Researchers call it an exchange model of religion: If people can get what they need from the government (be it health care, education or welfare) they’re less likely to turn to a divine power for help, according to the theory.
But are people actually more likely to drop religion in places where governments provide more services and stability? In a new paper, psychology researchers crunched the numbers — and found that better government services were in fact linked to lower levels of strong religious beliefs.
Those findings held true in states across the U.S. and in countries around the world, researchers said.
The article, “Religion as an Exchange System: The Interchangeability of God and Government in a Provider Role,” was published April 12 in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Authors Miron Zuckerman and Chen Li of the University of Rochester and Ed Diener of the Universities of Utah and Virginia wrote that their findings suggest “that if the function that religiosity provides can be acquired from some other source, the allure of religion will diminish.”
The researchers also found something of a staggered link between the government services on offer and levels of religiosity in a given state. Between 2008 and 2013 in the U.S., for example, “better government services in a specific year predicted lower religiosity 1 to 2 years later,” researchers wrote.
Researchers measured government services by looking at how much each state or country spent on health and education as a percentage of gross domestic product. Then researchers compared those numbers with data about religion that Gallup collected from 455,104 people across 155 countries, according to the paper. That’s nearly 3,000 respondents from each country, researchers said.
Full story at Miami Herald.
This article dovetails with something else I read. C.S. Lewis in his work “Miracles” presents an understanding that people of democracies have a propensity to become relativists whereas people of monarchies have a propensity to believe in absolute truth. This new study presents a similar dynamic that replacing religious-based welfare with good government-based welfare effects belief.
According to Vatican II, when a people forget the Creator, the Creature becomes unintelligible. This loss of meaning might explain why all of the established democracies seem to have become infected with a self-destructive wish.
Regretfully, it seems that democracies may not have the capacity for longevity.
For similar reasons, as government increases the role of being a financial supporter, women are less likely to desire marriage or to remain in marriages.
The bigger the government, the smaller the people.
How about the Catholic dictators: Salazar (Portugal) and Dollfuss (Austria)? Certainly this is correlation and not causation.
People have forgotten the need for salvation.
By the way, I am praying for little Alfie, the boy whose life is near an end. I pray God’s will be done in this situation and justice be served. If he can be helped, I pray it will be done There is so much going on that it is impossible to keep up with it all without avoiding neglecting ones daily duties.