June 28, 2012
Why are Americans More Religious than Western Europeans?
Why are Americans More Religious than Western Europeans? Becker
This is a difficult question since even within Europe there are big differences in religiosity; for example, Catholic Ireland is considerably more religious than either Catholic France or Catholic Spain, and Spain is more religious than its neighbor France. Still, I do believe we can partly explain why Americans are much more religious than Europeans.
I am confident about the importance of competition among denominations- also emphasized by Posner. America has several thousand denominations competing fiercely for members among each other and against Catholicism. Fierce competition always induces competitors to try to better satisfy the wants of their customers. This is why the many American denominations offer a large variety of religious services and doctrines that enable families to match their religious desires to different denominations.
Lawrence Iannaccone of Chapman University followed up Adam Smith's observations on religious competition with an interesting empirical investigation in 1991 of the relation between competition among different religions within a country and the religiosity of its population. He finds a significant positive relation across countries between competition and religiosity, although one cannot be certain that the causation is mainly from competition to religiosity rather than from religiosity to competition.
The growth of evangelical religions in many Latin American countries is an example of causation from religiosity to competition. In 1900, evangelicals numbered about 1% of the population of Latin America, while by 2010, they reached 17% of this population-the rest being mainly Catholics. Latin American countries with the highest concentration of evangelicals are Brazil, Chile, and Guatemala. The Catholic Church in Latin America has often received both direct and indirect support from the governments of this region. As a result, many priests and bishops became more interested in politics and advocacy than in attending to the spiritual needs of their congregations.
This created a religious vacuum that provided an opportunity for evangelical Protestant denominations to try to convert individuals by offering the religious experiences they wanted, and that were less readily available in their local Catholic churches. This helps explain the growth of evangelical religions in this region, especially in recent decades.
Two other important contributions to the difference in religiosity between Americans and Europeans are social interactions with respect to religious beliefs, and the transmission of religions from parents to children. The religious beliefs of individuals are a prime example of beliefs that are very much affected by the beliefs of neighbors, relatives, and co-workers. An individual is more confident about his religious beliefs when the persons he interacts with hold similar beliefs.
The importance of such social interactions with regard to religiosity is that even small initial differences in religiosity between Europeans and Americans would get magnified over time into possibly very large ultimate differences between them in religiosity. Perhaps the initial differences were due to the greater competition among denominations in America, or to forces that we do not understand fully. The powerful reinforcement effects of social interactions among individuals with related beliefs would over time widen the religious gulf between Americans and Europeans. As a result, large differences in religiosity between Americans and Europeans would eventually emerge from relatively small starting differences.
Differences in religiosity between Americans and Europeans are also reinforced and maintained by the strong transmission of religious beliefs from parents to children. This transmission is much more powerful when both parents have similar religious beliefs. Men and women with similar religious beliefs are more likely to find and marry each other when a sufficient number of men and women in the marriage market have similar beliefs. Therefore, as the gap in religiosity between Americans and Europeans increases over time, due at least in part to social interactions, it becomes much easier for religious Americans than for religious Europeans to marry each other, and transmit their religiosity to their children. That difference in the intergenerational transmission of religious beliefs further widens the gap between the religiosity of Americans and Europeans.
In summary, I believe that greater competition among religious denominations in America than Europe, social interactions among religious beliefs, and the transmission of religions from parents to children go a long way in explaining the large differences in religious beliefs between America and Western Europe, even though America and Western Europe are similar in many other respects.
Why Are Americans More Religious than Europeans? Posner
There is no question that Americans are on average considerably more religious than Europeans; the only major exception is Poland, which remains a bastion of Catholicism. Other major Catholic countries in Europe, such as Ireland, Spain, Italy, and Austria, have low levels of church attendance and adherence to church doctrines. Countries like the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, and (above all) the Scandinavian countries, rank very low on the scale of religiosity. There is some suspicion, however, that the differences in religious observance between the United States and Europe are smaller than public opinion polls reveal, because Americans are reluctant to acknowledge that they don't attend church regularly—but of course this is a clue to the hold that religion has over the American mind. No one could be elected President of the United States who did not profess to believe in God, whereas the question of religious belief does not arise for aspirants to become European heads of state.
The United States has a much higher level of religious belief than Europe as well as of church attendance and religious observance. More than 50 percent of Americans consider religion very important to their lives, a figure more than twice that in most European countries. Furthermore, while in general the religiosity of a country is inverse to its per capita income, the United States has a level of religiosity similar to that in much less prosperous countries. Finally, religious observance and belief have been declining in Europe since at least the 1960s but increasing in the United States during the same period, though recently there have been signs of reduced observance and belief in the United States as well. A loosening of the grip of religion in America is suggested by the rapidly increasing tolerance for cohabitation outside of marriage, of births out of wedlock, and of same-sex relationships and even same-sex marriage.
The prevalent economic explanation for American religiosity, which derives from eighteenth-century writings by David Hume and Adam Smith, is that established churches, like other monopolists, reduce output, though by a somewhat different route from business monopolists. An established church normally is supported in significant part by taxes, enabling church leaders and other church personnel to spend less time in proselytizing because they have a pecuniary advantage in competing with other churches. The "quiet life" theory of monopoly (John Hicks) is not widely accepted in regard to commercial markets because a monopolist that does not strive to minimize its costs is sacrificing profits, just like a competitive firm though with less dire consequences for survival. But because most churches, and certainly established churches, are not for-profit enterprises, profit maximization is not feasible and church leaders may take rents in the form of luxurious buildings and art, elaborate staff, and leisure, instead of in money.
Furthermore, whereas a commercial monopoly can offer a diversity of products or services, that is difficult for a religious organization to do—it can hardly offer one set of religious beliefs that allow parishioners' pets to go to heaven and another set that reserves heaven for the souls of human beings, or a set that includes Satan and Hell and a set that eliminates those unpleasant features of conventional religion. Committed to a single set of rituals and beliefs, an established church is bound to lose the support of many people, who however may find only limited alternatives if competing churches are at a significant competitive disadvantage because of the established church's governmental backing.
Although the United States had quasi-established churches in New England at the founding of the nation, the First Amendment to the Constitution (1787) forbade the federal government to establish a church, and the state establishments soon crumbled as well. The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) was eventually interpreted to forbid states to establish churches, and the Supreme Court continues to enforce a high degree of "separation" between church(es) and state even today, despite the nation's increased religiosity. As a result, there is vigorous competition among religious sects in the United States, notably including competition in observances and doctrines. As a result of this greatly increased religious variety (compared to Europe, which has long had, and continues to have, established churches in most of its countries), there is a much greater likelihood of a given individual's finding a religious sect that is to his liking in the United States than in Europe.
It does seem also that Americans are more credulous on average than Europeans—less matter of fact, less inclined to accept the authority of science (notably in regard to evolution, and geological phenomena related to evolution, such as the age of the earth), more superstitious. But it is unclear whether this is cause or consequence of the greater religiosity of Americans compared to Europeans. What seems more clearly causal is Americans' individualism and spirit of independence. The vast majority of American Catholics reject Catholic doctrine on contraception (that only the unreliable "rhythm" method is permissible) while considering themselves good Catholics and continuing to attend church and make donations. And Americans are continually breaking away from existing sects and joining or founding new ones.
Another plausible causal factor in American religiosity is the size of the United States and the mobility of its population. A church provides a locus for forming community ties in a new city or suburb to which a family has moved. There is less population mobility within European countries, let alone among those countries, so less need to be a member of a community that exists everywhere that one might move to.
Finally, an interesting and at first sight paradoxical aspect of American religiosity is the very high level of tolerance for other people's religions. There are two major exceptions. There is limited tolerance for Islam because of the strongly Muslim character of al Qaeda and related terrorist movements. And there is a surprisingly strong antipathy to Mormonism—public opinion polls show that while only a few percent of respondents would be reluctant to vote for a Jewish candidate for President, 20 percent would be reluctant to vote for a Mormon. This reluctance appears to be attributable in part to a lingering association in many people's minds of Mormonism with polygamy, and in part to Mormon beliefs that other Christians consider deeply heretical, such as the belief that Jesus Christ visited North America during his lifetime and that human beings after death eventually become gods, and the rejection of the Trinity. Indeed some Mormons while venerating Christ do not consider themselves Christians.