Americans increasingly see their political opponents not merely as wrong, but as dangerous. Can religion help us recover the virtues democracy requires?
Religion is thought to have both positive and negative influences on democracy. On the one hand, religion has been a tremendous force for good in America. Think of the powerful words in the Declaration of Independence stating that God grants inalienable rights. The Declaration also grounds government power in the consent of the governed. Martin Luther King Jr. articulated the importance of treating everyone equally. For him, this was not merely as a matter of public policy, but as a moral requirement rooted in human dignity.
On the other hand, religion is often a divisive force in American politics. Historically, Protestant religious communities in the United States contributed to anti-Catholicism, anti-Mormonism, antisemitism, and hostility toward Native American religions. And the same Bible used to fight slavery was used to justify slavery. Is religion a force for good or evil in American society? I find that religion strengthens democracy when it forms people who are more humble, compassionate, just, self-controlled, and open to transcendence. Religion’s influence on democracy depends less on how often people attend church than on the kind of people their religious commitments are helping them become.
There is real value in describing the different ways people practice their faith. We can also learn from a better understanding of how people across different religions and spiritual traditions approach the world, and how their religious beliefs and practices shape them as human beings. Yet measuring religion’s influence requires identifying shared patterns among religious beliefs, practices, and behaviors to empirically measure the influence religion has on outcomes like support for democracy, civic virtue, or political violence.
Many major faith traditions emphasize common virtues that practitioners should develop over the course of their lives.
In my book “The Metrics of Faith,” I propose that we measure religion not by its inputs—that is, not by the specific actions a person takes to practice their faith—but rather by what religion is helping the person to become. Many major faith traditions emphasize common virtues that practitioners should develop over the course of their lives. I have developed measures for these common virtues, grouping them under the umbrella of what I call “religious becoming” to assess the extent to which an individual has cultivated these character traits.
The four virtues are temperance, humanity, justice, and transcendence. Temperance captures qualities like self-control, moderation, and humility in one’s thoughts and actions. Humanity captures the extent to which one exercises compassion, love, and care for others. Justice reflects the dimensions of fairness, equality, and the importance of ethical behavior. Transcendence measures the extent to which one experiences a connection to the divine and an appreciation of beauty. You can find the specific measures on my website and take an online quiz to see how you score across these dimensions. You will also see that adherents of both Christian and non-Christian faiths score high in each of these areas. Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims score just as high in transcendence, justice, and humanity as do Christians.
In addition, Gen Z and Millennials score as high on religious becoming as do Boomers, Gen X, and the Silent Generation. Younger Americans are not less religious than their older counterparts; they simply practice religion differently and measures of religion ought to account for this. Regardless of which faith tradition one adheres to, religion can help people develop these virtues.
When measured through the lens of religious becoming, religion proves to be a potent, powerful force for advancing democratic values and promoting tolerance in the United States. I will highlight four important findings. First, those who score high in religious becoming are significantly more tolerant than those who do not. While the literature over the last fifty years has consistently identified formal education as the key to increasing political tolerance in the United States, in my analysis, religious becoming predicts political tolerance far more strongly than formal education—roughly four times as strongly in the model.
Second, an important predictor of intolerance towards one’s political opponents is the perception of threat. When someone believes that their political opponents endanger their values, identity, or way of life, they are more likely to support restrictions on the very rights guaranteed them in the constitution. As people develop the virtues of religious becoming, they are less likely to perceive threats from those in other groups. People who score high in religious becoming are the least likely to believe that there is discrimination against whites in America and the least likely to believe that efforts to reduce discrimination against LGBT individuals have led to increased discrimination against religious people. Religion helps reduce perceptions of threat from political opponents.
Authentic religious development fosters support for democratic principles.
Finally, church attendance is positively associated with support for political violence and support for other anti-democratic behaviors. Christian nationalists are especially supportive of bending the rules to help their side win. However, church attendance is too often conflated with religion in the United States. This distinction matters because religious participation and religious formation are not always the same thing. In the United States, many non-Christian religious adherents do not attend church frequently. I find that across religious traditions in the United States, those who score high in religious becoming reject all forms of political violence. In addition, the higher one scores on religious becoming, the more likely they are to reject bending the rules to help one’s own side win elections.
Ultimately, the empirical relationship between religion and democracy depends on how religion is expressed and measured. Authentic religious development fosters support for democratic principles. Religion may be an important resource for helping Americans become the kinds of citizens on whom democratic survival depends. Critics may reasonably worry that religion has often been used to justify exclusion, domination, and violence. They may therefore conclude that democracy would be safer with less religion. Some argue that secularization is the cure for the social and political problems associated with religion in American society. Yet, religion is not inherently anti-democratic. Religion can help cultivate the citizens democracy requires. This is why the United States needs more, not less, religion. Crucially, we do not need to establish a state religion to accomplish this.
This emphasis on becoming should feel familiar to Latter-day Saints. The gospel does not ask only what we profess; it asks what kind of people we are becoming. Focusing on the development of these four virtues—transcendence, humanity, justice, and temperance—does not require a specific religious path. These virtues can be developed through non-theistic study of ethics, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, or any other major religious tradition. As the United States becomes a less Christian nation, it need not become a less religious nation. John Adams believed that the “Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.” By focusing on helping Americans develop the virtues espoused by every major religious tradition, the United States can develop moral and religious citizens necessary for the survival of the constitutional system established by the Framers.
