Theological Modernism, Cultural Libertarianism and Laissez-Faire Economics in Contemporary European Societies - Statistical Data Included

Sociology of Religion, Spring, 2001 by Nancy J. Davis, Robert V. Robinson

Nancy J. Davis [*]

Through analyses of national surveys of 12 European countries and Israel, we test hypotheses relating moral cosmology to cultural and economic attitudes. Modernists are theologically more individualistic than the religiously orthodox in that they see individuals, not a deity, as responsible for their fates and as the ultimate moral arbiters. We hypothesize that modernists, as theological individualists, are culturally individualistic or libertarian in supporting freedom of choice on cultural issues of abortion, sexuality, religious education, and gender roles. We hypothesize as well that modernists are economically individualistic in believing that individuals are responsible for their own success or failure and that the solution to poverty and unemployment is greater effort by the poor and jobless themselves, not government aid or private charity. In our analyses we find support for both hypotheses. In conventional political terms, modernists are to the left of the religiously orthodox on cultural concerns but to the right of the orthodox on economic issues. What explains this paradox is the individualism that underlies both cultural libertarianism and laissez-faire economics.

In Europe, as in the United States, it is common for scholars to link religious traditionalism with right-wing politics, and religious modernism or secularism with progressive politics (Almond, et al. 1991b: 476; Arnold 1990: 186; Brechon 1996; Coleman 1992: 85; Conradt 1986: 134; Harding et al. 1986: 64; Kirschenbaum 1993; Mayer 1995; Mossuz-Lavau 1992; Percheron 1982; Safran 1991; Soper 1994; Szawiel 1993; Talin 1995; Taylor 1985). While much has been written about the secularization of Europe (e.g., Abbruzzese 1995; Acquaviva [1961] 1979; Bruce 1995; Dobbelaere 1986; Dogan 1995), communities of the religiously orthodox (e.g., Comunione e Liberazione in Italy, the Charismatic Renewal movement in France, Protestant Restorationists in Great Britain) are found in all European countries (Zadra 1991; Arnold 1990; Walker 1987). Both modernists and the orthodox in Europe have successfully mobilized their followers to pursue political objectives, yet few European academics, politicians, or journalists characterize their populations as so strongly polarized along moral or religious lines as the United States has been portrayed by leading sociologists of religion writing about the "culture war" (Hunter 1991; Wuthnow 1988). Nonetheless, the convention wisdom in Europe is that modernists tend to be left and the religiously orthodox right, suggesting some degree of polarization.

In this paper, we test hypotheses relating moral cosmology to cultural and economic attitudes in contemporary European societies. We begin by showing that what distinguishes modernists (including both believers and secularists) from the religiously orthodox is their greater individualism. Modernists are theologically individualistic in that they see individuals themselves, not God, as the ultimate judges of what is morally right and wrong, and as responsible for determining the course of their lives. We argue that modernists, as theological individualists, are more likely than the religiously orthodox to be individualistic in their cultural and economic beliefs. In the cultural sphere, individualism or libertarianism entails support of individual freedom on issues of abortion, sexuality, religious education, and the division of tasks between husbands and wives. In the economic sphere, individualism or laissez-faire economics holds each person responsible for his or her own economic fate and sees the solution to poverty or joblessness not as requiring more government spending on public assistance programs or more private charity, but greater individual effort on the part of the poor and jobless to pull themselves up. Our hypotheses thus place modernists, in conventional unidimensional political terms, to the left of the orthodox on cultural issues but to their right on economic concerns. What explains the seeming paradox in the political stances of modernists and the orthodox is the individualism that for modernists underlies both their emphasis on individual choice in matters of lifestyle and their insistence on individual responsibility for economic failure or success. In this paper, we test our arguments on data for 12 European countries and Israel, a country with strong European roots.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

We begin by introducing a dimension of religious and moral belief along which individuals can be arrayed and on the basis of which they can be predicted to have different political orientations -- a model of moral cosmology developed by James Davison Hunter (1991). While moral cosmology is correlated with other dimensions of religion, such as religious (faith) identification and religious service attendance (e.g., Hayes 1995a, 1995b; Michelat 1990), we will show that it has independent effects on cultural and economic attitudes controlling for these other dimensions.