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The Flesh and The Devil: Belief in Religious Evil and Views of Sexual Morality

  • Research Note
  • Published:
Review of Religious Research

Abstract

We examine an understudied connection between religion and sexuality: beliefs about the reality of supernatural evil (Satan, hell, and demons). After controlling for multiple other aspects of religiosity, beliefs about religious evil remain a strong and consistent predictor of attitudes about issues involving sexuality, including abortion, homosexuality, premarital sex, extramarital sex, and pornography use. Further, the effects of religious service attendance on attitudes about sexuality are contingent upon beliefs about religious evil. Moral condemnation of non-traditional sexuality is significantly higher among regular religious participants who believe strongly in religious evil compared to actively religious people who disbelieve in religious evil, as well as compared to people who do not attend religious services. Beliefs about religious evil are therefore central to understanding the empirical connections between religion and support for conservative, traditional views of sexual morality.

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Notes

  1. http://voiceofthefamily.com/about/ retrieved September 5, 2018.

  2. In these analyses, all religious nones are religiously nonaffiliated theists, as atheists could not complete the image of God items we use as controls. Importantly, nonaffiliated theists are more politically conservative than non-theists, including on issues of gender and sexuality, although they are still generally more liberal than actively religious people (see Baker and Smith 2015).

  3. In supplemental analyses we also examined each of the indicators on the abortion index in separate models. Views of religious evil were significantly (p < .05) related to more restrictive views of abortion in each circumstance, with the exception of instances where the family cannot afford a child, where belief in religious evil was marginally significant (p = .1).

  4. This same interactive effect can be shown for views of the Bible and frequency of religious service attendance. Importantly, however, the interactive effect of religious evil and attendance demonstrates which aspect of theological conservatism is most connected to views of sexual im/morality.

  5. In supplemental analyses we tested for interactions between beliefs about religious evil and religious tradition, and there were some interesting and significant results. Beliefs about religious evil had a significantly stronger effect on a restrictive stance toward abortion among black Protestants compared to evangelicals. On the single-item sexual morality outcomes, beliefs about religious evil had a significantly stronger positive relationship on condemnation of premarital sex for evangelicals compared to mainline Protestants or Catholics. Similarly, religious evil was significantly more strongly connected to condemning homosexuality and porn use among evangelicals compared to Catholics. Research on frames of religious evil within and across different traditions is needed in future research.

  6. Replacing our three-item index of belief in religious evil with only the question about belief in Satan, the single-item predictor remains statistically significant in all models except views of extramarital sex (where it remains marginally significant; p = .055), and the interaction effect with religious service attendance remains strong and significant for all outcomes.

  7. Although the main outcomes used in this study do not directly measure “othering,” we tested for this possibility using data from the 2014 Chapman Survey of American Fears, which included both a feeling thermometer about “homosexuals” and an item asking for agreement with the statement: “Satan causes most evil in the world.” Belief in an active Satan was strongly and negatively related to scores on the feeling thermometer in an OLS regression model that included controls for sociodemographics, political views, religious tradition, religious attendance, and biblical literalism. Further, the measure of belief in an active Satan was the strongest religious predictor of “othering” sexual minorities. The full model for this analysis is available in the supplemental appendix (Table A1).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. East Tennessee State University, Box 70644, Johnson City, TN, 37614, USA

    Joseph O. Baker

  2. Chapman University, Orange, CA, USA

    Andrea Molle & Christopher D. Bader

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  1. Joseph O. Baker
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  2. Andrea Molle
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Baker, J.O., Molle, A. & Bader, C.D. The Flesh and The Devil: Belief in Religious Evil and Views of Sexual Morality. Rev Relig Res 62, 133–151 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-020-00403-4

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