politics, demographyI’m afraid this might qualify as off topic. I also don’t know if this is only the US or global. It’s been shown that religiosity and political leanings are very correlated, and you probably don’t need to see that poll to know it. I’m wondering why - what do religion and politics have in common that could account for this? My only guess is that on a very broad level conservativism tends to mean “keep things the same” and liberalism means “change things.” This phenomenon also applies to science, but the link is much more obvious there - science threatens the religious worldview. But liberalism? Maybe because it tries to fight biblically motivated discrimination. But that doesn’t seem to be enough. Why are the numbers in that poll so huge?
My theory is that at one time religion and politics were the same thing, and indistinguishable from other related ideas, such as philosophy and culture. It’s only relatively recently that we have created distinctions between the ideas. Why else would the Christian god be called ‘king of kings’ or ‘lord of lords’? These are now considered political positions. If modern democracy had been in place 2000 years ago we might also have the phrase ‘president of presidents’ or ‘prime minister of prime ministers’.
I suspect that within another 500 years that another yet-unnamed idea will split from the politic-religion-philosophy grouping making more refined distinction between the fuzzy overlapping of the groups.
I don’t have a lot of citations for this, but here’s my thinking.
Generally you can divide western European and US politics into a liberal and conservative camp. Generally the conservative camp is aligned with religion in one form or another, and the liberal camp is aligned to a greater or lesser degree with humanism and rationality. Why is this?
I believe that strong religiousness gives rise to a conservative mindset. I think that hewing to a mandated ‘law’ from a couple of thousand years ago sets certain values ‘in stone’. For example, the current right wing (in the US) fascination with whether or not a penis is put into a vagina or a rectum is deeply linked with religion and the oddly translated injunctions in Leviticus. Religious people are taught and lean toward unquestioning adherence to authority, especially scriptural.
Liberal thinking is based on liberal interpretations, first of the religious texts, and then of the world itself. Allowing yourself to question the status quo is not a conservative strength, it is a liberal strength.
You can take the example of bathing. For a couple of hundred years during the late middle ages and early renaissance, bathing routinely was regarded with great suspicion, and was thought to lead to ungodly fascination with the body and vice. Since people who bathed regularly tended to outlive those that didn’t, and because of emerging knowledge of hygiene, this mode of thinking died out. Now, people believe that ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’ - Why? Not because of any deep thinking about it, but because it’s an inherited conservative opinion. When the ‘hippies’ came around and said that bathing every day and slathering yourself in deodorant is stifling, it was the conservatives that resisted them.
Religious people are taught in a thousand different ways, from subtle to overt to not question authority, especially their holy books. So, whatever the entrenched authority says no matter how ridiculous, the conservatives will hew to it. This is why liberalism is always a minority opinion in the religious communities.
Politics are about who you like, who you trust. For religious people, other members of the same religion, or similar religions, fall into both of these categories. The issues that a leader is expected to decide on are complicated, most people (I certainly include myself) don’t fully understand all of the complexity of governing a country. So you can’t usually vote on the issues alone- you want to believe that the person you are voting for has the same general values and priorities that you do, and so it isn’t entirely unreasonable for the strongly religious to vote for their own. Finally, religious institutions are built for politics, so they are a natural environment for politicians to go seeking support.
The deeply religious strongly believe that they are unquestionably right in their beliefs and associated moral system. It is no surprise, then, that they feel that their political zone (city, country, whatever) would be “better off” if all their neighbors held to those same moral codes; they only way they have at their disposal to attempt to bring that about is through political power.
Religion has always been a way to define the tribe, so it has also been used to motivate people to work for the good of the group and even fight for it. Republicans are doing a little better at using that right now, but I’m not sure it really means anything in the big picture. In any religion I know of, there have been conservatives and liberals, those who say we must continue to follow the old rules and those who say they have heard a new revelation.
Religion is a tool of social control. Governments need religion to control people, religions need government to legitimise the lie.
I personally think that religions by nature are very organised and well run communities. They are motivated and believe what they do is right. They believe that they are bound to be successful because they have God on their side.
Historically, politics and religion have gone hand and hand.
I can imagine that the religious community would support any religious political candidate as they will think that the candidate will support them in return.
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