Now that it is one of Republicans' leading issues, I would think that if you're someone who identifies as Republican but is non-religious, immigration is probably a top issue for you.
If you're religious and a self-identified Republican, it COULD be a top issue for you, but it could also be something you don't care much about; you identify as Republican for other reasons. So even though religious Republicans as a group tend to share the instincts of non-religious Republicans on this topic in broad terms, the result is watered down and more mixed, because it's a lower priority.
A little harder to make sense of what's going on with religious Democrats though. Especially since the finding holds after your regression controls, so it's presumably not just an age or race thing.
If I had to guess:
If you look at someone like a *weekly-attending* 30-year-old white male Democrat (which is kind of an unusual specimen) -- I might guess that his peer group is likely to be pretty conservative relative to a 30-year-old *never-attending* white male Democrat. He likely goes to an evangelical church -- that's where the young people are -- where he's kind of an oddball in his church peer group but still generally accepted. I know people like this. Relative to his never-attending counterpart, he likely lives in a more conservative place, where church attendance is higher.
So what you see from the slope of the line is his peers are influencing him on two issues: abortion and immigration. Why those two? Because they're the two hottest-button issues; the ones his peers care about. He still remains to the left of them on this, but he basically positions himself towards the middle. On things that people talk about less, like the EPA and ACA, peers have less influence. There, he's more influenced by media.
One problem with this thesis is that it's surprising to me that such a person isn't more influenced by his peers on guns though.
Regarding immigration and healthcare, I wonder if the churches Democrats and Republicans attend speak about those issues more or less. On those two issues, which churches are more likely to speak about them in church?
The min at my Episcopal church doesn't deliver political messages, but they sure do deliver (fairly often) on social issues ones. (A couple of times at the end of a sermon people in the pews clap....honest.)
I believe a missing variable is age. Is it possible that older people attend more frequently and (without an implication of causality) have a different opinion about issues such as health care and immigration. In other words, older people are more conservative, on some issues, and also attend more frequently, which is impacting the data.
Isn’t church just selection effects and not treatment effects? @Rob Kurzban has noted that we should think about church as a support group for people with certain lifestyle interests. That is people go to church based on what they already believe (and stop going when they stop believing stuff), it doesn’t cause the beliefs. This explains how people across a lifespan might attend, then not attend, then attend church again. Look at their lifestyle interests and their interests in putting the finger on the scale for cultural norms that serve their self-interests. This is easily seen with abortion for example if you look at correlative beliefs and how that interacts with church attendance. https://pleeps.org/2015/01/15/abortion-and-self-interest/
1. It would be really interesting to see breakdowns of this that also look at splits by denomination (or even major categories, like Catholic, Mainline Protestant, Evangelical, etc.)
2. It would also be interesting to see how this holds for other questions that were asked regarding these issue areas. For example, the EPA’s ability to regulate CO2 is one small issue within a large field of environmental issues; it would be interesting to see what the correlations are on other questions. (And same for the other issues!) And with abortion, for example, my understanding is that public opinion changes drastically based on the trimester and circumstances of the pregnancy.
3. I appreciate the note at the end about how correlation ≠ causation. That said, given that reality of not having causal data here, isn’t the post title (“When Church Attendance Influences Political Views”) perhaps a bit overstated then?
Even conservative churches like Baptists push immigration. I don’t believe in illegal immigration because I’m Hispanic and live on the border which went red on this issue. The Catholic Church is the worst for pushing immigration legal or not. For me my religion has no bearing
RE: For Democrats, it’s also a positive sloping line and it’s much steeper. In other words, the more Democrats go to church, the more they look like Republicans on this issue.
ME: Given the socioeconomic status you've spoken about often -- i.e. that those who attend church more often tend to be better educated, hence "better off," -- I'm making a somewhat informed comment here that those weekly attending Dems who want to revoke the ACA aren't worried about their health care, nor do they have family that benefits from/uses it, so they don't actually understand the impact that revocation will have on millions of people they don't know (or perhaps care about).
All comments on my comment would be appreciated....because I really do want to understand (nuance) why this might be occuring.
Awesome read, I’ve had a feeling about this but seeing the numbers is great
On immigration:
Now that it is one of Republicans' leading issues, I would think that if you're someone who identifies as Republican but is non-religious, immigration is probably a top issue for you.
If you're religious and a self-identified Republican, it COULD be a top issue for you, but it could also be something you don't care much about; you identify as Republican for other reasons. So even though religious Republicans as a group tend to share the instincts of non-religious Republicans on this topic in broad terms, the result is watered down and more mixed, because it's a lower priority.
A little harder to make sense of what's going on with religious Democrats though. Especially since the finding holds after your regression controls, so it's presumably not just an age or race thing.
If I had to guess:
If you look at someone like a *weekly-attending* 30-year-old white male Democrat (which is kind of an unusual specimen) -- I might guess that his peer group is likely to be pretty conservative relative to a 30-year-old *never-attending* white male Democrat. He likely goes to an evangelical church -- that's where the young people are -- where he's kind of an oddball in his church peer group but still generally accepted. I know people like this. Relative to his never-attending counterpart, he likely lives in a more conservative place, where church attendance is higher.
So what you see from the slope of the line is his peers are influencing him on two issues: abortion and immigration. Why those two? Because they're the two hottest-button issues; the ones his peers care about. He still remains to the left of them on this, but he basically positions himself towards the middle. On things that people talk about less, like the EPA and ACA, peers have less influence. There, he's more influenced by media.
One problem with this thesis is that it's surprising to me that such a person isn't more influenced by his peers on guns though.
Regarding immigration and healthcare, I wonder if the churches Democrats and Republicans attend speak about those issues more or less. On those two issues, which churches are more likely to speak about them in church?
I've done quite a bit of work on this topic. There's a chapter in 20 Myths about Religion and Politics in America that addresses it directly.
The clear impression from the data is that few weekly attenders report their pastor delivering political messages from the pulpit on a regular basis.
And this post is in the same vein:
https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/do-church-goers-want-to-hear-more
The min at my Episcopal church doesn't deliver political messages, but they sure do deliver (fairly often) on social issues ones. (A couple of times at the end of a sermon people in the pews clap....honest.)
The second most shocking thing here is that there's a coding at all to the ACA.
I believe a missing variable is age. Is it possible that older people attend more frequently and (without an implication of causality) have a different opinion about issues such as health care and immigration. In other words, older people are more conservative, on some issues, and also attend more frequently, which is impacting the data.
The last data visualization is a regression model with controls for things like age, gender, and race.
This should address the possibility that older people tend to be both more conservative and more likely to attend church.
Isn’t church just selection effects and not treatment effects? @Rob Kurzban has noted that we should think about church as a support group for people with certain lifestyle interests. That is people go to church based on what they already believe (and stop going when they stop believing stuff), it doesn’t cause the beliefs. This explains how people across a lifespan might attend, then not attend, then attend church again. Look at their lifestyle interests and their interests in putting the finger on the scale for cultural norms that serve their self-interests. This is easily seen with abortion for example if you look at correlative beliefs and how that interacts with church attendance. https://pleeps.org/2015/01/15/abortion-and-self-interest/
Do you mean causality not casualty?
Any studies on Nones who regularly attend church?
Interesting post, thanks for this!
1. It would be really interesting to see breakdowns of this that also look at splits by denomination (or even major categories, like Catholic, Mainline Protestant, Evangelical, etc.)
2. It would also be interesting to see how this holds for other questions that were asked regarding these issue areas. For example, the EPA’s ability to regulate CO2 is one small issue within a large field of environmental issues; it would be interesting to see what the correlations are on other questions. (And same for the other issues!) And with abortion, for example, my understanding is that public opinion changes drastically based on the trimester and circumstances of the pregnancy.
3. I appreciate the note at the end about how correlation ≠ causation. That said, given that reality of not having causal data here, isn’t the post title (“When Church Attendance Influences Political Views”) perhaps a bit overstated then?
Even conservative churches like Baptists push immigration. I don’t believe in illegal immigration because I’m Hispanic and live on the border which went red on this issue. The Catholic Church is the worst for pushing immigration legal or not. For me my religion has no bearing
RE: For Democrats, it’s also a positive sloping line and it’s much steeper. In other words, the more Democrats go to church, the more they look like Republicans on this issue.
ME: Given the socioeconomic status you've spoken about often -- i.e. that those who attend church more often tend to be better educated, hence "better off," -- I'm making a somewhat informed comment here that those weekly attending Dems who want to revoke the ACA aren't worried about their health care, nor do they have family that benefits from/uses it, so they don't actually understand the impact that revocation will have on millions of people they don't know (or perhaps care about).
All comments on my comment would be appreciated....because I really do want to understand (nuance) why this might be occuring.