Sacred Texts
Knowledge Diffusion and Intellectual Change: When Chinese Literati Met European Jesuits
Chicheng Ma
Journal of Economic History, forthcoming
Abstract:
From 1580, the Jesuits introduced European sciences to China -- an autarkic civilization whose intelligentsia was dominated by Confucian literati. Drawing upon prefectural distributions of the Jesuits and Chinese scientific works, this paper demonstrates that the Jesuits stimulated Confucian literati to study science. On average, the literati's scientific works increased four times in prefectures with Jesuit scientists after 1580. But this effect shrank after the Jesuits were expelled by the emperor of China in 1723. Since China's scholar-official system remained unchanged, the literati's scientific research aimed to serve the needs of statecraft rather than translating into economic progress.
Islamic Constitutions and Democracy
Moamen Gouda & Shimaa Hanafy
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
There is an ongoing debate on the relationship between Islam and (lack of) democracy. Considerable literature shows that Islam, represented as an informal institution by Muslim population share, has a negative effect on democracy. This study examines the effects of formal institutions, specifically constitutions that prescribe Islamic law (Shari'a) as a source of legislation, on democracy. We use a newly developed coding of the degree to which Islam is incorporated in constitutions. Our empirical results show that the constitutional entrenchment of Islamic law has a negative and significant effect on democracy. Our findings are robust to using different estimators and instrumental variable regressions, employing alternative measures of democracy and controlling for Muslim population, natural resource wealth, and additional control variables. While we show that Islamic constitutionalism is a reason for a democracy deficit in Muslim-majority countries, we find no evidence that Islam is inimical to democracy when not entrenched in the constitution.
Christian no more: Christian Americans are threatened by their impending minority status
Rosemary Al-Kire et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, November 2021
Abstract:
Christian Americans are on track to become a minority of the U.S. population by mid-century. Research on racial demographic shifts shows majority-group members experience status threat when reminded of similar demographic changes. Public debate about religious freedom and the role of Christianity in America suggest that fast-changing religious demographics similarly elicit threat, and trigger defensive political stances, among Christian Americans. In two preregistered experiments (total N = 766 Christian Americans), reminders of religious demographic shifts evoked perceived threat to religious rights and freedoms, which in turn accounted for increases in Christian nationalism, conservative political ideology, and support for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Results illustrate how America's fast-changing religious landscape can evoke threat for Christians and how this threat may influence political reasoning.
The Partisanship of Protestant Clergy in the 2016 Presidential Election
James Guth & Corwin Smidt
Politics and Religion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Given their strategic position within American society, clergy continue to remain important actors in American politics. This article examines the partisan identifications and electoral behavior of American Protestant clergy in the 2016 presidential election. Although clergy partisanship may be of interest in any election, the 2016 contest, given the milieu of political polarization and the presence of the Trump candidacy, provides an intriguing context for assessing the profession's electoral behavior, particularly among Republican clergy. Based on survey results from over 2,500 clergy drawn from ten Protestant (five mainline and five evangelical) denominations, the study finds that, during the early stages of the 2016 nomination process, only a small percentage of Republican clergy supported Trump and that, despite the high level of political polarization, a sizable segment of Republican clergy resisted partisan pressures and refused to vote for Trump in the general election. The propensity of both independent and Republican clergy to vote for the GOP nominee varied largely with the level of perceived "threats": to the Christian heritage of the nation, from Islam, and from the process of "globalization."
National religiosity eases the psychological burden of poverty
Jana Berkessel et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 28 September 2021
Abstract:
Lower socioeconomic status (SES) harms psychological well-being, an effect responsible for widespread human suffering. This effect has long been assumed to weaken as nations develop economically. Recent evidence, however, has contradicted this fundamental assumption, finding instead that the psychological burden of lower SES is even greater in developed nations than in developing ones. That evidence has elicited consternation because it suggests that economic development is no cure for the psychological burden of lower SES. So, why is that burden greatest in developed nations? Here, we test whether national religiosity can explain this puzzle. National religiosity is particularly low in developed nations. Consequently, developed nations lack religious norms that may ease the burden of lower SES. Drawing on three different data sets of 1,567,204, 1,493,207, and 274,393 people across 156, 85, and 92 nations, we show that low levels of national religiosity can account for the greater burden of lower SES in developed nations. This finding suggests that, as national religiosity continues to decline, lower SES will become increasingly harmful for well-being - a societal change that is socially consequential and demands political attention.
Loved As-Is: How God Salience Lowers Interest in Self-Improvement Products
Lauren Grewal, Eugenia Wu & Keisha Cutright
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Consumers often desire to become better versions of themselves. Reflecting this interest in self-improvement, the marketplace offers consumers a wide range of products and services that promise to improve or better the consumer in some way. But, in a world with unlimited opportunities to spend one's time and money, what influences whether consumers will invest in products that enable self-improvement? We demonstrate that the degree to which God is salient has a negative effect on individuals' preferences for consumption choices with self-improvement features compared to equally attractive options that do not include such features. We propose that this is because thoughts of God activate a greater sense of being loved for who you are ("loved 'as-is'"), making self-improvement a lower priority. We demonstrate this basic effect across several experiments as well as archival data, provide process evidence through mediation and moderation, and address alternative explanations. We also identify important boundary conditions: God salience is less likely to decrease interest in self-improvement products when consumers do not believe in God, and when God is considered to be a punishing (vs. loving) entity.
Religiosity and risk taking: Is there a demand-side effect?
Thomas Berry-Stölzle & Steven Irlbeck
Journal of Corporate Finance, forthcoming
Abstract:
Religiosity may impact firm risk taking via its risk averse employees or through risk-sensitive demand. Using detailed financial statements of property-liability insurance companies, we find that both religiosity at firms' headquarters and the religiosity of firms' largest geographic market are negatively related to firm risk taking. For firms with one salient market, the impact of market religiosity is approximately the same order of magnitude as headquarter religiosity. Our evidence suggests that firm risk taking is influenced by customer demand.
The Long-Term Effects of Oppression: Prussia, Political Catholicism, and the Alternative für Deutschland
Lukas Haffert
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Contemporary political behavior is often affected by historical legacies, but the specific mechanisms through which these legacies are transmitted are difficult to pin down. This paper argues that historical political conflicts can affect political behavior over several generations when they trigger an enduring organizational mobilization. It studies how the oppression of German Catholics in the nineteenth century led to a regionally differentiated mobilization of political Catholicism that still affects political support for the radical right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) today. Using newly collected data on historical oppression events, it shows that Catholic regions where oppression was intense saw greater mobilization of Catholic lay organizations than Catholic regions where oppression was milder and show lower support for the AfD today. The paper thus contributes to the literature on the historical determinants of political behavior as well as to the question of which regional context effects strengthen or weaken the radical right.
The Lord's Justice: Blood Libel, Legalism, and Neighborly Negotiation in an Eighteenth-Century Private Town
Curtis Murphy
Jewish History, September 2021, Pages 57-87
Abstract:
This article discusses a series of investigations from 1729 to 1730 into an alleged ritual murder in the town of present-day Niasvizh. In the eighteenth century, Niasvizh, then called Nieśwież, belonged to the Radziwiłłs, one of the wealthiest and most powerful families of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Unlike similar cases during this period, this ritual murder investigation did not follow the standard script of interrogation by torture and public execution, in part because the private town lord fostered a culture of legality and predictability that allowed the Jewish community the opportunity to organize an effective defense. The multiple investigations carried out by the town magistracy and the lord's hand-picked officials also revealed a dense network of socioeconomic and neighborly relations between Catholic elites and Jews of both genders, a relationship that excluded non-Catholics and noncitizen residents of the town. In such an environment, blood libel served as a weapon of resentment and revenge for the disenfranchised and the excluded in order to destabilize the class oligarchy. The failure of the accusation to fundamentally alter relations between Catholics and Jews underscores the extraordinary significance of the supposedly "feudal" private town lord in enforcing cooperation and upholding legality, creating a framework in which the Jewish community had greater room to maneuver to combat a blood libel accusation than in royal towns or in even more "modern" states.