The Link Between Religion and Helping Others: The Role of Values, Ideas, and Language

Abstract

This study used life narrative interview data from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study to examine how religious values, ideas, and language motivate prosocial behaviors. Open coding of 88 in-depth interviews revealed six themes: defining morality in religious terms, considering religion an important aspect of one's identity, feeling that one's life involves carrying out God's mission, making an increased commitment to religion over time, drawing an explicit connection between religion and helping others, and, for Christian respondents, finding inspiration for helping in Jesus's teaching, example, and sacrifice. Using ratings from independent coders, statistically significant relationships were found between most of the themes and prosocial behaviors, particularly for respondents who engaged in multiple helping behaviors. In addition to documenting the relationship between religious ideas and values and helping behaviors, the study demonstrates how language mediates the relationship between the social and personal aspects of religion.Key words: beliefs; civil society/public sphere; nonprofit sector; qualitative methods; values; prosocial behavior.The importance of helping others is a common theme in many religious traditions, and many scientific studies have found a link between religiosity and helping. However, the exact nature of this link is disputed. Sociologists who study this issue tend to explain the connection between religion and helping by reference to the social networks that come with religious participation ( -Glen 1991;Omoto et al. 2000). Most psychological studies of the relationship between subjective religiosity and helping use quantitative measures of subjective religiosity, and most find only moderate correlations between religiosity and helping (Saroglou 2006). This paper focuses on subjective religiosity, and argues that religious values, ideas, and language are not merely psychological phenomena but are also social facts. People learn religious ideas and values from others, and internalize them into their own sense of identity. They draw upon these ideas to engage in social behaviors, and use language to construct accounts that explain why they help others, and what helping others means to them. Taking ideas and language seriously allows for a broader and more accurate understanding of the connection between religion and helping, and allows researchers to connect the internal world of the mind with the external world of social discourse. GoldbergThis paper analyzes data from 88 in-depth life narrative interviews undertaken as part of the 1995 Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study. The first phase of this research project used open coding to identify six themes in how respondents talked about religion. These themes were defining morality in religious terms, considering religion an important aspect of one's identity, feeling that one's life involves carrying out God's mission, making an increased commitment to religion through the adult life course, drawing an explicit connecti...

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