Abstract
Religion is considered by many practitioners to form the foundation of morality. However, religiosity varies substantially at the individual and societal level. Understanding this variation from an evolutionary perspective can aid in disentangling religion and morality. This chapter presents a study that sought set to replicate and extend previous findings regarding Norris and Inglehart’s (Sacred and Secular: Religion and Worldwide Politics, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2004) “Secure Society Theory” of religiosity, which states that religiosity varies with the extent to which one feels secure in one’s environment. The relationship between individual perceptions of societal security—as opposed to national indicators—and religiosity has yet to be tested. The study addressed this by analyzing data from the General Social Survey, supplemented by the FBI and the US Census data. Results indicated that the extent to which one feels safe walking around one’s neighborhood at night predicts religiosity, even when crime rate, poverty rate, age, sex, and race are controlled statistically. Additionally, time series analyses of data from 1980 to 2012 provided partial support for Secure Society Theory, with neighborhood fear and poverty predicting future religiosity.
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This chapter is based on Liddle (2015).
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Liddle, J.R. (2016). Disentangling Religion and Morality: An Analysis of Religiosity in the United States. In: Shackelford, T., Hansen, R. (eds) The Evolution of Morality. Evolutionary Psychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19671-8_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19671-8_11
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