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RSSAre religious people really more left-wing?
Demos's analysis suffers from some severe methodological problems.
By Nelson Jones Published 10 April 2012 13:32
In his Easter sermon, Rowan Williams suggested that "the high watermark of aggressive polemic against religious faith has passed". Right on cue comes a report from think-tank Demos suggesting that (in the words of author Jonathan Birdwell) the "natural allies" of progressives "may look more like the Archbishop of Canterbury than Richard Dawkins."
Faithful Citizens (available here) boasts a foreword from the former Labour minister Stephen Timms, who writes that religious faith can provide "a key source for the values the Labour party exists to promote and the aspirations it seeks to realise" and "a large reservoir of potential support for Labour's aims."
That might come as a surprise to Oliver James, who wrote at the end of last month that he assumed that Guardian readers were "a largely agnostic or atheist bunch." But beyond the obvious point that not all practising Christians fit into a US-derived stereotype of the Religious Right, what does the report actually tell us about faith and politics in 21st century Britain?
Based on an analysis of the UK Citizenship Survey and the European Values Survey, the report highlights apparent correlations between religious commitment and social or political activism. It emerges, for example, that 55% of people with faith described themselves as left of centre, that they were more likely than the non-religious to value equality over freedom and less likely to have negative feelings about immigrants.
There was also a suggestion that the actively religious were more active politically, being more engaged in local community work, more likely to sign petitions or go on demonstrations, more likely to belong to a political party than people who weren't religious. This would not, in itself, prove that believers are more left-wing. Some might, after all, be volunteering for the Conservative party. But taken together with the findings about general social attitudes, at least as reported at the weekend, it would seem to provide encouragement for Labour politicians to "do God" more enthusiastically.
Unfortunately, the analysis suffers from some severe methodological problems.
The report looks at both the UK and some other European countries, but the selection of those countries looks somewhat arbitrary. Switzerland, we are told, was excluded because it was not a member state of the EU, Italy because the patterns it revealed were "anomalous" (significantly, we are not told what was so anomalous about Italy) and the Scandanavian countries because "research consistently shows higher levels of civic engagement... which would have skewed our results".
Since Scandanavian countries also consistently score low in markers of religious observance and belief in God, one can see how this might have "skewed" the result that Demos wants to present, that there is a natural link between religiosity and social activism.
The report divides the public into three broad groups: "exclusivists" who believe that their religion is the One True Faith; secularists, who regard religions as all equally false; and "pluralists", less exclusive believers. Unfortunately, the latter category is wholly artificial, as it combines two entirely different stances: followers of one religion who are prepared to concede that other religions might teach some common truths or ethical principles, and vaguely "spiritual" types who believe that no one religion has a monopoly of the truth.
A "pluralist" might be a very devout and committed follower of their faith, or might not be a practising member of any religion at all. The category is meaningless. It is especially meaningless if the aim, as that of the Demos reports appears to be, is to harness the social activism of practising religionists to progressive causes.
What about the key finding that religious believers were "more likely to be left-of-centre"? The way that this finding was reported strongly implied that believers were more likely to be left-wing than non-believers. But this was not, in fact, the case. The figures for the UK showed that while 55% of believers considered themselves left-of-centre, 62% of non-believers did so. Thus believers were actually less likely than secularists to consider themselves left-wing!
With the other headline findings the picture was equally mixed. We read with some surprise that "the extent to which someone feels that religion is important to their sense of identity does not appear to have a positive impact on their civic engagement." On freedom versus equality, in the UK a clear majority (approaching 60%) of both the religiously affiliated and of secularists prioritised freedom. Support for freedom was almost identical between the groups, though there were slightly less enthusiasm for equality among the non-religious (36% as opposed to 41%). In the continental European sample there was indeed a clear divide, with religious believers more likely to prioritise equality; but here I suspect that not including the Scandanavian countries may have skewed the result.
On most other issues, there's very little difference between the views of believers and those of non-believers, and while practising religionists were indeed slightly more likely to be active in other ways, the divergence was not great. For example, in the UK 12% of those who belonged to a religious organisation professed themselves "very interested" in politics, as opposed to 11% of those who were unaffiliated. Well within the margin of error.
85% of British respondents, both religious and secular, said that competition was good rather than harmful. There were similarly high levels of support for personal responsibility as opposed to reliance on the state. Such answers raise obvious questions about the self-definition of the majority of people as left-of-centre politically but say nothing at all about the influence of religion.
One thing that the report does concede is that religious observance in the UK continues to decline -- 50% of Britains do not regard themselves as belonging to any religion, as opposed to 31% thirty years ago. The trend is especially strong among younger citizens. So politicians both left and right should perhaps think before chasing religious votes with too much enthusiasm.
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34 comments
It is especially meaningless if the aim, as that of the Demos reports appears to be, is to harness the social activism of practising religionists to progressive causes.
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Many choose to forget English Socialism was born from the protestant faith. The Quakers for example, or the Religious Society of Friends. Members of this particular faith are convinced that God resides in everyone “the light of God” that is why Quakers believe in human equality, religious tolerance, social betterment and peace. The Quakers have no formal creed, and the Bible is generally not considered the only authority, English Socialism. Many of Labour's founding fathers were born from this faith. Tory Blair is a Catholic, sorry had to get that one in.
Oh dear, Nelson Jones at it again. Does the man even understand "balance" and "reasoned argument"?
A basic premise I work from is that where Religion is a route to power, such as the US, those who become actively involved are more likely to be right wing,in places where religion is not a route to power, those who become more actively involved are more likely to be left wing.
It seems the key element is whether the religion offers a route to power.
"The report divides the public into three broad groups: ... ,secularists, who regard religions as all equally false..."
Secularism is the separation of church and state, not about one's views on any religious claims. In the US I believe there are plenty of Christian secularists. This is a serious mistake, really.
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I have grown up in the British Church and quite an evangelical part of it (please do not judge - in fact I am not religious). I also have a Muslim wife and have quite a lot of experience in that community. I have found overwhelmingly that the more religious people are in these circles the more left wing they are.
Most of the left-wing elite do not want to accept this as it does not fit the dominant narrative/discourse that they have created in magazines such as this that their is a dichotomy between the 'liberal', 'tolerant', 'rational' 'left' and the 'religious' 'fundamentalist' 'irrational' 'intolerant' 'right'.
The US isn't the only country with people who are religious and right of center politically; why keep mentioning it? Does being right of center only count/threaten when it's in a country where most people have flush toilets and cellphones and are wealthier than most?
Tedious, tedious, tedious.
Becuase the US is reallly right wing when compared with most of the world.
'The US isn't the only country with people who are religious and right of center politically; why keep mentioning it?'
Because US politics is dominated by explicit religion. But there's an attempt to spread it. That weird throwback to the disasters of the Stuarts, Michael Gove, expects modern children to read an archaic 'Bible' translation full of errors, one that those who actually deal with children say will "put them off Christianity for life". Presumably that is the Gove plan, abetted by his pal Pickles, which they hope will culminate in a Civil Security Bill to ensure compulsory Confession and Mass attendance. Except for the famed Warsi Amendment, that allows Muslims to attend mosques.
Can anyone clarify what is meant by "freedom vs equality"? Scanning the paper for the word "freedom" I could find no discussion of this. Personally, I would say that the eventual goal of equality is to create a country in which people are free from the discrimination or powers that might otherwise prevent them from fulfilling their aims in life (i.e. People will have more freedom and opportunity, not less). It's not something that is in conflict with my definition of freedom but a vital component of it.
It is the popular conception that some desirable ideals like freedom and equality sometimes come into conflict and have to be balanced against each other. You are right in pointing out that whether this is the case or not depends crucially on how you define them. There are some (Dworkin, for example) who believe that the correct definitions of "equality" and "freedom" would make them absolutely compatible in all situations.
In a society in which resources are unevenly/unfairly distributed, it is sometimes necessary to curb the freedoms of some in order to ensure equality of opportunity for all; eg. the creation of an economic/political level playing field might involve increasing the taxes of some (arguably the curbing of individual freedoms) in order to re-distribute wealth towards institutions that tackle a equality deficit.
From what I can see, the Demos research was about the hypothesis that religious people are more likely to be right than left wing. It appears to have disproved that hypothesis. In fact, the opposite is true. So, arguing that the research says that non-religious people are even more likely to be left wing doesn't really disprove that statement.
The article's headline, are religious people really more left wing? Is hence, yes.
US Lefties protect "minority faith" rights but not Caucasian. PWW (praying while White) will get you labeled as a looney.
Dear me. Nelson is having to huff and puff so hard to try to prove his points that the only conclusion to reach is that Demos are probably quite right. Their report certainly backs up my own experience that mainstream religious/spiritual people are broadly left of centre.
In the beginning, was empire, with castes of busybody priests to ensure imperial pyramid of power.
In the beginning, was Abram, wealthy, yet honest. Abram became father Abraham, and had no priests, no busybody to tell him what to do. Jesus was his child and 'successor', and also the one who precipitated empire into claiming his authority for its own busybodies, and for a thousand years.
Today, the left is joined by the right in claiming to follow Abraham and Jesus, and Amos, too. But only the left actually do so; and the right try to stop them.
From the Demos paper:
"Seculars did not identify as religious"
From my dictionary:
"Secular: [...] not overtly or specifically religious"
HTH.
It's not clear without reading the paper myself whether the error over the meaning of the word "secularist" is Nelson's or Demos's.
To be secular is to lack religion, but I believe that the popular understanding (and quite possibly the correct definition) of the word "secularist" is a belief in keeping religion and the state separate. This is compatible with having a faith, and there are many religious people who are also secularists.
I assume that if the Demos paper calls them "seculars" and Nelson calls them "secularists" then the mistake is Nelson's.
Is it really such a methodological problem that Scandinavian countries were left out of the study? If it is true, as the report's authors suggest, that there is a more pronounced general culture of overall civic engagement in these countries when compared to the rest of Europe, then maybe an additional, cultural/institutional variable is at play in these countries. This additional variable functions regardless of both religious and non-religious belief, and therefore to include it would indeed skew the results of a study that hopes to isolate religious belief and its effect on civic engagement. The fact that the report's authors make no effort to hide this, should further confirm that this is a methodologically justified choice, that is, nevertheless,readily open to evaluative criticism.
You forgot to mention Spiritualism, which is neither a religion or some fluffy vague idea, but a fundamental truth. Spiritualists do believe in an eternal Afterlife and that we are all part of The Divine Spirit, but Spiritualism bypasses all man-made religions in that they communicate with spirit directly. As one Spirit recently conveyed the message - world religions aren't all bad, because they teach people humility and looking out for your fellow-man. It's a progression of sorts, a stepping stone to Spirituality. Many people will open up to Spirituality in the coming years,that's the message - are you ready to fight the greed and selfishness of right-wing fascist tendency that is lurking in our government and throughout the world? Because spiritual revelation is on its way!
Spiritualism is no more "a fundamental truth" than any other nonesense spouted by various imans priests and rabbis. In my experience, the best "spirtualist" demonstration was given to some years ago publically, and was subsequently admitted as a hoax... but many of those "spirtualists" present maintained that the magician had been guided by spirits unknown to him (his demonstration being so powerful) the believers so reluctant to admit the truth that spirtualist demonstartions are nothing more than second rate stage magic.
I will refer you to the fact that many believers in crop circles maintain that the self confessed hoaxers who admit to creating complex patterns with a plank of wood and some rope were themselves guided by 'the aliens' or the 'gods' that they believed to be behind it. Delusion is a universal 'fundamental truth' of being human, and malt, you are one.
@ Crabstix
Those who are spiritually aware, tend to frighten people who are not. We accept the scepticism, for before we became aware, we too were sceptical. To be human is to be imperfect. There has been a spate of hoaxers for sure - people jumping on the "bandwagon" to make money and a name for themselves. There are even Spiritualists who squabble amongst themselves, which I have to say, is showing gross disrespect for their gift of communication from spirit. A gift bestowed by Divine Spirit. They will have to review their behaviour when they return to Spirit World, and make amendments for their behaviour here on earth. A great many people fear this "atonement" process, but it's totally voluntary, "in your own time" - when you're ready, because eternity's a long time! You can sit and stew on your astral plane until you gt fed up with similar types, and lack of progress. There's so much love in Spirit World, you eventually want to be good and useful to others and loving. Depending on what you learn here - you create your own level of light or dark. People always want to go towards Divine Light eventually. Those trapped in darkness are worth praying for, you know - the genocidal dictators, etc, because they need all the prayers they can get.
Alex, it's not a weird definition of secularism, it's an incorrect one. Maybe Nelson should pick up a dictionary and make sure he knows what he's arguing against.
"secularists, who regard religions as all equally false"
That's a weird definition of secularism.