still argue the same hypothesis?
ReplyDeleteTheir hypothesis is one I am sympathetic towards as well, though admittedly I already doubted it was true going in... or at least, doubted that it was the dominant factor. As much as I'd love to have proof that religion is being deliberately used as a tool of social control, I think it is often less deliberate: a self-perpetuating monster, a meme, a virus.
My pet hypothesis (largely shaped by Tom's writing) is that the main causal mechanism here is insecurity, which drives people to seek false security in bogus afterlife guarantees. This dovetails nicely with how the rich become even more religious when inequality is high: they have more to lose, and the possibility they might lose everything is very real.
I think there are many other contributing factors, even some where the causality swings the other way, but based on gut feeling that seems to me to be the main one...
I'm with Benjamin: the rich use religion to rationalize their good fortune and assuage their guilt at having so much more than the poor in inequal societies rather than use it consciously to maintain that inequality (although that's a juicy bonus, isn't it?).
ReplyDeleteThanks Benjamin for that link - I'm off on holiday for a week so take that for some reading!
ReplyDeleteI agree with everyone that it's unlikely that the rich consciously use religion as a tool to keep themselves in a position of privilege. However, the critical thing to bear in mind is there are many possible religions, and it's no accident that the most popular religions have the characteristics they do. People choose religions according to whether they fit their desires - conscious or otherwise.
I also agree with James that the correlation thing is not very good evidence for their theory, and also that there surely is an element of insecurity driving religous belief and affiliation.
But... but... their findings that the wealthy in highly unequal countries are actual more religious than the poor is remarkable. The rich may well demand legitimation, but one consequence of belief in a good, powerful, listening god is that people get what they deserve (i.e. the world is just).
If the world is just, then not only are the rich legitimated, but it is not legitimate to tax the rich to give to the poor (who are poor because of their own failings). We know from other research that believers don't support wealth redistribution, and this helps to explain why religion is attractive to the rich.
It doesn't have to be that way of course. Social Darwinism could also be used to argue that the poor are genetically inferior (and you do see this argument made quite a lot). It's complete bunk, in my opinion, but it's interesting that the argument doesn't seem to get much traction - even among the rich!
Tom:
ReplyDelete"If the world is just, then not only are the rich legitimated, but it is not legitimate to tax the rich to give to the poor (who are poor because of their own failings). We know from other research that believers don't support wealth redistribution, and this helps to explain why religion is attractive to the rich."
Yes, I agree completely, so I think Solt et al.'s results could be interpreted as supporting Bourdieu's theory.
The original French version of Bourdieu's article contained a handy diagram of the relations between religious producers and consumers; this diagram unfortunately didn't make it into the English translation. I made an English version for my MA, though, and you can find it here.
Have a good holiday!
When I say that "rich use religion to keep the poor in their place", I do not mean that rich are "atheist in the closet" !!
ReplyDeleteBesides, I don't even think that rich push religion to poor people (except for the casual ultra-rich who spend his money in proselitism). Rather they press politicians to keep poor in place (and rich even more rich): it turned out that religion is good at this, so politicians who adopt religion as a policy tool get selected for governement officies.
There is another reason (IMHO) for which rich may want religion for themselves: reputation. Nothing washes reputation better than religious piety. And if you hold a position in society, than loose your reputation may damage that position. If you count nothing, your reputation is worthless.
Excellent!
ReplyDelete"The rich may well demand legitimation, but one consequence of belief in a good, powerful, listening god is that people get what they deserve (i.e. the world is just).
ReplyDeleteIf the world is just, then not only are the rich legitimated, but it is not legitimate to tax the rich to give to the poor (who are poor because of their own failings). We know from other research that believers don't support wealth redistribution, and this helps to explain why religion is attractive to the rich."
I'm not sure that the belief in a good, listening, powerful deity would necessarily give rise to the idea that the world is just. People believe that God is just, but there are obvious and atrocious injustices taking place everywhere, hence the platitude "God works in mysterious ways."
Perhaps people who are wealthy notice (whether consciously or not) that people suffer for no good reason and that pure chance can make or break a person's life. And when they notice this, they do seek for some confirmation that, yes- it is in God's plan for them to be rich and it's ok that there are poor people all around them, because that is part of God's mysterious plan as well.
Maybe there is also some double-think taking place: "People suffer when they don't deserve it because it's part of God's mysterious plan, but God made me rich because I deserve it." From my experience, it's common for religious people to explain bad things by saying "God is mysterious," but attribute good events to God rewarding them.