Religion plays almost no role in politics
I suppose some people were surprised to see heavily Catholic Ireland vote overwhelming in favor of legal abortion. But they really shouldn’t have been. Religion plays almost no role in politics, in Ireland, in America, and in Saudi Arabia. It’s simply not a factor.
Readers of the Washington Post should not have been surprised to learn that White Evangelicals are the least likely group to support providing shelter to desperate refugees from troubled countries:
In February 2017, as debate raged nationally over President Trump’s decision to curtail immigration to the United States, the conservative Christian Broadcasting Network dipped into the Bible to share what that sacred text said about refugees.
“Treat refugees the way you want to be treated,” it said, quoting Leviticus. “Invite the stranger in” (Matthew) and “Open your door to the traveler” (Job).
The first comment in reply to the article captures the tone of the rest of the feedback the site received: “Shame on CBN for this very poorly written article full of political rhetoric. This is not a Biblical issue.”
Nor should people be surprised to learn that the leader of the conservative Southern Baptists was a strong supporter of abortion rights, back in 1970. Why shouldn’t he have supported abortion rights? After all, religion plays no role on politics.
Some readers may still have a nagging doubt about this claim. What about Saudi Arabia? It is a conservative Muslim country that does not allow women to drive. Except now they do allow women to drive. Is that because Saudi Arabia is no longer Muslim? Is it because of what the Koran says about women driving? Probably not.
So why are people confused on this point? Perhaps because they confuse “religion” with “cultural beliefs held by religious people.” And cultural views do play a big role in politics. In 1970, it was culturally acceptable to walk down the street in Tehran or Kabul wearing a miniskirt. Now it isn’t. In 2050?
OK, so why is my distinction important? Am I just splitting hairs? Even I agree that the cultural views held by religious people are an important factor in politics.
I would argue that if you think in terms of culture, rather than religion, it makes it much easier to understand poll number such as the following:
If you naively thought that the political views of people reflected their religion, then you might be surprised by these numbers. Why would White evangelicals change their views so dramatically, in just a period of 5 years? Why would they have been horrified by the behavior of Bill Clinton, and then in 2016 suddenly decide that it didn’t matter if politicians had a sleazy personal life?
In my view, these pollsters are wasting their time. They are trying to ascertain the views of voters on certain issues of principle, whereas most voters actually have no fixed principles. (I mean political principles, they may well be otherwise fine people.) They are guided by convenience, by expediency. However you wish to define religion, it’s certainly not supposed to be about convenience and expediency.
In this post, I’ve focused on conservative religious groups, but in this excellent Freddie deBoer post we learns that Social Justice Warriors are no different—lacking in principles. It would not surprise me in the least if 40 years from now conservative Christians are overwhelmingly pro-choice, supporters of “Me-Too” and welcoming to refugees, and SJWs are the exact opposite.
PS. The deBoer post (especially the second half), is also a brilliant explanation of the internal dynamics of China’s Cultural Revolution–and he doesn’t even mention China.
PPS. I’d like to see a Venn Diagram of the overlap between people who:
1. Agree with Jordan Peterson on the importance of character
2. Actually like Trump
PPPS. Ramesh Ponnuru makes a very persuasive case that someone in the Trump Administration is out to get him.
PPPPS. Some commenters recently suggested that the FBI had spied on the Trump campaign. If so, this is really odd:
Meanwhile, Democrats who attended a classified briefing about the informant with top DOJ officials last week said they saw “no evidence to support any allegation that the FBI or any intelligence agency placed a spy in the Trump campaign.” Top Republicans who also attended the briefing have remained silent, however.
Tags:
29. May 2018 at 12:52
Agree it’s culture not religion. But rather than saying people have no fixed principals, wouldn’t it be more accurate to say people follow in-group norms? And norms shift, especially on a generational (>20 year) time scale.
That is to say, intellectuals often err in believing people are driven by abstract ideals/principals rather than norms. I think this leads to the same end result — religion not mattering for politics — but the framing could be more general. In that in some eras and places, religion and politics have the norm of being tied together, and in those circumstances religion/politics/culture/norms are a single unit of group definition.
29. May 2018 at 14:34
Thanks for linking the DeBoer blog. That was a worthy read.
29. May 2018 at 14:41
Nathan, I’m not sure religion and politics are ever tied together. Rather I’d say that during some periods people organize politically around a religious banner. But it’s just a banner. It’s not like their politics reflect their religion.
29. May 2018 at 14:45
They are guided by convenience, by expediency. However you wish to define religion, it’s certainly not supposed to be about convenience and expediency.
Your theory collapses right there. Religion is a lot about convenience and expediency.
It’s “us” vs. “them”, “true believers” vs. “infidels”. Simple solutions, simple explanations, Opium for the people. Why doesn’t this ring a bell??
There is significant evidence for the influence of religion on voting behavior. Take religious group X (let’s say White Evangelicals) as an example. You can predict how these people are most likely going to vote on issue X and/or person Y. There’s hardly a better predictor.
I also think you are mixing up churchgoing Christians with people who are just Christians on paper (for historical reasons) but do not practice this cult at all.
30. May 2018 at 07:47
Religion is what I should do.
Politics is what I’m willing to force others to do.
As a libertarian, there’s not a lot of overlap there, so my religious convictions often clash with my political vote. (I can only speak for myself, I have no idea what the rest of the obviously-not-libertarian country is thinking).
30. May 2018 at 07:49
(edit: I shouldn’t have said “clash”; rather, there is no clash between having one religious view and another political view).
30. May 2018 at 07:52
There is an interesting mix of things going on here:
1.) Christianity in particular is meant to govern personal conduct, not societal conduct.
2.) Many (most?) people do not understand their religion. They don’t study it. They don’t try to live it. It’s just something they do.
3.) While I find St. Paul’s mysticism difficult to understand (particularly the part where is gets into this in Romans 7 and surrounding chapters)…. He does say something that while hard to understand, seems entirely true and easy to understand….
“What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate.”
30. May 2018 at 08:17
First, I think it is bigoted to call Christianity a cult. However, if you would concede that post-modern Marxism is also cult, I would forgive the comment. Also, it is interesting how much the liberal atheists follow Christian morals, which when listening to the History of Rome podcast is not clear that atheists would automatically follow.
Second, in my opinion, the concern over refugees and immigrants is about disenfranchisement. There is a feeling that that powerful, instead of listening and responding to the current electorate, are trying to change demographics of the electorate. I believe that for them, California is an example of the disenfranchisement. For them, the core problem is that the powerful will import poor people, demand charity through a centrally control and powerful government that despises them using their religious beliefs as a propaganda tool against them. At the same time, the powerful will extract money from them to pay the new electorate too keep the powerful in power as well as pay themselves while also creating propaganda demonizing them. Not to mention, the religious will be restricted from their core function of spreading the word both locally and and internationally, which they believe will make the world a better place.
As far as politicians morals, it seems it depends on how morals are defined. Politics is about choice. Would they prefer someone who despises them or someone who cheated on this wife? Would they prefer someone who will use the power of the government against them, like the IRS, or someone who has cheated on his wife? Based on those questions, it seems that both democrats and republicans prefer someone who has cheated on his wife. Based on King David, maybe there is president.
Lastly, I completely agree with you, and Robert Cialdini has written about this in Pre-suasion, which is an excellent book.
30. May 2018 at 09:10
Robert, You said:
“Based on those questions, it seems that both democrats and republicans prefer someone who has cheated on his wife.”
That doesn’t explain the poll results. Why the 40 point swing?
30. May 2018 at 14:22
Scott, it kind of does explain the 40pt swing because most of the faithful are not. Politics seems to come first and Christian teachings second. It seems like for most people (I guess in all honesty, I am no different myself) don’t really have the conviction they think they do.
Take a look at Nancy Pelosi’s comments from the other day…
“When the president of the United States says about undocumented immigrants, ‘these are not people, these are animals,’ you have to wonder, does he not believe in the spark of divinity? In the dignity and worth of every person?”
The spark of divinity… the worth of every person… yet she advocates for allowing 50 million babies to be murdered for the economic convience of their parents! Please.
I think for most people, you are right. Our faith is a joke.
30. May 2018 at 17:40
>In my view, these pollsters are wasting their time. They are trying to ascertain the views of voters on certain issues of principle, whereas most voters actually have no fixed principles.
But how would you know whether they had fixed principles if you didn’t gather any data? It might seem obvious ex post, but it could have been otherwise. You can’t know which way it really is without actually going out in the world and observing.
30. May 2018 at 19:25
–“First, I think it is bigoted to call Christianity a cult.”–
There’s an older sense of the word that isn’t a pejorative. It simply means a community of religious worship, deriving from the latin word ‘cultus’ which means ‘worship’. I’m not sure which one was meant above, but I’ve read enough historical writings that I tend to no longer assume that cult always has a negative connotation. In fact I’d presume the neutral (and older) meaning given that Christianity is simply too large and mainstream to be reasonably described as a cult.
30. May 2018 at 19:43
I agree with student on part 2). Most western Christians aren’t particularly knowledgeable or committed to their faith.
You can see evidence for this when people are quizzed about their religious knowledge. Hispanic Catholics in the US, for example, only got 4.2 out of 12 questions on Christianity correct, and many of those questions were multiple choice. A completely ignorant person who has never heard of Christianity could probably answer 2 or 3 correctly. To get a flavor of the results, 71% of Hispanic Catholics couldn’t name the first book of the Bible, 81% didn’t know who Job was and 60% didn’t know who Abraham was. A whopping 85% couldn’t even name the gospels. Aside from evangelicals, neither the Catholics nor the Protestants got even half correct on average – and even the evangelicals still missed 5 of the 12 questions. Not that knowledge is the same thing as religious faith, but these are things that are hard to miss for a Christian who makes his faith a priority, and in any case if you don’t know what your faith teaches you it’s not going to impact how you vote.
http://www.pewforum.org/2010/09/28/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey/
So yes, I agree with Scott. People who aren’t very religious aren’t going to vote on the basis of religion, and so religion has little effect on politics.
30. May 2018 at 19:44
That doesn’t explain the poll results. Why the 40 point swing?
They are biased because of their peer group, in this case their religious group.
In my view, these pollsters are wasting their time. They are trying to ascertain the views of voters on certain issues of principle,…
Do you have any example or evidence for this claim?
@Robert
First, I think it is bigoted to call Christianity a cult.
Where did Scott call Christianity a cult? It is a cult but still.
31. May 2018 at 09:02
Student, You said:
“Politics seems to come first and Christian teachings second. It seems like for most people (I guess in all honesty, I am no different myself) don’t really have the conviction they think they do.”
That’s my point.
31. May 2018 at 16:20
What are “Christian convictions” exactly???
It is the essential character of successful religions, such as the Bible cult (or Marxism), that they are inconsistent, as vague as possible, and maximally metaphorical, so that you can read into them whatever you want to.
The nearly 2,000-year history of Christianity, with all its extreme twists, can serve as sufficient proof of my hypothesis.
What is Scott’s proof for his hypothesis again???
31. May 2018 at 17:10
In short… the golden rule… love the source of all life and do onto others as you would have them do onto you. One get get rather technical about it, but doing those things pretty much summarize it.
2. June 2018 at 13:21
love the source of all life and do onto others as you would have them do onto you.
What do you mean exactly? The death penalty? The crusades? The conquest of the Americas? Slavery? Racial segregation? Be a bit more specific.
You don’t need an opus like the Bible for something as simple as the Golden Rule.
3. June 2018 at 20:21
People often dont do what they want to do but do what they hate. That is one of the other things said in the opus.
5. June 2018 at 17:42
Culture matters, but religions have modes of thought that influence culture. There are distinct differences — in the crunch the numbers regression sense — in the level of human rights or the status of women in majority Christian v majority Muslim countries which are independent of, for example, income. Christianity sanctifying monogamy and banning cousin marriage has, for example, had a huge effect on the direction of Western civilisation. But then one is talking of institutions, which may be connected to doctrine, but have importance beyond it.
And, given monogamy is not Biblical, even those examples are not exactly counter-examples to Scott’s underlying point.
Timur Kuran on preference falsification (Public Lies, Private Truths) and the economic divergence between Europe and Islam (The Long Divergence) are both great, enlightening and very pertinent reads.
7. June 2018 at 13:35
Lorenzo, Good points.