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Faith, friendship and community
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Sociologist Peter Berger once said that your choice of friends determines your choice of gods.
And it seems true that people united in any faith have more relationships and make better neighbors than those who are alienated from others. Political scientists Robert Putnam and David Campbell have conducted studies showing that religious Americans are three to four times as likely to be involved in their communities as non-religous Americans. They are more likely to join voluntary associations, attend public meetings, contribute time and effort to political activity and vote. They are also considered "nicer" in day-to-day interactions with others.
Of course, social scientists are reluctant to immediately ascribe causality to these types of observed correlations. Any reader may have looked at the last paragraph and thought the relationship might reflect some other underlying variables. That's why Putnam and Campbell tested the relationship between religious participation and community activism, and found that people who hadn't attended church in the past became more engaged after they did, finding this effect to be "huge."
The reason for increased civic engagement seems to be the social relationships people make in religious groups, regardless of ideology. Specific doctrines encouraging civic involvement or pro-social behavior have less effect than these social contacts. They find that the more friends religious people have, the more likely they are to participate in civic events, to be active in a "moral community" of friends and fellow congregants.
Putnam and Campbell conclude it's not faith that accounts for this, but faith communities. By contrast, people who attend religious services regularly but don't have any friends there look more like secularists.
Young people are less likely than older ones to join religious groups, in part because of the political ascendance of the religious right. They find that "politicization of religion triggered great hostility toward religion." As many as 25 percent of young people, many of whom believe in God, report being turned off by how political American religion has become. Thus, surveys find a dramatic growth in secularism and lack of any religious affiliation.
Other researchers find divergent trends in some specific populations. CathNewsUSA reports research finding that active Catholics are younger than less involved ones. Also, a study by the Hartford Institute for Religous Research reports that mega-churches (ones with more than two thousand members) attract younger people and singles more than the average Protestant church.
Some observers disagree that religious people are better citizens. Ron Millar of the Secular Coalition of America says young secularists are just as likely to volunteer for worthy causes as believers. For example, he cites the Secular Students Association's volunteering to help Habit for Humanity and Katrina assistance. Millar adds, "We just don't say we're driven by our non-belief in God to do good work."
Taken together all these findings support the conclusion that membership in a community of believers -- or a community of ostensible non-believers -- does play a major role in determining how people deal with others. Tentative findings on younger people versus older ones hint at a possible trend toward increased need for community among people regardless of their professed ideologies.
It's tempting to see how these findings illustrate yet again the wisdom of Paul's belief that members of the community he was helping build, the early church, are incorporated in a living body.
For more info: A summary of the Putnam and Campbell studies was prepared by Daniel Burke of RNS. See Congregants make better citizens, says new study. The Christian Century, June 16, 2009, p. 16. The senior investigator, Robert D. Putnam, is the author of the oft-cited study, Bowling alone: the collapse and revival of American community (2000). In his research Putnam shows how people have become increasingly disconnected from a wide variety of social contacts. He concluded that the shrinking access to "social capital," the reward of communal activity and sharing, is a serious threat to civic and personal health.
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