This article was published in the IAST magazine, 2024/2025 winter issue, exploring the power of belief, from ancient rituals to 21st-century politics. Discover the full PDF here or email us at com@tse-fr.eu for a printed copy.
Religion is declining in many parts of the Christian world, even in Latin America. So why does it play such an important role at the ballot box, inflaming culture wars and swelling the ranks of the far right? Ahmed Ezzeldin Mohamed explains why religion’s persistent grip on democratic politics is not as miraculous as it seems.
Do believers go to church?
In a recent paper, John Huber and I present evidence that the relationship between religious belief and practice, though strong, varies considerably across countries. We use the World Values Surveys (WVS) to measure belief and church attendance in 105 traditionally Christian democracies.
On average, more than half of believers are not participants. Similarly, more than a quarter of regular churchgoers do not believe. This suggests church attendance is not necessary for nurturing spiritual beliefs.
How does religion impact policy preferences?
On social issues, scholars have linked conservative policy preferences among the religious to innate moral values, authoritarian personalities, and even genetics. On economic issues, conservatism may stem from the psychological insulation from economic risk that religion provides and the benefits for the religious poor from electoral coalitions with the rich. Our empirical analysis shows that conservative attitudes – regarding abortion, homosexuality, income inequality and individuals’ responsibility for their own welfare – are much more strongly linked to belief than church attendance.
Are churchgoers more politically active?
Previous research suggests church attendance increases political engagement by providing civic skills, proactive messaging, selective incentives, and political information. Churches can also be centers for political coalitions and targeting by elites. The impact of belief is less clear as religious ideologies can encourage political participation, but belief may also provide psychological comfort and other incentives to disengage from worldly affairs. Looking at individuals’ self-reported voting, our results show that religious attendance has a much stronger association with political engagement than does belief.
Why is the link between belief and practice so important?
This connection – which we call religious cohesion – can help us understand why religious divides emerge between voters. For any voting cleavage to exist, members of the group must be politically engaged with distinctive policy preferences. As strong religious beliefs are linked to distinctive policy preferences and church attendance is associated with political engagement, the coexistence of these two dimensions will strengthen the influence of religion on voters.
Our study finds robust correlational evidence to support this view. In democracies where belief and practice go hand-in-hand, individuals tend to vote according to their religious category. Where religious cohesion is weaker, religion has less impact on voting patterns.
Why do some societies have more religious cohesion?
Our empirical analysis shows that churchgoers are more likely to be believers in countries with higher levels of social protection. This is largely because non-believers have weaker material incentives to attend than in societies where churches play a greater role in providing food, education, healthcare and other services. Economic security may also help low-income believers to afford the costs of attending church, taking time away from paid work and other networks.
These findings complete our answer to the mystery of religion’s outsized political impact in increasingly secular countries. Economic security is often cited as a predictor of declining religiosity. However, we show it can also increase religious cohesion, leading to stronger religious voting cleavages.
How does this explain trends in the US and Latin America?
The United States is perhaps the archetype of a developed democracy with high religiosity. Many Americans are abandoning churches and spirituality but they are mostly religious moderates. Our research suggests this will give religion even stronger influence on electoral competition, driven by smaller but more committed religious groups.
Chile has seen a dramatic increase in economic well-being and declining religiosity. Rather than predicting that religion’s grip on politics will loosen, our research stresses the importance of considering how the form of religiosity has changed. Religious cohesion in Chile was six times higher in 2011 than in 1996, and the link between religiosity and party identification has strengthened as moral issues such as abortion and divorce laws have become more salient and polarizing.
FIND OUT MORE ‘The Decline of Religion and Its Rise in Electoral Politics’ and other related publications are available to view on Ahmed’s personal website.
