You'll never walk alone: Loneliness, religion, and politico‐economic transformation

Abstract

The rise of subversive religious beliefs has been recently documented as related to the politico‐economic radicalization of places that feel left behind. When is the traditional local religious institution so socio‐economically inefficient in providing hope for “not walking alone” to become substituted by subversive religious beliefs on the market for hope? This article suggests a detailed methodology, linking micro and macro levels, that starts from the quantification of the individual gain from religion as a source for well‐being by providing the feeling of “not walking alone.” This micro gain is next used: (i) to evaluate a religious institution in terms of the social welfare that it generates, and (ii) to monitor this religious institution for losing its market to subversive religious beliefs, related to radical politico‐economic transformations. To illustrate this methodology, I analyze the socio‐economic efficiency of the Church of England as a predictive tool for the Brexit vote.Related ArticlesGainous, Jason, and Bill Radunovich. 2008. “Religion and Core Values: A Reformulation of the Funnel of Causality.” Politics & Policy 33(1): 154–80. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2005.tb00213.x.Giugni, Marco, and Maria T. Grasso. 2016. “How Civil Society Actors Responded to the Economic Crisis: The Interaction of Material Deprivation and Perceptions of Political Opportunity Structures.” Politics & Policy 44(3): 447–72. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12157/abstract.Temple, Luke, Maria T. Grasso, Barbara Buraczynska, Sotirios Karampampas, and Patrick English. 2016. “Neoliberal Narrative in Times of Economic Crisis: A Political Claims Analysis of the U.K. Press, 2007–14.” Politics & Policy 44(3): 553–76. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12161.

Beyond Religion

“…Other studies have also documented the electoral consequences of irrational beliefs. For instance, Tubadji (2022) showed that voters who believe in subversive narratives and, for instance, identify themselves as witches voted disproportionally in favor of Brexit. Several studies have confirmed that neo-paganism in general, and Odinism in particular, represent a fertile ground in which neo-Nazi ideas and movements can flourish.…”

“…While these studies have highlighted the political consequences of a traditional mindset in several countries from the Global South, they nevertheless have little to say as to whether having a traditional mindset and, for example, believing in fortune tellers, horoscopes, or lucky charms also has certain political implications for countries in the Global North-where what have alternatively been labeled as new religions, cults, or, in our words, "traditional beliefs" have become more common and may possibly have expanded political consequences (Tubadji 2022).…”

“…We believe that this is an important question. Times of crisis such as today, in which old certainties—because of Brexit, the growing tensions between Russia and NATO countries, the war in Ukraine, and the lingering effects of a COVID-19 pandemic that has taken its toll on the global economy—seem to be crumbling, provide fertile soil for the flourishing of superstitious and otherwise irrational beliefs (Tubadji 2023). If it can be shown that such beliefs have clear and clearly detectable implications in the present political climate, the growing popularity of superstition and other irrational beliefs could transform our political landscape beyond recognition and pose an existential threat to preservation of democratic governance as we have known it for most of the post-war era—at least in the West.…”