Religion and Socio-Political Attitudes in Britain

1. Religion and Socio-Political Attitudes in Britain Siobhan McAndrew Institute for Social Change University of Manchester

2. Objective To investigate how religiosity affects socio-political attitudes across various domains • Bioethical attitudes • Relationship values • Political party choice • Social trust

3. Measuring religiosity • Typology approach: categorise respondents as • Religious: believe, affiliate, and attend • Fuzzily-faithful: believe, affiliate, or attend • Unreligious: do not believe, affiliate or attend • Religiosity scale based on 14 items

4. Measuring religiosity • Typology approach: categorise respondents as • Religious: believe, affiliate, and attend.................28% • Fuzzily-faithful: believe, affiliate, or attend.........39% • Unreligious: do not believe, affiliate or attend.....33% • Religiosity scale based on 14 items

5. 14 items for religiosity scale

7. How does religiosity affect: ?

8. 1. Bioethical attitudes 0-15 scale using following items: Do you agree that... Life begins with conception? Scientists should be able to use embryo cells in research? Abortion is wrong if the foetus has a birth defect? Abortion is wrong if the parents are poor? Doctors should be able to end life of a patient with a painful incurable disease?

9. ... but the tail is being wagged by the religious.

10. Religiosity has large impact – the more religious are much less liberal Higher income and education associated with more liberal attitudes But surprisingly... Age has no significant impact n = 1247 R2adj = 0.23

11. 2.“Family Values”

12. Literature to date: • Little confessional voting in GB. Class, education important • Left-right dimension dominates, ‘cultural’ variables less important But: • Muslim/Socialist Worker alliance 2004-7 • Christian Party • Recent papers on party choice control for affiliation or denomination. 2001 paper suggested effect may be because: • Historical legacy • Ethnic minorities tend to vote Labour • Social capital effect • Priming from church ministers 3. Religion and party choice ‘The Church of England is the Conservative Party at Prayer’

13. Multinomial logistic regression Being more religious is associated with being more likely to support Tory or Labour Other socio-demographic and ideological variables are as expected ... so why is religiosity significant?

14. Religiosity is mediated by other variables (e.g. authoritarianism) • Unobserved factors influence both religiosity and party choice (e.g. personality type, type of upbringing) • Party choice influences religiosity (i.e. religiosity is endogenous regressor) Possible explanations: result is valid, or...

15. How party choice might affect religiosity... • US twin study: intensity of party support has a genetic component, religiosity entirely socially transmitted • GB parent-to-child religious transmission 50% likely if both parents are religious. If religiosity is a choice variable, it could be shaped by political attitudes • Variation in religiosity that exists prior to political attitude formation used to identify causal effect of religiosity on party choice • Mother’s church attendance used as instrument

16. Mother’s church attendance correlates with respondent’s religiosity, but not with party choice • Mother’s church attendance does not directly affect respondent’s party choice • We use religiosity predicted by mother’s church attendance to examine party choice • Respondent’s religiosity causally affects their party choice Two-step OLS-logit approach

17. 4. Generalised social trust Saguaro Seminar: in the US ‘houses of worship build and sustain more social capital – and social capital of more varied forms – than any other type of institution in America’

18. 4. Generalised social trust Saguaro Seminar: in the US ‘houses of worship build and sustain more social capital – and social capital of more varied forms – than any other type of institution in America’

19. 4. Generalised social trust Saguaro Seminar: in the US ‘houses of worship build and sustain more social capital – and social capital of more varied forms – than any other type of institution in America’

20. Summary 1 The more religious are: • much less likely to hold liberal bioethical attitudes • more likely to think homosexuality is wrong • more likely to support Labour or the Conservatives (vs. no party) – and this is causal

21. Summary 2 Religiosity makes little difference regarding: • Attitudes towards extra-marital sex • Attitudes towards traditional gender roles • Supporting other political parties vs. none Need to examine further: • Social capital (measured by trust).

22. Comments • Religious organisations concern themselves with when life begins and ends. Secular society is less directive. • In other areas, religious organisations have less to say: Britons acquire their norms elsewhere. • That religiosity affects party choice is a puzzle... which needs further investigation.

23. Thank you for listening!siobhan.mcandrew@manchester.ac.uk

24. Causal analysis: two approaches • Two-stage OLS-multinomial regression: parental attendance as an instrument to examine the causal effect of religiosity on party choice • Hypothesis: religiosity is formed by socialisation which may have a causal effect on party choice • Data are cross-sectional: do not identify the causal order of religiosity formation and party choice. If religiosity is endogenous to party choice estimates of its effects are biased • Possible that both are jointly determined by unobserved values. Exploit data on parental religiosity to find variation in religiosity formed prior to party choice • Structural equation model: authoritarianism as a mediating variable. Hypothesis: religiosity does not affect party choice directly, but affects an individual’s position on the liberalism-authoritarianism scale. In turn this affects party choice