Religious Faith and Agency

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 colleagues 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 religion 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’d like to replicate this survey in other Latin American countries and other world regions. Does the link between religiosity and agency hold for people who subscribe to other religions? Is the relationship between religion and agency an artifact of Latin America or Christianity, or does it transcend both place and faith? 

(For a longer version of this post co-authored with Richard Wood, please visit the website of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies).

---- James Ron is a sociologist and political scientist. For details of his scholarly research, visit his Google Scholar page and academic profiles on ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Web of Science, SemanticsScholar, ORCID, and PhilPeople. For details about his professional trajectory, please visit his LinkedIn page.

James also writes a Substack blog on military memoirs.