Contesting the Good News

March 12, 2013 By 2 Comments

This summer, I have the opportunity to travel to Brazil with Calvin College’s Nagel Institute, for a seminar focused on understanding how Pentecostals are interacting with and shaping globalization forces.  This question of how religious actors around the world understand and conceive of economic life—and in particular, aspects of increasing economic liberalization—is a central focus of my research.

I’ve recently finished Jill DeTemple’s 2012 book, Cement, Earthworms, and Cheese Factories: Religion and Community Development in Rural Ecuador (University of Notre Dame Press).  It’s one of the most recent books to look at a question that is growing in importance to a number of development scholars: How religion and development are intertwined and interconnected.

In discussing  historical trajectory of development, she makes a convincing argument that many of the colonizing impulses behind ‘economic development’ and Christian proselytization in the West are similar.

 Progress in its broadest sense—spiritual, cultural, technological—became the optimal way to achieve salvation’s ends (28).

Spreading the Gospel–the Good News–is a term some might use to talk about the message of God’s salvation in Christ, or the message of growth and progress for the world.  For some, mantras of growth and economic development are the true message that must be shared for the world to succeed today.

I’ve written on this question of the aims of development before. DeTemple’s work focuses more on the ways that religious and development goals get intertwined in specific places and contexts, and the lack of distinct boundaries between the two. But in telling the stories of communities, she shows that many times the goals and assumptions of development workers and ‘those being developed’ are not the same. The ends of development are re imagined.

One of the foundational aspects of development for many in the industry is economic growth (which I recently addressed).  So how are religious actors engaging with this largely uncontested belief?  In my book manuscript, I focus on how religious actors discuss and frame free trade and economic globalization.  What’s fascinating to me is the way that across a number of Christian traditions, religious voices continue to raise questions about the real goals of development and growth, almost universally critiquing our emphasis on economic individualism and a lack of concern about responsibility and relationship with neighbor.  And just as fascinating to me is that even as there seems to be much agreement among religious leaders, these voices are largely muted in public economic debates.

In understanding how Pentecostals in Brazil are engaging with globalization, I look forward to seeing the ways that actors on the ground—those engaging with poverty reduction and interacting with development programs—are part of a larger religious conversation about the value of growth and development.  As I continue to engage further in dialogues on religion and development, I’d love to hear other examples you may have of how religious actors are challenging global values and structures of current globalization paradigms in their micro-level efforts.

Filed Under: Amy Reynolds Tagged With: , , , 2 Comments

When Growth is Bad

January 22, 2013 By 5 Comments

The Hastert Center for Economics, Government, And Public Policy  at Wheaton College hosted an event last Thursday on the morality of economic growth, co-sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute.  The central speaker, Dr. Smith of Gordon College, argued that economic growth should be a moral imperative for Christians, especially if we are concerned about poverty.

As a person engaged in economic sociology (and a respondent at the event), I appreciated the fact this conversation was taking place. We need more dialogue on the moral character of market life. What does it mean to live ethical economic lives—as individuals, communities, and societies?

However, in a world where it seems that governments and policy-makers often just assume that growth is good, I’d like to suggest that growth in itself is not good. I recognize the great strides we have made in lowering infant mortality (and the rise in other development indicators) in the last two centuries. However, I think we should ask, “When is growth good?” or “How do we promote ethical economic growth?”

Some reasons why I think growth is sometimes not good:

1.Poverty and inequality are related.  Many people will focus on absolute poverty as the central issue.  Clearly, issues of absolute poverty are important.  As Christians, we should be invested in anti-poverty efforts that ensure people have enough to eat and a place to live.  But relative poverty is also important—a concept that considers one’s wealth and resources in relationship to others in society.  Relative poverty can negatively impact one’s social networks, employment, educational opportunities, and political involvement. Growing inequality is often linked with increased social isolation (that is, the poor living with the poor, and the wealthy with the wealthy).   In a world where the wealthy have more than enough, ethical growth must be measured in terms of how the poor fare—not only in absolute terms, but also relative to the wealthy.

2. Value creation matters.  While the ends of growth are important, the means by which growth is received and earned is also important.  How is economic growth achieved?  Is it through individuals having more creative power to exercise?  Is it through business being able to get more out of workers and manage the process more effectively?  In an economic marketplace where businesses have more power than individuals, and the poor are at the bottom of commodity chain processes, ethical growth demands attention to increasing the capacity of the poor to be involved in more active and significant ways in the economy. It should increase the potential of those at the bottom to be involved in value-creation activities.

3. Relationships are central.  The rise of a free-market system is connected in some ways to a more depersonalized market.  Most of us do not know the people that we are involved with in economic transactions.  But this does not mean those relationships do not exist.  Many assessing economic growth center on the individual as the basic unit of analysis, and maximizing individual (or the sum of individual) well-being as the end goal.  But as Christians, why should we assume the individual is the central variable of analysis?  In my study of religious communities engaging in debates over international trade, I find that they all prioritize right relationships and community as a central goal of economic life.  What would it mean to demand ethical and life-affirming relationships as a basis for market transactions?

Although economic issues are often considered distinct from moral issues, many voices (religious and otherwise) are challenging this assumption.  As a sociologist, I recognize that markets are social constructions, and values are embedded within them.  As a Christian, I want to live in right relationships (with others, with God, with the earth).  For me, this means asking how engage in more ethical relationships within a depersonalized market, and how to promote policies that prioritize (more) healthy relationships within the marketplace.

 

 

Filed Under: Amy Reynolds Tagged With: , , 5 Comments

Democrats: Losing their Religion

November 5, 2012 By 7 Comments

It’s election week, and we’re inundated with polls, predictions, and predilections, so I’ll keep this short. While I was crunching NFSS data for an unrelated set of analyses, I stopped to dwell on an interesting survey question on perceived change in religiousness. We asked the 2,988 respondents:

Compared to today, were you more or less active in organized religion when you were growing up?

Given that we’re talking to 18-39-year-olds, and that young adulthood can often exhibit a notable decline in religiousness—something I’ve written about more extensively here and here—and that former US senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum misinterpreted here, it’s of course not at all surprising to see that most respondents said they were less active in organized religion now than when they were growing up. Fully 53 percent said that, whereas 34 percent said they were “about the same” and 13 percent reported being “more active” than when they were younger. But what aggravates these numbers in either direction?

My first guess is that age and marriage are apt to boost religiosity in some who had been flagging, while sexual “deviance” (from religious expectations about it) can cause it to lag some. Keep in mind, of course, that the question begs an unknown answer about just how religious respondents were when they were “growing up,” so a “more active” or a “less active” response is connected to a level known to them, but not to us. So be it. It’s still illuminating: only 8 percent of the youngest group (18-23-year-olds) reported becoming more religiously active, compared with 13 and 18 percent of the older two groups (24-32 and 33-39-year-olds, respectively). Makes sense.

Both married and divorced respondents reported comparable levels of growing religiousness, at 18-19 percent, while 63 percent of cohabiters said they had become less religious.

The most dramatic shifts, however, appear around personal politics. Political affiliation—a one measure, 1-5 scale of just how politically conservative or liberal our respondents consider themselves—takes the cake for shifting the bar on perceived growth or decline in organized religious involvement. Only 23 percent of respondents who said they were “very conservative” politically reported being less active in organized religion today, while 31 percent said they were more active than as a youth. Keep in mind that’s compared with 53 and 13 percent of the total population, respectively.

It’s a linear association, too: 48 percent of just plain “conservative” respondents reported being less active religiously, compared with 52 percent of moderates, 62 percent of those who said they were “liberal” and 76 percent of those who self-identified as “very liberal.” That’s quite a span–from 23 percent (among the most conservative) to 76 percent (among the most liberal).

The Democrats truly are losing their religion. Or perhaps these are persons who lost their religion and then decided the Democratic Party seemed most in line with their sentiments. There is probably plenty of both types.

This is not new news, I know. See here. But it’s heartwarming and confirming to me to see the NFSS data continue to make rational sense in so many domains of research questions, even while critics remain convinced that I got the basic story wrong in the July Social Science Research article on the adult children of parents who’ve had same-sex relationships. (I didn’t.)

Happy voting…

 

 

Filed Under: Mark Regnerus Tagged With: , , 7 Comments

Racial Religious Patterns in Political Ideology – Expanded Version

October 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment

In a recent report by the Pew Hispanic Center, we had some new statistics available for the religious diversity within the Latino populations. The published findings only show us the registered voter group of Latinos surveyed which is not an identical match to the other figures I presented in a previous post, but until we can access the actual data , we may need to go with what we have. This got me thinking, why not try and pick up other data to create as comprehensive a picture as possible. So I pulled the figures on registered Hispanic voters and their religious affiliations for 2012. The nearest survey with a large enough sample of different religious African Americans was the Pew Religious Landscape Survey 2007. The nearest survey with a sizeable and reasonably representative sample of American Muslims was the Pew 2011 American Muslim Survey. However, I couldn’t access the race information that would help see racial variation within this religious affiliation.

Before we get to the figures, a few caveats. I readily admit that this is far from ideal, a lot has changed since 2007, and these changes to our political-economy could have an effect on party preference. So take these figures with a big grain of salt. My sense however is that generally the patterns don’t vary radically; that is, no major shifts amounting to a shift of 10% or more. Also here’s a breakdown of some of the shorthand:

AsAm = Asian American

AfAm = African American

(reg) = registered voter percentage, 2012

(’07) = Pew Landscape Survey 2007

(’11) = Pew American Muslim Survey 2011

Unless noted by the aforementioned, the figures refer to 2012 general percents not limited to registered voters.

Figure 1: Catholics

When we include African American Catholics (assuming the 2007 figures don’t vary much from 2012), we find a strong Democratic preference that is slightly higher than the Hispanic Catholic preference. Republican preference is stronger among white Catholics and slightly more for Asian American Catholics.

Figure 2: Non-Catholic Christians

I started the figures this time with Catholics because the second cluster is what I describe as non-Catholic Christians. I use this catch-all term because I found a sizeable group of Orthodox Christians (all of whom identify as white and non-Hispanic). This is the only predominantly white Christian group that actually leans more Democrat than Republican. Among African American Christians, there’s no contest, very clear preference for the Democratic party, regardless of whether they are in predominantly white religious traditions such as evangelical and mainline Protestantism or in a historically black Protestant tradition. Put this together with African American Catholics and we see strong majorities of all black Christians for one party over the other (again assuming little voter preference has changed since 2007 for this population). Among Latino non-Catholics, we a similar stronger preference for the Democratic party as African American Protestants but it’s not as pronounced. The largest presence of Republican presence is with Hispanic evangelical registered voters. In the 2007 data, we have enough respondents to look at the preferences of those Latinos who affiliate with an historically black Protestant tradition. We find that they also support the Democratic party more so than the GOP. With better inclusion of more racial diversity we see more clearly too that Asian American evangelicals are the only minority Christian group that leans more in favor of the Republican party than the Democrats.

Figure 3: Other Religious Americans

Using the Landscape Survey from 2007 we have a large enough sample of white Buddhists to help us compare Asian American Buddhists (albeit tentatively due to the 5 year gap). White Buddhists clearly favor the Democratic party and more so compared to Jewish respondents. In fact we might say that of all the religious minority groups that have a substantial presence of white followers, white Buddhists are the most Democratic. They stand in contrast to Mormons (which is predominantly white) who are the religious minority group that clearly favors the Republican party. When we account for Muslim preferences (and they identify with a diverse array of racial labels so we can’t say how race might or might not work among them), we find that they follow other religious minority communities in greater support of the Democrat party.

Figure 4: the Unaffiliated

There’s amazing parity among the unaffiliated. Again, as long as there are no time effects or major differences between registered voters and all members of that group, nearly every racial group among the nonaffiliated identify as Democrat.

My conclusions from the previous analyses seem to be stable even when we account for more religious and racial diversity. The Democrat party is a very diverse tent and trying to develop a platform that appeals to these diverse constituencies and the particulars that affect their social and economic conditions is challenging. Republicans for the most part are still clearly a party of Christians, namely white Catholics, white evangelicals, Mormons, and Asian American evangelicals (and perhaps Asian American Catholics). This doesn’t mean that the GOP is devoid of non-Asian minorities, but they are clearly a minority within their religious traditions.

Share your other observations!

 

 

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