If you’re searching for the big society, here’s where you may find it

The tenor of relationships within a religious community makes it the best tutorial in citizenship and good neighbourliness.

By Jonathan Sacks Published 30 June 2011

It is the Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam, the man who ten years ago delivered the bad news, who has now given us the good news. Social capital, once thought lost, has been found again, at least in the US. Putnam is perhaps best known for the phrase he used to describe the individualism afflicting ageing western democracies. Noting that more Americans than ever are going ten-pin bowling, but fewer are joining bowling clubs and leagues, he coined the phrase "Bowling Alone". It summed up an era.

The free market was giving us unprecedented individual choices. Liberal democracy was leaving us freer than ever to decide how to structure our lives. Morality had morphed into a seemingly infinite variety of lifestyles, to be put on and then discarded at will.

Social capital

In the decade since Bowling Alone was published, we've travelled further along the same trajectory. Two generations ago, newspapers, radio and television were configured in such a way that an entire nation was receiving the news at much the same time in much the same way. Now news and information-gathering have fragmented: there are myriad blogs, Twitter feeds and Facebook pages from which to choose those that resonate with your convictions-de-jour, allowing you to screen out all voices with which you disagree.

One way or another, it's been bad news for those associations - marriages, families, congregations and communities - through which we once lived out our biological imperatives as "the social animal". In the endless competition between our selfish genes and our group instincts, self has been winning, weakening, in Robert Bellah's words, "the subtle ties that bind human beings to one another, leaving them frightened and alone".

Now, in his new book American Grace, Putnam sets out the good news. A powerful store of social capital still exists. It is called religion: the churches, synagogues and other places of worship that still bring people together in shared belonging and mutual responsibility. The evidence shows that religious people - defined by regular attendance at a place of worship - actually do make better neighbours.

A survey carried out across the US between 2004 and 2006 showed that frequent church- or synagogue-goers were more likely to give money to charity. They were also more likely to do voluntary work for a charity, give money to a homeless person, donate blood, help a neighbour with housework, allow another driver to cut in front of them, offer a seat to a stranger or help someone find a job.

For some minor acts of help, there was no difference between frequent and non-churchgoers. But there was no good deed that was more commonly practised by secular Americans than by their religious counterparts. Religious Americans are simply more likely to give of their time and money to others, both within and beyond their own communities.

Their altruism goes further than this. Frequent worshippers are also significantly more active citizens. They are more likely to belong to community organisations, especially those concerned with young people, health, arts and leisure, neighbourhood and civic groups and professional associations. Within these organisations they are more likely to be officers or committee members. They play a bigger role in civic and political life, from local elections to town meetings to demonstrations. They are disproportionately represented among local activists for social and political reform. The margin of difference between them and the more secular is large.

Tested on attitudes, religiosity as measured by church or synagogue attendance turns out to be the best predictor of altruism and empathy: better than education, age, income, gender or race. On the basis of self-reported life satisfaction, religious people are also happier than their non-religious counterparts.

The art of association

Interestingly, each of these attributes is related not to people's religious beliefs, but to the frequency with which they attend a place of worship. Religion creates community, community creates altruism and altruism turns us away from self and towards the common good. Putnam goes so far as to speculate that an atheist who went regularly to church (perhaps because of a spouse) would be more likely to volunteer in a soup kitchen than a believer who prays alone. There is something about the tenor of relationships within a religious community that makes it the best tutorial in citizenship and good neighbourliness.

So, if we're searching for the big society, this is where we will find it. Politically, it's the idea of the moment, but it's what faith communities have been doing all along. It's their greatest strength and a large part of their raison d'être. They are an ongoing tutorial in the "art of association" that Alexis de Tocqueville saw as our apprenticeship in liberty.

Does this mean that we are about to become more religious as a society, or that charity is an adequate substitute for government spending, or that faith communities are our only source of altruism? No. Britain, relative to the US, is a highly secular society. Philanthropy alone cannot fill the gap left by government cutbacks. And the sources of altruism go deep into our evolutionary past.

My point is simply this. In thinking about religion and society in the 21st century, we should broaden the conversation about faith from doctrinal debates to the larger question of how it might inspire us to strengthen the bonds of belonging that redeem us from our solitude, helping us to construct together a gracious and generous social order.

Lord Sacks is Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth

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Tags: big society

9 comments

Thu, 2011-06-30 14:49 — geoff (not verified)

"religious people are also happier than their non-religious counterparts." Yes because they find it easy to see the world and their existence in rose tinted simplistic terms. Why not form a community based on reason and logic? surely they would come to the same conclusion that giving is good, and that selfishness is bad..

People aren't as dumb as they used to be.

Thu, 2011-06-30 15:11 — Language Game (not verified)

I'm not religious at all but I come to a massively different conclusion following logic from my atheism.

There is no good or bad (so giving cannot be "good") - such terms are human creations. There is no consequence to action in the over all picture.. everyone will die and so in the long run no action really matters and has no significance.

In fact I see no reason not to be selfish - as there is no point and no objective morality, why not purely pursue my own pleasure? It could be argued here that we have evolved such things as community as it has wider benefits within Socio-Biology but my answer to that is, so what? Why should I care... my selfish actions must be also determined in a similar matter - by what measure do you judge my deviance from Society?

Thu, 2011-06-30 15:11 — Language Game (not verified)

Sorry - that last comment was a response to geoff

Fri, 2011-07-01 14:19 — geoff (not verified)

Language Game,

What would you describe as the overall picture?

When has being a human creation been a prerequisite for something to not exist? I would say the opposite holds true. I mean even if god does not exist as a physical entity he still exists as a thought in billions of people, and as good and bad are not generally given material forms then they are a thought process too, still as real as these words that i am forming in my mind and transferring to this comments board IMO

"everyone will die and so in the long run no action really matters and has no significance"

Wouldn't the fact that we are on this planet for only a limited amount of time make our actions more significant, after all we do not have an eternity to mull over these decisions and even more poigniently no ability to change them. (no matter what attendance at a religious establishment may tell you otherwise)

I feel a bit undereducated to give an answer that would maybe change your outlook and i will not judge your on it at all, but i wholeheartedly dissagree with it, as pragmatic as it may be; for me it feel's good to be good, that is enough to tell me that it is indeed good. It doesn't however mean that i am a saint...

Fri, 2011-07-01 15:08 — Language Game (not verified)

geoff

To be honest I am being a but facetious and having a little bit of fun playing with an argument that I do not actually follow (otherwise I would just be in a brothel every night)- I do however still believe it is fairly logical.

The "overall picture" being that there is no meaning to everything, human beings happened due to a set of physical laws following out their natural course, concepts of morality and beauty are man made concepts, all men will die, the Universe will slowly go cold and have no energy. Nothing matters. Life is only significant because we decide it to be - but we the decision makers are deluded as to our importance in the grand scheme of things. There is no difference between human and chair - just particles that will be recycled... etc.. etc.. Fairly bleak - but logical.

I think that you rquestion about everything being more significant because the planet is around for a shirt amount of time making everything more significant would only hold true if there was a God. Otherwise - so what? The really significant thing would be to ensure that I am in a better position to spread my genes than anyone else. Even that does not matter though as eventually all will come to an end and did not have any meaning or significance in the first place.

Fri, 2011-07-01 15:48 — geoff (not verified)

Do you mean there is no meaning to everything or there is no meaning to anything?

You state that one day the Universe will slowly go cold and have no energy (I'm assuming you meant to infinity). This seems to be the basis of the particular outlook you are peddling; to me logic disagrees with you. If this really was the case then how could such an occurance begin if it has no end... its quite impossible. The reoccuring Big Bang theory seems far more plausible to me, what form that takes is i think unknowable and it opens a heck of a lot of questions. But none the less, it seems apparent to me that the Universe operates on a Cyclical basis to what end i dunno...

If i believed the nature of the universe was as you do, i beleive i would feel equally despondent with virtue and morality (unless ofcourse i was a religious believer), but it seems to me that it simply isn't the case.

And i said everything is more significant because WE, as in my and your conciousness, are only around for a short time, the planet itself is irrelevant as is god.

Thu, 2011-06-30 17:58 — Daulat Ram (not verified)

Civlization is only possible because religion was criticised. A little pothunter liked Sacks, drawing a huge and easy income from peddling chicken-headed superstitions, will be the last to admit it.

Fri, 2011-07-01 21:33 — Mrs.Josephine Hyde-Hartley (not verified)

I've often wondered about the term " human being". I suppose it serves to remind us quite well of the essential aspects of what one really is at any time, any place anywhere. What's so scary about being one human being? What about hermits?

Personally I don't share this rather muddled and sentimental view that;

"in the endless competition between our selfish genes and our group instincts, self has been winning, weakening, in Robert Bellah's words, "the subtle ties that bind human beings to one another, leaving them frightened and alone",
although one can fully understand how easy it is to get certain myths and realities confused.

In my view it might seem closer to the truth to tell of subtle ties that bind human beings to one another which perhaps because they are so subtle (if not completely intangible and unaccountable) are in themselves somehow part of the reason so many of us seem to be sadly frightened of being human, alone.

However, we are not like a load of silly fishes in the sea or even headless chickens running about. We've all been blessed with some measure of common sense and I thank God he sent Jesus His son, to tell us that even when two or more are gathered together in His name ( ie Emmanuel) God is therefore with us. Also, here in the UK we have the Freedom of Information Act which helps.

From this position it's probably highly likely that as a Christian one might understand any evidence which shows that religious people - defined by regular attendance at a place of worship - actually do make better neighbours.

But without good faith in God and his mercy - it's all too easy to become inward looking and then of course we may as well be on that fast track to oblivion that leads us into terrible temptations..like eg those dreadful situations where improvement ends up stuck - because of the usual frustrations pertaining to unnecessarily exclusive methodologies and inappropriate tactics.

So in my view, what Lord Sacks is getting at when thinking about religion and society in ways which effectively delete the usual frustrations associated with doctrinal debates - is how can we look more clearly at the larger question of how one's faith, hope and charity might strengthen the bonds of belonging that can redeem anyone from (otherwise unwanted) solitude, helping us to construct together a gracious and generous social order.

One wonders if Lord Sacks is getting at the re-drawing of the same so-called social contract that the deputy governor of the Bank of England was talking about the other day.

My point is this. There may jolly well be more to good works and good workers than meets the eye and thanks to our individual rights as human beings to privacy, dignity and autonomy etc. Thus we might just as well be hordes of angels - than herds of animals.

Tue, 2011-07-05 12:00 — Assia W. (not verified)

I'm going to skip past direct references to various points in this article and even skip offering a point on it and skip to telling you about a personal experience of a religious community. I grew up in a semi-religious immigrant enclave. There were those among us who went to church every sunday and those who went every other sunday and then those who went every christmas. I saw a marked level of difference between the various groups of attenders on every level.Those who attended church every sunday were, frankly, as I later found out as an adult, were pompous, sanctimonious, judgemental, hypocritical, petty, gossiping ( about each other, incessantly. What happened to 'love thy neighbour"??)and do not claim to be idiots and those that negative adjectives slowly dwindled away as you got to the people who only came at Christmas. The first lot, the ultra-religious lot, never did anything for anyone unless it was a direct way of promoting their own holiness and their perceived moral 'right' to be viewed as 'good' and in some ways 'kinder', 'fairer' more 'giving' and wiser simply because they were religious.
I found out the hard way, though, when my family needed help that though they might very well take some poor stranger in for a night or two they'll very quickly revert to ordinary human fault and reject you, someone they've known for years, on petty personal grounds and that even that poor stranger, they won't really help. What good is charity if it doesn't really do anything but sustain someone in an already bad situation? If it doesn't help one beyond that?
Okay, I'll have to refer to the article now, you say in your article :

"Frequent worshippers are also significantly more active citizens. They are more likely to belong to community organisations, especially those concerned with young people, health, arts and leisure, neighbourhood and civic groups and professional associations. Within these organisations they are more likely to be officers or committee members. They play a bigger role in civic and political life, from local elections to town meetings to demonstrations. They are disproportionately represented among local activists for social and political reform. The margin of difference between them and the more secular is large."

Allright. I do not even know where to start here except maybe with saying the reason they are 'disproportionally represented' and that there are more of them in xyz public good fields than secular people is because religious people, when given the chance,push secular people out of those fields and prefer to work alongside their fellow christians/muslims/jews than amongst secular people. In a traditional village community, for example, what matters most when someone is made head of a local committee? Well, if the village has church, it's normally , is xyz person someone we see there on sundays. Now that could be
because in a village there's little else to do and nowhere else to meet members of your local community on a Sunday, true but even that fact shows that primarily, paradoxically, the real reason for this increased 'bonding' between people in church is simply because it's church and not religion that brings people together, forces them to be together in one room long enough to want to play-act at their own individual society and so on. This shouldn't and isn't necessarily a bad thing but maybe it ought to be viewed under the correct term of 'human nature' as opposed to 'religious fervour". Church-goers are not any better than their fellow human beings at anything. They are not Angels, they are just as weak and flawed and capable just as much of indifference and cruelty.
I grew up also with an experience of the Church of England and I wish I could say the people there were better than the people in my church but actually, they were'nt. They were also split into their own, sinister cliques that first of all have to decide they 'approve' of someone before they help them and what's worse, half of them were only there because they wanted their nice middle-class children to get into certain schools.
The protection of public good, our fellow human beings lies with every one of us and I don't think it's right to say that solely worshippers, religious people are good at investing time and money in that.
Especially at a time like this, when the government is cutting funds to public bodies, charities, etc, leaving the quite possibly, also, secular people without a leg to stand on in their wish to help others, even though, of course, it's maybe a good idea to cling to Church and religion as the way out of a nasty predicament ( thankfully Cameron hasn't yet started cutting the Church's purse strings, who knows, he might though)
it is flawed logic to presume that the Church and Religion could 'save' our society from suffering more or even, in the same way a secular, government-presided movement of public love and concern could. Ordinary people, ordinary communities would never have the money or the resources to help everyone. Our government does. It's a shame it's not standing up to that responsibility and, instead, spitting at it.