James Ron - Religious Faith and Agency in Latin America

Congregation in Veracruz, Mexico, founded by Brazilian missionaries from the Universal Church By Roberto Filipe at Portuguese Wikipedia

Marxist perspectives have long argued that religion is an illusion that suppresses the willingness of ordinary people to change the world.

To explore this claim, my colleague David Crow and I ran surveys in Mexico City and Bogotá, and we found the precise opposite to be true. The more respondents believed religion was important in their lives, the more likely they were to believe they could change the world.

  We conducted the surveys with financial support from the Open Society Foundations. In each city, we drew a sample of 960 persons that was broadly representative of the adult population. (To learn more about these surveys, check out these reports on our broader findings in Bogotá and Mexico City).

Our surveys first asked, “To what extent do you agree, or disagree, with the statement, Individuals like me can make a difference in the world?” We offered seven response options, ranging from 1 (“I do not agree at all”) to 7 (“I completely agree”). Next, we asked, How important is religion in your daily life? Here, we offered 11 response options, ranging from 0 (“Not important at all”) to 10 (“Very important.”)

As Graph 1 shows, most respondents felt optimistic about their ability to make a difference in the world.

I was surprised by these results. I'd expected people to be more pessimistic, given these countries' challenges of poverty and public security. (See, for example, my earlier post on Mexico's public security crisis).

As Graph 2 shows, religion was important to people living in both cities. Almost 40% scored religion as "very important," and over 70% ranked religion at a 6 or above on the 0-10 scale.

I then built a statistical model in which the outcome of interest was Agency and the independent variable of concern was Religious Importance. In different iterations of the model, I controlled for socio-economic status, civic participation, gender, religious denomination, frequency of prayer and religious attendance, political knowledge, country, and city neighborhood.

All of the models I ran indicated that Religious Importance was a strong and consistent predictor of Agency.

As Graph 3 demonstrates, respondents who ranked religion as “not important at all” scored their agreement with the statement, “Individuals like me can make a difference in the world,” at just under 5.7 on the 1-7 Agency scale. This reflects the overall optimism of respondents – even non-religious respondents were upbeat.

Individuals who reported that religion was “very important," however, scored their sense of agency at just over 6.2, a 10% increase.

This finding is notable, given the difficulties inherent in explaining variation in psychological assessments. Individual-level psychological constructs are shaped by myriad personal, cultural, and situational factors, many of which are unmeasured in public opinion research.

In alternative statistical models, I explored whether this effect varied across socioeconomic status, religious denomination, gender, and more. My concern was that Religious Importance might matter more for females or males, richer or poorer people, Catholics or Evangelicals, or more or less educated respondents. I also explored non-linear relationships, in case religion mattered more at higher or lower levels of faith.

None of these statistical explorations panned out. Instead, Religious Importance had a linear relationship with Agency that was not moderated by interactions with other factors.

What does this all mean? First, Marx was wrong, at least when it comes to contemporary Mexico City and Bogotá. The more religious faith plays a role in the daily lives of people living in these cities, the more likely they are to believe they can change the world. This was true even for those at the lower end of the income scale, further undermining Marx’s claim.

I co-authored a longer version of this research with Richard Wood, a leading sociologist of religion and president of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of Southern California (IACS). You can read it on the IACS website here: Opiate of the Masses? Evidence from Surveys in Mexico and Colombia.

About James Ron

James Ron is an author and social scientist whose career has spanned military service, human rights investigations, journalism, and university teaching. He is working on a memoir, Azimuth, which reflects on a life lived at the intersection of political violence, moral responsibility, exile, and personal transformation.

Learn more at www.jamesron.com | www.jamesron.org | www.jamesron.net

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