Does The Welfare State Kill Religion?
Loren Michael
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What accounts for cross-national variation in religiosity as measured by church attendance and non-religious rates? Examining answers from both secularization theory and the religious economy perspective, we assert that cross-national variation in religious participation is a function of government welfare spending and provide a theory that links macro-social outcomes with individual rationality.
http://faculty.washington.edu/tgill/Gill%20Lundsgaarde%20Welfare%20Religion.pdf
It's an interesting hypothesis. If welfare states make church social services unnecessary, do churches cease to have a deep role in people's lives? Do they appear increasingly irrelevant to the poor? Here's a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the above study on the subject:
http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2007/02/a_case_of_the_m_1.html
There's a statistically significant relationship between a Christian country's welfare spending as a percentage of GDP and the percentage of people in it who report attending church weekly, even when controlling for such variables as education and whether the country is Catholic or not. The weakness of the study comes not from its lack of data, but from flaws in how the variables are defined, failure to look for alternative explanations, and problems with individual case studies.
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The study's ultimate downfall is not so much that it is wrong as that it is woefully incomplete, concentrating on perhaps the least enlightening theory available.
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The study's ultimate downfall is not so much that it is wrong as that it is woefully incomplete, concentrating on perhaps the least enlightening theory available.
So, flawed study = ample room for wanton speculation. Why the (perceived?) correlation between welfare spending and religiosity? It has been noted that the idea holds true even within the United States, with more secular regions being more welfare-prone.
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I agree. It's a poor study on that front, but I think it's an interesting correlation, and open enough for discussion.
As for correlation vs causation, the fact that there is always a need for charity towards somewhere in the world would surely sway this a little bit. Most of the public religious appeals here in the UK seem based more towards assisting those in other nations. That said it might be as a non church-goer I'm not so exposed to church run soup kitchens and the like (other than the Salvation Army), still even Christian Aid seems to advertise that its not really a religious group but more a organisation dedicated to helping the poor in other countries. Most of the major charities here other than the Salvation Army seem to be secular.
If you do not need support, it loses much of its appeal.
Of course, there are always emotions, networking uses, PR, and so forth to keep attendance up.
-Old fashioned musical taste were not to be described as 'B.C' (Before Crosby)
-No references to 'lavatories'
-No jokes about 'effeminacy in men' (homosexuality)
-No double entendre allusions to ladies' underwear like 'winter draws on'.
-No sexual allusions of any kind: no talk of 'rabbits' or 'suchlike animal habits'.
-No jokes or references that might encourage strikes or industrial disputes.
In other words, the national broadcaster had a keen sense of its own new role, in supplanting the church as moral arbiter of the populace.
That's an...interesting take on the culture of the Beeb. By interesting, I mean '90% bollocks'. There's a dozen other reasons for broadcast decency standards which have othing to do with 'the state' (because TV presenters are indistinguishable from the government!) wanting to control culture. Examples: They had ratings to win in order to justify funding, which was controlled by the British upper class, who were very concerned with appearances, as was British culture in general at the time (hell, it still is in many ways). They also couldn't afford to piss off the church in those days, so they had to be careful about standards. Still, within ten years a lot of the guidelines above were being cheerfully subverted by comics and variety show hosts. I think you're vastly overestimating the desire of the state to act in the moral arbiter's role you describe, and it seems to be stemming from that 'EURUP IS TEH SOCIALIST' meme that keeps popping up. I find that somewhat irksome.
Unfortunately, it is obviously not the case. There are still poor people who fall through the cracks, as proved by the number of homeless people sleeping on the streets, and the number of destitutes begging for money. As long as this will be the case, we as a society will continue to need the social services of churches and of any other organisation that wishes to offer them.
Places that are secular spend more on welfare because they don't think people are poor because of 'god's will' or something, so are more willing to vote in this sort of stuff.
The thing is, Europe certainly 'was' teh socialist. Postwar Europe, 1945-1970. Eastern Europe, obviously in the thrall of the USSR. Western Europe: dominated by the Social Democratic movement. Was this movement 'socialism'? That probably depends on how you define it. It was a political theory that put aside its Marxists origins of "class struggle" and revolution, advocating instead incremental improvements. But the 19th century socialist vision was not disgarded. The majority of mid-twentieth-century European Social Democrats maintained as an article of faith that capitalism was inherantly disfunctional and that socialism was morally and economically superior, and it is because of this vision that you get the European welfare state, which was a completely radical social transformation.
Early in this period, I think you can certainly claim that the state took an active role over the morals and opinions of its people. Until the 1960's, homosexual intercourse was still illegal: advocating gay sex or even depicting it in art was criminal. Abortion was illegal. Divorce eveywhere was difficult, often impossible and carried huge social stigma. Gambling was illegal- in the UK till 1960. Until 1960, if a British Citizen commited murder they could recieve the death sentence. The Government formed the National Theatre in 1946 (even though theatre was becoming less and less popular). In 1947, The Government added sixpence to local taxes to pay for local artistic initiatives (but only those deemed to be in the best of taste).
In Britain, citizens were forbidden to read anything their betters judged as 'obscene' or politically sensitive. Government agencies still enforced censorship of theatre, cinema, literature, radio and television, and newspapers. Commertial televison was strictly regulated and legaly obliged to offer "enlightenment and information" as well as entertainment- to say nothing of the BBC. As late as 1960, penguin books was prosecuted for publishing Lady Chatterley's Lover: controversial because of its inter-class eroticism.
This state of affairs would change, as you and I know. But it existed.
Yes. Yes it was.
It most certainly did not dispense with the notion of class struggle. It was and still is a very important part of revisionist Marxism (social democracy/democratic socialism). The disagreement between Bernstein and Marx wasn't in the necessity of revolution, either. Marx wrote of the proletarian revolution coming as a historical inevitability; when the necessary pre-requisites never manifested, Bernstein and other theorists attempted to modify basic Marxist theory to reflect these new realities (along with attempting to add a moral component to class struggle). This resulted in the concept of evolutionary socialism
The state still does today. Come on, CRTC content requirements? Broadcast regulations? Still can't swear on newscasts.
You're forgetting witchcraft. It was illegal until 1944 or 1945. (The illegality of some act doesn't necessarily reflect the real social situation or it's acceptability. Re: marijuana usage and selling in British Columbia).
What are you talking about?
As they still do today. All of those things are strictly regulated. There are still government censors, there are laws preventing libel or defamation. Up until the 1980's in the US there were laws that stipulated that news services and programs had to provide objective and fair representation of all sides of any given story.
There isn't much of a difference.
Better then what the state does for them which is tell them not to sleep in a place for too long or the police will prod them out of it.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Why not?