Education, religiosity and moral attitudes: explaining cross-national effect differences - Statistical Data Included

Sociology of Religion, Summer, 2002 by Peer Scheepers, Manfred Te Grotenhuis, Frans Van Der Slik

The general hypothesis on the effects of exposure to the educational system was specified by Weil (1985) on the basis of his empirical findings. He proposes that in countries with a long-standing liberal-democratic regime, the political culture contains 'enlightened' outlooks that may be transmitted through the educational system, at least more strongly than in countries where the liberal-democratic tradition has been interrupted. We, moreover, propose that his theoretical statements may be generalized to the national contexts of the former state-socialist countries: the educational systems of these countries have been characterized as uniform and highly standardized, using centrally licensed textbooks for the purpose of highly formalized outcomes (Meier 1989). The crucial argument is that the educational system in long-standing democratic and pluralistic nations instills liberal views on moral issues more effectively the longer people are exposed to the educational system, while this effect may occur to a lesser extent in countries where this democratic tradition was interrupted, and it may indeed be absent in former state-socialist countries where pluralism was unavailable for several generations. Weil also points out that in heterogeneous societies, in which the communal leaders try to promote accommodation among population segments in order to avoid open conflicts, the educational system may be more likely to instill tolerant and liberal moral attitudes. Therefore we set out to test the hypotheses that: (3a) The effects of exposure to the educational system on moral attitudes are strong in nations with a relatively long history of liberal democracy, relatively weak in nations with an interrupted liberal democracy, and nearly absent in nations with a relatively short history of liberal democracy; and (3b) The effects of exposure to the educational system on moral attitudes are stronger, the more religiously heterogeneous the nations.

The general hypothesis on effects of parental religious characteristics has also been specified according to national circumstances. Kelley and De Graaf (1997) propose an argument that boils down to a 'religious and moral defense.' Essentially, they argue that religious parents in secular societies try to minimize the effects of the surrounding secular society on their offspring and are inclined to maximize the effects of their subcultural religious surroundings in order to sustain their 'moral community.' This hypothesis was corroborated by their analyses. Extending the hypothesis to moral attitudes, as suggested by Kelley and De Graaf (1997:654-655), leads to the hypothesis that: (3c) The effects of parental church attendance on conservative moral attitudes of their children (our respondents) are stronger in more secularized nations.

We propose to take this argument one step further: the national religious context may also affect the relationship between individual religiosity and moral attitudes. Starting from the argument offered by Woodrum and Davison (1992), we propose that the effects of individual religiosity on moral issues are stronger in secular societies than in religious societies: in the former societies, religious communities try to minimize the effects of secularism on their members by building 'moral walls around their moral community.' This is a perfectly rational response as religious communities may consider these secular effects to be incompatible with, or even hostile to, their own views on moral issues. However, findings by Stark (1996) lead to a contradictory hypothesis. In a religious context, an individual's norms are prone to be justified by religious considerations (designated as a 'Hellfire effect' [Hirschi and Stark 1969]), as a result of social interaction with religious persons in one's community. In a predominantly secular setting, however, religion 'will tend to become a very compartmentalized component of the individual's life -- something that surfaces only in specific situations such as Sunday school and church' (Stark 1996:164). (2)