Religion, clubs, and emergent social divides

Abstract

JEL classification: C63 Z12 D71 D72Keywords: Culture divide Religious divide Club theory Agent-based model Sacrifice and stigma a b s t r a c t Arguments regarding the existence of an American cultural divide are frequently placed in a religious context. This paper seeks to establish that, all politics aside, the American religious divide is real, that religious polarization is not a uniquely American phenomenon, and that religious divides can be understood as naturally emergent within the club theory of religion. Analysis of the survey data reveals a bimodal distribution of religious commitment in the U.S. International data reveals evidence of bimodal distributions in all twenty-nine surveyed countries. The club theory of religion, applied in an agent-based computational model, generates bimodal distributions of member commitment.

Why Religion Helps and Harms Families: A Conceptual Model of a System of Dualities at the Nexus of Faith and Family Life

“…Through a social scientific lens, it may be posited that religion also may (a) create moral certainty in believers that leads to conflict with nonbelievers (Woodruff, Van Tongeren, McElroy, Davis, & Hook, 2014); (b) divide people between believers and nonbelievers, saved and damned, "us" and "them" (Lichterman, 2008;Makowsky, 2011); (c) lead people to experience guilt, repression, and hypocrisy (Inozu, Karanci, & Clark, 2012); (d) promote passive fatalism (Franklin, Schlundt, & Wallston, 2008); (e) create gender inequities in marriage, family, and society (Schnabel, 2016;Sigalow & Fox, 2014); (f) encourage irrational and/or "magical" thinking (Routledge, Abeyta, & Roylance, 2016); (g) enable sexual, emotional, physical, and/or financial victimization and abuse of children, elderly, and other vulnerable persons (Simonic, Mandelj, & Novsak, 2013;Stotland, 2000); and (h) be subject to being employed as a destructive force or weapon (i.e., the Inquisition, pogroms, the Crusades, jihad, the Holocaust, terrorism).…”

Narratives and Opinion Polarization: A Survey Experiment

“…A natural question is indeed whether certain narratives may have a different impact based on the underlying cultural orientation. To capture these contextual features, we focus on the division between Republican-and Democratic-leaning states that is at the root of the so-called "American cultural divide" 31 .…”

“…Second, political parties and politicians have shown an increasing tendency to divide the electorate on cultural and religious issues rather than on economic differences. In this respect, some studies illustrate how cultural divisions are necessary to mobilize inframarginal voters and increase politicians' chances of victory 31,35,36 . In these models, social cleavages allow politicians to send targeted messages.…”