Religious people make better citizens, study says

[fgoodwin]

Religious people make better citizens, study says

 

http://pewforum.org/news/display.php?NewsID=18088

 

May 13, 2009

by Daniel Burke

Religion News Service

 

First, the silver lining: people of faith are better citizens and better neighbors, and America is "amazingly" religious compared to other countries, says Harvard University professor Robert Putnam.

 

Now, the cloud: young Americans are "vastly more secular" than their older counterparts, according to Putnam.

 

But religious people may be God's gift to civic engagement, Putnam and University of Notre Dame scholar David Campbell argue in their book, "American Grace: How Religion is Reshaping our Civic and Political Lives," which is scheduled to be released next year.

 

The scholars say their studies found that religious people are three to four times more likely to be involved in their community. They are more apt than nonreligious Americans to work on community projects, belong to voluntary associations, attend public meetings, vote in local elections, attend protest demonstrations and political rallies, and donate time and money to causes -- including secular ones.

 

At the same time, Putnam and Campbell say their data show that religious people are just "nicer": they carry packages for people, don't mind folks cutting ahead in line and give money to panhandlers.

 

Ron Millar, acting director of the American Humanist Association, said that nontheists are just as likely to volunteer for worthy causes as believers. For example, he noted that the Secular Student Alliance went to New Orleans to help build homes with Habitat for Humanity a few years ago.

 

[excerpted]

[le Voyageur]

Pitts: Unchristian response from American Christians

Leonard Pitts Jr.

 

Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr.

 

Between 1933 and 1945, as a series of restrictive laws, brutal pogroms and mass deportations culminated in the slaughter of 6 million Jews, the Christian church, with isolated exceptions, watched in silence.

 

Between 1955 and 1968, as the forces of oppression used terrorist bombings, police violence and kangaroo courts to deny African-Americans their freedom, the Christian church, with isolated exceptions, watched in silence.

 

Beginning in 1980, as a mysterious and deadly new disease called AIDS began to rage through the homosexual community like an unchecked fire, the Christian church, with isolated exceptions, watched in silence.

 

So who can be surprised by the new Pew report?

 

Specifically, it's from the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life, and it surveys Americans' attitudes on the torture of suspected terrorists. Pew found that 49 percent of the nation believes torture is at least sometimes justifiable. Slice that number by religious affiliation, though, and things get interesting. It turns out the religiously unaffiliated are the least likely (40 percent) to support torture, but that the more you attend church, the more likely you are to condone it. Among racial/religious groups, white evangelical Protestants were far and away the most likely (62 percent) to support inflicting pain as a tool of interrogation.

 

You'd think people who claim connection to a higher morality would be the ones most likely to take the lonely, principled stand. But you need only look at history to see how seldom that has been the case, how frequently my people -- Christians -- acquiesce to expediency and fail to look beyond the immediate. Never mind that looking beyond the immediate pretty much constitutes a Christian's entire job description.

 

In the Bible it says, Perfect love casts out fear. What we see so often in people of faith, though, is an imperfect love that embraces fear, that lets us live contentedly in our moral comfort zones, doing spiritual busywork and clucking pieties, things that let you feel good, but never require you to put anything at risk, take a leap, make that lonely stand. Again, there are exceptions, but they prove the rule, which is that in our smug belief that God is on our side, we often fail to ask if we are on His.

 

So it is often left to a few iconoclasts -- Oskar Schindler, the war profiteer who rescued 1,200 Jews in Poland; James Reeb, the Unitarian Universalist minister murdered for African-American voting rights in Alabama; Princess Diana, the British royal who courted international opprobrium for simply touching a person with AIDS in Britain -- to do the dangerous and moral thing while the great body of Christendom watches in silence.

 

Now there is this debate over the morality of torture in which putative people of faith say they can live with a little blood (someone else's) and a little pain (also someone else's) if it helps maintain the illusion of security (theirs), and never mind such niceties as guilt or innocence.

 

Thus it was left to Jon Stewart, the cheerfully irreligious host of The Daily Show, to speak last week of the need to be willingly bound by rules of decency and civilization or else be indistinguishable from the terrorists. I understand the impulse, he said. I wanted them to clone bin Laden so that we could kill one a year at halftime at the Super Bowl. ... I understand bloodlust, I understand revenge; I understand all those feelings. I also understand that this country is better than me.

 

So there you have it: a statement of principle and higher morality from a late-night comic. That Christians are not lining up to say the same is glaringly ironic in light of what happened to a Middle Eastern man who was arrested by the government, imprisoned and tortured. Eventually he was even executed, though he was innocent of any crime.

 

His name was Jesus.

 

 

[skeptic]

le Voyageur;

 

Thanks; Amen.

[BrentAllen]

I'm not sure what the views of a history revisionist has to do with the original post. He tries to denigrate Christians "with few exceptions" but then hails the true "few exceptions" - Oskar Schindler, James Reeb, Princess Diana. I wonder why he left Mother Teresa off the list - maybe because she was devoutly Christian and pro-life? Sorry, but I know Christian bashing when I see it...(This message has been edited by BrentAllen)

[packsaddle]

While the bias of the report is obvious, I think Pitts is in error in his associations. There is no question that the events he described happened, but I am very doubtful that religion was a culprit in any of them.

I also note that while there are Christians (and Jews and Buddhists, etc.) who are Unitarian Universalists, Unitarian Universalism is NOT a Christian faith.

 

The association of something bad with a certain view or belief can be a chicken and egg situation. In one sense, to credit 'religion' with the ability to influence people to great evil associates it with great power over people. It is equally logical (and I think more probable) that people disposed to great evil would seek a rationale for their predisposition and to conveniently employ religion as a result. In this sense I can more easily explain the Jim Bakkers and Jim Joneses of the world as having exploited religious faith rather than having been influenced by it. Same thing for 'jailhouse conversions' for people who have committed unspeakably bad crimes. I remain skeptical.

[Trevorum]

Related to Pitts' point, I noted yesterday Wikipedia's featured historical blurb for May 15: "1252 Pope Innocent IV issues the papal bull ad exstirpanda, which authorizes, but also limits, the torture of heretics in the Medieval Inquisition."

 

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_15)

 

I'm glad we've made some progress in the last 750 years. We still have political leaders that condone torture (and, bizarrely, it seems acceptable to many citizens), but at least the Pope has distanced himself.

[fgoodwin]

packsaddle, when you say the bias "of the report" is obvious, I'm not sure who you are referring to.

 

Are you saying the Pew Forum is biased, or that Robert Putnam is biased? If the former, I would agree, but Pew didn't write the study which is the subject of the article. If the latter, I would disagree that Putnam has an inherent bias in favor of religion.

 

Can you clarify?

[packsaddle]

Maybe the name, "Innocent", went to his head.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

[packsaddle]

From the quoted article,

"Putnam and University of Notre Dame scholar David Campbell argue in their book, "American Grace: How Religion is Reshaping our Civic and Political Lives," which is scheduled to be released next year."

 

Fgoodwin, I can cite other similar characterizations. When authors and researchers make such arguments, they become advocates and advocacy is almost always biased to some extent (almost by definition). The statistics that they use may similarly be biased, depending on the ways they constructed the statistics. And while I may actually agree with some of their arguments, I remain aware of the bias and the possibility that they might be in error.

 

I agree with you that their bias is not necessarily in favor of religion. As the article states, their arguments also conclude that civic engagement "...has nothing to do with ideas of divine judgment..."

To my mind, the bias is revealed because they think they have identified a causal relationship based on statistics. They may have constructed a good hypothesis - but until that is tested rigorously, as I said before, I remain skeptical.

[fgoodwin]

Correlation causation

 

I haven't read the study, but having read Putnam's earlier book, "Bowling Alone", I am confident he let the data speak for itself, rather than looking for data which might support a pre-ordained conclusion.

 

So, do religious people really make better citizens? Hard to say, but at least this study seems to support the idea of a relationship between the two.

 

And to some extent, the study would seem to support the statement of BSA's DRP, which is really why I posted the article.

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Well Fred, I judge people based on individual merit, not by what group they fall into. You, for example, are unethical, because of your intention to exclude atheists from your cub scout pack when it was chartered by Blattman Elementary, a public school. Plus, of course, your continued efforts to paint atheists as second-class citizens. I guess you really take the DRP to heart. And that's no compliment.

[BrentAllen]

Merlyn,

Why do you really care what the BSA thinks about you or other atheists? There are groups that feel their race/kind is superior to others. I don't believe them, and I pay them no mind. They can think what they want and it isn't going to bother me. Why does the beliefs of the BSA, a group you despise, bother you so much?

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Why do you really care what the BSA thinks about you or other atheists? There are groups that feel their race/kind is superior to others. I don't believe them, and I pay them no mind. They can think what they want and it isn't going to bother me. Why does the beliefs of the BSA, a group you despise, bother you so much?

 

Because they teach children that atheists are second-class citizens, and they dishonestly try to get the government to aid them in this. And plenty of BSA members seem to loath atheists and think they don't deserve equal rights.

[evmori]

Because they teach children that atheists are second-class citizens

 

Your interpretation of a BSA statement.

 

and they dishonestly try to get the government to aid them in this.

 

I'm gonna ask how and you are going to post that old public school charter thingy again forgetting the public schools that chartered BSA units are just as guilty of what you say they aren't allowed to do.

 

And plenty of BSA members seem to loath atheists and think they don't deserve equal rights.

 

Got some figures & facts to back that up or is that just your opinion?

[fgoodwin]

Putnam's funding for the study came from the Templeton Foundation:

 

http://bhascience.blogspot.com/2009/05/does-secularization-of-usa-spell-social.html

 

I didn't know this when I posted the article and my response to packsaddle. I don't think the source of the funding necessarily results in a bias in favor of religion in the study methodology or results, but I wanted to let everyone know.