Paul Froese

UNRAVELING RELIGIOUS WORLDVIEWS: The Relationship between Images of God and Political Ideology in a Cross-Cultural Analysis

Not only do few studies address the issue of how religious belief relates to political ideology, but little attempt has also been made to analyze this relationship from a comparative perspective. Using data from the International Social Survey Program, we examine how images of God, as measured by Gods perceived level of engagement and authority, relate to political ideology in seven Western industrial and postindustrial societies. We find that variation in images of God has no effect on whether individuals are politically liberal or conservative in five of seven countries. Nonetheless, beliefs about God are strongly related to abortion and sexual morality attitudes in every country, but only sporadically related to ideas about social and economic justice. In the end, we argue that theological beliefs tend to be unrelated to a general measure of political ideology, not because religious beliefs are politically unimportant in these societies, but rather because religious perspectives are rarely fully liberal or conservative in their political orientation. In addition, we find that Americans hold unique views of God in comparison to other countries in our sample and that the American tendency to view God as more active and authoritative affects policy attitudes in ways contrary to the effects of church attendance.

Religious Oddities: Explaining the Divergent Religious Markets of Poland and East Germany

Over the past two decades a new paradigm within the sociology of religion has been amassing empirical support and theoretical refinement (Finke/Stark 1992; Iannaccone 1991; Jelen/Wilcox 1998; Gill 1998; Stark/Bainbridge 1987; Stark/Iannaccone 1994) while also garnering its share of criticism (Bruce 1999; Chaves/Gorski 2001; Lechner 1989; Olsen 1999). This attempt at a general theory has been described as offering “supply-side” or “rational choice” explanations of religious change and proposes an alternative to the traditional family of secularization theories (Gorski 2000). Advocates of the new paradigm have attempted to garner empirical support through a wide-ranging series of studies of religiosity in Western Europe (Men/Wilcox 1998; Stark/Iannaccone 1994) North America (Finke and Stark 1992) and South America (Gill 1998). Critics have offered case studies that attempt to disprove the predictions of the new theory (Bruce 1999; Lechner 1989; Olsen 1999) and appear “tempted at this stage to bow to historians such as Hugh McLeod, who argue that sociological explanation for such a broad phenomenon as religion over such a broad range of countries is impossible” (Bruce 1999: 115).